24-04-2025
PETER HOSKIN reviews Clair Obscur Expedition 33: Ooh la la! Welcome to the fancy French game where beautiful people battle Belle Epoque monsters…
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £44.99)
Verdict: Fancy fantasy
Ooh, fancy! For that is the only permissible response to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It's got a fancy name. It's set in a fancy fantasy version of fancy Belle Époque France. It's got fancy graphics and a fancy combat system. So, like I say, fancy.
Let's take those things in turn, starting with the fantasy setting. Here, all the people are beautiful, well-dressed, Gallic and voiced by more or less well-known actors (including the great Andy Serkis).
Except there's a problem: a nasty baddie known as the Paintress has split apart this world of boulevards and boudoirs. Every year, she claims a sacrifice of hundreds of people. Every year, an expedition is sent out, across the sea, to try — and, so far, fail — to put a stop to her schemes. This year, it's the turn of Expedition... 33.
It's fair to say that things go badly when Expedition 33 get to the Paintress's realm. The first part of the game involves you — that is, the main character, Gustave — getting the band back together to take on this great malevolence (and her monsters) on her home turf.
But what turf! This is an extraordinarily beautiful game, in everything from its expansive landscapes to the nuances of its characters faces. The creature designs, the foliage, everything... you just keep on wanting to see more.
The real draw, however, is that combat system. It's turn-based in the style of Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Persona: you go, then the monsters go. But it also features more real-time elements in the style of Dark Souls: you've really got to be quick and accurate with your button presses to evade incoming attacks.
The result is something that's both familiar and new at the same time — and difficult, in a good way.
You press on, and so do Gustave and his crew, slowly getting stronger and stronger. Fancy? Yes. But also pretty fierce.
Tempest Rising (PC, £34.99)
Whisper it, but Command & Conquer is back. The real-time strategy series that occupied so many hours at so many beige computers in the 1990s is finally back after a hiatus of about 15 years. We can all return to building bases, producing more troops and vehicles, and clicking them from one place to another in the hope of outmanoeuvring the enemy. Oorah!
So why do we have to whisper it? Because this new game, Tempest Rising, isn't officially Command & Conquer. It's what might be called a homage or spiritual successor, but it hews so close to the original series that it's actually more a facsimile.
How close? Well, instead of a technified conflict between the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod, we now have a, er, technified conflict between the Global Defence Force (GDF) and the Tempest Dynasty.
They still take each other on in fact-paced battles on resource-laden landscapes. Even the soundtrack composer, Frank Klepacki, is a C&C veteran.
In fact, the biggest difference might be that Tempest Rising has ditched the beloved filmed cutscenes in between C&C's battles — in which actors such as Tim Curry got to chew wholesale quantities of scenery — although it's replaced them with very similar-looking digital versions.
All of which might sound like a bad thing. A cheap copy. But it's not.
It's amazing how far Tempest Rising gets — across its two story campaigns and skirmish and multiplayer modes — by recreating C&C as you remember it.
It's far better looking, of course. And faster. And, at least when it comes to the units under your command, more varied.
But it feels the same. And until we get a new, genuine Command & Conquer release, that fact is going to make a lot of gamers very happy indeed. Including this one.
