MEMBER PROFILE FOR Rahnir-XBA
Average Overall Score Given: 7.44400 / 10
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Reviews
Battletoads
Spoilers! I was once younger than I am now. Shocker, I know. And being male, that would have made me a boy-child. The thing about boy-children is that they’re terrifying vortexes of sometimes aggressive energy. Oh don’t worry, I never punched anything... but I loved stuff that did. Power Rangers, Transformers and every bipedal animalian hero including the Ninja Turtles, Extreme Dinosaurs and Biker Mice from Mars. You’re welcome for the nostalgia.It wasn’t uncommon for me to tear around the neighbourhood with lawn furniture cushions strapped to my back and plastic swords in hand proto-cosplaying my favorite heroes and slaying local villains. It was always a tough fight but ultimately I’d emerge victorious and celebrate with an ice cold Orbitz (look it up, that stuff was weird). So with my enthusiasm for beating stuff up so deeply entrenched in my person you’d think that I’d enjoy those video games too... which I did, but only kinda. My all time favorite arcade beat-em-up is Turtles in Time, naturally, but there is another name that echoes through the ages and makes retail employees from the mid 2000’s shudder. Hide your wives, hide your tadpoles... That game is Battletoads.
In its original form, Battletoads was a 2D side scrolling beat-em-up action game, and its brand new iteration follows in those footsteps with several twists. You follow the exploits of the three battletoads; Pimple the big brutish tough guy, Rash the too cool for school wacky one that loves nothing more than the reverence of fans, and Zits, the leader that constantly needs to prove how leader-y he is. Each toad plays differently, and depending on what you feel most comfortable with, can really swing the outcome of battle. But, what is also true to form of this new Battletoads is its punishing difficulty.
While playing on your own you’ll often need to swap from toad to toad, to both mix up your attacks and keep yourself alive. Toads that have been KOed will automatically be swapped out in exchange for a fresh amphibian and be put on a respawn timer. Only when all three of your toads have been KOed while still on spawn timers will you have to restart at a check point. That sounds forgiving, but have I mentioned that the game is really hard? Some baddies dish out a TON of damage. Up to three players can play local co-op as well. So don’t you all go croaking at once. Get it? Croak? Like a frog. IT’S A JOKE.
Doing battle in “ye olde Battletoads” was simple and restricted by the relatively few buttons on the NES controller, but now with what my father would argue is 'TOO many buttons', we can do the same thing but, like, way better. There isn’t just one fight button, but three if you know what I'm saying. There is a standard attack, a heavy attack which is used to break enemy goons that are blocking and a button for something called morph attacks where your toad will contort themselves into wacky forms for both awesome and sometimes hilarious effect. Stringing these attacks together in varying ways lead to different combos which will be more or less effective on different types of baddies and also help you get a better handle on what each of the toads excels at. The right trigger is your dash button and arguably the most important button in the game because if you aren’t dodging, you’re dying. The D-Pad swaps between your different heroes and the left trigger lets you lash out your tongue to grab target objects or juicy flies for health. Can you imagine the things these guys have tasted?
Remember those twists I mentioned? Well the beat em-up sequences are only one part of the game. Many missions take the form of other genres of game. There are on rail sections, quick-time events, top-down Galaga-Raiden style shooting, platforming, and even a portion of the game which I can only best describe as the closest I've ever been to defusing a bomb... in a video game. There’s something here for everybody! ...which is actually one of my concerns about the game. While it’s really cool that this one game packs so much fun stuff in such a wide breadth of ways, what if somebody dove in expecting the action-frogs game of yonder year just to be slapped with a game mode they’re no good at?
I’ll fall on my own sword and say that many of the quick-time sequences that require I push a chain of buttons quickly and in the right order gave me a load of grief. I play video games on just about every platform and controllers are cruel mistresses that put 'X' in a different spot every time. This is of course one small example, and I can hear the tiny violins playing already, but if the game was more focused and... what I expected it to be, I wouldn't have had these issues. Another example is that I have a friend that loves beat em-ups but hates arcade shooters. He’s going to have the same problem as I did. On the opposite side of the coin, if you love pretty much everything you’re probably going to be tickled pink by the variety.
The most standout element of 2020’s new Battletoads is not that it's something that’s actually good to have come out of the year, but that its writing is really, truly fantastic. Clever lines and plenty of dark or slapstick humor help you fall in love with the cast quickly. Each act is bound together with fully voiced, animated cut-scenes done in the same style as the game itself. If you can imagine the kind of humor you’d get from Deadpool, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect here. Each mission is also fully voiced where appropriate and the banter between characters helps to bring layers of life and immersion into the fold.
Battletoads takes on a very appropriate 90’s hand drawn cartoon appearance and I couldn't have asked for anything more perfect. It sells itself well to the very audience that grew up playing the originals. Its bright punch-you-in-the-face colors matched with its more adult themes and tone bring it into the same realm as many of the more modern and popular adult cartoons we’ve all spent so much of our lives watching. Futurama anyone? Unfortunately outside of the main theme, a lot of the music is largely forgettable and is more or less drowned out because of the focus that goes into playing the game successfully. Some kind of an audio library in the settings would have been a fun addition, but seems to be absent.
Battletoads is an exciting reminder of a simple time and an excellent game to have been brought back into people's hearts, minds and hands again. It's faithful to its own memory by being just as wacky and unhinged as its predecessors while managing to fold in all sorts of new gameplay that wasn't present in a time when you still pulled all nighters with your buddies. Battletoads fleshes out and builds upon something that was already cherished by so many but isn't just appealing to those that have history with the games. Battletoads in general is just a fun, silly and all around interesting game, even if you don’t know what's going on or are up for a challenge. If you ask me, anyone and everyone should jump at the opportunity to give this classic reborn a go. Get it? Jump? Like a frog? IT’S A JOKE!
Overall Score: 8.0 / 10
Deliver Us The Moon
Space. The final frontier. Something so vast and expanding so quickly that nothing in the past, present or future of existence could ever hope to see it all. Do you know what that means? That means it's the easiest thing in the world to write about, baby! Upside-down galaxy? Maybe! Planet made of chocolate pudding!? Possibly! A parallel universe where every tinder date is successful? Definitely not. It's no wonder why space is so compelling to human beings. It represents an infinite potential where anything is plausible because we just can't say for sure what all is out there. Children dream of going to space because it's so damn cool. Well... most children. I dreamed about playing video games my whole life and here I am. However, literal endless possibility can have an opposing effect and hamper rather than inspire. Some people want to work within a set of rules. Boundaries. Structure. What does that result in? Plenty of great stories that we know and love. Personally I'll take the pudding planet any day of the week. But, until that day comes, give me a horrifyingly close to home hitting story about the failings of man and their exploits on that little thing in the sky we call the moon.Under most circumstances, watching the trailer for a game before playing it will give you a decent idea of what to expect. That cannot be said for Deliver Us the Moon. The trailer, while compelling, was delightfully ambiguous and could well have been cinematic pre-rendered clips. As it turns out, it was showing me in-game footage. Deliver Us the Moon falls into a category of game that I rarely play or even think about but is a welcome change of pace when I embrace it. It's almost strictly exploratory, like early No Man Sky or Journey.
You find yourself in Earth's not so distant future where humanity is struggling through its worst nightmare, a global power crisis. Fossil fuels have dried up and forced the world to scramble in search of an alternative. Earth's remaining resources are pooled into one organization tasked with looking to the stars, and a solution is found on the moon within a variant of helium. A satellite and a moon base are established to send this new energy back to earth via an energy beam transmission, and all seems well for a time. Then, years later in the 2050's, the moon base goes dark, energy transmission halts and Earth's crisis is renewed. Now you, the player, need to leave earth to figure out what happened and save the world. If you can. A nice light story to take your mind off of the stresses of modern life, you know?
Out of the gate, Deliver us the Moon feels a little strange. Not horrible, but strange. Unpolished. Segments of the game are broken up into first and third person. While you are in first person a lot of these problems are less apparent, but when you enter the third person suddenly everything feels like you're walking on, well, the moon. Here's the problem. You start on earth. Movement is slide-y, and when you jump you get waaaay too much air-time. I look forward to the prequel; "Deliver Us the Hoops" where your character navigates the ups and downs of a career in the NBA. Turning and looking around takes a long time too. This can be partially remedied by cracking open your options menu and cranking your horizontal and vertical sensitivity, but even then you still feel slow. So if you can mentalize it you feel both overly loose and incredibly sluggish. "But this is an exploration game! It's not like you're fighting things and need quick responses!" Quite right, random internet voice I conjured to make a point. Those don't necessarily need to be better to make your way through this game, but how a game feels from the beginning, much like the first cup of coffee in the morning will define the rest of your experiences.
The story is told by inspectable and interactable objects sprinkled throughout the world. Some of these are simple pieces of paper or books laying on tables. When holding an item you can pan, tilt and zoom it in 3-dimensions using button commands shown on screen. Most of the time these are just for flavor, but other times you find pass codes to progress through locked doors. Some objects will have a blue glow about them and can be scanned and added to your log for more valuable lore regarding the events that led to the story up until that point. These blue objects are also the primary reason you may find replayability in Deliver Us the Moon beyond achievements because they are easily missed. And lastly, there are voice recordings that play snippets of interaction between characters during key moments. You could easily skip through all of this to blast through the game, but I would have to wonder why. The story, after all, is the whole point of Deliver Us the Moon. You might as well lay face down on a concrete sidewalk then ask what the point of going outside was.
The game is not without its challenges. This isn't something you boot up with a mug of earl grey while wearing your crimson housecoat. If you do, prepare to have your monocle blown off. The dangers of venturing into the great void are present. What do I mean? Oxygen! While floating about in space and on the moon you'll be slapped in the face with timer after timer usually indicating oxygen levels. Quick thinking, problem solving and spare oxygen tanks will get you safely through to the other end without harm... in theory. Now, I don't consider myself a big dumb-dumb, but either the time segments are tuned way too tightly, or I've greatly overestimated my intelligence. Not once during my time with Deliver Us the Moon did I solve a puzzle within the time limit on my first try. Knowing what to do saw me finish my objective with a wide margin remaining, but omnipotence isn't a human-beings M.O..
Folks are going to play this for their first time and not know what to do. Challenge is important, but it should also be fair. Flip-flopping between segments of measured exploration and timers ending in failure not only felt bad, but in my mind, made the vision of what this game was trying to be blurrier. Of course timers aren't the only obstacle. You can die when exposed to elements like steam and electricity for too long, so caution should be taken, especially when you don't know what's just around the corner.
For when you can't see what's in front of you, you have a flashlight. This plays a critical role throughout the game because, as you'd imagine, derelict structures in space don't have a lot of electricity to spare. While very cool for the fantasy of the setting, it actually limited how much I could play in one sitting. Overall, the game is very dark. I wouldn't change that in the slightest, but the rest of the art style and lighting combined with the inherent darkness gave me headaches while I played. Too many overly dark environments combined with overly reflective surfaces wore on me very quickly and made the game hard to play. This is especially true in the later legs of the game when almost everything is cloaked in darkness and the use of your flashlight is absolutely mandatory. That said, Deliver Us the Moon looks good otherwise. The settings are beautifully crafted and look convincingly like they were lived in. Each of the environments feel unique despite their similarity and proximity to one another. There is a strange gritty filter that has been overlaid across everything which is distracting, but only if you look closely and really focus on it... So let that serve as a warning to all you billionaires with 500 inch TVs. I should note that many textures load slowly too, resulting in the inspection of very fuzzy and unintelligible documents.
There isn't much to be said about how the game sounds because of its limited soundtrack, which works in its favor. Most sounds are atmospheric and lend themselves to the solitude of being on a solo mission into space. Every creak and every groan of the structure around you feels more real. The surging and buzzing of mechanical instruments carries weight. And, if you hear something strange... it probably means something. The voice acting in the audio playback collectibles is good as well. I found myself sucked into the world while listening along, for however briefly the clips would play. My only reservation is that sometimes something would come out a little tinny. I was disappointed that the moon rover didn't have an AUX jack though. If nobody can hear you scream in space then that's the perfect place for the kind of metal I'm into.
Being taken off guard by a game you had no expectations for is one of my absolutely favorite things, and something I've been able to celebrate seldom. Discovery of something new you enjoy is perhaps something we all get to celebrate too little. Deliver Us the Moon isn't perfect; in fact at one point the game broke transforming my screen into a rave light-show you'd have to warm people with epilepsy about. It's hard on the eyes, the challenges can feel impossible on their first shot, you control like a block of ice filled with helium but I'm glad I played it. It's different and doesn't demand much. It's a relatively short and sweet game with a story to tell and is done in a way that makes you listen. Maybe, should the developers feel compelled to fix a few of these problems, Deliver Us the Moon could go down as a truly great game. But, until that happens, I guess we'll have to settle with an okay game that shouldn't be passed over with at least some consideration.
Overall Score: 6.5 / 10
Outward
Role playing isn’t a new concept. Proto-humans have been playing the roles of other things since the era before recorded time, when survival meant pretending to be a bush to catch dinner. Role playing has meant engaging story around a bonfire or successful espionage leading to victory over an neighbouring tribe. Even today, role playing has taken on the important task of masking nerds from their peers at conventions; because “under no circumstances can my friends be allowed to know I’m into this stuff”. Without role playing we wouldn't have most any kind of entertainment or last ditch efforts to pay for our pizzas in “some other way”. Role playing is ingrained into us as human beings, being an almost second nature to our primary one.So, naturally, we seek out ways to play roles that are not our own... to live out fantasies if you will. Enter the RPG. Role playing games have taken on innumerable forms and helped us, the gamers, live lives as medieval heroes, cowboys, space-cops and woodland creatures of every kind to the point of nauseous repetition. Unfortunately not all roles can be played equally, and in extreme cases, may not be worth playing at all. Enter Outward, a game in which I play the role of a reviewer struggling to live in a world with sluggish controls and muddy textures.
It’s easy to see what Outward is going for. Outward brings to the surface many elements of the classic RPG that have gone by the wayside in recent years. It’s properly difficult and makes the player think ahead, prepare and assess the risks of everything they do. As you adventure, your character will get hungry, which means carrying around or foraging up a supply of food to keep your belly full. You’ll become thirsty, which means knowing where to find clean and safe drinking water. Depending on where you are or what you’re wearing, you’ll over heat or become too cold. And, perhaps worst of all, are the diseases you can contract from the wounds of battle with wild beasts which, if left untreated, will kill you.
Outward is a game that bases itself on a certain measure of reality, where things like sleeping too long in an exposed area raises the risk that your things get stolen. A reality where if they're not maintained properly, your weapons and gear will break. A reality where if you run into combat willy nilly... you’ll probably fail. If that sounds stressful to you, then Outward will absolutely not be a good time. On the upside, you can’t really die. You just faint and wake up nearby. Sort of like Pokemon.
Games that pour every ounce of realism into their world can have a dividing effect on RPG fans. That's because there are two primary categories of RPG. There are “Checklist” RPG players that get more enjoyment out of the collecting and leveling and finding every dragon summon ability elements of RPGs. Then there are “simulator” RPG players that enjoy following the life of a single individual in intimate and scrutinizing detail. You know, role playing their entire life. There's also a weird overlap between this this kind of RPG player and those that desperately want the real-life apocalypse to happen because, you know, they’d be so good at surviving or something. Of course there are all sorts of grey shades in between these two extreme camps, but Outward places itself firmly into the second realistic camp.
I'm a tad too young to have participated in the gold rush of fantasy RPGs on the PC that was the early to mid 90’s. These things were everywhere. They were a dime a dozen. You'd have the odd one like “EverQuest" stand the test of time, but the reality is that London Drugs did it's best to liquidate its fantasy shovelware by putting it beside the chocolate bars at the checkout for $0.99 because they couldn't get rid of it any other way. Outward reminds me of these game. One born of a more modern age for sure, but similar in aim and tone. I'm game to try anything new if it means I get to pick up a controller or mouse, but Outward just wasn't for me.
From the moment I started my game I felt lost. A feeling that rarely subsided throughout my time playing. Your player character wakes up having been shipwrecked not far from home and sets out to return to safety, but at no point along the way are even the basics of gameplay taught to you. Thankfully the menus aren't too complex, and the controls even less so, but bumping into your first hyena before you know how to swing a torch isn't a recipe for fun. Even more frustrating are the introductory plot points which light a figurative fire under your ass with threats of exile. So, not only are you unsure how to navigate the world, you have to do so with a timer. Outward does not make a good first impression.
To put it plainly, combat feels sluggish. Like, check the router because the latency is through the roof sluggish. Attacks have loads of start up time, and god forbid you press the button more than once, because if you do you're attacking again, leaving yourself open to counter attacks. Combat in general is, thankfully, simple to understand. You lock onto your intended target with R3 (which you’d have had to figure out yourself) and use a spell or ability with one of your 4 face buttons. Up to 8 abilities can be set in this way with your Triggers, cycling between 2 sets of 4. After you've locked onto the enemy you can strafe too, which, at least in the early game, you'll spend most of your time doing. Target, strafe until your target leaves an opening, attack, and repeat.
As you acquire better weapons and abilities this tedium begins to wane, but like I said before... Outward does not make a good first impression. If you do find that you've died in combat, which will happen often, you don't actually die. Instead you get a loading screen with a brief story piece explaining what happened to you after you lost consciousness and why you are still alive, which is great except sometimes you get plopped down into another unwinnable scenario leading to another untimely death. For a game about being prepared before jumping into the fray, you'd think they'd want to give you an opportunity to do just that. One of Outwards core systems is the ability to play coop with a friend which can soften the games jagged difficulty edges. If the goal was to make the game so unforgiving that you -have- to play with a friend, then the developers have succeeded. Better plan a playdate kids.
Outward is dark. Not just in color alone, but in the Zach Snyder's “Man of Steel” kind of way too. The whole game has a sort of dreary tone about it, which I dig. Gothic fantasy has always stood at a higher tier of awesomeness in my mind. But, the cynic in me suspects that it may be to cover the fact that the textures overall fairly muddy. This is never more clear than when you first boot up the game and begin to make your character. Outward offers you 3 different races to choose from, each one of which simply a palate swap from the last... and not a one of them have a decent looking face. Whether intentional or not, all of the facial options look grimaced, haggard and a little blurry. The hair options are better with many options to choose from, but not all of them look convincing placed on the characters head, and instead, look to be floating in place.
The world itself seems to want to make it difficult for you to do anything if it isn’t broad daylight. When night time falls, even while holding a torch, it’s nigh impossible to see anything save the 3 square feet around you. This is a shame because there are some pretty cool vistas that I would have loved to have seen more of while playing. Overall there are a lot of very interesting character and creature designs in game, but those get drowned out by the looming darkness most of the time. Outward simply suffers in far too many ways for me to say I enjoyed myself playing it. What would be a splendid RPG in scope and theme is dragged down kicking and screaming by rough gameplay and difficulty that sources almost solely by never knowing what's going on.
If any time at all is spent on polishing up combat and the introductory segments of the game, then Outward could find itself in a much more favorable situation, but unless numerous patches or a sequel are in our future, then we may just have to accept this game for what it is: not great. That isn't to say that there isn't at all an audience for a game such as this. If you get off on diving into the unknown in a truly old-school way, only this time without an instruction manual, then you might consider giving Outward a try. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
Overall Score: 5.0 / 10
King’s Bird, The
I don’t travel much. It’s not that I hate it, it's just that I like it less than being at home. There's also the cost to consider because unless you’re traveling to the next city over or you don't mind sitting statue-still while driving for 18-hours a day and making frequent stops because everybody is on a different pee schedule, you’ll probably be flying... which isn't cheap. Even if it wasn’t just a matter of cost, I don't handle being in the air well. It's just not a natural habitat for a critter without wings. My brain seems to be wired to detect even the slightest change in altitude, which summons the swirling tendrils of vertigo to grip my weakened form. I once vomited into a guava tree from a zip-line in Hawaii. Yay! If ever my presence is needed on a plane, just be advised that i'm the kind of person that needs the aisle seat, several bags, and a modicum of patience from those around me because no, the gurgling sounds won't stop. Thankfully we live in a world where flying experiences can be done safely from home and behind closed doors where the only one to hear my gurgling is the cat.Simply put, The King’s Bird is a platforming game. But beyond simplest terms, this is no Super Mario Brothers. Yes, the goal of each level is to make it to the end, but it's how that's done that sets The Kings Bird apart from nearly every other platforming game I've played to date. The Kings Bird is a game all about physics, reaction time, and quite literally flying... or more accurately, gliding. The only way you’ll find success is with momentum, precision and sometimes luck. Exactly like grocery shopping on a Sunday.
Is it weird to describe a game as elegant? Probably. Am I going at anyways? Of course I am. The King’s Bird is the ballroom dancing of platforming. It looks outwardly simple because of how few actions appear to happening on screen, but underneath, the optics are layers of subtlety. To an observer you look as though you are just gliding your way through a course, but you the player know you’re dashing, floating, jumping (with different increments of power) and timing each movement perfectly. Admittedly it took me some time to get a hang of the basic controls, but once it clicked, I soared. The trick was, if you’ll excuse the crude comparison, keeping the pedal to the metal.
Of course directional movement is handled with the left thumb-stick, but that alone will do you no good. Keeping your right trigger depressed will have the player character dash when they touch a new surface, and keeping your left trigger depressed lets you glide at will while touching no surfaces at all... be careful though, you can only glide for so long before running out of steam. By holding these two down almost perpetually, you will get up to the speed you need to find success in most cases with it being more tactically appropriate to release those buttons when you don’t need the boost than to press one when you do. Your other primary tool for navigation is jumping. You have both a normal jump and a powerful jump which you can do by press both the jump and dash buttons simultaneously.
