Beyond Co-op Reviews: March 2022

Sequels and retro releases make for a very solid month of games.

Welcome back to Beyond Co-Op Reviews, our critical look at games that don't feature co-op modes.

This month, we’re kicking it old-school as we review The King of the Fighters XV, the latest installment in SNK’s venerable KOF series, the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, the newest Taiko no Tatsujin music game, and even a pair of Turbografx-16 games that have been miraculously released on modern consoles. With so many games to choose from, let us help you find the best non-cooperative games in our Beyond Co-Op Reviews!

The King of Fighters XV (Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam)

“Although the single-player modes are a bit skimpy, KOF XV’s quality multiplayer modes make it a must-buy for anybody looking to face off with friends and online foes.”

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pack (Switch)

“While a couple of the courses included in the Booster Course Pass at launch aren’t particularly memorable, the overall lineup is quite solid.”

Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! (Xbox)

“As players successfully hit their notes without missing, the soul meter fills up above the playing field… [Meanwhile,] the characters and visual effects in the background get crazier and more frantic, which is a big part of the fun.”

Infernax (Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam)

“At various points throughout the game, Alcidor will have to make a choice: save or kill a man, let a group of squatters stay or go, etc. These choices are always fun and can lead to dramatically different outcomes such as an incensed man returning for revenge.”

Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection (Switch)

“The PC Engine versions of Valis (included here) feature CD-quality soundtracks and fully voiced, anime-style cinematics. Fans of 80s and 90s anime will certainly enjoy the beautiful, lengthy story scenes.”

Moto Roader MC (Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch)

“Games like [this one,] a 5-player, top-down racing game were common on the PC Engine, but it’s surprising to see Ratalaika release such an obscure racer on modern consoles.”

Download codes were provided by each of the publishers in this feature.

Review by: Paul Acevedo

Back when you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a new fighting game, SNK managed to create a distinctive new franchise by bringing together fighters from Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and other games into one massive series: The King of Fighters. The series has outlasted many of its competitors, racking up fifteen numbered entries and numerous spin-offs. Six years after the last entry, The King of Fighters XV now makes an impressive debut on Xbox (which never got KOF XIV), PlayStation, and PC. Despite the long wait and a lack of earth-shattering innovations, this one’s a whole lot of fun.

Story Mode allows players to pick any team of three fighters and proceed through a series of battles. Between certain bouts, cinematics play out that tell the overall story of the new tournament and a dangerous, otherworldly threat waiting in the wings. These cinematics are a bit goofy and focused on specific characters rather than the team chosen by the player. It all culminates in a series of flashy boss battles and a 2D, team-specific ending. Story mode is basically a traditional arcade mode with some cinematics thrown in. It’s fun while it lasts, but rather insubstantial compared to the story modes you’d find in every other AAA fighting game. On the plus side, unlocking the numerous team endings will inspire plenty of playthroughs.

Other single-player modes include Training, Tutorial, and Mission. Training is the usual practice-against-CPU-dummy mode. Tutorial is broken up into two basic categories: Basic Moves and Attack Moves. The two do a good job of teaching basic and advanced game mechanics. Mission mode, the equivalent of Combo Challenges in the Dead or Alive series, offers five tough challenges for each of the game’s 39 characters.

Offline versus mode offers normal and tournament options in both one-on-one or 3-on-3 fighter configurations. That’s all expected, but the online modes are surprisingly robust. First, the game uses GGPO netcode, so the experience is as fluid as you’d hope. The actual menus are busy and unintuitive, but you get used to them after a while. Ranked matches are the standard fare, though players have to try out against three increasingly brutal CPU opponents first, just like in Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid.

Room Matches are where players can hang out, spectate, and spar in a variety of battle types, including Single VS, Team VS, Party VS, and Draft VS. Party is a 6-player team-based mode in which each player controls one character on a team of three during a 3-on-3 battle rather than one player controlling all three members. Draft VS forces players to take turns drafting characters with which to play. Each fighter can only be used by one player, so picking the right characters for your team of three before your opponent gets them comes into play. In total, Room Matches have quite a lot to offer.

The huge roster is always a selling point of this series, and KOF XV is no different. XV launches with 39 playable characters – more than the first game’s roster of 24 but fewer than some installments. Most of my favorites like Mai, Terry, Andy, Joe, Ryo, Yuri, and Athena are all present. So is Robert Garcia, though he now sports an awful pencil-thin mustache and goatee. New characters include Isla, a girl with ghostly hands floating around her; Dolores, a woman who fights with earth magic; and Krohnen McDougall, a goggles-wearing dude with a cybernetic arm. Some important characters from XIV and series mainstays didn’t make the cut, but the premium DLC Garou Team (led by Rock Howard) has just been released, and the South Town team (led by Geese Howard) will come next. A $29.99 Team Pass will get you both teams.

