Gaming

Detroit: Become Human review: Create-your-own-adventures are back

This is your story

Published

May 30, 2018

Luigi Leonardo

Throughout video game history, the element of choice has never factored prominently towards a game’s progress. Even with an abundance of gameplay elements, video games always corral you to its own desired ending.

With Detroit: Become Human, developer Quantic Dream completely leaves that option to you. Besides a unique cinematic experience, Detroit brings a complete create-your-own-adventure set inside a near-future sci-fi world.

Welcome to Detroit

Like its predecessors Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human mixes its plot seamlessly with its gameplay. Because both are so intertwined, it becomes impossible to talk about one without the other.

Detroit brings us to its eponymous city in 2038. Despite being set two decades into the future, the Motor City doesn’t differ greatly from how it is now. Cars, houses, and clothing styles strangely look the same. However, for all its similarities, the Detroit (and everywhere else) of the future differs in one crucial aspect: artificially intelligent androids exist.

As predicted, humanity has invented compliant and intelligent robots that can do our bidding as servants, companions, and even occasional lovers. Unfortunately, things aren’t as smooth as they seem. Everywhere, androids have started to rebel against their masters. Humanity would call them “deviants.”

In Detroit, you control three androids portrayed through their own respective points of view. Connor is a prototype police android tasked with investigating why androids are turning deviant. Kara is a housewife managing an abusive father’s house and his daughter. Markus is a companion robot caring for an aging artist.

Three-in-one

With three characters, Quantic Dream created three distinct perspectives to separate each story from the other. Besides three collaborative ones, each chapter takes on a different tone and theme.

From gameplay elements to the soundtrack, each perspective is its own story. Even if you isolate them as separate stories, they can still exist individually as an adequately drawn game.

For the most part, every character is isolated in its own world. Detroit successfully created different moods for each story. Connor’s story and gameplay takes on a CSI vibe. Kara’s story has a more familial vibe. Finally, Markus’ story has a more revolutionary tone.

Sigh-filled sci-fi

A well-written science fiction story is always an excellent medium to depict a cautionary tale of the future a la Black Mirror. Like that show, Detroit starts off with an optimistic, well-rounded vision of the almost-near future. In that vision, androids have elevated humanity into new technological levels.

Unfortunately, this breath of fresh air eventually degrades to an on-the-nose civil rights story. From the onset, Detroit already hints that android rights lack the same modicum of respect that human rights do.

While civil rights stories shine in the spotlight today, Detroit hammers it down a little too much. Case in point, the story’s android rights movement uses too much historic taglines like “we have a dream” and “we think therefore we are.” Despite its create-your-own nature, Detroit really wants you to care about its androids.

For what it’s worth, its background worldbuilding excels. Through in-game magazines and TV screens, the game explores other facets of 2038’s world — politics, sports, interpersonal relationships, and transportation.

Do choices really matter?

Thankfully, yes. As with Quantic Dream’s other games, Detroit features a vast river of branching paths. Every decision — whether major or trivial — affects future chapters. Even missing a single slip of paper in one scene blocks you from significant decisions in future scenes.

Despite the allure of unlocking every option possible, the game naturally blocks you from achieving — or at least, unlocking — every option. Some scenes even lock users into time limits, both explicitly shown and hidden.

Further, developers have also highlighted the game’s permadeath options. A persistent worry, however, is if Detroit will have copouts when it deals with death. Thankfully, death is a real option in the game. In my first playthrough, a key character didn’t make it to the end credits. While there are some copout moments, permadeaths for both side and main characters remain a possibility throughout.

Fortunately, Detroit shows you which branches and options you’ve unlocked during your playthrough. The developers adamantly encourage gamers to finish a playthrough first before backtracking into new branches. However, the temptation to replay a chapter is always there.

Press X to pay respects

Unlike most games, Detroit does not have a standard verb set. Besides the traditional movement stick and some interfaces, there are no dedicated run, use, and shoot buttons. Random prompts often appear to perform certain actions.

Usually, this isn’t a problem. In a laidback investigation portion, prompts are easy enough to decipher. However, as is the norm with Quantic Dream, the game also includes nerve-wracking quick-time events (QTEs) to get through action and chase scenes. While this is the best use of the janky controls, it’s not the best way to tell a story. The harried pressure to press the right button in time often takes away from the game’s cinematic element.

