The Grumble indie supplement

Even mediocre things must end.

2019-07-02T00:45:00.001+01:00

The future.

So those of you who read my dribble here likely have noticed I've not uploaded any new review etc for a while.

The reality being I wasn't sure what to do.

XBLIG is dead, all the games are gone unless you already own them and so most of the hall of fame is not really helpful to anyone but people looking for archived info on old games hardly anyone has heard of.

So with all that in mind I'd like to announce that this place is only going to pretty much be an archive from now on. There is 1 more game I'd like to get a review out on at some point in the future just to be close this all off but that will be the only new content here.

For those of you eager and after new content I've been working on setting up a new blog. It won't be like this one. I want to expand and do opinion stuff and editorials too the kind of things I was doing in Destructoid's C-blogs sections. I've decided for the time being and likely for the foreseeable future to also stop blogging on Destructoid's C-blogs for various reasons.

Anyway the new blog is Entertainment Nasty don't mind the mess I'm still setting up over there and you might notice some rapid changes taking place.

Hope to see some of you over there.

The Road So Far: Glitch Runners

2016-04-13T16:06:00.000+01:00

Hello Ladies, Gentlemen and welcome to the road so far, a sort of first impressions or early impressions series where I give my early thoughts on games I either haven't played much of or aren't officially out yet. You can carry on reading or watch the video version of this piece embedded below this paragraph.

Today I'm taking a look at a title by Torque studios that goes by the name of Glitch Runners. I recently got to play the what is most likely going to be the release version of the game and I have some footage from it captured from a show floor and I've also had a try and the demo.

So the first question I guess should be what is Glitch Runners about? Put simple it's a 5 player asymmetrical multiplayer game where 4 players take the role of the glitch runners breaking into old video games to steal the power cube. The 5th player takes the role of the architect, determined to keep the powercube safe and slow down or delay the runners as much as possible. The architect in essence is a sort of dungeon master able to use powers like reversing peoples controls and throwing objects at the other players or activating traps to kill them. The aim of the game pretty much is to be the player with the most points at the end of the round by hitting opponents and getting and keeping control of the powercube.

Sounds cool right, and as an idea it is but from what I saw of the game there is one giant glaring issues. This is a game in 2016 releasing on PC that requires two computers to actually run and it has no inherent online multiplayer matchmaking. You can do a sort of IP connection thing or the developer was telling me you can sort of do something with Hamachi but yeh you pretty much need two computers on a lan network to try and play easily, or you have to organise a bit with people to exchange IP information and stuff. Suffice to say while net coding is difficult thing when you're releasing a PC only multiplayer game it can make or break the games sales as XBLIG hits like Chompy Chomp Chomp with 57,000 and even the rather huge game Towerfall only managing about 160,000 PC sales compared to Duck game which is touching on about 220,000. Those numbers should give you a bit of an idea how even well known names struggle to find an audience with no online multiplayer by default on PC. I did speak to the developer who implied that the lack of online multiplayer allowed additional things to be put into the game and if it was customisation or something like that then it's not worth sacrificing online multiplayer for. If you are going for a local only PC game you're limiting yourself to a niche audience, unless steam boxes suddenly take off.

In the case of Glitch Runners the game seemingly limits itself even further by making the game seemingly require two machines with the game on. The idea to get round this according to the developer was to have a tablet version of the game which allowed you to play the architect (a sort of dungeon master style role). However as far as I'm aware at the time of writing this the tablet version and with it the cross platform multiplayer is not done. I did speak with the developer who at the show told me how the tablet version development had fallen a bit behind.

In terms of gameplay I did notice the game seemingly have a few issues at the show (though admittedly it seemed to be the Mac being used that had issues) and from trying the demo version I was only getting about 38 FPS on medium and my machine easily exceeds the recommended specs for the game. In comparison that's about same FPS I get running Dota 2 on about mid settings which suggests at least the demo if not the full version needed some optimising.

In the end Glitch Runners seems like a very nice concept but one that needs longer in the oven and it feels very much like a publisher trying to rush developers to push a product out the door and for it to start earning before it's fully done. Now while it's a bit of a dirty word phrase at present, I feel this game really would have done better releasing now as Early Access while it was finished off.

So for those interested you can check out Glitch Runners on Steam where it's £10 / $13 or whatever your regional equivalent is and this gets you two codes for the game.

http://bit.ly/1T3S1wD

Not a Howler, but not great either

2015-10-18T14:47:00.000+01:00

Price: £3.99 / $4.99 / €4.99

Format: PC

Also available on other platforms at different prices.

