One night while I'm in the shower, the door gets knocked and I hear my dad shout "WHAT WAS THAT SHOOTING GAME I SAW ON THE TELLY?". After some confusing and loud back and forth, I realise it's this and tell him. "THANK YOU" is all I hear. The next day the game arrives. He'd immediately went on Amazon and got it for himself.

"Can you set up the virtual reality?"

I oblige, and he commandeers my chair, TV, and console for three solid hours. I spent a wee part of this time lying on the bed browsing my phone, listening to the game and looking up whenever he was getting particularly heated. He was having an absolute blast, and eventually I was enjoying just watching him experience this thing. You might say he was truly "In a world".

He so quickly went from weird arm flailing to precision reloads and headshots with shite one-liners. I watched my almost 60 year old dad become a real SAS dude. Childlike wonder from him experiencing full immersion, accompanied by patter like "Through his fuckin' eye" and "Go to sleep forever". At one point he was hanging from a window ledge 100 feet up on a building site, he drops one hand to his pistol, shoots a dude through the opening, leans in and grabs the fella's vape, takes a puff, chucks it and keeps climbing.

I barely remember what the game was about, but the live show I got to enjoy over three nights was incredible.

This is how you do a roguelike that is concise, narratively engaging yet minimalist with gameplay that is just as simple but rewarding.

This entry is so perfectly streamlined that it feels arcadey at times, including the whacky stupid rewards, the inate push to always improve your performance on a particular enemy to get to the godking with more health and shield left, etc.

Desperately wish this franchise wasn't treated like dogwater after Apple compatibility died. And of course, Fortnite making the company that made it lose interest in it forever.