Levels are riddled with walls made entirely of spikes which will end you on contact, and are your primary roadblock in just about every situation. Fortunately there are lanterns peppered throughout the world that serve as checkpoints, and being as tricky as some of these segments are, getting to a lantern feels as good as being able to breathe through your nose again after a long cold. The difficulty level in The King’s Bird has managed to strike a perfect balance between challenging the player and their mastery over the controls while not being too overly easy or hard. Each level seemed to push me to try something bold and really think about the actions I was taking. Many times I would have to repeat a segment over and over and over until I got it just right. These especially tricky maneuvers were always met with another checkpoint meaning that your hard work was rewarded by never having to do it again... a method students have been using to tackle public school tests for decades.
There is some measure of replayability in The King’s Bird. Each level is timed so as to encourage players to come back and beat their best scores. Some people will undoubtedly respond to the timer correctly and do just that. While many others will see the timer, panic and forget how to play the game entirely. I’m guilty of the second. Once I put the timer out of my mind and the feeling in my thumbs returned, I was able to play the game as it should be. Additionally, as you play you’ll find little sprite looking things scattered about in inconvenient, but always reachable places. It was rare that I would get each of these fairies on the first go through of a level, requiring that I go back again. Most of the time, and this is my only major gripe about the game, is that these collectible pixies can be really hard to see on the backdrops of the levels, with some of them more clearly visible only once you’ve moved to look at them from a different vantage point.
What will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody is my favorite part of the game; the artwork. Each time I call a game’s artwork my favorite component it's no less true, but The Kings Bird has managed to worm itself into my mind like a parasite hijacking my memories and feelings and transformed itself into the best looking game it could be in accordance with my tastes. Yup, it was all for me... back off suckers! It also forced me to neglect all of my household chores which I would totally do with enthusiasm any other day. But the point is that The Kings Bird looks amazing. The game looks like a layered painting with the colors furthest back being the brightest and getting darker the more you move towards the foreground. This dark on light contrast makes every environment and every frame look striking and impactful. The utter lack of detail on the foreground’s pitch surface also adds an element of mystery because you never get to see the player character (or anything else really) beyond its silhouette.
The music in The Kings Bird has a lot to stand up to if you’re to take the rest of the game as a benchmark. Thankfully it too stands on its own. The fast paced nature of level-navigation demands fast paced music. Each of the tracks featured in The King’s Bird is upbeat and cheery, and even more importantly, doesn't get tiresome. One of my primary pet peeves in gaming is poor music. More specifically, poor music loops. I'm sure each of us knows all too well what it's like being unsure how to pass an obstacle and being forced to listen to the same thing ad nauseum to the point that you either want to mute the screen or throw the whole TV out the window. There is none of that here. The King's Bird is self aware enough of the experience it offers and features tunes that match the game so you aren't berated by the same looping track for an excess amount of time. Music aside, there are several sequences where characters communicate with one another, but instead of voice lines they “talk” in a sort of “sing-song-y” kind of way. It felt a little awkward and out of place at first, but I grew accustomed to it and isn't so distracting that it warrants demerits.
I love it when a game that looks interesting is also fun, and that's exactly what happened here. It lured me in with its visuals, and then latched onto me with a platforming experience that I had never seen or felt before. Needless to say I had fun... like, a surprising amount of fun. While my trigger fingers did get a little sore to the point that I had to take frequent breaks, each level had a design different enough that I felt engaged the whole way through. The Kings Bird is a rare kind of game that combines fast-paced gameplay with thoughtful movement and rewards the player with a proper feeling of accomplishment. Well done Serenity Forge. I look forward to seeing what else you bring to the gaming world in the future.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
GRIP
I’m just about the worst person that you could take with you to the carnival. I’ll gladly come along to chow down on tasty “Beaver Tails” (“Elephant Ears” for you american readers in the audience... I don’t actually eat beaver tails. I’m not a monster). I may even throw a ring or two at some bottles to win, or more likely not win, a poorly made plushie that's destined to fall apart at the moment it leaves the hands of the vendor. What I won't do are the rides... you know, the whole reason you go to the carnival. It remains unclear what events leading up to the version of Royce you have today caused initial aversion to them. Truthfully, as long back as I can remember, I’ve had difficulty managing heights. I get anxiety when I go too fast and aren't in control. And you know, gosh darn it, I just don’t get to keep those beaver tails when I get flipped upside-down. You could say that I have the perfect blend of defects that make carnival rides an absolute nightmare. I’m still hoping for the patch that fixes all of those bugs, but in the meantime... You know what I can do? Bumper Cars. Lock up your kids because there's a lone adult afraid of the Ferris Wheel coming to wreck your sons s*** and potentially earn himself a restraining order. So how do I get my thrill seeking in? At home from my couch of course.Nothing is more thrill-tastic than a fast paced over the top racer. You know, Like F-Zero, Motorstorm or Wipe-Out (the good one, not that waterpark party game crap). Along those lines is the brand new Grip. Its fast paced, full of action, and it makes me want to replace the window that I just shattered from throwing my... enthusiasm at it. Unrelated, does anybody know a guy selling controllers at a good deal? Asking for a friend. Grip cuts out its own niche by presenting itself as a racing game that lets you drive your vehicle with reckless abandon, because flipping yourself upside-down makes absolutely no difference. Each of the game's many machines has comically large wheels on each side, and a flat symmetrical body that lets you tear up the track without worry of derailing yourself. Kinda.
The topsy-turvy flippy-floppy upsy-downsy nature of the vehicles, and how they move about the track is one of, if not the main hook of the game, and both the tracks and game modes are designed around that. Each of the games many tracks is built in a way that has you driving around on the walls and ceiling, pushing upwards to 500 kph (that's kilometers for our american readers in the audience). Along the way there are all manor of hazard to watch out for. Going as fast as you are, many things will come up on you quickly, so simple things like branches in the road can become otherwise dangerous. If you bump into something of that nature while you’re upside-down you’ll lose all of your speed and go plummeting back to the ground. Grip is also defined by its combat racing. Unlike F-Zero, you’ll pick up weapons and power ups to help you eek out victories, or at the very least, stave off an utter defeat. At its core, Grip sounds like it should be an awesome game, but, ironically, it loses some traction in the details.
Arcade style racing games have always set themselves apart from more realistic style racing because they don't follow the rules of physics. That's fine. That's fun even. Grip is absolutely an arcade racer, but some of the gameplay, or more specifically, matters of control, left me scratching my head and wondering if Grip goes to bed, looks of the poster of Forza on its wall, and dreams of becoming a racing sim when it grows up. The speeds you reach in Grip are fast. Really fast. And the best way I’ve found to make quick turns at quick speeds was to put the controller down and order a pizza. That turn ain't happening buddy. In grip you have access to two types of brake. The normal brake found on your left trigger that when held long enough sets you into reverse, and the hand brake located on the 'X' button.
The hand brake is, I’m sure, the intended tool players are supposed to make sharper turns with, but it slows you down to a painful halt and brakes (tee-hee) the pace of the game. “Royce, that's too whiny”, you say! And you would be correct if that were a solitary issue. Unfortunately hand braking to make a turn highlights a second problem that Grip suffers from; insane rubber banding. Rubber banding is an effect that occurs in racing games that more or less latches CPU players onto you no matter how well you are doing. You could be running a perfect lap, or three, and then on your first tiny slip up you’ll end up back in 5th. It's a bogus mechanic meant to artificially pad out difficulty.
The way the tracks are built leads to unfortunate side effects as well. Grip, because of it fast and wild nature needs big, wide-open, multi-pathed tracks, it’s not uncommon to, during a race, run off of a ramp or wall at a weird angle and end up out of bounds, or at the very least, positioned so poorly that you’re doomed to place last as it’ll take you a solid chunk of time to get yourself back into the race. At one point I landed on what I thought was another piece of the track at a different point (think the overlap segment of a figure eight), only to realize what I was actually on was decorative prop with no way down. Needless to say I reset the race and finally got around to calling the window guy.
Weapons feel unsatisfying. The most useful of the bunch is the boost item which can give you a decently meaningful jolt of speed, but the others feel more or less like a crap shoot. The seeker missile is only effective if you have a clear line of sight, which is fair, but corners are plentiful and you’ll miss often. The gatling gun, when used, is hard to even see. You’ll hear it, but there is little by way of graphical effect to show you if you’re connecting the blows or mowing down the family of geese beside him. Being hit by the gatling gun it’s even more infuriating, because again, there is no clear graphic for what is happening. Instead you’ll be driving along in one direction one moment, then you’ll begin swerving because bullets turn vehicles now.
What Grip does have going for it is the amount of stuff there is to do. There’s a campaign mode, single player and multiplayer splitscreen free racing, and of course, online racing. Free racing is what you might expect. You, or you and a friend get to build custom races by choosing your vehicles and then flipping through a bunch of rules. Turn off, or on, whatever your heart desires. Similarly this can be done online as well. Where Grips racing content shines is its campaign mode. What you won’t be getting here is any kind of real story, so perhaps the word campaign is a bit of a misnomer. Instead you get a series of event style races with many number of rules ranging from basic races with boosting only, to racing with all weapons, to death matches which function as a sort of battle mode. These event races are plentiful, and difficult. Even on easy Grip can be challenging at the best of times.
Each of the games many racing modes will net you experience points. Where there are experience points there are levels, and where there are levels there are unlocked rewards. Experience gained is determined by various metrics, but even if you get last place you’ll still get something. Position, finish time, and even if you got a boosted start, all come into consideration when calculating experience. Reaching different level landmarks will unlock new vehicles, tires and decals for you to customize your ride with. Each of the games many vehicles handles differently, but sadly the tires do absolutely nothing to change that. They are 100% decorative, and 100% difficult to make out the patterns going 450 kph, making them functionally useless. You’ll spend more time with the decals, and changing the colors of your machine.
Another thing that Grip unequivocally nailed was its visuals. I don't know what kind of future we’re going to live in that requires the types of vehicles we’re seeing used here... but I imagine it would be kinda Mad Max-y, and grainy. The future is a Snapchat filter. For real though, Grip looks fantastic. While there are a plethora of tracks and cars to choose from, some do stand out more than others and they are beautiful. I’m a sucker for snowy environments, so my personal favorite track is pretty clear, but each and every track from the cities, to the ruins, to the fields, feels distinct and wonderful.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the music. The music itself is fine, and the composers should pat themselves on the backs, but it gets lost in all of the noise. Grip sounds the way you would imagine. A bunch of loud engines competing to be the loudest. The only thing noisier is political a discussion during Thanksgiving at my family’s place... HEYO! Sound levels can of course be adjusted to lessen the motors and up the techno, but then, and maybe this is just me, but I have a harder time focusing on the game itself. A neat feature that can be found in the options menus of the game is the ability to toggle specific tracks on and off if there are any you’d prefer not to hear anymore.
While Grip is a good idea, and has loads of potential, its current iteration did little to make me want to keep playing. I didn’t hate my time with it, but I didn't feel the drive (tee-hee) that I do with many others games, urging me to turn it on in the morning. Grip simply suffers from too many gear grinding gameplay annoyances that jump out at you at every opportunity for it to feel like the experience that it should. Every time I felt like I could keep playing it for an extended period I’d either get stuck on something mundane, or have my run ruined by a minor error that sets me into last place. No doubt there are many others that will enjoy Grip just as much as I didn’t, and as a game, it's not so poor that I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If you get the chance, play a round of Grip or two to see what you think. There is fun to be had, but as far as comparing it to the fast-pace racers that got my blood pumping growing up, Grip is laps behind.
Overall Score: 6.5 / 10
Soulcalibur VI
Once, in passing, I overheard an old man say something surprisingly profound. He said “Life is simply a collection of stories”. That shook me to say the least because it was ultimately true. Everything we do in this lifetime is something that happens momentarily and then becomes history. Every second of our life becomes the past the instant it is no longer the present. From there it is up to us to decide what that moment meant to us. Where does it fit into the grand epic scheme of our lives? Of course not everything we do is of note. Not everything ends up on the highlight reel so to speak... but some things do. These are the stories of our lives and the things that make us, us.When I’m an old man sitting on a park bench talking to the pigeons I hope to accomplish two things. One, pass on some kind of profound wisdom to a stranger that changes their life for the better, and two, don’t get arrested doing so. Weird old guys talking to birds waves pretty much every red flag after all. Even if I don’t manage to see that through, there is one thing I’m absolutely sure will be part of my “old man kit”, and that's repeating stories ad nauseum. Forgetting I've told something to somebody only to tell them the same thing the next day is something I do already and will no doubt get worse with age. The next thing you know I’ll have stories about wars I’m too young to have been in, develop “trick joints” for every type of weather, and be wondering why my children named all of their children Billy. It’s okay though, because no matter how many time I’ve told the same story to Billy, I’ll never have told it more times than Namco-Bandai has told the story of Soul Calibur.
“A tale of souls and swords eternally retold” is its catchphrase after all. They are straight up admitting it. The thing is though, unlike with many genres of games, nobody cares if a fighting game does it. This is something not too different from what I call the “superhero method”. How many different characters have killed Batman’s parents over the years? Which characters make up the Avengers? For some there is a “right answer” to both of these questions, but the truth is that there are many different answers because each story has been approached so many times. This is true of Soul Calibur VI.
While the multiple games over the years have a story to tell, it’s roughly the same story about good versus evil and the mythological swords that embody the struggle. This has always been a smart move to me because it lets the developers get away with keeping the same roster over and over through the years without having to deviate or worry about timelines too much. What am I saying? In a historical world where Samurai’s fight Pirates and Ninjas fight Knights, all of that is out the window anyways.
Soul Calibur VI is the best in it’s series in a long time. I’ll just come right out of the gate and say that. Of course the bar hasn’t been set overly high in recent years with its most recent predecessors having featured Star Wars characters and terrible pseudo replacements to fan favorite roster members. I haven't had this much fun playing Soul Calibur since the heyday of Soul Calibur II and guest character Link of “Legend of Zelda” fame. Soul Calibur VI does a lot of things right by dialing everything back to basics and really reinforcing the elements of Soul Calibur that made it both strong and unique.
The paramount question on everyone's mind when analyzing a new fighting game, or even just debating whether or not to play the thing, is “How’s the combat?”. I’m not a fighting game pro, but I do enjoy them and have some experience with Soul Calibur's past. In short, Soul Calibur VI feels great. The gameplay is visually smooth, the controls are responsive and each of the game's 22 characters feels powerful. What more could you ask for? Soul Calibur’s main draw and focus is just as much about the memorable characters as it is their weapons. Unlike in other fighting games, like Street Fighter, which feature characters who differentiate themselves by their martial arts, Soul Calibur’s roster instead hosts fighters with weapon mastery.
Gladiators, Monks, Barbarians, Knights and Assassins, all find themselves comfortably on the list and each fights in the way you might imagine they would in reality. Combat is simple to learn and execute, but deep enough for those looking to really set themselves apart from their competition. Attacks are broken down into middle level and high attacks, with low attack being doable from a crouching position. Kicking and guarding make up your other face button commands, with combinations of your face buttons allowing you to perform maneuvers like grabs.
I could dive into the details of every single mode and game style, but when it comes to fighting games some modes just don’t need explaining when a quick overview will suffice. Soul Calibur VI, of course, features many staples of the fighting game genre. In the well labeled “Battle” category on the main menu you’ll find Arcade mode. Arcade, in case you were born yesterday, is the grandfather of all fighting game modes that pits you against a chain of continuous opponents that ends only after you beat every foe, or they beat you.
You’ll also find Training mode, which happens to be the first thing I did in order to shake off some rust. Training hosts the usual amenities, letting you choose both your own and the CPU’s characters. From there you’ll be able to browse your move list, then alter how the CPU character behaves to help you focus on practicing whatever it is you want to improve. Finally in the “Battle” category you have Vs. mode. Vs. is your standard multiplayer match that lets you play single matches against CPU or other local players. Who says there isn't a reason to have friends come over anymore? Soul Calibur VI also boasts both ranked and casual online play for those that both like and dislike keeping score. There are online leaderboards and a menu that lets you browse through saved replays.
More so than any other Soul Calibur title, Soul Calibur VI has single player and story driven content by the boat full. Soul Calibur, as a series, occupies the fantasy history realm placing all of its events in our worlds actual past, while putting a fantasy spin on it. Each of the games characters hails from places around the world such as Japan, Greece or London, to name a few, but what are also present are magical swords, terrible beasts, and hellish dimensions.
The story mode in Soul Calibur VI features a main plot that follows a select cast of the characters on their journey through this medieval world in pursuit of an evil force that is driving people mad in its wake. But, that isn't all. Upon completing the main story you’ll unlock additional stories for many of the other characters which detail their place in the world during the events of the main plot. Not only do these stories help to bring life to characters that are already beloved by the fan base... they’re done so in style. Being set in the 16th century, most of the games storytelling is done by using backgrounds resembling parchment and told through imagery that resemble paintings and drawings. The story mode alone, depending on how skilled a player you are, will take more time to complete than your average 10-15 hour game.
If that wasn’t enough, Soul Calibur VI has another story mode in store for you. This mode, named “Libra of Souls”, takes you on a journey as seen through the eyes of a soul that happened to get caught up in the mess. What I mean by that is the character that you play as is one of your own creation. When you boot up Libra of Souls for the first time you’ll be prompted to make up a custom character through Soul Calibur's comprehensive “Create a Soul” interface, one which allows for the the creation of completely original characters that fight based on styles used by existing characters in the game.
Libra of Souls tells its story much in the same way which the narrative is presented in story mode, with time appropriate artwork and materials, only this time there are many more RPG elements in play. As you progress you’ll move about a rudimentary map of the old world spanning from Europe to Asia with each new completed mission earning you experience and gold. The levels you gain while playing dictate how powerful the weapons you may wield will be, whereas gold is used to purchase said weapons from shops, as well as helpful items like food that can alter properties such as health regeneration in battle. In both Story mode and Libra of Souls you open up historical pieces about places, events, and characters which can be viewed in the games “Museum” section along with a library artwork and music.
Characters can also be crafted from the ground up outside of Libra of Souls from the main menus “Create a Soul” option. There are two types of characters that you’ll be able to make playing Soul Calibur VI, the first, and more interesting, are 100% original characters that start you off with choosing both a race and gender for your new hero, and then it unleashes you into list upon list of different customization options. The body of your character can be adjusted not only by way of hair style and eye color, but by proportion as well. Each section of your custom characters body can be adjusted with a slider to be thinner or bulkier. From arms, to waist size, to muscle tone, this character can truly be whatever you envision.
From there you can pick from loads of armor, scars, tattoos, and even change the color of their skin to something unworldly. My natural creative instinct drove me to making something of my own the first time, but it wasn't long until I was recreating favorite characters from other games just to see if I could, and I indeed could. The other second option for character creation in Create a Soul is the ability to customize traits of existing roster characters. As far as i’m concerned, if you’re going to make something into something it isn’t, you might as well make something new. You know what i’m saying?
How Soul Calibur VI looks was touched on a bit earlier, but it’s hard to understate just how great the hand drawn elements of the game really are. It sells the old world time period fantasy of Soul Calibur in a way that none of the previous games have done before. Even the menu screen features artwork that looks like painted canvas. When you get to the character select screen, each of the roster members has a drawn portrait that turns into a full character splash on your side of the screen while the 3D model loads.
Load times are actually my one major gripe with Soul Calibur VI in general. While most of the game runs very well, the character select screen has some serious performance issues. It can take upwards to a few seconds to slide over even one spot on the selection menu, which puts a serious damper on the mood. Nothing says high-paced weapon based fighter like taking a 45 seconds to pick just one character that's across the selection screen from where you are.
The character and environmental artwork is absolutely on point. Each of the games environments are not only bright and distinct, but feel real in their own ways and are accompanied by a complementary score. At no point did the music overshadow the gameplay, or vice versa. Instead what you got was an experience that felt whole and engaging. While you were obviously sitting at home on the couch, you still felt pulled into the storm dock or frozen tundra you were dueling in at the time. The character designs are not only good, they’re phenomenal... save a few that I have personal disappointment with. Most of the characters are thrown back to their original appearances in Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, with characters that appeared later (like Raphael, Talim, and Zasalamel) going back to their earliest designs too.
Soul Calibur is easily my favorite traditional style fighting game, and seeing it get back to form with a solid new entry in Soul Calibur VI warms my heart, and my thumbs. Bandai Namco has taken great strides in getting the franchise back on track, and it seems all they had to do was listen to its fans. Gone are the weird and increasingly questionable combat mechanics; instead what we have is a product that feels clean, inviting, and refreshingly fun. It’s the first Soul Calibur since the early days that I’d be comfortable recommending to a player that was either new to fighting games, or games in general, because I know they’d have a good time. It feels strange to say this, but I’ve enjoyed my time with Soul Calibur VI so much that i’m actually looking forward to spending more money on whatever DLC characters, stages, or modes they throw our way in the future. I guess Soul Calibur's soul still burns after all.
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
8-Bit Armies
There exists a phrase you commonly hear in movies and entertainment which resonates with me. It goes a little something along the lines of “I love it when a plan comes together”. Of course you most often hear it in reference to a successful heist, or at the end of a wedding movie, but when I use it, it's usually more simple in scope and far less dangerous. When a shelf fits up against the wall, the plan has come together. When paying for gas, and I stop the pump at an even number, the plan has come together. When I use the last drops of milk the day before the expiry, the plan has come together, which leads to later plans coming together in a grocery store, where you’d better believe my plans for a well organized cart have come together. I love to plan things if it means i’m prepared for what is to come. This translates to video games somewhat.Of course, there is only so much planning that can be done if you’re playing a platform title, where gameplay is more focused around fast and twitchy reaction time, but many other genres, like the RPG, let you plan things out for days if you really want to. Strategy is the key to victory after all. However, the king genre of planning in video games goes to the RTS, a genre whose name is itself; “Real Time Strategy”.