Premium DLC characters don’t mean much if the game isn’t very good. Thankfully, King of Fighters XV is very good. The game plays very smoothly, with both simple basic mechanics and advanced mechanics like guard crushes and emergency evasions. As a casual fighting game fan, I can hop in and have a blast without feeling overwhelmed or like I’m missing out on too much of the gameplay. The 2.5D graphics look great, too, other than some character models having gigantic necks (Ryo) or hands (pretty much everybody). Not only is the soundtrack very solid, the DJ Station also allows players to listen to stage music from three past KOF games (XIV, 2002, and ‘94) and assign songs to each stage. Although the single-player modes are a bit skimpy, KOF XV’s quality multiplayer modes make it a must-buy for anybody looking to face off with friends and online foes.

The King of Fighters XV sells for $59.99 in digital and physical formats. Grab the digital version on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam or the physical version for Xbox, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. A digital deluxe version that bundles the game with the “Team Pass 1” DLC is also available for $84.99.

Our Rating: 4 out of 5

Review by: Paul Acevedo

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, an enhanced version of Mario Kart 8, raced onto Switch way back in 2017. All these years later, Nintendo has decided to further extend the life of the game with the release of the Booster Course Pass. This season pass-style DLC can be bought for $25 or accessed via a premium Nintendo Switch Online Plus Expansion Pack membership. The Booster Course Pass currently adds two cups with a total of eight extra tracks at launch, with a whopping 40 additional tracks set to be released by the end of 2023.

The two new cups, Golden Dash Cup and Lucky Cat Cup, can be accessed through all modes except for Battle; these tracks are just for racing, not fighting. To select them, visit the mode of your choice and scroll down on the cup selection screen. The DLC tracks appear in public online races and can be played through Friends and Rival races as long as the host player has purchased access to the Booster Course Pass. It’s always cool when games let people who own DLC play with people who don’t own it.

The Golden Dash Cup includes the following tracks:

The Lucky Cat Cup includes:

While a couple of the courses included in the Booster Course Pass at launch aren’t particularly memorable, the overall lineup is quite solid. It’s great to see the mobile courses make their way into an official console release, especially the excellent Ninja Hideaway. Some gamers have complained that the mobile courses aren’t as detailed on Switch, but they don’t look worse than any other courses. The older courses have certainly received graphical upgrades, especially the previously flat Sky Garden. Even though it’s easy to fall off the track in that one, bouncing around the clouds while Koopa Paratroopas cheer everyone on will always make for a good time.

Gamers who love Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and want more of it will easily get their money’s worth from the Booster Course Pass over time. Nintendo has 40 more courses in store for us, many of which will surely be crowd-pleasers. With Mario Kart 9 seemingly still a long way off, at least we’ll have plenty of newish content to keep us busy in the current game.

Get the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass for $24.99 on the eShop or with a Nintendo Switch Online Plus Expansion Pack subscription. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sells for $59.99 digitally and physically.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Review by: Paul Acevedo

For years, Xbox has struggled to attract Japanese games and series to the platform. Thus, it’s exciting when a game like Bandai Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master arrives on Xbox and the Windows Store. In the Taiko series, players use controllers or drum accessories to play along to a variety of songs. The Xbox version doesn’t have a drum peripheral like the PlayStation and Switch games, but it still has lots to offer fans of rhythm and music games.

Despite a few tweaks, the Taiko no Tatsujin gameplay hasn’t changed much over the years. One or two players select a song, a difficulty, and then do their best to play along to the music. A series of red and blue note symbols scrolls by from the right; the goal is to hit the corresponding button when the notes hit the target spot on the left. Large notes can be hit with two buttons for extra points, yellow streaks represent drum rolls, and balloon notes can be popped by rapidly hitting a button. It’s simple, but faster songs and higher difficulties add plenty of challenge and room for mastery.

As players successfully hit their notes without missing, the soul meter fills up above the playing field. Fill the meter to yellow and you’ll pass the song, earning a decent chunk of coins along the way. Failing to reach the yellow will result in a loss and only a small number of coins being earned. Achieving a “full combo” by hitting every single note will get you the highest rating and payout. And, of course, as the soul meter fills, the characters and visual effects in the background get crazier and more frantic, which is a big part of the fun.