Realistic dolls in an empty dollhouse

The video game industry has come a long way from the polygonal character designs of yesteryear. Detroit pushes that boundary even further with its motion-captured performances. From cinematic cutscenes to trivial fidgets, Quantic Dream created extraordinarily realistic characters. The three main characters even share an uncanny likeness with the actual actors who play them.

Unfortunately, Detroit’s background visuals are less desirable. With interactable elements scattered throughout a scene, the game often plays out like an old-school point-and-click adventure game. However, they lack the random charm of those lovable games. Besides the actual objectives, Detroit’s backgrounds feel blank and empty. Even if they’re filled with details and background actors, neither Connor, Kara, nor Markus can interact with them other than just walking past. For a game that puts the premium on character design, Detroit falls short on delivering a thriving physical world.

Regardless, with its choice-driven narrative and superb character design, Detroit: Become Human marks a turning point for video games. It opens the industry as a medium for cinematic but interactive storytelling.

Despite its flaws, Detroit: Become Human is still a loving homage to the choose-your-own-adventures and point-and-click games of before.

Related Topics:Detroit: Become Human Quantic Dream

Gaming

Nintendo eShop will finally launch in the Philippines

The doors will open on November 10.

Published

October 27, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

Filipino Nintendo fans, the wait is finally over! Nintendo eShop and Nintendo Switch Online are launching in the Philippines on November 10.

If you’re in the Philippines (or any other country without the service, for that matter), owning a Switch 2 comes with a modicum of difficulty. The country does not have access to Nintendo’s online services, prompting users to buy physical cartridges or switch their region to supported countries, which unfortunately leads to lopsided pricing.

Around the launch of the Switch 2, Nintendo promised that these online services will soon launch in more countries, including the Philippines. Finally, that date is nigh. On November 10, users can access the Nintendo eShop to purchase games digitally, and Nintendo Switch Online to play with friends online.

Besides that, we don’t know much else. There are still a lot of questions unanswered. For example, how will the games’ prices compare to prices in other regions? Since users in the country are forced to switch to another country’s store, they are also subservient to that particular country’s taxes and fees.

Either way, it’s a huge win for Filipino gamers, who no longer have to pretend they’re Singaporean or American just to access online games.

Gaming

HP OMEN Max 16 review: Gamer-maxxing in deep black

Peripherals deemed necessary to max this out

Published

October 23, 2026

Gab Orlina

It’s not every day that you come across a machine that looks good and plays even better. Oftentimes, subtle aesthetics take a back seat to sheer performance and power. Whenever a gaming machine looks sleeker, it seems to lack the power to push it forward. Simply put, you can’t have the best of both worlds these days.

But what if you could have it all? Not just money, fame, and other fortunes, but also a machine with everything you’re looking for! Gone are the days of wanting only power to keep you playing all day or wanting to look good while playing. On paper, this is what the HP OMEN Max 16 promises: the best of both worlds.

Unboxing a beast inside

When you first take it out of the box, the HP OMEN Max 16 looks unassuming in its overall design. It’s bulky yet sleek in its Shadow Black colorway, with nothing too fancy or flashy while powered down. From the outside, the machine screams premium, even though its dark color can attract more visible dirt than lighter finishes.

Opening it up reveals a 16-inch OLED display with a peak refresh rate of 240Hz, seamlessly connected to a base with a full-sized keyboard and a large trackpad. The bright, seemingly anti-glare display makes colors pop when watching or editing videos on the go.

Furthermore, HP places the ports in convenient spots along the rear and sides of the laptop. This makes it incredibly easy to set up and manage external peripherals while providing more room for ventilation under heavy loads.

Of course, the device’s biggest features lie in the hardware powering it from within. An Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, 32GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA RTX 5090 Laptop GPU should give you an idea of how well this machine can perform. It’s also a great combination for demanding productivity tasks and creative work!

Power that AI can only hope to replicate

The HP OMEN Max 16 lived up to many of our expectations in terms of performance. From startup to shutdown, it delivered on what its hardware promised. You can watch videos for longer, edit photos and videos to your heart’s content, and enjoy casual gaming without slowing down. Furthermore, the wide display gives you plenty of space to accommodate all these activities.