RTS games demand strategic thinking in a way that no other type of game does. You have to be tactical and fast, and above all else, you have to know what you’re doing and how to react to anything that could be thrown your way by being both aggressive, but mindful of your own fortifications as well. Personally, I’ve never been very good at these games, but I can recognize exceptional skill on a player's part when I see it. So, what is the big and trending new strategy game that's taking the world by storm? I don't know, but 8-Bit Armies exists.
Let’s start from the beginning shall we? 8-Bit Armies is, as I made loosely clear on my soapbox, a strategy game that has you taking command of large armies in a top-down isometric view to rout opposing armies. This is a formula that has been used, and largely unchanged, since the birth of the RTS genre, to a family one would assume wore exclusively camouflage as daytime wear. It's fast paced (mostly) and rife full of action.
How RTS games work is you start with the first structure of your base and some money. From there you build other structures, using this currency, that affords you to bring in more resources and currency faster, and then build your army. Broadly speaking, if you wanted to train a soldier, you’d typically have to build a structure such as a barracks to do so. These games escalate in a way that encourages you to strike at your enemies when you can to keep them distracted, or outright kill them, while you build up more powerful members of your team like tanks squads or aircraft squads. RTS games have taken on all manor of theme over the years such as futuristic and fantasy, but 8-Bit Armies goes for something new, and I think a first for its kind.
8-Bit Armies earns most of its points because of the way it looks and sounds. This game lays on a fantastic first impression, and it does so thick. The menu screen pops up with heavy rock and an art card that tells you immediately that this game is going to be all about 8-Bit visuals... almost like you are staring at a really angry Minecraft dude. The menu select options themselves are reminiscent of nostalgic games of yore, wielding blocky text and simple colors, but are done so in a way that feels more modern.
When you get into the game the visuals are even better. The colors are crisp and clean. Shading and shadows never muddy, nor what is happening at all times, and instead, you'll find the visuals help to accentuate everything on screen, meaning you never lose a member of your army into the visual ether. But, most importantly, the structures, environments and characters are all fantastic representations of what they are supposed to be; only in 8-Bit. All in all, 8-Bit Armies looks and sounds every bit as fun as the game should be. ...Should be.
Where 8-Bit Armies falls flat is in it’s control scheme. RTS games have a rocky history on consoles, and with good reason. There is very little that the RTS genre can’t do better on a PC. What I mean by that more specifically is how you both command and build your army. When playing an RTS title on a computer, you’d obviously be using a mouse and keyboard, and what that opens up for you is the kind of pinpoint accuracy that controllers just can’t replicate, no matter how precise they get. Additionally, keyboards have multitudes more buttons where which you can “hotkey” specific building instructions to a single press, as opposed to having to go through some kind of menu that you would with a controller. What this means is that RTS games on PCs are faster and more precise, and RTS games on consoles are cumbersome and slow. 8-Bit Armies approaches this issue with a unique, and albeit fantastic, sounding workaround on paper that seems to cause more trouble than it’s worth in actual gameplay.
When playing 8-Bit Armies you’ll notice that each your left and right bumper buttons open up comprehensive lists for each of the structures and units you can build in your army, which would be great if the cursor wasn't so hard to see. All you need to do hold down the left or right bumper, then with your thumbstick, press and hold in the direction of the thing you’d like to create. Easy. But, to take it a step further, when ordering more troops you must choose to do that with one of three buttons in mind. See, when ordering troops you can press either X, Y or B. When doing that you are permanently assigning that unit to one of three parties. Later, when you press the X, Y or B buttons, you’ll instantly select all units on the field that are a member of that party.
As far as quick selection of units goes, that sounds like an acceptable solution to the traditional click and drag methods utilized by the Command and Conquer and/or Starcraft type games of the world. However, unless you are exceptionally gifted at keeping all members of a particular squad together at all times, this method of selecting units gets both messy and detrimental fast, with different units running across the screen in different directions through what is usually hazards like lava or the enemy, just to get to where the rest of the group is. God forbid you accidentally select something you don't want. That's a one way ticket to restarting a mission. The only other option for moving units is individually. One at a time. It’s hard to explain to somebody that has never played an RTS game why that’s bad, but imagine cutting your lawn with nail clippers. Yeah, that isn’t an option.
Content wise, 8-Bit armies is respectable. There are four main modes that make up your play options. First is the campaign, and it's here that you play through the story of your chosen army by doing what an 8-Bit army does best. This is also the way to go for new players... because as these story missions progress, you’ll be able to build more and more unit types and become more and more familiar with both that specific army and the game as a whole. As you would expect, these missions start off relatively easy and work their way up in difficulty. For those of you with friends, there is also a Co-Op Campaign mode. As the name implies, you'll be firing through story missions, only this time with a partner. Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to play this mode because everyone I knew was busy, so I'm unclear if the missions are the same or different from single player campaign.
Next is Skirmish mode. Skirmish mode is the closest 8-Bit armies gets to having an online quick match function. When you select Skirmish you’ll have to build your own match by selecting a map, filling it with as many or as few players as you'd like, changing which player is which army and even team colors. This mode screams “post game” for when you are done with the campaign, which is a-okay by me. Some of the best RTS memories I have are from custom matches. And last on the modes list is Multiplayer. More specifically, Multiplayer means online multiplayer. Selecting multiplayer mode gives you a few different styles, including quickmatch and online with friends. If strutting your stuff for fake internet points is your jam, then this is where you'll be spending most of your time.
As it stands, 8-Bit armies is a decent overall package that gets held back tremendously by its awkward controls. As with anything, despite my displeasures, I did improve my game with time and effort, but at no point did playing ever start to feel natural. 8-Bit Armies is a game best played by the most passionate gamers, and even more specifically, ones that have a deep love for RTS games. It's fun art style makes it a standout member of its genre, that while not necessarily appropriate for all ages, is much more in line with something that older children and young adults may find more appealing than it's typically darker, more melancholy or even violent cousins. It's hard so say that I’ll personally ever want to go back and revisit this title for the reasons I've outlined, but 8-Bit Armies is hardly an unpolished travesty and certainly contains fun if you're up for a challenge both in game and while playing it.
Overall Score: 7.0 / 10
Revenant Dogma
I suppose you could say that video games are pretty important to me. After all, they have been part of my life longer than the amount of time that this years college graduates have been alive. Various toys have appealed to my ever evolving brain's senses over the years. Like most newborns, I enjoyed pleasant shapes, happy colors and anything I could put in my mouth. That poor chubby orange cat didn’t stand a chance. As I got older I transitioned into Hot Wheels and Tonka trucks... anything that could get me rolling in the dirt and my mother rolling her eyes as she loaded the washing machine for the 15th time that day. When I hit grade school I was all about Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. You know, the kind of thing that if you played make believe hard enough you’d end up punching Jeremy in the face by accident and walking to the principal's office to explain yourself. This was also the age where card and board games started to appeal to both me, and my parents wallet. I needed that 1st Edition Charizard after all. When I hit high school the toys “proper” started to fade out, but I'd still pick up missing figures for my Beast Wars Transformers collection here and there, or grab a particularly neat looking LEGO set if I was feeling saucy.But, as I look back at all those years, one staple was always there during all these phases, and that was video games... save the era when I was pooping myself and chewing cats. One might think that it’s a perfect life for someone such as myself to end up writing cleverly structured reviews about the things that I hold closest to my heart. You’d be mostly correct. Unfortunately, when writing said reviews you don’t always end up with a winner. The truth is that not all games are good. So, when I get playing a game that isn’t great, it hurts my heart that way a thousand double bacon cheeseburgers never could. Sometimes you get Monster Hunter World... and sometimes you get Revenant Dogma.
Revenant Dogma is as simply defined as a JRPG. JRPGs are an enormously popular genre all across the world, but nowhere more so than the country that the “J” in JRPG comes from; Japan. JRPGs are a much different creature than their western counterparts, not only in the way they look, but typically in how they play too. JRPGs, with an almost 100% totality, sport the anime look, whereas western RPGs are mostly dark with a protagonist that has a scar on his face or something. Many people like both, but many more usually subscribe to one over the other. Looks aside, that's mostly because the two “types” of RPG play wildly different from one another. Western RPGs are much more action oriented, whereas JRPGs tend to lean more heavily into slower, methodical, turn-based strategy. Revenant Dogma is certainly of the latter variety, but its so plain, generic, uninspired and boring that even a diehard JRPG devotee would probably favor this months Red Dead Redemption 2 over spending even a minute playing this game.
First impressions for Revenant Dogma are... not good. The game opens up with basic artwork and some story telling, all of which combine to serve as your first warning. The opening to the story feels stiff and uninteresting. It gives some detail, but falls into the trap of making everything sound 'world-endingly-grand' without also handing you something smaller to hold onto and get started with. Imagine hearing a story about a world changing war, gods and holy warriors without knowing where exactly you fall into the whole thing... that’s Revenant Dogma. As you continue, and by that I mean actually get into the game, things don't improve. The game, at least while you adventure, is played in a top down vantage point like many classic JRPG’s of yore; like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. Only these classic RPG’s look as good, or maybe even better than this 2018 game. The controls are serviceable and responsive, but the walk cycle doesn’t line up with how quickly you move leading to a “sliding” effect.
All of this might be forgivable if the combat was something more than everything else, but unfortunately it's not. The combat itself isn’t necessarily terrible, but its largely generic. Your party and the enemy party take turns attacking one another in accordance with stat values that determine who gets to go in what order. There are some stand out elements to the combat, but even those mechanics have been done a thousand times over by higher quality games. For some reason your party, and your enemies party, stand in different formations which is a strange decision at best. Yours stands in a standard line, four members across, as you can imagine from literally any other JRPG you’ve played since the early 90’s. But, your enemies party stands in a boxed formation. What this means is you can only attack certain enemies with certain attacks at certain times.
To give you an example, party members with melee weapons can only attack the front two baddies until those enemies die, making way for you to attack the back baddies. There are some abilities that let you attack multiple baddies at once, or just ones in the back or just ones in the front. This is where the vast majority of Revenant Dogmas strategy comes into play. Why this comes off as a strange decision is that it's unequal on both sides. Why not have both sides line up as usual? Why not have the heroes party take a box formation? Instead, what you can do is move your heroes between standing in the front and back “rows”. What this serves to do is alter how much damage you both deal and take. But, unlike the box formation of your enemies team, you can’t move another hero in front of a character that has moved into the back. No matter what you do, you’re stuck to the line.
When you enter combat, the true horror of Revenant Dogma awaits you. The game shifts to a 3D style with character models ripped straight out of the N64 era. Granted, we have HD now which makes them look both better and worse at them same time because you can actually count the polygons on these bad boys. The animations of the characters are little better, but they are stiff and rigid with many attacks leaning into that floor sliding I was talking about earlier. What really seals the deal on these models though is the texture work which, at a glance seems like the highest quality element to these characters.
For the most part it is, but due to the lack of physical detail on many anime style character models, developers instead have to use rotating textures to convey emotion on what is otherwise a flat surface where the mouth is. This texturing fails to sell that. It is clear and awkward when characters change emotion in the same way a poorly cut film changes scenes. It’s jarring, doesn't look quite right and draws attention to itself with its lack of smoothness.
This is also true of the character artwork used when your party is conversing in the overworld. A common thing to find in JRPGs is the use of static character artwork that appears during conversations to indicate who is talking. Most of the time this artwork will be done in a way that helps them convey different emotions like happiness, anger, embarrassment or anything else they might feel when talking to another. Usually this means a few different poses like a forward lean or being physically taken aback. In Revenant Dogma each character gets one pose with an altered face that looks more sad or angry. This comes off as lazy. For some characters, specifically the beastial Fleon, this approach doesn't work and leads to his snouted mouth being bent and angled unnaturally.
What’s funny is that the music comes off as the best part of this game for the same reason I’d normally deduct points; I can't remember it well. It doesn't stand out as being amazing, but it also wasn't awful to the point I needed to bring it up. While it does loop too quickly sometimes, it's pretty good overall.
With a JRPG comes JRPG mechanics. Again, nothing special to report here but the usual fair. As you play the game you’ll happen across treasure chests that, when opened, don’t even look like they’ve been opened. Instead they simply disappear. A reason for this is given in game, but feels more like a sprinkled in excuse not to have an opened chest sprite which would take all of 20 minutes or less to make.
The common theme with Revenant Dogma is that it feels like they are taking shortcuts. The items you find fall into the usual categories; weapons, armour, medicine, accessories and quest items, along with a few others. These can be found in your menu screen where you’ll equip and heal your heroes using these found items. The menu has a total of ten different sub-menus to open, but it doesn’t need them. A few of the menu options take you to very similar places and could have been trimmed to reduce clutter. Both the items and equipment sub-menus can be used to equip your character, so why not just ditch the equipment menu? There is a customization sub-menu wherein you can augment weapons that you use in combat which, if i’m being honest shouldn't be there either.
The world of Revenant Dogma feels empty and a little sleepy. Having a vendor or an additional place you need to visit in cities helps to fill this vacant world with purpose. Instead you have inns and shops. At least there are inns and shops.
I like to think i’m okay at writing, but i’m no Lovecraft. To be fair, most people aren’t Lovecraft. I’ve never tried my hand at fantasy writing, and maybe I should, but I don’t know what all goes into it. I don’t know the ins and outs, the planning involved or the background work that gets laid out to make sure the final result comes off as both consistent and intriguing. But, what I can do is tell when writing is bad. That's something I think we’ve all been able to do since around fifth grade. The story and characters in Revenant Dogma fall flat and commit themselves to every trope in both fantasy and anime. From the get-go, the subtitle’s meaning becomes apparent. There is no subtlety.
Characters talk to one another not like they are talking to one another, instead they speak as though they are practicing talking to other people in a mirror using every line they can to make themselves sound cooler, edgier or funnier. At one point there was on-screen text for a sound effect instead of an actual sound effect. The characters themselves seem to make decisions that actual people, at least decent and actual people, wouldn't make. And of course there’s the obligatory mysterious busty girl in a mask that can’t speak for some reason whom has bound her soul to the protagonist to protect him and do his every bidding. Did I mention that the protagonist and his sister are orphans? All we need is a character with amnesia and we have the anime holy trinity.
I gave Revenant Dogma an honest to goodness shot, and a good portion of my time, but it just isn’t worth it. I get no pleasure from scathing reviews, but similarly I know that very few will get any pleasure from playing this game. Revenant Dogma feels like it was put together with RPG maker software by somebody with a genuine interest in the genre, but has no talent for detail or nuance. I appreciate anyone who has the kind of passion for games that I do, and even greater respect for those that put themselves out there and bringing a product of their passion to the market because they love the medium. Unfortunately passion and talent don’t always line up, and this is one of those cases.
If the developers of this game are reading this then I urge them to understand I mean no malice, but instead encourage them to take another stab at a JRPG. But for now, Revenant Dogma is good for no one and I just can’t give it a pass. If you’re in the market for a JRPG to sate your hunger, then you should keep looking for a little while longer.
Overall Score: 5.0 / 10
Graveyard Keeper
Something I find peculiar about both our modern day and recently historical society is the insistence that the young must choose the course of their life both early and quickly. At no younger than 13, the foremost ages of high school, you’ll have figures of authority prodding at you in ernest about what path you plan to take towards your destiny. Somebody with the hormones of early adulthood swirling in their veins like many ants to a freshly dropped lolly pop shouldn't be handed the reins of any sort of reasonable decision making, let alone a choice that defines the rest of their life. But the choice is made none the less, and most of us end up spending exorbitant amounts on classes for a field we’ll never see the light of day in. However, there are always the exceptions.Many people work their dream jobs and couldn't be happier. But still many more of use just let the wind sweep us into whatever worked and we stuck with it because, you know, gotta pay the bills right? If the career choices we made in our formative years held any sort of weight we'd live in a world filled to the brim with astronauts, ice cream men, and firefighters... though I suppose the world could use more of those anyways. One such job that is never uttered from the mouths of babes, and ultimately ends up being a job that many pick up undoubtedly as backup plans, is a graveyard keeper. I wouldn't know because I've never been one, but I imagine the life of a graveyard keeper is less grim than the title may suggest. Still, that vocation in life surrounds you with the bones of the dead, creepy stone angels (which if you've seen Doctor Who you'd know is concerning) and the nice bouquet of yellow tulips that keeps showing up mysteriously on the third plot of the tenth row. Luckily, for those of us that wanted to experience this particular slice of life, we now have a video game that helps us see life through the eyes of old man Jenkins, who would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you damned kids and and that damned dog too. Welcome to Graveyard Keeper.
Graveyard Keeper is the latest member in a genre of games pioneered by Natsume’s Harvest Moon, and then later successfully emulated by Rune Factory and the popular Stardew Valley. Only instead of a happy go lucky farmer that plants crops, raises livestock, gets married and hires garden gnomes... you get to bury dead people. Grim themes aside, Graveyard Keeper doesn't offer an overly drab experience. Instead, the game is filled with just as much quirk and humor as other games in it's family. Fun characters and interesting environments not only make the experience brighter, but a genuine joy to play as you trudge through the challenges involved with taking over the reigns as the local towns newest caretaker of the departed.
Like it's relatives, Graveyard Keeper is a role playing game at its core. It has all the hallmarks of one after all. Your character has an energy meter to indicate how much you can do before you need to replenish your strength by consuming food, potions or going to bed (sleeping also saves the game). You pick up all sorts of useful tools which can be upgraded as you play, using materials you gather in the world. The town's folks trust must be earned over the course of your play time, effort you make towards which is displayed by a progress meter. These same towns folk will assign you tasks to complete, earning you rewards like new recipes and their favor. You earn money, but also skill points that are used to further your own abilities that come in many forms of crafting, from cooking to smithing and, of course, there's a day and night cycle. The ultimate goal of your adventure is to uncover the mysterious nature by which you ended up in the shoes of a graveyard keeper, and figure out a way to get back home to your beloved who asked for that pint of mint chocolate chip like, hours ago.
Diving right into Graveyard Keeper is... an interesting affair. It harkens back to the old days of gaming where you’re asked to do things, but not necessarily told how to go about achieving said things. The quests you get, or tasks as they are referred to, come sailing in fast and hot, and typically never have an easy or quick resolution. More often than not getting a simple request turns into an absurd chain that goes from one person to another. You can't get X until you get Y, but you can't get Y until you get Z, but you can't get Z because you don't have the crafting skill for it... or something along those lines. Quest chains can fall into place once you get to the last person in the chain, but that is an undertaking that only hours of play can see you to climax of. Luckily these tasks that you'll be keeping in your pocket for lengthy periods are tracked in the characters page on your menu screen by the character that you got it from. Never will you forget where to turn in an objective.
Graveyard Keeper, as a game, is built in such a way that you'll get the most out of it if you play for an extended period of time, or commit yourself to it for several days, weeks or even months. If you're looking for a game that you can pick up and play for five minutes then walk away feeling like you've made progress, this isn't the game for you. The games objectives aren't limited to tasks you receive from the villagers, rather you have upkeep to mind and manage as well. Remember, you are a gravekeeper after all. You work at a cemetery, and there will be bodies. Each day your friendly neighborhood talking communist donkey will roll by with new grudges against the capitalist pigs and a fresh corpse for you to autopsy. Performing an autopsy let's you harvest goods from the dead body... like meat or bones. I said this game was in depth, not moral. When you're done with your questionable practices you can either bury the deceased in a plot of land near your ramshackle church, or dump it in the river. It's up to you. Should you choose to bury the body, you'll also have to adorn it with a tombstone or decorations because if your graveyard doesn't pass the weekly visual inspection by the nearby priest, he won't be promoting you. Being a cleric of the church is all the rage these days. Trust me.
A good bulk of the character progression in Graveyard Keeper is handled through the skill tree. Like many RPGs, Graveyard Keeper sees you grow and improve through traits, abilitie, and skills learned by spending points in a talent tree, or more specifically, several trees that make up the games various elements from smithing to woodworking. Each and every action you make that spends energy will earn you points to spend on new skills. These points are broken up into three categories that are further simplified and represented by the colors red, blue and green. How many of each you earn depends on the action taken. Feats of strength will earn you a much different point payout than acts of spirituality. With these points you'll learn how to make bigger and better tombstones, superior crafting and repair supplies, more satisfying food and patterns for additional workstations which in turn widen the breadth of items you can make.
Your axe cuts down a tree for wood, and your hammer will break up a rock for stone. But in their starting forms you'll be limited to smaller trees and tiny rocks. These material are valuable yes, but better quality and greater quantity of supplies can be earned by upgrading your tools; something that can be eventual achieved by earning favor with the locals. Completing tasks for the nearby village will improve your reputation and unlock further recipes for success. In addition to you increasing multitude of responsibilities, you'll be able to pick up a sword for fending off marauding monsters, a rod for hauling in delicious and nutritious fish and even open up a plot of land near your abode for gardening. Who knew a graveyard keeper could be a master of so many things? The truth of it is that in order to find resolution to your adventure in this mysterious town, you'll have to embrace everything in the world around you while managing your energy effectively, and choosing your own priorities. Graveyard Keeper offers the player a truly open ended game to play and tackle in any way they see fit.
Anyone familiar with previous written works of mine will no doubt know that a good pixel-art game with good sprite work ranks highly in my books. High quality artwork is a time consuming and laborious affair, but getting all of the details and emotion that you want to display in a characters appearance becomes much harder when you're working with a smaller canvas. This is the struggle of every pixel artist. In the 2-Dimensional world, silhouettes become very important for distinction between different characters, and the artists of Graveyard Keeper have done a good job of this. Of course technology has improved in leaps and bounds since the days of the 16-bit era, so newer environmental effects like fog and lighting are also in play. This blending of new and old give the game a simultaneously fresh and nostalgic feeling in one package, which is a hard mark to hit.