Playing single-player or local multiplayer (not quite cooperative, but not really competitive either) is exciting enough, but The Drum Master takes things a step farther by adding online multiplayer. Not only is playing against others good for showing off customized characters, it also pays more coins than local play. The ranking system awards players a letter grade based on their win/loss ratio. Win a bunch and the rank goes up; lose and it drops a bit. The game matches low-rank and high-rank players against each other, yet high-rank players don’t automatically stomp weaker opponents. That’s because the song difficulty goes up with your rank, so high-rank competitors have to work harder to win than noobs. It works well, in my experience.

Like most games in the series, The Drum Master doesn’t have a campaign to speak of. 55 of the base game’s 75 songs are available to play from the start, with the other 20 waiting to be unlocked with coins in the in-game store. That’s the metagame – earning coins and buying songs and character and profile customization items from the shop. The process is incredibly grindy, but robust music games like this certainly have the potential to keep many players entertained for the long haul. The Drum Master launches with 89 Achievements to reward gamers for playing every song, buying everything in the shop, and more, which can also be fairly motivating.

As for the song library, it consists of songs from 7 categories: Pop, Anime, Vocaloid, Variety, Classical, Game Music, and Namco Original. A few of the categories are woefully understocked, such as Pop with its scant five selections and Variety with a meager three songs. Still, there are plenty of great anime themes from properties like Dragon Ball Z, Attack on Titan, One Piece, and even Spirited Away. Game Music has songs from Undertale, Katamari Damacy, Darius, The Ninja Warriors, OutRun, and more. Bandai Namco also sells a $20 season pass that promises 6 song packs over time. Between the game and season pass, rhythm fans will have plenty of songs to enjoy.

The elephant in the room for The Drum Master is the lack of a dedicated taiko peripheral for Xbox. Many people enjoy playing the series with a controller, but some gamers want the authentic arcade experience that only a drum can provide. PlayStation and Switch both have official drum controllers from Hori as well as cheaper knock-off drums, but no such luck for Xbox. Bandai Namco certainly should release a taiko controller for Xbox, even if just through their company store. That said, there is now a way to use PlayStation and Switch drum controllers on Xbox: The Brook Wingman XB accessory! Using the converter, I’m able to play The Drum Master with a PlayStation taiko controller. Buying both a drum and a converter isn’t the cheapest solution, but it works. See our Wingman XB review.

Japanese-style rhythm games aren’t exactly a dime a dozen on Xbox. Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master doesn’t just stand out because of that lack of competition; it’s also a great game. Buy the game for $49.99 on Xbox or try it for free on Xbox Game Pass (as of this writing). If you want to go the extra mile by accessories, you can get an official Switch drum controller for around $90 and a Brook Wingman XB for $45.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Review by: Paul Acevedo

Before Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night came along to cement Metroidvanias as a legitimate platforming subgenre, earlier platformers had to lay the groundwork. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link each combined platforming with bold adventure game elements that hadn’t been seen before. Though neither game is particularly beloved nowadays, they serve as inspiration to the newly created Infernax from Berzerk Studio and The Arcade Crew. Infernax looks and plays a lot like a classic NES game, but its creative design choices and sharp gameplay will easily qualify it as an early frontrunner for the year’s best Metroidvania.

The game takes place during the Crusades. Lord Alcedor, the protagonist, returns to his European kingdom after some time away at war. He comes home to discover that things have taken a turn toward the dark and demonic. Monsters prowl the land during both day and night, people suffer from curses and vile schemes, and a cult has even arisen to foment the chaos. Alcedor will face many tough choices to make on his quest to return order to the kingdom.

Infernax is modeled after the NES classics of yore, though the larger color palette of the sprites and some graphical effects put it closer to the Super NES Ninja Gaiden Trilogy than a true NES title. The blood and gore here wouldn’t have flown during Nintendo’s censorious early days, but the pixelated art style keeps things from getting too disturbing. Blood and guts aside, the exploration of desolate fields, swamps, and other wastelands while contending with a day-and-night cycle certainly evokes Simon’s Quest vibes.

Early on, the hero reaches one of the precious few settlements amidst the hinterlands. In each town, Alcedor can converse with townspeople, accept quests, and purchase a few unique upgrades like armor, potion bottles, and spells. Magic can be used to create a temporary shield, refill health, solve a couple of puzzles, and, eventually, fast travel between save points. Potions initially function like those of Dark Souls, with the player limited to two rechargeable potions for healing. Later, Alcedor can buy more bottles and even MP-refilling potions.

