There's a compelling battle royale game in Naraka: Bladepoint, but it takes some warming up to. When my Naraka: Bladepoint playtime was still within Steam's two hour easy refund window, I was not having fun. Martial arts battle royale is a great idea, but I was disappointed by the execution from Hangzhou-based studio 24 Entertainment. The progression and monetization systems look like a lot of work to unpack, the English localization is sloppy, and your first match is against bots who behave more like dust particles caught in air currents than players. It seemed pretty bad.  A few more hours and one heartbreaking second place finish later, however, and my favorite character and I both achieved Greater Understanding. For travelling monk Tianhai, that was a Cultivation reward tier in one of a reckless number of progression systems. For me, it was the understanding that Naraka: Bladepoint is a pretty good videogame. If you didn't get a taste of it in the betas, here's a ru...

  Along with thousands of other galactic migrants, your character in The Ascent pays a small fortune for a ticket to the planet Veles, looking for a better life. The moment you step off the ship, however, the price of the ticket becomes a debt so astronomical that you'll probably die before you can pay it off. Even so, the company that owns the massive city you now call home, the Ascent Group, wants its pound of flesh. You are now an indent—slang for an indentured labourer—working dirty, dangerous jobs to pay it off. So much for a better life. Those advertising blimps in Blade Runner were full of shit. The Ascent's setting, a mix of neon-flecked '80s cyberpunk and grimy science fiction, is magnificent. The story takes place in an Arcology—a self-contained city squeezed into an immense skyscraper—and it's obscene with detail. Think Hong Kong's infamous Kowloon Walled City, crossed with Akira's Neo Tokyo, and populated by the scuzzy aliens from the Mos Eisley cant...