When you step up to more competitive gaming, the machine doesn’t miss a beat. Most titles deliver high frame rates regardless of the quality or performance settings you choose. With more advanced visual settings enabled, the RTX 5090 does a fantastic job of keeping supported games within a solid 40–50 FPS range. Pair it with a high-refresh-rate OLED display, and you get crisp details and faster input response to help you get ahead in ranked games all day long.

If there’s one thing to complain about, it’s the extra optimization required through the OMEN Gaming Hub. Features such as network prioritization, automatic power-mode switching, and system optimization are useful, but you’ll need to spend time configuring them during initial setup. The laptop also comes with OMEN AI, which promises to maximize FPS with a single click. However, it was only okay at best.

Runs longer, cools off smoother

Surely, a gaming laptop this bulky and powerful can’t last that long on battery, right? Well, the HP OMEN Max 16 averages around three hours of battery life during intensive gaming, which gives you a decent amount of playing time. For general use, battery life extends to around five and a half hours with Balanced power settings. It holds up reasonably well if you forget to bring your charger.

When you do have the massive 330W charger with you, charging doesn’t take too long either. During our tests, a full charge took two hours, with charging progressing slightly faster when we left the laptop idle. Charging the battery to 50% took around 20 minutes, giving you enough juice to squeeze in another game!

Another factor in prolonged use is how the device expels hot air through its sides and rear. We touched on this earlier, but it bears repeating: the laptop provides plenty of ventilation through its vapor chamber and multiple external vents. Instead of directing heat toward the keyboard, it pushes hot air through the vents, where it can hit your hands or peripherals. At least the keyboard stays cooler, right?

Is this your GadgetMatch?

At PHP 229,990, the HP OMEN Max 16 is a sleek-looking machine with incredible power under the hood. Despite its initial bulk, it delivers impressive performance for both casual and competitive gamers. Inside and out, it packs plenty of hardware and features to let you tailor the experience to your needs.

If you’re looking for a gaming laptop with decent battery life, this is a solid choice, but don’t expect it to last half a day. Of course, you wouldn’t use this machine entirely on its own, even if the unboxing experience might suggest otherwise.

Peripherals such as the HyperX Cloud Alpha Air and Solocast 2 Pro can further enhance the experience.

Overall, this is a Swipe Right for its features, performance, and premium design. However, if you don’t have an infinite money glitch to buy it right now, you’re better off saving up for this beast of a machine!

Gaming

FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE now available across major platforms

FINAL FANTASY HD-2D is here

Published

October 22, 2026

GadgetMatch

SQUARE ENIX has released FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE. It’s a new role-playing game that brings the franchise’s classic pixel-art aesthetic into the HD-2D era.

The game launches on October 22, 2026, for Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The PC version will be available through Steam and the Microsoft Store on Windows starting October 23.

FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE reimagines the first story arc of the mobile game FINAL FANTASY Brave Exvius as a full-fledged RPG experience. It combines retro-inspired pixel art with 3D models and dynamic camera angles.

Strategic turn-based combat returns

Players will explore a world featuring familiar FINAL FANTASY elements, including crystals, airships, chocobos, espers, and moogles.

Combat revolves around exploiting enemy weaknesses to stagger opponents, break their defenses, and gain extra turns. Players can also unleash powerful Resonance attacks to turn the tide of battle.

The adventure features Visions, representations of familiar FINAL FANTASY characters who join the party with their own skills and abilities. These include Cloud, Tidus, and the Warrior of Light.

Beyond the main story, players can discover optional challenges and rewards, including encounters with the wandering swordmaster Gilgamesh, a monster-filled Colosseum, the Chamber of Arms, and Ultima Weapon.

Editions and platforms

FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE is available as a single-player RPG on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

A Digital Deluxe Edition includes the base game and the Magitek & Grimoire Deluxe Pack. The bundle features a Magitek Armor Key for a chocobo, an exclusive Archwitch’s Grimoire, a Mastery Ring, and consumable items.

A Collector’s Edition includes the physical Standard Edition alongside an acrylic block set, a pixel-art book, a 120-track original soundtrack on CD, and an exclusive FINAL FANTASY TRADING CARD GAME promotional card.

Availability and release timing may vary by region. Check local digital storefronts for purchasing details.