That said, the game isn't a graphical landmark by any stretch and suffers from frequent spikes of lag and performance issue which is surprising. It doesn't destroy the experience, but it is distracting. Almost too distracting. Load times are another sticking point; which seem to take far too long, or at least longer than one would expect. The music does what it needs to by helping bring you into the shoes of a graveyard keeper. It's atmospheric and plenty medieval, but lacks the punch it needs to keep you humming during the hours you'll be spending at work thinking of all the corpses you're going to throw into the river when you get home.
Overall, Graveyard Keeper is a fantastic game. While I would likely never recommend the title to somebody that's more casual in their approach to what they play, the RPG faithful out there that already have experience with roleplaying games of any kind, or more specifically, this subgenre, will absolutely fall in love with the macabre world of Graveyard Keeper. It has failings in its performance, and depending on how you look at it lack of initial guidance, but those simply aren't enough negative points to detract from an otherwise ghoulishly fun game. Graveyard Keeper takes a proven, but seldom used, format of game and gives it the fresh twist that needs to feel wholly unique while not straying too far from the blueprints that would make it compelling. Maybe, just maybe, if you aren't too attached to your yearly run through of Luigi's Mansion or Resident Evil 4 for Halloween you'll consider picking up Graveyard Keeper for something different. Or you could do it now... You should do it now.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
20XX
30 is a weird age. For those younger than me, 30 is the number that starts to signify the slow and inevitable decline into a life filled with bran flakes, prune juice and shuffleboard. For those that are older, 30 is still the spry young whipper-snapper that they aren’t and wish that they still were. I’m not complaining really, but it’s awkward sitting at either table knowing that to the people present I’m either trying to be a “fellow kid” or not a “real adult”. What I can say for certain about 30 is that it’s a near prime age to be one that has grown up in the golden age of gaming. Sure, I missed out on Pong, Atari, Coleco and the great E.T. crash that forced nerds to band together in abandoned computer parts warehouses; eating their weakest for sustenance until everything blew over... but that's fine. What I did get was the NES and everything beyond.While iconic games, and the figureheads that occupy them, continue to be born to this day, the NES was very much the cradle of life as we know it; the golden goddess on a cloud telling us we’ll receive her blessing if we promise never to go outside or touch another living being. During that era we were met with faces that continue to be relevant in popular culture like Mario, Link, Samus, Simon Belmont and of course, Megaman. These characters and games raised an entire generation and stoked the flames of passion along the way, inspiring those who became the adults they would become to throw themselves at the gaming industry, like mosquitoes to a man that chose the wrong week to go camping.
So, much are these games beloved that, when the holders of these properties sit on them too long, smaller independent developers make games to honor their fallen heroes. The most recent in line to uphold the legacy of the blue bomber is 20XX, which takes place in the year 20XX or something.
Megaman is a name that most gamers will have, at the very least, heard of before. Typically, when it comes to Megaman there are two camps. You’ve either dabbled but overall have indifferent feelings towards it, or everything you own is blue and you’ve named your first child “Protoman”. Megaman has a crazy loyal following filled with such crazy loyal fans that they declared actual war with Capcom after they stopped making the games for a time. From the vacancy came games intended to fill the role Megaman had held, most notably was Mighty No.9; a game developed by the original creator of Megaman. It flopped. People were sad. Shakespeare returned from the grave and wrote a tragedy about it. Don’t look that up. But then others took up the mantle and we ended up with 20XX, a game that looks, feels and plays exactly like an old Megaman game on a SNES would. There are loads of worlds, bosses, power-ups... and its crazy hard.
When a game that wants to pay homage to another, and does so in its purest form, you get an experience that takes you back to playing games in a that era. That sounds appealing on paper, but it can be divisive for a number of reasons. Firstly, games made during gaming's infancy were restricted by tech, and had technology been better, we wouldn’t have had the physical limitations you commonly see in older games versus their newer counterparts. To put it plainly, games get better over time for a reason. Second, the further back you go, the more players you’ll alienate having never played the original. What this really boils down to is a game that was made by people who liked a game, for others that liked that same game (a.k.a. a very specific nostalgic crowd). Of course I just said it; homage games are made for the people that like that game! What’s the problem? The problem is that despite my long history of gaming, my enormous laundry list of titles tackled, my surprisingly burly thumbs... I’ve never played a Megaman game. 20XX has been a hard pill for me to swallow.
Megaman was one of the first action platformers, and 20XX faithfully recreates that experience right down to your inability to aim your shots in any direction that isn't forward. Crouching isn't an option either. Instead, success hinges on your ability to move, jump and position your character masterfully around oncoming threats and projectiles. Levels feature a slew of various enemy robotic creatures and tricky platforms to navigate. And, just like you'd expect to see in a Megaman title, defeating powerful enemies and bosses grants you a boon in the form of new weapons and power-ups which are nothing but pure fun to play with. Unlike that which 20XX is based off of, up to three power-up items can be held at a time. These power-ups range in effect from increasing your total maximum health during play to increasing the damage output of your basic attacks. Power-ups you pick up are only good until you're all out of health, because when you die it's game over man. Time to start from the beginning again.
Something that does stick around after a tragic run killer is currency. 20XX features a small hub-world where you can mull around and access the rest of the game's content. Currency you earn while playing is vital in making your life easier as you play again and again. With it you can buy permanent upgrades to your attributes like health and damage, or pick up blueprints to build a companion robot that will drop in from time to time and throw you some goodies. This currency can be used to buy temporary power-ups, the same you'd find by playing, to start your journey off more smoothly. Additionally, and most interestingly, 20XX offers you two ways to play in the form of its two playable characters. Nina is your long Ranged character preferring distance over anything else, and Ace is the user of an energy sword that fares best when up close and personal. Other characters have been made available for DLC, but these are the two you get with the base game. As you can imagine, who you choose greatly alters how you go about completing the challenges you face.
Beyond the standard adventure mode, there are a number of challenge modes to put your mettle to the test against. Two of these modes are challenges that are commonly seen in games these days and need little explanation; Boss Rush mode and a Speed Run mode. Speed Run modes are as classic as games themselves and finds itself quite comfortable within the walls of 20XX. Boss Rush, a more recent addition to the halls of gaming, has you Battle the games bosses in a back-to-back-to-back fashion until either you're dead, or they are.
Four other challenge modes are available and rank you based on score, with two having daily leaderboards, and the other two weekly leaderboards. Both the daily and weekly varieties of this score based gameplay have “hardcore” modes for the bold. In hardcore, the regular gameplay is made more challenging with the application of affixes. These affixes change from day to day (or week to week), changing how you approach the day’s (or week’s) challenge. Health numbers, damage numbers, and volume of baddies all have a chance of being manipulated via these affixes, so players beware.
I'm a man of artistic appreciation. This is the section that most games get points from me, and 20XX is no different. While 20XX isn't going to blow the minds of anyone playing with its visual fidelity, it has a good look and it sticks to it. In many cases, simple art styles are best because they don't cloud up the screen with unneeded visual noise, which in turn lends itself to a better play experience. As you would imagine, like all of the other elements of 20XX, lines of similarity can drawn between what you see here and a Megaman title. Edges are crisp, colours are bright, and the character design is great.
20XX’s pace is upheld by it's punchy music, and though it's great to hum along to while playing, I find I cannot recall a single note of its tunes outside of the game. To call the music unmemorable would be unfair, but the number of action platformers that subscribe to the electro-rock genre is numerous, so over time they've all blurred together. My only wish is that the main protagonists looked a little less exactly like Megaman and Zero, but I suppose that’s the point of 20XX to begin with.
Despite my sounding somewhat negative, 20XX is actually a very good game built upon a solid and well tested foundation. Most of my grievances come from a personal place made of emotion and lack of experience with the source material. Still, there is the part of me that struggles to see a need for games that intentionally limit themselves to a set of old rules that no longer exist. 20XX is a game, more than most, with a clear audience in mind and flaunts that with no shame. We also live in an age where difficult by design games are making a resurgence, so perhaps there is a chance that 20XX will open the hearts and minds of a new generation of young gamers. What kind of young gamers you ask? Well, gamers who will look at all kinds of games, not just the AAA, and say yeah “I'm going to totally beg my parents for that until they are fed up with me and cave because I've been an annoying little twerp for the past month”. Just like I was all those twenty-some-odd years ago. Sorry Mom. Sorry Dad. Okay... maybe I'm not that sorry.
Overall Score: 7.5 / 10
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
I was there when the first meme was born, and still I have a hard time with what meme culture has become. In their infancy, memes were dumb inside jokes that used recurring imagery to express stupid mistakes, bad advice, or remind everybody that cats loved cheeseburgers. Now, memeing is a cesspool occupied by folks of every terrible internet subculture that use their anonymity to get away with racism, gate keeping, or the shameful misuse of Minions. If I read one more “meme” about how I’m not a real man if I don’t ride motorcycles while firing my freedom-pistols, I might actually snap. If I may therapize you for a moment, this type of behavior is a clear sign of everyone’s desire to feel validation within whatever type of activity they enjoy, or as the type of person they are. Plainly put, they want to be part of a group group... which is something I’m sure we all understand all too well.One such grouping that I fall into is the infamously over-stated 90’s kids. The group of internet 90’s kids has an insane level of nostalgia over the mundane. Worse yet, they sometimes behave in a way that would make you think they own nostalgia as a concept. Most people didn’t care about that one weird soda that had floating jelly balls in it because it was weird and didn’t taste all that great, but according to the internet it was part of the 90’s and therefore untouchable. I too feel nostalgia for the things from my childhood, but because I am not a god, I didn’t get to experience all things from that era... one such thing being Crash Bandicoot.
Crash Bandicoot was, for a time, a household name. Kids now are more about Fortnite, Minecraft and swearing on the internet when they think their parents aren’t listening, but, when I was that age, Crash Bandicoot was the enemy. Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog, and of course Super Mario were the faces of the teams you had to choose from... and you HAD to choose. Sony, Sega and Nintendo were the three competitors in the way too dramatically named for its obviously low stakes Console War. Every so often there was the kid named Travis or Bradley that had all three because his parents were rich and bred race horses or something, but for the rest of us there was loyalty. I was on the side of Nintendo, and as such never owned a PlayStation until I was of a working age. At some point we thankfully realized that the Console Wars were beginning to sound more and more like the plot of an episode of South Park and stopped the nonsense. Now, at the age of 30, I’m playing Crash Bandicoot for the first time and let me tell you... its effing hard, man.
If anyone else out there is like me and still hasn’t played Crash Bandicoot, let me lay it out for you. Crash Bandicoot is an action platformer that puts a twist on traditional platforming by having you run from front to back, or back to front, instead of the more traditional side to side. I’d say that it was unique and revolutionary for its time, but that wouldn’t be doing the franchise justice.
Crash Bandicoot games have yet to be mimicked in any meaningful way, meaning they still hold a mantle of uniqueness. However, that uniqueness, while impressive, may simply be because nobody else wants to touch it. Crash games no doubt hold a special place in the hearts of many gamers who grew up playing the games, but its strange perspective make it difficult to see much of what’s going on ahead of you, resulting in game-play that’s difficult in a way that feels bad and at times unfair.
The Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy comes with three lovingly recreated games that first appeared on the PlayStation. Each of the games was rebuilt from the ground up, and each looks absolutely incredible. Other developers that are looking to remaster an old classic should take notes and use The Crash Trilogy as a golden standard. The environments are lush and colorful, and the characters, both main and side ones, animate fluidly and are full of life. Crash himself teems with expression which helps to reinforce his wacky persona better than has ever been done before. The voice acting has been redone, but not to the games detriment. Changing a small element in great volumes serves to damage the legacy of a game, or detach the players of the original from the new product. This change, while noticeable, also serves to give new life to the characters and help returning players remember just what it was about the games that they loved so much growing up. The soundtrack to the trilogy is loaded with catchy and hummable tunes, a hallmark of the era of mascot platforming.
Starting at the beginning is best when revisiting old favorites, but is not an absolute when they are packed into bundle deals like this. You’re getting the whole extra-large number three combo here baby, tuck in! I’m glad I played through them in order though, because as I’m sure was the case back upon their original release, they improved mechanically with every iteration. The original Crash Bandicoot definitely feels like the first one. All of the ground work is there, but it feels a little rough around the edges. It was still forming its identity after all.
The controls feel a touch 'floaty', which took some getting used to and lead to countless deaths over miss-aimed jumps, both onto enemies or over chasms. The level design was also on the more malicious side, leaning towards traps and pit falls that couldn’t be seen unless you were a psychic, or had played the level before. And before you go about calling me bad at platforming... remember, I’m a Nintendo kid. Nintendo was, and still is, the king of platforming with more properties in that genre than the Hiltons have hotels. Crash Bandicoot’s level design make Donkey Kong games look.... slightly less difficult. I died more times in the first world of Crash Bandicoot than I have on the first world of any other game ever.
The sequel, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, not only has a Star Wars name, but it also features a space station! Mechanically it feels better with less cheap deaths, but no less difficult. It relies more heavily on proper timing and inconveniently placed obstacles. Unlike the first game, which features themed worlds, Crash 2 plops you down into portal rooms which offer up an array of varied levels ranging from snow to swamp in a single cluster, which is both refreshing, and again, unique to Crash Bandicoot. The controls have been tightened up a little (either that or I was just getting better) over the first game, but due to it’s 'over the shoulder nature', deaths involving jumps that didn’t land properly are still the number one strain on your extra-lives pool.
The final game in the trilogy feels like the most solid package and it is objectively the best title of the three. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped takes all of the greatest parts of the first two games and improves upon them. The controls are again made to feel more responsive, an improvement I can only imagine was made to its original release as well. The over-world is a cross between its two predecessors giving you a more open area to wander around with distinct areas for each world, but each of those world areas is condensed down into tight-knit “portal rooms”, more reminiscent of the second game.
Level design is once again improved, with even fewer deaths feeling cheap or unfair, though at the beginning it was unclear to me that goats were the bad guy, so I touched one and died. My bad. Crash 3, as with the two games before it, has a number of objectives that you can attempt to fulfill if you’re feeling saucy, finding and breaking each of the crates, or beating the level within a certain time. Each successfully completed objective nets you a different reward... but they’re all crystals. I hope you like crystals. And no, they aren’t the “align your neurons” kind either.
The Crash Bandicoot: N-Sane Trilogy is a triumph in every sense. Not only is it masterfully put together, it’s a wonderful game for both nostalgic and new gamers alike. The Crash Trilogy holds onto its roots and respects the original releases by keep everything that matters, and by that I mean the things that made it so successful, intact. The steep difficulty curve will no doubt scare away some prospective on-lookers, but for those that grew up playing these games it just wouldn’t be Crash without it. The N-Sane Trilogy is a no-brainer pick up for anyone that wants a challenge, but digs a great deal too. Three well renowned games for the price of one is absolutely N-Sane.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
Death Road To Canada
Your alarm goes off. It’s finally here. Hurriedly you climb out of bed and wake up the rest of the family. Everyone needs to shower and eat a quick breakfast before your friend down the road arrives to pick everyone up. It's vacation time! Bags... check! Passports... check! Kevin... check! Everything is here, let’s roll! You arrive on time, and with plenty to spare. The line to check-in was long but painless and now all there is to do is wait until the plane is ready for you to board. But then it hits you... oh no. Oh no no no! You’ve forgotten something. Many somethings. The sun roof of your car is still sitting wide open and there’s rain in the forecast. You didn’t let the dog out before you left and all of the ovens burners are still on. This is a disaster. Now anxiety and worry will ruin everything.This is why I don’t travel much. My mind always filled with the worst of possibilities when it comes time to leave my things over a prolonged period of time. How do I know that my enemies haven’t been scoping out my place for the past seventeen months just waiting for the perfect time to strike and leave crude graffiti on the front door? Of course my mind might be changed in the context of a zombie apocalypse. Then again I already live in Canada, and apparently we don’t have zombies. We have a strict no hozer policy in the great white north.
In Death Road to Canada you play as a desperate American citizen trying to escape from the balmy state of Florida and the onslaught of... current events. By that I mean Zombies, what else? This Oregon Trail homage has you hitting the road, assembling a party and hopefully surviving the danger filled voyage to your new home and native land. The name of the game is asset management because without adequate food, fuel, medical supplies and ammunition, your journey will be a very, very short one.
Right from the get go you can make this adventure truly your own with the custom character creator. You can randomize a character if you so choose, but making up characters has been made very easy. Given Death Road to Canada’s simple style there isn’t an overwhelming number of options you need to concern yourself over. There are plenty of visual options for you to scroll through, including the gender of your character, body type, skin colour, hats, glasses and clothes; but these are all superficial. The things that actually change the way you play come in the form of “Perks” and “Traits”.
Perks represent a sort of character class, and there are plenty to choose from. If you choose to be a Mechanic, you’ll be handy to have in case of car problems... of which there are many. Should you opt to be a Surgeon you’ll be your group’s go-to for scrapes and ouches... of which there are many. If you pick the Warrior then you are the face on the front line fighting Zombies... of which there are many. Traits change how your character interacts with the world and can either make you even better at being the class you chose, or help you diversify your skill set. Some traits include Paranoid which helps you detect danger easily, but makes you a tad obnoxious to those around you. If you’re Charming you may just get free stuff from traders you come across in the world. And, if you’re a Friend of Dogs, you can have rare puppers fight at your side. Such effective. Wow. Very want.
Gameplay alternates between action sequences where you’re exploring towns in search of supplies like food and medicine while fending off zombie marauders, and traveling which is done mostly automatically with some input by the player when important decisions need to be made. Time progresses while you’re rummaging for useful tools in towns, as such more and more zombies will continue to wander your way the longer you take to get in and get out. There is no “killing all the bad guys” in Death Road to Canada.
When you make a stop it’s best to do what you can as quickly as possible then hightail it out outta there. Prioritizing specific supplies can be difficult as you are rustling through whatever desk, drawer and fridge that you can. Fortunately you can exchange surplus items for things you may be short on when you bump into the periodic trader. As you travel you’ll also come across stranded individuals who may be in need of your aid, and with the right motivations, may be willing to join your cause. Up to four people can be in your party, and the more you have with you the easier beating back the zombie menace will become. Just ask anyone that’s been a server at an early-bird special. Some of these recruitable characters are unique in nature and even pay reference to other famous video game characters.
Between stops your party will be out on the open road. Maintaining a supply of fuel is important for both hasty travel and general safety. Without a vehicle, the obstacles your party will have to overcome while travelling become more dangerous. You’ll be exposed to the elements, wandering bandits and even go through your supply of food and medicines more quickly. Then, inevitably you’ll be forced to find another vehicle in a city packed with zombies, the dangers of which are self-explanatory. While travelling you’ll be faced with any number of crazy events to overcome, and making your best judgement call is what everything eventually boils down to. Bigger risks generally mean bigger reward, but bigger danger, while playing it safe may lead you down a path where you eventually bleed yourself dry of everything useful. It’s too bad a psychic isn’t one of those playable classes.
As you play you’ll earn ZP, or Zombie Points. Zombie Points can be used to buy various power ups that make new adventures in Death Road to Canada easier. These can be purchased from the menu screen and include increased bonuses to character perks, and even brand new character traits. Using ZP to unlock bonuses from the garden gnome character Gnomey gives you a load of new ways to earn ZP faster than you would have before, so, if you’re one of those efficient completionist gamer types then you may want to get all of his goodies first.
As seems to be a tradition with the Indie genre, Death Road to Canada is a game all about pixel art. That isn’t a bad thing though, quite the opposite especially given its relationship to the Dysentery Trail. Actually, the entire game is presented in a way that’s hilariously contrary to the themes of the game. There’s plenty of bright color to be had, but not so much that it drowns out the yucky nature of a zombie apocalypse. The humorous writing and wacky characters also help to lighten the tone, but Death Road to Canada really finds its presentational stride in its music. Imagine if Night of the Living Dead was overlaid with the music from Grease. That’s right, we have an over the top 70’s diner, drive-in’s, and drudges situation, and it’s right on the money.
Zombie games in general aren’t normally my cup of tea, but Death Road to Canada is no normal zombie game. It’s a game that is not only well built, but has fun and doesn’t ever take itself too seriously. Randomized events, zany characters both prebuilt and of your own device, and an upbeat soundtrack that keeps you combing your pompadour even when hit by a rotten streak of luck (like getting killed by the evil spirit in a Ouija board of which I’m not at all still salty about) make up for an awesome package that is well worth the money. If you have a couple hours to kill, love zombies, or even have a soft spot in your heart for a certain old classic that killed players with violent diarrhea, then Death Road to Canada should be on your bucket list.
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
Disco Dodgeball - REMIX
Athletic displays weren’t my strongest suit in my youth. I ran, jumped, ducked and weaved with about as much proficiency as a garden snail. I never quite found the time to maintain my cardio routines between cans of Dr. Pepper and tubes Jalapeno Pringles. Unsurprisingly this led to my inevitable fate as the last pick for all sporting events in physical education class. Hockey? Last pick. Football? Last pick. Soccer? They’d be done the game before I made it to the field. Don’t feel bad for me though... I hated most sports. It didn’t bother me. Also I lie a little bit in these reviews for effect and laughter, but you didn’t hear it from me.The only times when being picked last for a team truly got under my skin was on dodge ball day. I loved dodge ball on the sports scale of tolerability, though on the list of appreciation of all things, it still ranked lower than peeling the plastic layer off of a new electronic device. The thrill of throwing a ball into a crowd on the other side of the gym and having it land with high probability into the face of an unsuspecting victim was top-shelf. The hollow thud of rubber on their stupid face made me smile every time. I didn’t even have to be fast, I could just stand behind somebody else on my team and use them as a meat shield. Dodge ball truly was the best of the best. That is until the robots took over.