The most essential upgrades that provide access to new areas tend to be found inside of castles. These labyrinthine dungeons resemble those of Link’s famous adventure. Monsters can kill Alcidor if he runs out of health, although death by falling into pits is the real threat. The first two castles are reasonably conquered, but the third features some truly cruel and frustrating jumps (as pictured above) that will test even seasoned platforming fans. The remaining dungeons are actually easier, making this a rare balance issue in a game that usually challenges without veering into unfair territory.

The last thing that sets Infernax apart is its karma system. At various points throughout the game, Alcedor will have to make a choice: save or kill a man, let a group of squatters stay or go, etc. These choices are always fun and can lead to dramatically different outcomes such as an incensed man returning for revenge. The karma system is not without its flaws, however. First, the player often can’t tell whether a decision will count as good or bad. Second, there’s no way to check your karma other than seeing whether one of the opposing NPC factions has quests to offer. A significant amount of late-game content, including unique endings, is tied to having entirely positive or negative karma. Because Infernax never conveys whether decisions add or subtract karma, players basically have to rely on guides in order to see the last portions of the game.

With a few exceptions, Metroidvanias tend to be easy – just look at our recent review of Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. Infernax offers two difficulty levels but tends much more towards old school challenge overall. On the whole, this is a tough but fair game. Players who want an easier time can always input cheat codes at save points. The game communicates several such codes, and they don’t even disable Achievements (though some probably should). There’s even a code that gives Alcidor a Contra gun instead of a mace. How cool is that? This game is clearly a labor of love, one that Metroidvania fans can’t afford to miss.

Infernax costs $19.99 on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. It’s also available on Xbox Game Pass as of this writing, so be sure to give it a try!

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Review by: Paul Acevedo

Back in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras of gaming, Telenet Japan released a series of story-intensive action-platformers called Valis on PCs and Japanese consoles. The games are noteworthy not just for their challenging platforming but especially for their complex narratives and anime-style cinematics. Now, thanks to a Japanese crowdfunding campaign, Edia has released the first three Valis games on Nintendo Switch as Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection. This collection is both an excellent way to enjoy these classics and an important step towards preserving games that might otherwise be forgotten by future generations.

Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection collects the PC Engine Super CD-ROM versions of Valis 1-3. The first game has previously been released in English on Sega Genesis, whereas the PC Engine versions of the second and third games were released in dubbed form on Turbografx Super CDs. This collection strictly features the Japanese versions, so the English dubs of 2 and 3 are not included. All three games are playable with optional English subtitles. The PC Engine versions of Valis are the best ones because of their CD-quality soundtracks and fully voiced, anime-style cinematics. Fans of 80s and 90s anime will certainly enjoy the beautiful, lengthy story scenes.

The first three Valis games follow Yuko (voiced by the prolific Sumi Shimamoto), an ordinary high school girl who gets summoned to the Dream World as its protector. Simultaneously, Yuko’s friend from school joins the villainous Robles’s side as its warrior, leading to a fateful confrontation. In the second game, two warring factions threaten the magical realm, forcing Yuko to once again step in and help. The third game sees a tyrant from the demon realm leading an attack on both the real world and the Dream World. This time, Yuko will have to team up with her long-lost sister and a friendly demon in order to save all three realms.

Although Yuko is the main playable character in all three games, the art style and gameplay evolved from one entry to the next. Our heroine always fights with the sword of Valis. In the first game, she also wields a variety of magic spells and can slide to dodge enemy attacks. The second game ditches the magic system in favor of an expanded arsenal of power-ups. Unfortunately, it also loses the slide move, making dodging a little harder. Valis 3 brings back both magic and sliding while also introducing two additional playable characters.

All three games are deep but very challenging platformers. The first Valis, in particular, is hampered by slow movement and floaty jumping. The level design basically requires players to constantly attack and watch out for surprise assaults, which is stressful. The sequels feel more responsive, slightly lessening the difficulty. Thankfully, the collection adds both a rewind feature and save states. Without these features, the games would be a lot more frustrating. Unfortunately, the buttons for those particular functions can’t be reassigned from L and ZL, making it tough to play with retro controllers that lack those buttons, such as the 8BitDo PC Engine Wireless Gamepad.

