Wireframe_-_Issue_23_2019

60 / wfmag.cc

Review

Rated

 The game’s atmosphere is
fantastic throughout.

Police armed with angry, invisible monsters. What could go wrong?

stop society dissolving around you, as long as

you keep it on a leash.

The surprising brilliance of Astral Chain is how

it uses this setup to thematically unite all kinds

of disparate objectives, making you play both

everyday beat cop and superpowered action

hero. Here, rescuing cats, collecting litter, and

chasing down graɝti artists are as much your

Mob as flying through a dimensional portal to

take down some vicious fiend. In one mission,

you have to destroy a colossal creature tearing

up the city centre. In the next, you’re sent to

help with the clean-up effort afterwards. But it

never feels disjointed. As a kind of total action-

adventure that constantly segues between

exploration, environmental pu]]les, platforming,

and combat, it has parallels to the recent God of

War, but with a streamlined cohesion that stops

it feeling so overweight.

The result is a game of huge variety

where everything somehow slots into place.

'irector Takahisa Taura brings aspects of his

Info

Review

GENRE

Action

FORMAT

Switch (tested)

DEVELOPER

PlatinumGames

PUBLISHER

Nintendo

PRICE

£49.99

RELEASE

Out now

Astral Chain

Review

Rated

REVIEWED BY

Jon Bailes

alk around Astral Chain’s

police station, or its Harmony

6Tuare, and you’ll notice

how clean everything looks.

This consumerist idyll of chatty

vending machines, electronic J-pop melodies,

and backlit advertising displays also implies a

strict order, where citi]ens are gently herded

by holographic barriers, and a discarded drinks

can feels so incongruous you can’t help but pop

it in the nearest bin. It’s beautifully clinical, but

at the same time unnervingly sterile. So when

the rifts appear in this society, literally, as gaping

red holes punched into that pristine surface,

spewing forth warped creatures and dragging

civilians into a nightmare dimension, it somehow

feels fully deserved.

It seems you can’t maintain perfect order

without a touch of chaos bursting through.

6omehow, it’s necessary to balance the two.

And this is where you come in. Part man (or

woman), part commander of dimension-shifting

monsters, all cop. The titular astral chain links

the law to its repressed opposite, with your

rookie oɝcer shackled to a Ȇ/egion’, an enslaved

Ȇchimera’ from the Astral 3lane that might help

HIGHLIGHT

1he fi{e egions are the stars
of stral hainŬ ach has its
own fighting style and sync
mo{es, not to mention a little
nersonalityŬ ut the fun often
comes from denloying their
indi{idual skills in and out of
battle, from se{ering wires
and snining targets to sniffing
out hidden items and lobbing
hea{y ob`ects aroundŬ

W