The only way you’ll ever catch me playing a sports game is if its chief cast doesn’t consist of real people. I don’t play games for reality, damnit. In Disco Dodgeball you play as exactly that; not humans. Instead you play as a robot with a singular wheel... unicycle style. These robots need not be feared. They are less concerned about taking away your freedom and independent thought as much as they just wanting to make you look really bad at everything you do with those soft, fleshy, meat sacks you call bodies. These robots take to bright and flashy neon arenas that they pulled the designs from by watching Tron. They watched the remake too for research purposes but got stuck complaining about it on forums for hours and never got any work done.
So how do you play Disco Dodgeball? To put it plainly, it’s dodge ball. Your objective is to beat the other team. Fortunately the game offers up a wide array of changeable settings and game modes that can keep you playing this relatively simple title a surprisingly long time. The basics of Disco Dodgeball include throwing the ball, catching a ball midair, dashing and jumping off of ramps, though the physics engine allows for more complicated maneuvers like bouncing balls off of walls for ricochet K.O.s.
There’s a wide array of different game modes to choose from when building the perfect game of dodge ball for you. The standard issue game mode is Deathmatch. You and another team go head-to-head in a competition to score the most K.O. points. Elimination mode plays similarly to Deathmatch only your life is finite. It’s a game to see who lasts the longest. Many other game modes like Score Battle and King Pin help to fill up the total number of ways to play, while only being one part of your overall options to choose from. When customizing the way you want to play, you can adjust how many computer players you’d like to see, how long matches should be, which arenas you’d like to play in and even whether or not you’d like to see power ups.
The first choice you have to make when playing Disco Dodgeball is whether you want to play online, or offline. While playing online you can join rooms created by other players set to the specific way they like to play, or you can create your own room using all of the tools and settings I outlined above. If all of that sounds like too much hassle for you, or you just want to play a match or two while your significant other decides what to wear to Olive Garden, there is a Quickplay option that throws you directly into the fray with no muss or fuss.
Playing offline offers up a few more options, but follows the same pattern of gameplay. For new players, or those that are coming back after a long break looking to shake off the rust, there is a Training Mode. Training Mode gives you the low down on the basics of playing the game. It’s quick and painless and barely qualifies as a game mode. Your other options are Arcade Mode, Challenge Mode, and Bot Match. Bot Match gives you the same ball throwing action we’ve been chatting about so far this time with AI. It isn’t particularly exciting, but the AI is surprisingly difficult to overcome which may be a good way for folks to practice up with before going online.
Challenge Mode offers a series of goals for the player to meet. In most of these cases you are simply seeking to break your own high score, but how that score is broken and points are earned is done differently by challenge to challenge. The most basic of these is the “Horde” challenge, which drops you into an arena with endless enemies and has you get as many kills as you can before biting the dust. In the “Juggernaut” challenge you become invincible and must rack up as many K.O. points as you can within a time limit. Arcade Mode is an 8 stage test of mettle that pits you against wave after wave of opponent AI. You’ll earn money to spend on power ups and bonuses between rounds, but the difficulty in Arcade Mode can become quite extreme if you are unpracticed or simply a bad shot. I personally only made it to the third stage before meeting my robotic maker.
As you play Disco Dodgeball, you’ll earn experience for your deeds. Upon leveling up you receive a care package that contains a new part for you to modify your robot with. Your player robot can be customized in every way, from its face, head and body, to its decals, color and even what clothes it wears. Each care package only contains one item, so collecting them all will take a dogs age, but, will ever keep you rewarded while playing. In addition to the care package, you get one “junk” item each time you level up. Junk items in certain combinations can be used to craft nicer and better looking custom parts for your robot than the ones you get out of the box.
Disco Dodgeball sports a simple and boxy look, but what it lacks in detail it makes up for with its wild and over the top lighting. Each map and the robots that rove around in them are so brightly neon and pulsating that you’d think you were at a rave. The music matches that theme by being primarily bass-filled trance and dub-step. The music of Disco Dodgeball kept me entertained long after I stopped playing because I kept it on in the background while I made my review notes. While playing, the beats set the tone of the matches perfectly and keep you in the competitive mode.
Fun would be a good word to describe Disco Dodgeball with. It’s not a GoTY contender, but it isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever touched either. It simply is what it is and does that thing well. It looks serviceably good while selling its theme perfectly, it sounds like a night on the town in your twenties and plays as well as a dodge ball game ever could. Disco Dodgeball is a great game for kids and grown-ups alike, and offers up enough content to keep the player busy for a long while. My personal take is that I wouldn’t play this game for an extended period of time, but I would absolutely pick it up for rounds between other games, or while I’ve got a few buddies over to hang out. Well done Zen Studios, you’ve made the first dodge ball game I’d recommend to others!
Overall Score: 7.5 / 10
City of Brass
Gather ‘round children, its story time with Royce! Once upon a time there were three little pigs. All three pigs decided to build houses. The three pigs came across a man carrying a bundle of straw. The first little pig declared: “Please give me that straw to build a house with”. The little pig quickly built a house with it. Before long came a wolf who knocked at the door, and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in”. The pig replied, “No, no, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”. “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!” said the wolf. So he huffed and he puffed, and he blew the house down, eating up the foolish pig within. The other pigs passed a man with a bundle of sticks. The second little pig said to the man carrying the sticks: “Please give me those sticks to build a house with”. The man did, and the pig quickly built a house with it. Then along came the wolf and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in”. Just like the first pig, the wolf huffed and puffed and blew the house down eating the little pig within. Finally the third pig met a man with a load of bricks and said: “Please give me those bricks to build a house with”. The man gave him the bricks, and he built his house with them. The wolf came, as he did to the other pigs, and said, “Little Pig, little Pig, let me come in”. “No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin”. Well, he huffed and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he puffed and he huffed; but he could not get the house down so he gave up and went to play an easier video game.In case you didn’t pick up on the subtle messaging in the story above, I have a rocky relationship with extremely difficult games at best. My philosophy for playing games is that I have to be having fun, an element that does not occur naturally when I am losing, or learning by dying. Unfortunately that puts me at a disadvantage in the current “Dark Souls” era of gaming. This is something I’ve made good effort in changing, but old habits die hard as the saying goes. To aid in breaking myself of habitual challenge avoidance, I picked up my controller and turned to my current review: City of Brass.
City of Brass is hard. Like, harder than bringing in all of your groceries on the first trip kind of hard. It’s also a member of the dying arcade style of games. Essentially you play until you die, and then you start all over again. City of Brass is a first person action game that has you taking to the cursed streets of a long lost city in search of treasure, and I’m assuming killer pictures for your Instagram story. Along the way you’ll be going toe to toe with the undead, genies, undead that run really fast, traps that you didn’t see, controllers in your dry wall, and undead...with hats.
Progression in City of Brass is done by the age old system of levels. Start level 1, beat level 1. Start level 2, die in level 2, start level 1. You know what I mean. The levels themselves are always the same, but the layout will change from attempt to attempt. For example, “Level 1” will always be the “City Outskirts”, but where the start, where the end, and what’s in between those two points is always random. I certainly hope you like Mystery Dungeon games. In addition to the general layout; treasures, enemies, shops, and even the time of day, will always be different. This is part of what makes City of Brass such difficult game.
The other half of the difficulty equation is City of Brass’s generally fast paced combat. Combat is relatively simple with few command options, but how you use those abilities, and with what timing, will determine your success. Your right trigger, when pressed, swings your sword. As shouldn’t need explaining, your sword kills things, and it is pretty much your only way to do this that doesn’t involve the environment. Your left trigger lashes your whip, which when used does a number of things from stunning enemies, grabbing far off treasure, to swinging you across distances depending on what you target.
Using your trusty sword and whip is the key to your victory, when you manage not to die. You can also run, jump, and dash-slide, but these actions need little explanation. You can also shove your enemies in a pinch if correctly positioned near a suitable trap. I found I didn’t use the shove command very often, but its utility speaks for itself.
When you inevitably die, you’ll earn experience points. They don’t come in particularly large quantities, but your success in the run that killed you will have some measure of effect over how much you receive. Leveling up will grant you rewards for future runs to help ease the steep difficulty. Other features exist to help you along the way, like the many Genies that open shops for your benefit. The treasure you pick up automatically converts to an in-game dollar value. This currency can be exchanged at Genie shops for a wide array of power-ups or helpful tools. Some shops even offer to heal you, store purchased items for later runs, or disable obnoxious traps.
Your game experience can be altered further with the Blessings and Burdens system. In place of a standard difficulty slider, City of Brass let you adjust various elements of the game on a singular basis. Things like number of enemies or the amount of damage you deal can be changed by selecting which Blessings or Burdens you’d like to have in place for your next run. While each of the Blessings (options that make you experience easier) are available from the start, Burdens (options that make you question life) are unlocked by completing in-game objectives first.
I don’t often give unmitigated praise for singular systems in a game, but having a fully customizable gameplay experience like this is brilliant and is something that other game studios should take notes on for future releases.
Being a sort of “high score” game, there is a leaderboard in place to track your worldwide progress. This is important as it lets you make sure that your coveted position at 453,711th isn’t snatched by up and comers. Gotta keep the noobs in line you know. Even more interestingly, City of Brass lets you completely overhaul your keybinds. Keybind rearrangement is nothing new to the PC gaming community, but it is still finding its footing on consoles. Seeing this option make an appearance is welcomed with open arms, and like the Blessings and Burdens system, and it is is encouraged in the future. City of Brass also comes with baked in streaming features, but because I am not a streamer I did not understand the words I was reading and promptly backed out without doing anything with them. I’m sure these are very useful things to have, but I’m going on trust.
The audio and visual presentation of City of Brass is on the money. The musical score sells the Arabian theme beautifully while still being appropriate for what is in essence Resident Evil: Aladdin Edition. The game looks every bit as great as it sounds with the city shimmering in splendor during the day, as a city of treasures should, while being truly dark and foreboding at night. The enemies look just different enough from one another for you to know what your next encounter requires of you while still looking believably like they come from the same place. Perhaps my favorite artistic touch is when an enemy sees you, their face begins to glow an eerie blue before they rush you down. It’s both alarming, and a helping hand when wandering around in the dark.
While City of Brass can be punishingly hard, it’s a very well built and 'fun-to-play' game. Unlike most games of its kind, I found myself actually wanting to go back and make another attempt after dying. Simple combat that gives the player the opportunity to improve, combined with predictable yet fun enemies, and a world that is ever changing all add up to make an experience that stays fresh long after your 50th death. City of Brass is a perfect platform for gamers that enjoy speed running and adrenaline chasing, but it is also a great experience for the less dedicated that just want to run around and eventually say they overcame something momentous. While it isn’t for everyone, City of Brass has taken an old-ish genre that few think about anymore and turned it into gold.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
Robocraft Infinity
One of two things seems to be true, and I’m not sure which it is. Either people have a deep seeded need to build stuff, or it's learned behavior from everything we’ve seen and that has been done before us. Either way, the art of building has lead us to the grand society that we live in today. Without the hammer we would have never put together the first house. Without the wheel we’d have never devised the chariot and then eventually the modern vehicle. Without the toilet...well, we’d have really gross streets. Humanity is constantly evolving, changing and building to improve upon our lives using the building blocks that previous generations have given us.Of course, sometimes improvement is unnecessary. Look at the shark for example; a being of such awesome perfection it remains unchanged since the age of the Dinosaur. Then of course there is the Slap-Chop, a device that’s only purpose is to cut small things into even smaller things. If only we had some kind of long sharp metallic stick that could do the same thing with less effort at half the cost.
Products aimed at children to encourage their inner architect have been a staple for some time, with the most prolific among them being Lego. Even games have started in on this 'build-your-own-world' ideology with with Minecraft, and since then others have reared their head some years ago inspiring many other studios to follow suit. Terraria, Portal Knights, the Lego games, and Robocraft Infinity have all given us their own spins on the creative game genre. Let’s talk about that last one for a while shall we?
Personally, I prefer a structured and ordered story to play through in my games for the same reason I like my burgers to come pre-built on the plate. If I’m paying you, I want you to do the 'thing' that I am paying you for. Giving you my money so that you can make me do stuff sounds like the very definition of a racket when you put it down on paper, doesn’t it? That said, there is a load of fun to be had with creative mediums if you think about it in a way where you are spending your money on the tools rather than the final result, much in the way an artist would. You’re buying a canvas. As it so happens, Robocraft Infinity wins the award for most robotic, combative, online-competitive canvas that has ever been. It might actually be the only one, but who’s counting?
While Robocraft Infinity has been around on the Steam market for a few years now, it’s just now gracing us with its presence on home consoles. Take that PC 'master-racers', we’ve got your robot building game now! While it is a simple game in practice, there is a lot to play around with if you fancy spending your time that way. Robocraft Infinity, as the name suggests, is all about crafting robots in an infinite number of ways. The type of robot you make is up to you, and the building materials to choose from are numerous, with the end result being a robotic being of pure destructive force. Translation; you battle with it after.
The crafting process is the core element of the game, and yet, it doesn’t feel great. The space you get to build your machine is ample, and the way in which you get to do it is sound in theory, but overall the experience feels lacking. Unfortunately the whole process is without any kind of smoothness. Robocraft Infinity as a whole is rife with laggy load screens and choppy menus which migrate their way into the robot creator.
The control layout for building your bot is the second problem. It feels unintuitive and it lead me to make frequent and frustrating mistakes, which lengthened the already lengthy building process. A fully functioning bot is made up of various parts including Cubes (which are mostly filler), Weapons, Movement pieces (such as legs and propellers), Special items (like wings and fins) and Cosmetics (like flags). Individual pieces can be bought from your inventory menu using the in-game currency called Robits, or you can earn parts at random by opening crates which are earned by leveling up. Crates can also be purchased in the online store using your hard earned real life dollars.
Pre-made robot builds are available for you to download and play, but they cost you an exorbitant amount of Robits, which isn’t overly easy to get as a currency. Robits come from pulling duplicate parts out of item crates or recycling parts you don’t plan on using anymore. Still, what you earn in these ways get you very little compared to hundreds of thousands it costs for just one download. It’s almost as if they are encouraging you to spend all of your money on parts. Almost. There is a secondary currency that is even harder to get called Galaxy Cash, and the only way to get your hands on any of that stuff is to pull a duplicate Cosmetic item from one of your part crates.
Once you’ve cobbled together a robot to call your own (or acquire one of the pre-made ones), the game can begin. Play modes are broken down into offline and online categories, with offline modes being almost exclusively methods for you to test out prototype robots before you jump into the online world. While offline you can “Practice”, which drops you into a blank arena to rumble around and fire weapons in, or “VS AI” which plunks you down into a 5 versus 5 match that’s consists of you and 9 computer controlled dumb-dumbs. Don’t worry, the 4 worst ones are on your team. I promise. Playing against AI players will earn you experience in the smallest amounts possible, but not enough to really send you towards your next level and part crate.
Playing online, while slightly less limiting, is made up of just two game modes. Deathmatch is the same type of 5 versus 5 gameplay you get in the offline “VS AI” mode, only this time with 9 human players. The second online game mode is Battle Arena. This time you and your team must fight to control 3 separate points on the map. When you hold points you fill up the charge meter at the top of your screen and when the meter fills up, your ultimate weapon is fully charged and the other team explodes. Neither of these modes feel particularly compelling beyond a few matches, and combat certainly isn’t deep enough to warrant play over a long period of time. Playing online will earn you the lion’s share of your experience.
That’s it. That’s the game. Visually, Robocraft Infinity doesn’t look half bad. Everything is blocky, as you are building things out of literal blocks (with the exception of fancier parts like wheels). The environments are largely jagged, but with some decent detail, and the lighting is damn good especially on the glowing effects littered throughout everything. The sound is fairly good too. Nothing too memorable, but nothing off-putting either. The sound effects never get grating, and the announcer is one of the best I’ve heard in some time because it they don't get in the way or talk too much.
It’s very easy to see what the creators of Robocraft Infinity were going for, and I think the concept is great, but overall what we have in its current state doesn’t do that idea justice. Perhaps the PC version runs better than its console brother, but bland combat, limited game modes and very obvious money driven customization don’t make for a great experience. Robocraft Infinity is at its best when you are work shopping new ideas of robots to play as, and building them.
As a creative outlet this game has potential, but unless they give gamers more to do with their robots during the end game, then there is little reason for players to play long term, let alone justify the costs involved with getting more parts for their robots. It’s a shame that with all of the customization options that they gave us, Robocraft Infinity couldn’t build itself up into something more.
Overall Score: 6.0 / 10
Octahedron
If there’s one thing that I’ve taken away from Doctor Who over the years, it’s that time is really funky stuff. The second would be that I pity the writer’s behind the show because all of that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey nonsense is really hard to put down on paper in a way that doesn’t make the viewers (or readers in my case) eyes roll backwards into their skull and explode. Fortunately for most of us we can skip the TV and best written video game reviews of all time in favor of looking out our windows to witness time tom-foolery firsthand. Our example is personified by the ever present and ever eternal wisdom of teenagers. In their clearly superior knowledge of all things that are, have been, or will be, we can see all of time unfold by their choices of attire. Fashion has a tendency to come full circle and become “cool” again some thirty years after its debut, which is a fantastic thing to remember as a parent when your children begin to mock old photos of you from the 80’s. Speaking of the 80’s, everything 80’s is hot right now. Star Wars has come back and Stranger Things has a title card that looks intentionally low quality to bring us back to the time when something like that was as high as quality got and Thor: Ragnarok had neon stuff. You know what else uses a lot of Neon? My next game, Octahedron.Part of me is more excited to see the absolute gong show that will be 90’s inspired games with oversized t-shirts, bad music, and protagonists rocking frosted tips, but for now we have Octahedron. Octahedron takes the concept of a neon street sign and makes a whole video game out of the thing. Imagine Tron but with less bikes and more diamond shaped heads. Interestingly the octahedron is the scientific name for a diamond shape. So if you want to be “that guy” you can roll into your nearest jewelers and make absolutely no friends by requesting their finest octahedron ring for your wife. Only the finest karat octahedron will do you gentleman.
So, what does Octahedron look like? Well, it looks like an indie game. It plays like an indie game too. It even sounds like and costs about as much as one, but don’t let it fool you. This little number was published by Square Enix. Though the developer Demimonde is less of a household name, knowing that Square Enix was behind the wheel in some capacity would have you think that this game was well funded. Maybe it was. Unfortunately, even if it was, it doesn’t feel like it. Octahedron looks great, but the gameplay shifts back and forth between bland an infuriating.
Aesthetically Octahedron strikes the same cord as old arcade classics by delivering itself on a sheet of black with vibrant, colorful lines. The boundaries of each level are clearly defined by how far you can move in any direction, and each is filled with an array of neon obstacles, platforms, enemies, and collectables for you to look out for. It’s a simple look for a relatively simple game. The music too harkens back to an era and setting where this type of thing would be seen most commonly. Low and fast beat music; dance club style, makes up the score of Octahedron and sets the pace and tone of the game remarkably well. Ironically though, these very things that I enjoyed about that game seem to be the lead contributors to the failure of its gameplay.
Broadly speaking, the biggest hurdle that most modern indie platformers seem to suffer from is oversimplification. They focus too intensely on a singular mechanism or quirk. Super Mario Bros. started its life with just one thing; Jumping, and from that it created a dynasty. That same train of thought has never succeeded since then for two reasons. One; jumping is present in all platforming titles since Mario and Luigi decided to exterminate all turtles automatically making each game that adds stuff less singularly focus than the game that started it all. And two; moving up and down in the way afforded to us by a jumping mechanic is so integral and expected in a two dimensional game now that removing it to focus on a singular mechanic the same way would surely be financial suicide. Aka... people would hate it. So what’s wrong with Octahedron? Well, you jump and you place platforms under your feet which disappear after a few seconds. Each are as important as the other. Both of these actions are integral to scaling the vertically natured levels in the game and must be managed correctly. While that sounds okay in theory, it feels clunky in practice and does little that adding more jumps over the platform mechanic couldn’t solve in a more fluid way.
Nearly all of your interaction with the environment around you requires the use of these platforms, of which you have a limited number. If you mistime a jump or fail to place a platform correctly you may be looking at falling a long way down. Some uses for the platform feel better than others, such as placing one to get across a large gap or shield yourself from an enemy that attacks from below. Others, such as using your platform to trigger the appearance of another platform in the stage, feels less good because it requires your jumps and platforms be timed in a very specific way, as using your platform can also cause these environment platforms to disappear too. It’s all terribly confusing... though less so in the game than in a written explanation. You need to spawn your platform to break light bulbs in the background for their sweet, sweet hidden collectables within too. Usually these bulbs are hanging between platforms and in more difficult locations to reach within reason. Did I mention you have limited platforms? There is a lot of trial and error in Octahedron, and not in the good way.
The superb visuals and music in game do a weird amount of harm to the game. The rhythm of the music tells you a story that screams at you to play fast and keep up with the music. It’s the same phenomenon that occurs while you’re driving and listening to some awesome music, and then you look down to see you’re doing a good 25 over the limit. Getting into the music while you play is ill advised if you aim to make as few mistakes as possible. Octahedron is also a visual fiesta. There are lights and color explosions everywhere. Many times I found myself focusing on one brightly colored obstacle to overcome only to be slain by the tiny annoying orange circular bad guy stowed away underneath the rest of the fireworks show.