In addition to save states and rewinding, the Fantasm Soldier Collection features some impressive extras. Every story scene and song can be played from each game’s main menu, allowing folks to enjoy the narrative without diving into the actual games. Each Japanese instruction manual is viewable in full, and most pages have full English translations as well. The only important presentation features missing here are widescreen borders and scanline options. Oh, and the collection is missing Valis IV, sadly. The Super Nintendo version, Super Valis IV, is separately playable via Nintendo Switch Online, but the much better PC Engine game deserves a re-release as well.

Despite the omission of Valis IV, Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection is a truly fantastic collection of classic action-platformers. All three games feature beautiful graphics for the era (even without parallax scrolling), excellent soundtracks, and engaging, well-voiced cinematics. Valis did isekai fantasy before the genre started taking over Japanese animation. If you’re a gamer who lived through the 8-bit and 16-bit eras or an anime fan who can live with super-tough games, don’t miss this collection. Let’s show Edia that there’s demand for more Valis games!

Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection sells for $39.99 on Nintendo Switch. The games in this collection can now be purchased separately as well. Valis, Valis II, and Valis 3 sell for $15 each.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Review by: Paul Acevedo

The Turbografx-16 and its Japanese counterpart, the PC Engine, are some of the few consoles ever produced with only one controller port. To play with two players, gamers had to buy a multitap accessory. The multitap didn’t just let two players team up, though; it added five controller ports. Thus, Turbo/PCE games often supported five players, three more than competing Super NES and Genesis titles. Games like Masaya’s Moto Roader MC, a 5-player, top-down racing game were common on the PC Engine, but it’s surprising to see Ratalaika release such an obscure racer on modern consoles.

Moto Roader MC is actually the third game in the series of racers, but only the first Moto Roader has been released in English markets before. It might seem strange for Ratalaika to publish the third title before the others, but that probably comes down to gameplay styles. The first two Moto Roaders have a Micro Machines-style close-up camera view, upgrade systems, and a higher degree of challenge. MC, in contrast, ditches the upgrade system and uses a Super Sprint-like, highly zoomed-out camera, confining races to single-screen tracks. Thus, it makes sense to release the most approachable game before potentially progressing to the main series.

After a lovely cinematic intro, players can choose from Race, Time Attack, and Omake (bonus minigame) modes. Races support up to 5 simultaneous local players on Switch and up to four on Xbox and PlayStation, making Switch arguably the best version. If less than the full number of players is present, the rest will be played by AI racers. There is no option to adjust the difficulty of the AI racers, which can be annoying because they’re pretty aggressive. Still, after practicing for a while, I managed to win first place in a circuit.

Standard races consist of five circuits, each containing five different tracks. The five tiny competitors must all complete five laps around the screen, ending the race. During a race, cars can fire rockets forward or drop bombs behind them, but weapons aren’t vital to succeed. Since the race doesn’t end until all five racers finish, anyone who has completed the race gets to drive around as a ghost until the remaining competitors complete their laps. With the tracks confined to a single-screen, races only take about a minute, making this a great game for quick multiplayer sessions.

Anyone who has played the first two Grand Theft Autos knows that controls can be awkward in a top-down racing game. The default control scheme is definitely unintuitive here, with Up on the D-Pad or stick making the car go forward, and Left and Right in control of steering. Thankfully, players can press a button at any time to switch to an alternate control style in which holding Up moves the car up, Down moves it down, etc. This makes the game so much more playable. I only wish you could set a default control style instead of having to switch to the better style at the start of each game.

Ratalaika has ported a lot of classic console games like Cotton 100% to modern consoles in the last couple of years. These ports always have a handful of emulation frills like optional scanlines, but they never include widescreen borders, annoyingly. This time, however, the developers included an option (on by default) to play on a widescreen field. This simply stretches the screen horizontally. It doesn’t look bad or interfere with gameplay, but gamers can choose the original aspect ratio if they like.

Finally, we can’t discuss a Ratalaika game without mentioning Achievements. The Achievements/Trophies are awarded for racing on each track. With 25 tracks in total, that should take about half an hour. Ratalaika might be selling Moto Roader MC a bit short by omitting skill-based Achievements; this is not a shovelware title like some of their other games. That said, Moto Roader MC is a game meant for short multiplayer sessions, so practicing to perfect the circuits isn’t really the point. This game won’t be for everybody, but its status as a unique type of party game still makes it worth taking for a spin.

Moto Roader MC costs $6.99 on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch.

Our Rating: 3.5 out of 5