My final verdict is that Octahedron, well, isn’t terrible. I know. I just spent six paragraphs ragging on it for the very thing that it is. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t great either, but the truth is that there is a framework here that could be the foundations of a very solid sequel. While I certainly wouldn’t pay any more than the $14.49 CAD that the game cost to play, any platforming pro that wants to test their mettle should still consider giving it a shot. Octahedron is hard in the obnoxious way that many old NES platforming games are. It kills you without remorse. It gives you little time to become warmed up the play style before ramping up the difficulty. New and fun ways to die just crawl out of the walls like a damn horror movie, but hey, it looks pretty while doing it. I suppose if building a game that both looks and plays like an old game was their goal then they succeeded, but us wimpy Millennials can’t handle that crap. How dare they! I need my safe space now! /s
Overall Score: 6.5 / 10
RiftStar Raiders
Let’s face it, life is crazy. You’ve got your home life and responsibilities flying at you from one side and you’ve got your job stresses flying at you from another. But of course there is more. Every driver on the road except for you is a complete moron, children are a continual fountain of sickness and poop, bills are endless and money isn’t. And, to top it all off, that dude upstairs still won’t turn his goddamn music down despite your very polite request for him to do so. Somebody is getting flaming diapers on their doorstep. To deal with the rat race, we’ve all developed our little vices to help pass the time. These activities take our minds off of the things we don’t like. Unfortunately for some of us, as life gets busier and busier it gets harder and harder to sit down with a good old fashioned story. You remember them don’t you? The big expansive worlds filled with interesting characters and compelling plots that would keep you up late into the night because you “just need one more point in your blacksmithing profession to make the mega dragon armor so you can take on the Demon King”. Ah yes... a simpler time.
It’s lucky for us that the people that make our games are also in the same life-y conundrum that we are. They understand that we can only take so much Bejeweled before we become somebody on the six o’clock news that’s been arrested for lining up people wearing the same colored shirt hoping that they’ll explode. They give us games that we can play in teeny tiny amounts and still be satisfied. Thanks game companies, you keep me off the news!
Riftstar Raiders is one such game that can be played in brief spurts. This isn’t to say it’s the type of game you can play for three minutes and then put down. This isn’t a phone game. But, there is very little time commitment should you choose to play periodically. Riftstar Raiders is a level based top-down shooter that puts you in command of an upgradable starship. Each of these levels takes about 10-15 minutes depending on how well you know it, so as a first time play through give yourself the latter amount of time.
Fans of old arcade games dating back to Asteroids, or more recently Raiden, will love this little number, although it lacks the over the top “fireworks” weaponry that Raiden has. Upon booting up the game you’ll be given the option to check out a tutorial level if you’re unfamiliar with the genre or simply want to acclimatize to the controls. Veterans, or the overconfident, can skip this if they’d like, but the physics take a little time to get used to, so I’d recommend you swallow your pride put on the training wings for a little.
The main bulk of the game is broken up into missions, or “events” as the game likes to refer to them. There are a good handful of missions to play, at least a dozen of them, and they all have plenty of replay value. As you play through the missions, the longevity of Riftstar Raiders begins to shine through. These missions are hard, and finding each of the hidden secrets within them is even harder. There are no timers, but there are a limited number of lives, inconveniently placed obstacles, and constant assaults from enemy ships, all which keep you trying to master the craft of space-combat. The missions also tell the story of the game, but I’ll be honest here, I was more focused on the pew-pew. Multiplayer mode is available if you want to play with friends, and if you’re looking to adjust the challenge you can change the number of lives you have during a missions in the options menu.
The more time you spend playing, the more likely you’ll have stumbled across the game's mission rewards, of which there are four for each mission. Rewards are varied, but offer up customization options for your ship or straight up in-game currency. Finding rewards is as simple as exploring your surroundings by looking for destructible walls or interactive mechanical parts that you can tug on with your tractor beam.
When you’ve got a bunch of new toys to deck your ship out with, you do it from the “Loadout” option in the main menu. From there you can change your ships body type, weapons, shield style, boosters, and even your ship's emblem. Each of these customization options will change the way your ship handles in the cold-dark, so play around a little to figure out what works for you.
The most visually satisfying thing to change is your ships body type. Your default look is a basic “fighter jet” type, but more and less bulky ship types are available. There are also a variety of boosters which include a speed increasing “turbo” style and a short distance “hop”, all of which are used to get you out of a jam or through obstacles. Different boosters are better at achieving different outcomes, so picking the right booster for the job gets easier with time and experience. There are also three basic shield types; a bubble around your whole ship, a wide forward facing shield and an exo-shell which hugs your ship like a wet bodysuit. You can choose to use the default version an of these shields, but you can also build a custom shield using the one of the three types as a base, and then choosing it’s traits through a talent tree. Unlocking some of these traits will cost you in-game currency, while other perks are found while doing missions. Boosters and weapons can be customized in the same way.
The weapons that you pick will have the most effect on how you tackle enemy fighters. The default weapons are the Linear Coil Gun, which fires a line of munitions in rapid succession at decent range and is great for distance combat, and the Claw, which is a short distance shotgun style weapon that fans bullets in a short arc. The other options you have out of the gate include the Boltslinger, which fires a singular powerful missile, and the Hyper-V Lancer, which is a mid-range laser beam that you can change the trajectory of while it’s firing.
Switching gears here (metaphorically), the most impressive thing about the way that Riftstar Raiders looks is its backdrops. Sure, you play as a star fighter in the vacuum of space, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t focused more on what was happening behind me some of the time. Huge sprawling imagery of colorful nebulas and war-torn worlds sell the vastness of the galaxies you’re doing the missions in. Each is different enough that it really sells you on the fantasy of being in an entirely different region of space. The rest of the game looks good too, albeit the smaller enemy ships can sometime blend in with their surroundings making them harder to fight. Riftstar Raiders has a dark and mechanical tone to it, as it should, given you’re flying through scrap yards and space bases a vast majority of the time.
Riftstar Raiders is a fairly solid entry into a usually forgotten genre in our modern world of gaming. It offers up solid, if not a little loose feeling, gameplay with tons of replay value and an adjustable level of challenge for gamers of all types. Its greatest victory is in the gear crafting system. Never before has an arcade style starship shooter felt this involved and this personal. Each ship that you make is truly you own as if you were the one sitting in that cockpit making those decisions. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll have cool spaceships to call our own and explore the galaxy with on our busy schedules, assuming the traffic around Neptune behaves itself. Until then we’ll just have to keep letting games do the exploring for us.
Overall Score: 7.5 / 10
Far Cry 5
Despite their greatest efforts, I didn’t turn out to be the good god fearing man that my parents wanted me to be. I was raised in a Christian home and every Sunday morning was Church day. When you spend five of your seven days waking up and getting ready for school, having to spend one of my two days off getting up early again to sit in a stuffy room listening to messages of goodness and singing songs of “thou shalt not burn down your neighbor’s house” wasn’t on my top ten list of best moments spent. Didn’t people already know not to hurt others and steal things? Why did we all need to sit in a pointy building once a week and have somebody tell us not to do that stuff? I was eight and I already knew that slapping Mickey across the street was what bad people did. Why didn’t grown-ups know that? Grown-ups were dumb. Of course now that I’m a grown-up I know that church goers do what they do for more than just a daily reminder that leaving your sword at home in the morning is probably a good idea. Church is about community and kinsmanship. It’s about collective faith that will see them through the darkest of times and help them find the light on the other side. It’s still not for me though, but I can respect it. Besides, I’m pretty sure that if I were to walk into a church in this day and age, a collective of guardian angels would swoop down to reveal my true form and cause me to ignite in holy flame because I liked saying the word "fart" too much.Far Cry 5 hits home in a not so accurate way. The story revolves around a religious group, but they’re the crazy kind of religious that don’t realize they’re crazy, which is the scariest kind. This review is for you folks that are more interested in the gameplay and elements that make up its whole rather than the story because let’s face it; you could turn on the news at eleven and get a pretty similar experience. In Hope County, Montana, a fanatical group that call themselves "The Project at Eden’s Gate" gather around a figure head that calls himself "The Father". He, one Joseph Seed, and his three children; Jacob, John, and Faith Seed have taken complete and total control over this little farm valley and rule it with fear, guns, and of course hallucinogenic gas known as “The Bliss”.
I owe you readers a bit of a disclaimer. This is my first Far Cry title, so things that may be series staples or common place elements are being looked at by the greenest of eyes. I also don’t play too many shooters, so feel free to laugh at my noob ass all you want. The opening salvo of the game left a sour taste in my mouth. Far Cry, like many other Ubisoft titles (like Assassins Creed of which I’m much more familiar), does an incredibly poor job of telling you how to play before dropping you into a high stakes action sequence that has you running, jump, diving, leaping over, firing and driving around much in the same way a newborn baby would do fresh out of the womb. After no less than 7 opening sequence deaths the game actually begun and it got much, much, much better.
Learning how to play, as I played, was the most difficult boss that the game threw at me. Even hours in I found myself fumbling to remember which combinations of buttons and joystick directions to push in order to swap weapons mid fight. Things got better for me, but it never reached the point of feeling natural. These things may feel better for first-person shooter veterans, but a weapon swapping system that paused while you held it open would have been welcome. The weapon wheel menu was my number one reason for dumb deaths hands down. Weapon types like your explosives and melee weapons have three separate tabs as well just to add to the fun. Swapping these weapons involves holding open the weapon wheel, selecting that weapon slot and then scrolling using the D-Pad. The options menu was my best friend and has control settings in droves to really help you customize the way you feel comfortable playing. This includes heads-up display options for a variety of UI components. Surprisingly the game lacks a minimap which leads to getting turned around more often than would have been preferred. While not the biggest deal, navigations meant opening up the main menu map repeatedly which slowed down the pace of the game. This may sound all overly negative so far, but don’t worry, we’re getting to the good stuff.
Far Cry 5 is absolutely beautiful. Immediately after walking out of that first bunker I was greeted by one of the most breath taking game worlds I’ve seen in a long time. I’m a sucker for lush green forest-y biomes in games, especially ones that replicate pine forests. They remind me of the cold north that I call home. Ubisoft consistently surprises me with the scope of their game worlds and how large, but filled with content they are. Rarely have I played one of their titles and found open areas of nothing to look at or do. Each place you wander into seems to have purpose whether it’s just visually or for the gameplay. Furthermore, the skybox overhead is one of the best and most convincing skyboxes I’ve ever seen. Looking up into the skies of Hope County makes you feel just how small you are compared to the world around you.
The spine that holds all of Far Cry 5 together is its menu. From this place of vital information you’ll navigate with your map, track your quests, upgrade your abilities and check pertinent information about your allies. The map of Far Cry 5 is, of course, an Ubisoft map. What I mean by this is that it’s not only huge, but it’s littered with important icons for objectives and points of note. The map as a whole will be greyed over with a fog until you visit that area. Finding or buying maps will help you fill out the map with the objects or quests you’ve missed in an area as it’s pretty damned easy to walk right past something without realizing it. It’s hard to see through trees, yo. As you would expect, you can set markers and target objects you want to focus on which will appear on your directional bar overhead. This map can also be zoomed in and out when needed.
Quests that you pick up are kept track of by the next tab in your menu, and these are broken up into several categories. The top section is full of the big boys. The main story objectives. Just under that are your side missions, and even further under that are other objectives such as prepper hideouts. Missions of all types reward you with reputation which is integral for earning the trust of the people in Hope County and taking down Eden’s Gate.
Making yourself more powerful is a central part of every game out there, and Far Cry 5 is no different. By completing various in game challenges such as getting a specified number of kills with a certain weapon, or skinning X number of animals, you unlock perk points. Perk points are a currency to be spent on character improvements in one of five categories. These categories are Survivalist, Renegade, Assassin, Prepper and Leader. Placing points into Assassin will give you the grappling hook tool to reach higher places faster, or let you pick locks rather than blasting them open with explosives. The Prepper category has talents to help you carry more ammo or weapons. The Leader Category improves your allies and increases benefits you get out of them. Each will change the way you play and tackle further challenges.
When taking down zealous cults you’ll need allies at your side. As you wander the fields and forests of Montana you’ll no doubt happen across suspicious and violent cult activity. Many times hostages will be involved. Killing the cultists present will free the hostage, and in some cases make a quest available to you, but always you’ll have the option to hire their gun for your side. Good folks litter the country side and are willing to pick up and help you take the crazies that have overrun their home. Each civilian has different helpful traits that will make your life easier when combating Eden’s Gate. The traits become active after these unsung heroes score enough kills. Traits are many and varied, so it’ll be up to you to pick and choose who you’ll keep by your side. Guns for hire can be commanded to wait in watch in any place you tell them to, and then attack the chosen target with the same command prompt. There are also 9 specialist guns for hire out in the world for you to find with even more powerful traits and abilities.
Any good open world game has an engaging world to play around in, which means things to find. As you wander you’ll come across the native plant life. Plants in their differing varieties can be combined with a substance you’ll find on the fanatics called “Bliss Oil”. The outcomes are homeopathic medicines that will temporarily boost your stats. Attacking power and speed are among the stats you can boost. Along with these medicines you’ll be able to craft explosives from materials you’ll find in prepper stashes and cultist outposts. These goods can be crafted from the weapons wheel menu.
If online modes are your jam then Far Cry 5 has some treats for you in Co-op, Far Cry Arcade, and Live Events. Co-op is as it sounds where you and a friend can tackle any of Far Cry 5’s missions as a duo. Invite any friend from your friends list on your device of choice and get shooting! Voice chat is also available to you if you don’t already hate the sounds of each other’s voices. For added difficulty you can even turn on friendly fire. On second thought, don’t do that. I’ve never had a friend that won’t try to shoot me in games for the “lulz” if given the chance. Live events, while not active yet are exclusive run opportunities for players to earn special limited edition customization options for their character, cars, or weapons.
The most in depth of the online features is Far Cry Arcade. Arcade mode gives the power of creation (and destruction) to you the player in a near infinite number of ways. Assets from numerous games in Ubisofts catalogue including previous Far Cry titles, Assassin Creed, and Watch Dogs are unloaded in a fully unhinged map editor that you can use to ether create with, or play in. Dive into solo mission, or play some with your friends. Create the wackiest... or scariest maps that your warped mind can dredge up from that place in your head marked off with caution tape. Four game modes are available as either solo or co-op; Outpost, Assault, Bounty Hunt and Journey, while two are strictly multiplayer; Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch.
Before you strut your stuff online be sure to pimp out everything about what it is that makes you a bad ass Far Cry cultist killer. Throughout your adventure you pick up funds by doing missions, looting corpses and selling the goods you come across in the wilds of Hope County. You can spend this hard earned dough in shops across the valley to trick out your look, your guns and your cars. Fresh shirts, pants, hats and hairstyles are ready for you to try, where as your guns and weapons can get special paint jobs or modifying equipment like scopes to change the way a weapon handles and aims. For car customization you’ll have to venture out a little bit farther and find a garage to use.
Even though my first stretch of time with the game was bitter at best, Far Cry 5 opened up in a fantastic way that kept me wanting to wander further and further into the countryside. I wanted to liberate each settlement I came across not just because it was fun, but it felt like I was doing genuine good for the world I was in. The world itself felt so alive, to the point it was almost the end of me a few times. Stalking the outskirts of an Eden’s Gate camp without looking both ways sent me face to face with a cougar. Even the Turkeys are out to get you in Montana. So, should you decide to go hunting for some skins and meat to sell for money to get some sick new digs, or spend some quiet time away from it all fishing, Far Cry 5 has got it.
Should you find yourself wanting to plow straight through to the center of cult activity and really stick it to the Seeds, or slow down your pace assisting every Tom and Nancy you come across, Far Cry 5 has got you covered. Whether you want to play online with a friend and have a laugh or two in a goofy custom map, or get down and dirty with the local country folks, the choice is up to you. After all, this is Far Cry, and this is Hope County, Montana. You’re about to have a hell of a time.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
Marooners
For as long as I can remember, the fantasy of being lost on an island has been an entertainment trope of sorts. What strikes me as interesting about this specific trope is that it falls into a category occupied by few. That is to say, people are entertained by its notion, but nobody actually longs to be in the characters shoes. Wish you were the superhero fighting crime? Sure, I’d bet there are loads. The doctor that’s equally good at surgery and being a smooth ladies man? Every dude over 35 is in line already. How about the professional chef with seemingly infinite knowledge of all the tastiest foods in the world and an equally infinite pantry to make it with? Half of the goddamn planet wants that.There are only so many microwavable burritos a single person can take before they snap and become the next villain in “Gotham”...then you superhero dreamers can come save us. But, being stuck on an island with a ragtag group of misfits who will enviably turn on the fattest one in the group because they don’t have anything else to eat? Nah bro. I’m good. We’re all good. I can only go so long without a shower and my under-arm charm without starting to feel like a villain from “Gotham” myself. Yet, the lost on an island fantasy persists, and Marooners is one such example. Don’t worry though; it’s too cute for cannibalism.
To put this in medieval terms, each genre of games has a King. It is the one game, or games, as the King can change over time, that defines the genre as a whole. This is the golden standard to which games in that genre are held. For example, shooters have Call of Duty, MMORPGs have World of Warcraft, Action Adventure has The Legend of Zelda. Facebook has grandma accidentally putting her Google search into a status post asking why her TV won’t change channels when she presses the buttons...on her cell phone. As far as party games go, Marooners is the squire that shines King Mario Party’s shoes. With enough time and devotion it could become a powerful knight, but it’ll never be king. Marooners has all the makings to be a good party game, but it falls just short,, or even very short, in just about everything that it does. Let’s break it down shall we?
Marooners biggest problem is its general lack of content. Most everything that there is to be seen had rears its head only about an hour into the experience. The one exception to this rule is the level up system put in place, which manages to give the game some artificial legs. As you play mini-games you’ll earn experience and grow in level. Each level will grant you a new reward, such as one of four hidden characters (of which there are eight total) or different weapons for said characters to hold. While these weapons are plentiful, they are functionally identical and serve little purpose beyond visual appeal.
While bonking people with a fish is fun for the whole family, the fish itself doesn’t feel like a great achievement. Each of the games playable characters comes with a full set of colors to choose from, and while new palate swaps would have been just as superficial as the weapons, getting some additional variety of reward would have been nice.
Playing Marooners comes down to picking your game mode. While there aren’t an outwardly vast number of modes to choose from, you have the ability to mix and match both the type of game you’ll be playing, and how you go about switching from mini-game to mini-game. Unlike King Mario Party, Marooners isn’t structured like a board game. You’ll switch from game to game at a rather fast paced clip more comparable to the WarioWare series.
Your first option is “Linear” mode. When chosen, the games you play will be played to completion. A winner is determined and everybody moves on. It is, as it sounds, a very traditional way of doing things. The second switching mode is “Chaos”. Chaos spices things up by cutting the games off at an undetermined amount of time, effectively putting said game on hold and then starting the next one. This cycle will continue with the next game running for a certain amount of time until it is suspended and the next game is randomly chosen. This continues until all of the games are eventually completed and a winner is named. Chaos is an interesting mode as it keeps all players engaged in a way I haven’t seen party games do before. All players must be prepared to jump into any type of gameplay at any given moment while keeping track of which mini-games they may or may not still be a part off. You may also choose to play combinations of the Linear and Chaos modes called “Any”.
There are two, nope, hold on, three game types to choose from in Marooners. The third mode that I added at the last second, the “Any” mode, combines the other two modes much in the same way that the game switching function does. These two other modes are broken into the more distinct “Party”, and “Arena”. Party is the heart and soul of Marooners that gives the player that party game experience they would expect. This is where the stereotypical games hide, but ultimately I had more fun with Arena mode. Arena mode is a sort of king-of-the-hill mode that give players access to item blocks filled with weapons such as bombs and punching gloves. The goal is to be the last one standing in the arena. Combining the Arena game type with the Chaos switching mode was hands down the best fun I had while playing this game.
The variety of mini-games in Marooners is unfortunately lacking. Each party session lasts little more than ten to twelve minutes, and by the time I had made it to my fourth session it felt like I had seen all of the mini-games. Each of the mini-games offered manage to provide some fun though; examples of which are the game that drops boulders down a ramp in front of you and knock you into the pit of lava behind should you get hit. Another enjoyable mini-game is where an island made of ice slowly loses pieces as the timer progresses forcing the players to via for less and less space.
Some would argue that a great game is about the quality and not the quantity, and yes, that’s true and I agree. However, Marooners also lacks in one key area, and that is in its quality of control. The controls feel loose, which adds an element of difficulty to things that shouldn’t be as hard as they are. Many times I found myself crushed under a rock because I over turned myself when I didn't mean to.
Marooners is a game that allows up to six players to play, but it defaults to four unless you change it. Four is a good number though, as it’s the classic number, and it works. Six on the other hand is a visual explosion. Marooners is obviously a game for the kids with its bright colours and generally simple game design. The characters are small and cute, and when they bonk each other with their chosen weapon a tiny sound like a dog chew toy goes off. Maybe it’s because I’m becoming an old man, but the small scale of characters on the screen, combined with sheer volume of players, caused me to lose track of where I was on many occasions.
When new mini-games begin, they players starting location is randomised. Being unable to locate my character before the starting pistol went off resulted in my demise more times than any other thing. Feels bad man. While each of the player tags that float above the characters heads are color coded, the player characters themselves are a barrage of bright color which causes some level of sensory confusion. All in all the game looks okay, and it plays okay, but when the two are combined there is some weird interaction.
When I sit down with a group of friends, the point of the evening is to have fun. And while Marooners might provide some entertainment for a group of folks over a very short period of time, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where this little title ever makes it into the “party night rotation”. Marooners finds itself in a genre were there are already many other great games to choose from while doing very little to make itself stand out and above competition.
I think back to all of my all-nighters and sleep-overs of a time long past, where my friends would come-a-knocking with their Dr.Pepper and their Doritos, and we’d stay up until the birds came out playing all of the best multiplayer games you can think of. This is a role which I just can’t see Marooners filling for today’s kids. The sad truth is that if this game about a rag tag group of island bound treasure seekers were truly lost on an Island, I don’t think anybody would come looking. Better eat the caveman first.
Overall Score: 5.5 / 10
Vesta
As we learned from those children’s books with covers that show folks of all different skin colors holding hands around a miniature planet Earth, people come in all different shapes, sizes, and forms that you can imagine. These books are meant to convey the very important message that despite appearance, we are all equal, and all want to be treated with respect and love. I agree of course, but seven year old me couldn’t shake the terrible notion there were people so large they could breathe in space and topple the largest building in the world with a sneeze. No handshake of tolerance is worth the millions of lives lost by stepping on a city. Of course as we grow older we build opinions and biases based on our own experiences. In most cases these are unfair and require understanding and reason to overcome. Still, there is one group of people I have difficulty with. These people are so invasive and intrusive to my way of life that I can’t help but lash out if they approach me against my will. Morning people. Go-getters. I hate them. I hate all of them. They wake up all cheerful and full of energy and are prepared to take on the day without a single sniff of coffee or the minimum required three hours of charge up time before speaking to other humans. They treat life like one big puzzle to be solved. Puzzles are fine, but I prefer to approach mine enclosed in a box on a rolly chair wearing the fuzziest socks modern technology can offer.
Much like life, video games offer puzzles to be solved. Some games embrace this idea to such a degree that there is nothing else to the game. We call these gamles Puzzle Games and they are for people that like to use their brains. I like to use my brain sometimes when it is demanded of me, but more often than not I need to take cool down breaks lest I overheat like any Covenant weapon in Halo. Vesta is one such puzzle game, and while it would be ever so slightly inaccurate to call it a “pure” puzzle game like Tetris, or even Sudoku, all progress made in Vesta is done so by solving puzzles, so strap on your thinking pants.
I think what best differentiates puzzle games by quality are their setting and their aim. While some try to replicate the experience of jotting down lines on a piece of paper for ten times the cost, others try to tell a story. In Vesta, telling a story is very much the case. The game opens up with a cut scene, done in the style of a comic book, of a girl waking up from a presumably long slumber in the middle of a garden. Immediately she is met by a floating computer monitor, creatively named BOT, who reminds her of the task at hand, and sends her about her business in the robotics facility surrounding the garden.
Your aim, as was earlier stated in the “important” category, is to climb out of the facility floor by floor until you reach the top. That’s right; you’re roughly one-hundred and fifty floors below the surface of the planet. Oh, did I mention that you’re also the only human in the joint. Wait, there is more. The place is also filled with super hostile robots that want to kill you. Why? Well if you want the story you’ll have to play the game and interact with the miscellaneous computer terminals sprinkled throughout the compound to find out. I can’t tell you, that would be spoiling.
Early on you’ll meet and befriend the greatest tool you have at your disposal in Vesta; your robot companion. Yes, robot companion. The main hook to Vesta’s gameplay is your ability to swap between your two characters at any time. Each of your two characters have unique abilities which, when used properly, will see you to the end of each floor safely. Vesta herself is equipped with a backpack which allows her to absorb and distribute power to and from receptacles which energize the facility around her. Power is a limited resource in the facility and must be used wisely. Up to three charges can be kept at a time. Vesta can also dash forward a short distance, a good use of which is to evade certain death from enemy attacks. Vesta can’t take any hits from enemy robots because she’s made of squishy flesh and dies easily. Her robot pal however is made of sterner stuff and has three points of health, so a smack or two won’t take you down immediately. He is also equipped with missiles to stun enemy robots, and can pick Vesta up to throw her across gaps. Combining their abilities is the only way to defeat enemies by first stunning them with missiles, and then draining them of power with Vestas backpack.
The name of the game, in general, is to manage the aforementioned power in a way that gets you to the end. This means taking power away from places that don’t need it anymore, such as sections of the level that have already been solved or traveled through. That also means taking the opportunity to slay enemy robots where ever you can as they are a valuable source of power. In most cases, an enemy robot means that there is a place in your near future that’s going to need power that you don’t have yet.
All the things you would expect to see in an underground compound over run with evil robots are present. Locked doors, check. Stopped conveyor belts, check check. Pits of acid, check check check. Floating platforms that move back and forth across chasms of certain doom, check-a-roonie. The puzzle design in Vesta is done quite well and feels very rewarding when completed. The in-between, the solving of the puzzles, however, was a little gear grinding at times. Particularly long levels offer check points which is absolutely welcome, but even some of the shorter levels felt longer in practice due to the layout and tasks required.
These levels felt particularly bad when their difficulty ramps up at the end, killing you and causing you to restart the whole thing. Of course in games there must be punishment for failure and how else better to do it in a puzzle game than to make you restart the whole mission? The issue was not in the punishment, but the death. Some of the commands in Vesta feel slower and more methodical as they should in a puzzle game, but there are also instances of semi-combat scenarios that demand quicker responses than you are capable of or prepared for. Translation: dying feels cheap most of the time.
Vesta is presented in a top-down isometric format. This is a personal favorite of mine that harkens back to all of the best RPG’s of old like Mario RPG, Harvest Moon, and Final Fantasy Tactics. Top-down isometrics have got warm feelings on the inside for days. This view style however doesn’t lend itself to the puzzle genre. Even in those old classics, and the puzzles they presented, it was hard to gauge distance and height to far away platforms. Vesta suffers from this in some capacity having caused many a perspective based death throughout my play time. Most all of the game is kept on a level playing field, which is of good design in my mind as it reduces excessive and unnecessary environment based failure, or as I like to call it, the “Oh come ooooooooooon” effect. This view style also makes aiming robo-buddy’s missile attack tricky at the best of times. With enough practice, all of these conundrums can be overcome, but they may leave a bitter taste in a new player’s mouth., like chewed up Tylenol caplets bitter.
I’m a sucker for a pretty face, which is why I cry every morning when I look into the mirror. But it’s also why Vesta’s art style is my favorite element to the game. It’s blocky and chunky, but small and cute in an almost chibi kind of way. The compound looks properly rundown and gives off an amazing atmosphere. Though the general tile kit stays the same pretty much the whole way through, each level is distinct enough in design for that not to matter. Each enemy robot type has a unique silhouette and style of movement so you know exactly what you are up against before it becomes too much of a problem, and key points of importance in each level stand out, as they should. Vesta only features one audio track of importance as it plays in the background of every level. It’s a good piece and doesn’t wear over time. In fact, even after the umpteenth level I found myself still humming along to it.
If it wasn’t obvious from my subtle hints and unique way of sewing words into sentences, puzzle games aren’t my favorite thing in the world. Vesta did a good job though, and kept me entertained throughout my adventure. There were growing pains to be had; the controls felt sluggish at times, the the view style led to more deaths than I care to announce, and many times I had to step away in frustration, but it was presented in a fun way that kept me going. The characters are good, and the atmosphere is even better, but most importantly the puzzles are great. If you’ve got a few bucks lying around, and an itch for some sci-fi escapism, then Vesta is a good choice for you.
Overall Score: 6.5 / 10
Dragon Ball Fighterz
You know, I’ve never been a particularly violent person. “Well that’s good!” you say. “That takes a load off of my mind were I to ever meet you!” you exclaim. I’m glad to have warned you in advance. What I am however is a man, and a man that had a brother growing up. If you’ve never been in a house with two male children tearing up the place then you’ve never witnessed a genuine bona-fide disaster. In fact, you’ll find a listing for “Brothers” on the Canadian national disaster index filed snugly between avalanche and cataclysm. Our parents kept us mostly in line, but we did our absolute best to recreate all of the best scenes from our favorite 90’s cartoons; you know, Batman, X-Men, Power Rangers, Beast Wars, and Ninja Turtles...that stuff. I remember having my very own young-life crisis when my parents were considering banning us from watching Power Rangers anymore after seeing a newscast about similarly aged children breaking each other’s bones while fighting in the way that we did. Of course no house stays the same forever, and man-children kinda, sorta, maybe grow up...a little. The action-cartoon renaissance of our home will forever be known for two things: the discovery of Dragon Ball Z, and yelling to power up. I may have lied about the growing up thing.Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and its numerous fighting games have a long and powerful heritage dating back to well before those names meant anything in North America. Many of Dragon Balls earliest games can’t be found in English and are for consoles that never hosted them on our side of the pond to begin with, like the Famicom and Super Famicom. My personal experience with Dragon Ball games starts fairly recently, mostly due in part by their lack of availability for the consoles I owned. My first title was Dragon Ball Z: Budokai for the Gamecube, and yes, it was everything I dreamed it would be. It had all of my favorite characters, and they fought in all three dimensions! Of course it had some of my not so favorite characters too (I stand by the fact that Android 19 is the worst Dragon Ball Z character of all time), but oh well, not everybody can be a winner. Since then I’ve played most every Dragon Ball Fighting games on offer from the Tenkaichi’s to Burst Limit skipping only the Xenoverse titles because I was too busy saving Azeroth. Well, now I have more time, and I got to play Dragon Ball FighterZ which released not too long ago.
Having Dragon Ball Z move back into a 2-Dimensional environment was quite possibly the smartest thing that Namco-Bandai could have done with Dragon Ball FighterZ. While in the past it was important to move as many properties into the 3D gaming realm as possible to compete with other developers and take advantage of blooming technologies, I’ve always felt that there is a certain janky-ness to 3D fighters. Many times in 3D fighters, or at least in Dragon Ball’s older titles, you see scenes of fighters dashing towards one another only to miss because they were slightly turned in the wrong direction. This was circumvented most of the time with auto locking to your target during a match, but here and there it would still happen if both players went to make a move on the other simultaneously. This is an issue that 2D fighters do not have. 2D fighters also have an advantage in that it frees up three dimensional strafe commands replacing them with simple crouches and jumps, meaning those commands don’t have to fill up other buttons on your controllers. More fight buttons means more action which means more fun. They also look better, but that’s an opinion, and probably a blog post.
The controls for Dragon Ball Fighter Z are simple...well there’s a lot going on but it doesn’t take an absurd amount of time to get a rudimentary grasp on the basics. It isn’t a half circle forward, three-quarter circle back, X+Y while crouching kind of fighting game if you know what I’m saying. The game is loaded with auto combos done by repeatedly mashing one button over and over, which is both visually rewarding and effective play for green-horns, but there are also tools for the more seasoned of us to put together even more devastating strings of attacks. I won’t break down the controls button by button, as I’m not an instruction booklet, but everything you’d expect in a top notch fighting game is present. The face buttons are light, medium, and heavy attacks along with a ki blast button. Both your left-stick and d-pad are directional movement, crouch, and jump. Your right trigger and bumper buttons play critical roles in breaking an opponent’s guard and firing off effective super attacks. Lastly, your left trigger and bumper are all about calling in an assist, or straight up switching to an allied character. You read that right, we 3v3 baby, we Marvel vs. Capcom.
The entirety of the game is spent in a lobby. Exciting. What I mean is that there is a hub world that you access all of the games various modes from and it’s broken up into these lobbies, or servers if you will. You can leave and join different lobbies at any point that you want as at any given time the amount of people online playing will affect how many people there are in each lobby. If you are all about playing other folks online you may want to seek out busier lobbies to play on. The hub world is small and cute with many nods to the Dragon Ball universe in general.
You’ll start out by setting up your nickname, and if you so choose, customizing your player card and lobby character. Lobby characters are chibi (small, cute, baby-like) representations of virtually all the Dragon Ball Z characters you can think of for you to walk around as and use as your avatar. More lobby characters, profile cards, and fighter colors can be earned in the lobby by visiting the shop and spending your precious Zeni, but more on that later.
As they do, fighting game matches all play out pretty much the same way. What changes them are the circumstances of the match, or more plainly, the game mode. Dragon Ball FighterZ has six game modes to speak of, and each are different in their own ways, but none of them are strangers to the fighting game genre. First up is the classic, the expected, and the best way to get warmed up for the rest of the game, it’s the story mode. Dragon Ball FighterZ features a story mode that tells a tale which seemly takes place after the events of “Resurrection F”, but before the rest of “Dragon Ball Super”. In this tale, the fighters find themselves unable to harness their powers due to strange energy waves that fill the air. They’re only hope for survival is a strange body-less soul that seems to be bound to them and can access and unleash their inner power, but only one at a time. It’s a clever way to justify the fact that your team members can only fight one at a time. There are three story lines in total that tell the tale from different points of view and they overlap to some degree. In the story mode, the characters you use level up to gain more health, and some battles will yield power ups such as increased attack power, or more Zeni earned. One of the games hidden fighters is unlocked by completing this mode as well.
Arcade mode lets you challenge a string of fighters with three difficulty modes to choose from. Did you know that’s what arcade mode was? It’s news to me! The easiest difficulty has just three back-to-back fights. The medium difficulty has five fights, and the hardest mode has seven. On top of the number of fighters you face, the difficulty increases as well, obviously. Each match that you complete is ranked from “D” all the way up to “S”. The rank you earn in each match determines who you move onto face as you move up a very literal ladder. Not being particularly MLG when it comes to fighting games, I never did earn an “S” rank trophy on any of the arcade challenges, though I hear earning that coveted rank on the medium and hard settings can earn you the other two hidden fighters in the games roster.
Of course we cannot forget the multiplayer modes, which come in both online and offline forms. I'll be honest here, because I don’t have many Xbox Live friends I only dipped my toes into the online mode. I immediately got spanked but I can confirm that the mode works fairly well. World Play pits you against fighters from all over the globe in both casual and ranked play. I’m a little intimidated by the idea of losing my hard earned internet points, so I stuck mostly to casual matches. With fighting games above all else, good net code is critically important. I experienced little lag or poor loading times, though that may just have been my experience and obviously it may vary from person to person. Overall, the online infrastructure feels stable and reliable, which is always a sign of a potentially thriving online community. Due to the nature of fighting games, it is only recommended you use local multiplayer with people you do not intend to maintain long-term friendships with.
The last of the staple fighting game modes available in Dragon Ball FighterZ is the practice mode. I find myself spending just as much time in these modes as any of the other “real” modes in fighting games. I’m a chronic over prepare kind of guy, so I like to spend tons and tons of times practicing with my favorite characters to lose with. I just like to make sure I lose online in the best way possible. You know, with style, flourish, and a battle tag that looks something like a middle finger. In the practice mode you can find a series of challenges designed to teach you how to play each of the games fighters. This feature is crazy helpful and shouldn’t be snuffed at even by seasoned players. You just may learn a thing or two. Most, if not all (there’s like hundreds of these, I didn’t have time for all of them), reward their completion with cash.
Lobbies in Dragon Ball FighterZ come with their own set of useful features and aren’t simply gateways to the “good stuff”. First and foremost is the final, and least orthodox, of the fighting modes: Arena mode. Arena mode is a fighting mode for people in your specific lobby to enjoy and take part in. Players can throw down against each other, and outsiders, should they so choose, can spectate the match. There’s little else to Arena mode, but it does serve as a good way to kill time or fight with specific rivals you’ve made while playing. Also in the lobby is a rankings board and lobby chat. Now you too can see how many thousands of people are better than you while watching an endless string of memes and chuck Norris jokes. Just kidding...do kids still do the Chuck Norris these days?
The last lobby feature is my favorite. Before the game's launch there were whispers on forums that Dragon Ball FighterZ would join the leagues of games that sell dreaded loot boxes. This turned out to be untrue, but there is an in-game mechanic that functions in a similar way using all of the in-game currencies you'll find in this game. Using the Zeni you earn from the various modes, you can buy Capsule Corp. capsules which contain one of many randomized prizes. These include new color palettes for the games fighters, previously mentioned lobby characters and color variants for those, profile cards, stamps which can be used as part of the in-game emote system and on the chat log, and titles. As you progress through the game and spend more and more Zeni on these capsules, the likelihood of getting duplicates increases. When duplication occurs the game gives you a secondary currency called “Premium Z Coins”. Ten of these coins can be spent to buy one capsule which will give you a guaranteed new item.
Being as old as the show is now, Dragon Ball FighterZ has reached the point in Dragon Ball's life where the games look better than the show ever did. But, not only does the game look better than the show, it looks really freaking good altogether. While Namco can’t claim that each of the frames are hand drawn like many other fighting games of the past, they’ve done the next best thing. The frames are quick and choppy to give that illusion of speed you'd expect in a Dragon Ball title. Each movement feels important and powerful. Special attacks are over the top and in many cases fill much, if not all, of the screen. That’s just how it is with Dragon Ball and FighterZ has been remarkably faithful to the source material going as far as to have not only special dialog between most characters, but unique scenes that play out when specific outcomes are met that reenact the show. This cel-shaded wonder is nothing short of a masterful work of art.
Lending its hand to the Dragon Ball package is the sound department, and they delivered just as much as the visual crew. High octane action has always needed music that can match its pace. Dragon Ball FighterZ features a jazzy rock style that is distinctly Dragon Ball. The music is great on its own, but doesn’t intrude on the action. That said, my one complaint about the game falls into the sound category and how poorly it was balanced. During the story mode it was common for the voice acting of characters to get drowned out by the back ground music. This is actually an issue that show had in some cases way back when as well, I guess their faithfulness knows no bounds.
It’s rare that I get giddy for a game the way I did for Dragon Ball. I suppose the only titles that really do that for me are ones that I have a deep connection to from my childhood. Dragon Ball FighterZ is a series defining game for Dragon Ball and the creators of the game will definitely have set the bar higher for any sequel we may get down the road, and that’s okay. Games that improve gaming, and the enjoyment of those that play them, are so much more important than many of us give them credit for. When you have a game that people rally around, exclaim in excitement together about, and relive past excitements and childhood memories with them, what you have is a very special game.
Dragon Ball FighterZ takes everything that is good about Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and the newer Dragon Ball Super, and flaunts it, but not only that, it celebrates it. As it stands now Dragon Ball FighterZ is the best Dragon Ball game that has ever made it to store shelves. If you fancy yourself a Dragon Ball fan in any way shape or form, then I cannot recommend this game enough. Go! What are you waiting for? Go get it! Unless you can sense power levels, you’re going to blink and miss the whole damn thing.
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
Beholder
Do you remember when you were a child and you did a bad thing? It doesn’t really matter what the thing was, just think back. It could have been coloring on the walls, coming home late, breaking that antique whatcha-ma-call-it your mother has had since the dawn of time which holds value for some reason, or even “forgetting” to brush your teeth (that was my go to). Now, think back to how hard you tried to keep that hidden. It never mattered how many precautions you seemed to take, somehow, some way, your parents would always find out as if through magic. I’m sure few of us even assumed that our folks had sorcerous powers of any variety but the always inevitable failure of our escapades raised eyebrows higher than seemingly possible. Some say that there are still eyebrows above the skyline to this day. The truth is though that kids are garbage tenants that seem to leave destruction in their wake, so it became the parents job to know everything that their child was doing at all times... like a spy. Double-O Mom. The house police. Cracker down of “house illegal” activities. If the crappy things we did as kids were actually against the law we’d all be serving a solid twenty-five to life. With no video games.In Beholder you play as the parent... errrr, landlord of a crappy run down old apartment building in an unnamed country (it’s totally Russia). The totalitarian state has put you in charge after the old landlord failed to play ball to their liking and want you to whip the place into shape all cloak and dagger style. Beholder is a game thick with difficult moral decisions about how to treat people, how to talk to them and how to keep tabs on them. You have to balance when to keep your mouth shut and when to spill the beans on tenants for illegal activities. You can break into living quarters to gather dirt on the people in your building, or install cameras, or if you prefer, just peek at them through the key hole. Every action you take has a consequence that you’ll have to navigate in your own way or pay the price. If you aren’t careful, you just may end up dead.
As a rule, I avoid playing games that are going to stress me out. What are games supposed to be if not fun? Every now and then, one catches you by surprise and isn’t the kind of game you were expecting. I’m also a sucker for side-scrolling styled games, so I fell right into the trap. Beholder throws you right into a pile of peoples problems that you inevitably get tangled up in by either acting, or not acting, when they approach you. What a nightmare. As it turns out, dystopian Russia has a bunch of super dramatic people with no common sense. Playing through this title gives you an immediate feeling of weight which will continue to grow as you proceed. If you don’t get enough of worrying about the bills in real life, then this is the game for you.
When the game opens up you’ll be made immediately aware of your work desk (which we’ll get back to later) and the phone in your office. This phone is your direct line to the “Order”. From this phone you’ll receive directives from up high on how to proceed with the people living in your abode. These directives are usually along the lines of finding out dirt about your tenants or kicking them out of the building. If you successfully complete an Order directive you will be rewarded, but if you don’t... you don’t. The tools at your disposal for going about your directive are many. The first tool you’ll be taught how to use, and what will be your staple in many cases, are security cameras. Security cameras can be bought in game using a reputation currency that you earn essentially by being a good boy and doing what you’re told. Cameras can be placed on the ceiling in any room of the apartment building on specific nodes that look a little bit like smoke alarms. Public access rooms are easy installs for your security cameras, but for the good stuff, the apartments units, you’ll have to break in.
When you interact with a door in Beholder you are given three options; Unlock, Spy, and Knock. Unlocking the door is as it suggests. By unlocking a tenant’s door you’ll be able to roam around their living space to install cameras and search their furniture for outlawed possessions. Of course people don’t like finding you rummaging through their underwear drawer, so doing these things while they aren’t home and getting out before they return is your best course of action. Spy is your second option and is critical in the early game for determining if it’s safe to proceed before you have many cameras set up. Spy has you take a lean over to peek through the key hole of the chosen apartment unit. If anyone is home after looking through, you’ll see them. Your final door option is knocking. If somebody you need to talk to is home, knocking will have them answer the door.
Proceeding through Beholder sees a number of things happen in the games “real time”. Periodically there will be new laws passed that make having certain items or doing various activities become illegal. Having cameras set up and actively peeking in on your tenants will make finding the people living under you doing these things much easier. When you catch someone in the act, you’ll be prompted with a button press to take note of the action. Slowly, you’ll build up a profile for each of the people in your building filled with both interests and evidence against them. A number of things can be done with this information. When you sit down at your work desk you can write a profile, a report or a blackmail letter. Blackmail letters are a good way to get cash quick in exchange for compliance. Profiles filled with activities, interests, and habits can be written up in exchange for money as well. The government likes to know what its people are up to at all times and pays you well to fill them in. Finally you can write up a report using evidence you’ve gathered. If filled in correctly, a report results in the police coming to search for and take away a troublesome tenant.
Most completed actions result in a pay out of both money, and the earlier mentioned reputation currency. While the reputation currency lets you pick up items that make your job easier, money does everything else. Many of your tasks along the way have some kind of cost associated to them, from getting candy for your daughter, to paying one tenant to help another out. In many cases you have only two options for acquiring specific goods. The first option is theft. While sifting through the belongings of your apartments residents you can choose to lift the items that you find. Of course missing items don’t go unnoticed and doing this too much can land you in a bad place. Your second option is the black market. Once every twenty-four hours a man in a top-hat comes to hang out in front of your building to sell exotic and sometimes forbidden goods. These can be expensive, so spend wisely. ...Actually, there is a third option. When you have a tenant removed from your building for illegal activities, all of their belongings are left in a box outside of their door for a while. If they had something you need, you can take it from there free of charge.
The art style works well not only in its simplicity, but in the message it conveys. Beholder follows along the same lines as Limbo before it. Characters are black silhouettes with white borders to distinguish them from the background. Each of the many characters have unique silhouettes, but their drowned out appearances scream out that this is not a “happy” game, or a happy place to live for that matter. The building environment that you play in is more detailed, but it’s been made out to be dirty and run down. Toned down and somber background music solidify the atmosphere of Beholder to complete the dystopian package. Music changes are distinct and noticeable, and usually signify that something is happening. A good example is when the police come knocking, so does a frantic score.
Managing all of your options and being able to think on your feet are key to success in Beholder. Scenarios rarely play out in the best possible way and sometimes solving a problem can lead to having your next problem be even more difficult to overcome. One such thing happened to be in my play through. Having been burned by a previous deal with another tenant, I told the doctor in my building to solve his own spousal problems. I didn’t want to be involved. So, he up and left the building leaving the trouble causing girlfriend behind. The next day my daughter fell ill and needed a doctor. With no doctor in the building anymore I got slapped with a $30,000 bill for her cure.
Beholder is an absolutely unique experience and made me feel all sorts of ways I didn’t necessarily want feel about a video game. It was both stressful, but rewarding. It made me think quickly and gauge priorities. It’s a game that makes you understand that not everybody is going to have a happy ending, and that it’s within your power to choose who goes to jail and who stays free. If you’re up for a challenge then I recommend you give this game a go. It may not be for everyone, I’m not even sure it’s for me, but you’ll never know the outcome of something unless you give it a shot.
Overall Score: 7.0 / 10
OKAMI HD
I’m an artsy person. I’ll admit that out loud like I’m proud of it or something. Granted in recent years my artwork has gone by the wayside in favor of other more financially rewarding ventures and less time consuming ones. Still, I like to dabble from time to time and promptly bellyache to myself about how much better I used to be. My medium of choice, as I am a simple man, has always been pencil and paper. Good old fashioned drawing as the Aztecs used to call it. Putting graphite to tree-pulp-squares has always felt good to me. The physicality of drawing in a book, as opposed to on a computer, is where I always felt at home. I feel more connected with what I’m doing. In that way you’d think that I’d be totally on board with painting too. You would be wrong. I am not. Paint is hard. Mixing colors properly is a challenge beyond anything I have ever known. Cities have been built in faster time than it takes to recreate a color you didn’t make enough of the first time around...and now you can’t finish what you are doing because the whole thing will be thrown off with two different shades of blue. Watercolor is even worse. It’s all the bad parts about painting, but now there’s water involved to make your paper soggy. Just do what Capcom did, make video game watercolors instead.
Let me start off by saying that I have very little bad to say about Okami, so little in fact that the few negative points I’ve got feel like splitting hairs. There’s good reason this title has been re-released time and time again to different consoles across the ages. It plays good, it sounds good, and it looks daaaaayum good. For those that don’t know, Okami is a game in which you play as the Shinto Sun Goddess Amaterasu in the form of a white wolf. You’ll travel across ancient feudal Japan (Nippon) cleansing it of demon corruption, and restoring it to its natural beautiful self. Through your journey you’ll meet several other celestial “Brush Gods” that help you master combat and puzzle solving arts.
The first and most striking element to Okami as a whole is its art style. Okami already boasted a beautiful look, but it’s up scaling to high definition has taken it to a whole new level. Thick black lines and bright high contrasting colors give the game the look of a living and breathing watercolor painting. Watercolor has deep historical ties with Japanese culture, so it is the perfect fit for a game centered around Japanese mythology and gods. Each animation and action lends itself to the watercolored nature of the game. Simple attacks have splashing effects to them as if ink is coming from enemy targets instead of blood. Restoring the world around you transforms greyed-out drab bits of land into a lush green floral landscape. Even the backgrounds and skyboxes feature plain black line mountains or clouds like you would see from pieces of artwork in that style.
An integral part of the gameplay is built upon the art and artistry of Okami, and those are your brush-arts. At any time during play, either in combat or out, you can hold down RB to change your screen into a canvas. While holding RB, move your cursor around with the left stick and apply brush pressure with X to draw lines, dots, or whatever you may need. In this way you can effectively paint the world around you, but only in the limited ways the game allows for.
As you travel you’ll meet various Brush Gods that teach you new ways to paint in game, which will help you in combat or to solve puzzles. Drawing a horizontal line will slash at an enemy or object in front of you, while drawing a circle up in the night sky will call out the sun changing it from night to day. More complicated brush strokes, like a circle with a line through it at an upward angle, will summon a bomb into existence at the place you drew the symbol, which is useful for breaking down cracked walls.
Combat is simple, relying less on varying types of attack combinations and more on how to use acquired brush-arts to defeat enemies faster. Upon dishing out enough regular attacks, all enemies will become weakened and lose most of their color. When this happens, it’s a signal that they are now vulnerable to brush arts. Some require a simple slash, while others require more advanced arts like “Bloom”, which causes plant-like features to open up exposing weak points, or “Inferno”, which will melt away icy barriers.
Amaterasu can equip two types of weapons: a main weapon and a sub weapon. Your main weapon is, as the name implies, the weapon that you use to do the lion’s share of your attacks. Your sub-weapon offers various effects like a ranged rapid fire or a melee scatter-shot. Each weapon has a main and sub effect, so mixing, matching, and experimentation are welcomed.
To match the historically on-point artwork, Okami’s music features many traditional instruments such as Shamisen, Biwa lutes and Taiko drums. At risk of exposing my complete ignorance surrounding musical composition, I’ll stop at simply saying that the music sounds great. Like with other HD ports of past games, it’s harder to peg down the specific improvements on the audio side without spending large sums on top of the line sound systems. But, in many cases game music quality has improved less over the years than video quality due to lack of necessity having started in a better place to begin with.
My only major point of criticism for Okami is its weird camera movement. Thankfully the game comes with built in camera movement customization options for those that want to change their controls from the standard settings. By default the camera moves in every opposite direction you’d instinctively think to move. The up and down pan movement is inverted, which was popular at the time of its original release, but the left and right pan are opposites as well. Instead of moving the camera left and right from the back of the characters perspective like most all 3-D adventures have done previously, left and right moves the camera from the front. This doesn’t sound like a major problem when written out, but once it’s in your hands it feels very counter intuitive.
For me, Okami is a lesson in never putting off a great title. Having come out over ten years ago, Okami has touched the hearts and minds of gamers all over the world spawning fan art and clamor for sequels by the thousands, and yet this was my first time playing it. When you boot up a game that is made with love, care and genuine passion for the craft of video games, you can feel it immediately. I certainly did when playing this game. I enjoyed every moment exploring this world, meeting its peoples, curing its woes and slaying its demons. From one gamer to another, don’t do what I did. Don’t brush aside (get it!?) playing this classic any longer.
If you haven’t played Okami yet, then Okami HD is the perfect time to dive in and see what Nippon is all about. Okami represents the absolute pinnacle of art in games, an art that we all love, care about, and have passion for. An art form that we grew up with and helped mold us into the people we are today. The next time you meet somebody that doesn’t think games are art, show them Okami HD and show them how wrong they really are.
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
AER: Memories of Old
One of the more common things us mortals tend to dream about is flying, and maybe is is because we can’t do it ourselves. Maybe it is because flying is really super cool, and the animals that can fly are just as cool to match. This is all conjecture, and I wouldn’t trust the things I “conject” about being that the last dream I can vividly remember happening was when I was about seven years old. A cursory Google search of completely factual dream meanings tells us that flying in a dream means we feel in control of things. It means seeing things from a new perspective, it means freedom, and it means escape. I personally don’t believe any of that bologna, but, if I had a dream where I got to fly around as a bird, that would be super rad. I’d travel from one island floating in the sky to the next one in search of spirit animals to guide me on my quest. I’d meet the denizens of the islands and the ghosts of the past to understand their struggles. I’d enter holy temples dedicated to the deities of the land and receive their blessings to thwart the hungering void that seeks to consume all of creation. I’d solve puzzles and riddles and see all to see. I’d wake up and realize that I should probably stop going to McDonalds before bed because that’s some crazy stuff I just dreamt. Then I’d get my buddies together, convince them I wasn’t drugged, and make a game out of it. I’d call it AER: Memories of Old.
In AER: Memories of Old you play as Auk, a mysterious young girl thrust into a vast sky-bound world on her pilgrimage to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors. Auk’s natural magical abilities allow her to transform at will into a bird and take to the skies; a skill that is most crucial for her to successfully complete her adventure across a torn and sundered land she calls home. Along the way you’ll meet and learn about various spirit animals that tried, and failed, to protect the world that now lays broken across the skies. You’ll see visions, ghosts of the past, forever frozen in time during their last moments before the world came to an end. You’ll travel far and wide to find your place in all this while uncovering dark and festering evils below the surface of reality. And, you’ll do all of this without landing a single blow. AER is a strictly non-combat game, instead focusing on puzzles, exploration, and the fantasy of the world around you.
Non-combat games aren’t new, but they always feel surprising, and in some ways jarring, in a world where most other games require an abundance of “input action” to succeed. AER follows in those footsteps and, as it is difficult to “put a twist” on a lack of combat, the game doubles down on the world in which you are adventuring in. The game takes place entirely in the sky on a series of floating islands which are explored by shifting back and forth between human and bird forms. Each cluster of islands has distinct environmental atmospheres to them with the southernmost islands having warmer climates and the northern islands taking on colder and colder weather.
The world feels big, but not enormous. It’s big enough to elicit a sense of adventure. Yet, with the lack of combat, or much of anything else to do while flying, the novelty of flight quickly fades into a necessity of traveling from point A to point B. While flying you’ll come across streams of quick flowing air that can be used to speed up travel, but they usually end up feeling redundant as most of these drafts are found around land masses, when in reality they would be more useful for traveling between islands.
First impressions in most cases boil down to what things look like, which is why dressing well is important. You wear suits or dresses to weddings or funerals, and its mandatory attire to wear sweatpants when grocery shopping at midnight. AER’s simple but striking art style speaks a thousand words about the game that it is. Bright and bold colors make up the entire pallet. There are no wimpy shades here. The geometry is sharp and jagged in a Dr.Seuss kind of way. The entire game gives off a very strong, family friendly, story book vibe. The caveat however, to all of this, is that characters models are done in a way that each polygon displays sharp edges. Despite being colored, this style leaves you feeling like you’re looking at unfinished models that react weirdly to lighting effects. It’s not a particularly troublesome point, but is noticeable if you’re looking for it.
Ambiance plays an equal roll in your journey through AER. There are some points while flying that the music picks up a few beats to get your toes tapping, but most of the game features softer tones. While it wouldn’t be fair to say that AER does music as well as the all-time greats, what is presented does a good job of what it needs to. The mysterious music feels mysterious. When you are up in the cold mountains the music somehow conveys that it is indeed cold, and times of silence are acceptably quiet. It’s easy to see the types of tone they wanted to put forward while adventuring in AER, but in many cases I actually found myself wanting more out of the music; something to hum along with while hunting for caves, seeking out statues, and reading stone-carved tablets.
AER is a deceptively short game, taking just shy of three hours to play through, and that was taking the scenic route. While I mentioned earlier that the game world is large enough, that only begins to feel true if you actively explore it. Moving from objective to objective quickly reduces the amount of time you’ll be spending with this game, a trait which is exacerbated by the lack of combat and relatively simple puzzles. On the extreme end, I could see enthusiastic folk that are interested in clean speed runs clearing through AER in less than an hour. Relatedly, achievements come easy for those who seek to ace each game they play. Large 50 point achievements are locked behind story objectives and flying over (near) points of note in the world such as land marks and structures.
The greatest failing that AER has to offer is in its player movement. It’s very possible that the way this title controls is intentional, but it feels too floaty. Turning is loose, and there is an input delay on jumps. Like with the blocky character models, this lack of tightened movement is pretty minor, and perhaps an unnoticeable point to a vast populace of gamerdom, but, to those that spend their every waking hour and have a good grasp on a wide array of video entertainment, this will be a turn off. AER focuses on a good measure of platforming in its puzzles, and these “ever so slightly off” controls led to a number of blunders and mistimed jumps on my end.
Easily the best part of AER is its lore. The world it builds and the story it tells feels informative while managing to be vague enough to always keep you feeling a little bit in the dark. It is the most compelling element of the game, and the thing that kept me driving forward was my effort to try and piece together just what was happening. Each character, each stone tablet, and each scroll only tells you so much. Many such tablets and scrolls are well hidden in temples and caves, with achievements being the reward for finding these relics. They tell you a story from various and different perspectives about their creator god, lesser gods, spirit animals, a sealed away evil, the broken world, why it was broken, an ancient savior, and why you are on this journey in the first place.
If I was to categorize each and every game made by some metric or another, AER: Memories of Old would land firmly into the folder labeled “Hot cup of tea emoji”. This game is damned relaxing, and right up there in quality to comparable titles like Journey. It is a brightly colored, beautifully styled, combat free adventure that’s perfect for a Sunday morning gaming day. When your sole purpose is to look around, explore, and try to piece together a story by reading, you can lay back and let the stress of the world go in a way that other more traditionally demanding games just don’t allow for. It’s a simple game with simple demands and is quite simply fun. A breath of fresh AER.
Overall Score: 8.0 / 10
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Legacy
Here’s a fun but strange fact: Banging your head against a wall burns roughly 150 calories an hour. Another fun fact is that I used to be in the Cub Scouts. Cub Scouts was a grand old time filled with camping, knot tying, more camping, campfire songs, more camping, rain while camping, canoeing, team building, and more camping. Between organised activities out in the bush, the guys and I would more often than not be playing around, as boys do, in the make believe fashion. Sometimes we were soldiers, sometimes we were hunters, sometimes we were Pokémon...it was the 90’s. No matter what we were, it was a blast. Now, I’ve always gone about my life trying to be the 'laid-back-and-behave-younger-than-you-actually-are' type of person (Editors Note: We can vouch for this). As a result, this type of playing around persisted much longer than it really should have, well into my teens and high school. Around then Naruto was becoming quite the popular show amongst the nerds, geeks, and kids with dragon shirts (and I’m not telling you which of those I was). Naruto being a popular show on its own is fine, me being an eccentric teenage-child is fine too, what’s not fine is mixing the two and accidentally making hand-sign Jutsus in front of deaf students and their sign language instructor. They say the boy became a man that day.
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Legacy is not one, but four games. I’ve been touch and go with the Naruto franchise over the many years it’s been around, but for the last several it’s been more go than touch. Being blindsided by a game collection you didn’t realize was a collection of games at all, and then being told you’re reviewing it puts a special kind of panic in your heart...Ninja panic. A panic that sneaks into your window and threatens you with honor and swords and a dragon I think. But I’m a plucky fellow, and games aren’t the boss of me. I showed this Legacy collection who the boss was. It was the collection, the collection was the boss.
The biggest criticism of these games that can be made is that they just don’t let you learn in any other way than losing ad nausem. But, not in the fun way where you know all of the controls and you made a whoopsie. No, they don’t tell you what to do and then they kick your ass, like an MMA fighter in a nursery. The only way to get better is essentially to burn 150 calories an hour if you know what I’m saying (see why I mentioned banging your head against a concrete wall earlier on).
This arena styled fighting game makes combos simple to pull off, but yet tricky to really master, as there are a lot of other tools at your disposal. Each of the face buttons can be assigned for attack, ranged attack, jump, and charge chakra (energy). Being that there is only one attack button, and said button needs to pressed multiple times in unison for most combos, the games have an overall “button mashy” feeling to them. Despite this, the Naruto Ninja Storm games quality of combat improves drastically from game to game, which is especially noticeable if you play them back to back. The first game really shows its age by feeling a little clunky at best, without the more dynamic animations and camera of the newer titles. The newer the title in this collection you choose to play the more buttery smooth everything feels, from the ever decreasing input lag to the seamless transition between attacks.
Anime games really do only have one look to them: Cel-Shaded. Naruto is no different. Like with the quality of the gameplay, the quality of the visuals improves over the course of the series. Jaggies become less and less apparent, and as stated earlier, the games take on a more dynamic feeling with added animations, visual effects, camera movements, and an overall visual fidelity. As the games progress from first to fourth, you’ll also notice smaller things improving like cloth motion, particle effects, and terrain interaction.
One of the few things that remains pretty constant through the course of this series evolution is the music, which is not to say that the tech behind the music didn’t improve much the way that visual tech did, it's more that the music in Naruto has always been really good. The Naruto series, be it the games or the show, has always had remarkably powerful music that conveys feeling well. When there is a reason to be sad, you feel it in not only what you are seeing, but what you are hearing too. When shit hits the fan, you know it via your eyes and ears. When it’s go time, when it’s on, the music picks up and you get hyped. Believe it!
The roster increases in size from game to game, as you would expect from any fighting franchise. By the time you get to the fourth, and final, game in this collection, even the notable rocks are playable characters...I am kidding of course, but that was a fun way of saying that everybody is here. Main characters, side characters, loved characters, hated characters, living characters, dead characters, and even multiple versions of some characters. What tends to happen in cases of fighting games is that similar characters end up feeling somewhat the same to one another, and Naruto is no exception. Plenty of characters are true to their proper portrayals, but there are just so many that no character is 100% unique. That kick you see is probably used by some other character somewhere in the roster. Still, each character in these massive rosters will have the attacks you expect to see from them, and they feel great.
Each of this collections games feature free battle modes that allow you to go head to head in single matches against a computer player or other human players. It isn’t until a couple games down the line that you get to online battle with other players. In the latter games, free mode is where you pull out the custom characters that you’ve made by altering base characters. Custom characters are made up of alternate costumes, special power ups, altered special abilities and more. They don’t serve much purpose beyond the free battle mode, but can be fun to tinker with.
The adventure modes, which is in every one of these games, is by far the greatest asset of all these games you'll find in the collection. Playing through the whole of the Naruto story, from the outset of the first game to the conclusion of the fourth, is worth the money for this collection alone. From meeting all of your favorite characters for the first time (again), to coping with the deaths of others (again), the story told in Naruto is one of the best in popular Anime and is replicated well in this series. The nature of the adventure modes in each title varies from game to game. The first and fourth games are 3rd person sandbox adventures between battle missions allowing you to explore the Leaf Village environments; picking up side quests and collectables as you go. The second and third games have a more fixed camera style of exploration, a la Resident Evil Style. You know, the good Resident Evil.
Collectibles are also present in each of Ninja Storm entries. These vary from posed “statues” to music to cards to voice lines depending on which of the games you are playing. Most often they are collected in the adventure modes by completing certain tasks or paying for them outright using the games currency: Ryo. Some will come easily just by playing through the games, but others will require eventual mastery over combat, completing challenges under certain times, or achieving specific objectives during missions. All collectibles are logged in a collectibles page for you to observe and enjoy at your leisure.
The greatest fan to the flame of fandom is context. Things are universally better if you understand them and if you have frame of reference. This is also true of the Naruto games. They feel better if you already know what you are about to enjoy. To an outsider, the steep learning curve and unfriendly difficulty might prove to be big red flags, and enough reason to stay away from an otherwise great collection. However, if you are already of fan of what Naruto games have to offer, have played one or more of the games in the past, or are just a fan of the show looking for a diving in point, this collection is something you should seriously consider.
The value of getting all four of these games, plus the DLC content, for the cost of one title is nothing to balk at. Even I, who has, if nothing else, proven that I’m terrible at these games, have found enjoyment in what was presented. If this sounds at all like it might be up your ally then take it from me; put on some cozy socks, find a snack or some tea, pick a good wall, and start burning those calories. Burn them good.
Suggestions:
Find a way to help the players, especially new players, dip their toes in more slowly. The games are wholly too overwhelming at first.
Overall Score: 7.6 / 10