Review bit:

The Howler makes one big mistake from the title screen. It announces you can buy a book. Now you want to know the last game that announced you could buy a book. Well it was Project Gert Recon. Can you guess what the big problem with this game is bearing in mind my big criticism of Project Gert Recon was the lack of plot in the actual game itself? yes dear reader the exact same complaint. What's presented plot wise in the game seems interesting but it feels very much like you're playing the bits between the interesting story points that are no doubt in the book.

So I've started on the criticisms first so I might as well carry on. The game has no resolution options. It also has no options for windowed mode. To get it into windowed mode on my laptop I had to press escape. With no resolution options the game has black borders round it.

It appears that while the game was ported over from tablet I managed to find a slight issue. I have a touch screen laptop. It is capable of understanding and using a basic kind of multi touch. The Hower only partially worked with my touch screen laptop. For the record all the other control methods worked fine except the part where it relied upon having me touch two fingers to the screen to do an action.

The big problem is this is a game that took me just over an hour to finish including finding the code and completing the final secret level. This is a game asking for £3.99 that offers only just over an hour of play and the only incentive to replay is the score attack system, which I couldn't find any form of leaderboard for anyway.

Ok I think I've got most of the negatives out of the way.

To The Howler's credit it has a nice hand drawn art style which gives it almost the feel of playing characters in a painting or book. The idea of having three ways to control the game (Voice, Touch and mouse and keyboard) so you can play how you like and have a bit of an innovative experience by using the volume of your voice and surroundings to control the game.

It's a game with a fairly simple concept to it which is used surprisingly well to create quite deep mechanics from what initially appears to be a very simple concept. The concept being you can make the main character's hot air balloon rise up and by doing nothing it will fall. At different heights there are different wind strengths and directions and only by exploiting and using these can you achieve your goal.

Each mission tends to have a fairly different goal of some kind to it from delivering parcels to landing on moving targets to even destroying robotic sky drones so I can't fault the mission variety. The hidden bonus mission also being a very different style to the rest. I'll also give them credit for the mission code which for those of you after it can be found being broadcast out by the signalling tower on level 4 and the code is · · · – – – · · ·

Verdict:

Fairly deep mechanics but simple to learn and use controls (even if one of the methods had an issue with my laptop) and a variety of objectives make for an enjoyable game with a unique and nice art style. Hower this is ruined by a game that feels like the indie equivalent of a film licence tie in. It honestly feels like the major plot beats etc are mostly missing and you're just playing the segments between these unseen plot beats. For example one moment you're following the villain down. The next you're told the Villain was given dangerous information and you need to destroy their vehicle. The implication being you overheard the meeting between the Villain and their masters but the game doesn't show this in any way. As such The Howler feels like s stripped down plot designed more as an advert for the book.

For the asking price I can't recommend it. Maybe it there had been some attempt at cutscenes or fleshing out the story I'd be a bit more forgiving but at just over an hour to finish and little read replay value it's not worth the full asking price. If you can pick it up at half the price or on heavier discount it may be worth it (I paid £0.15 for it and it's well worth that). In short to be worthy of the £3.99 asking price it needs more, either more story development or more levels. Look even still scenes with text added on would do and fit the style cutscene wise and help with plot development.

Score

This Score is based on the un-discounted asking price

King Oddball: A real little Oddity

2015-10-07T20:18:00.001+01:00

Price: £3.99 / $6.99 (varies for other patforms)

Format: PS4 (Also available on pretty much anything else you can think of. Except Steam where it's in Greenlight still oddly enough as of writing this review)

Review bit: Ok King Oddball is a game I also have on mobile and I saw it going cheap on PSN so I bought it because hey, I can capture some footage from it far easier. So what is King Oddball? It's the big question when you initially look at the game and well it doesn't really answer it unless you play it. What King Oddball is, is an unholy hybrid of Angry Birds and Peggle. It's both wonderful and terrifying in terms of just how it's managed to combine elements of both to make something I was compelled to play to completion.

What makes King Oddball is a weird mix of skill and just plain luck with more skill than Peggle and more luck required than Angry Birds. Each level you get 3 rocks and with those 3 rocks you have to destroy all the enemies there. You don't control King Oddballs swing the only input you have is saying when the rock gets released so you have to time it right. However there's a number of extra tricks to it: If you can get the rock to hit King Oddball you get the rock back again. You also gain an extra rock if you kill 3 enemies in a single throw. The game builds up nicely with initially having just tanks; then adding troops which die easier but don't destroy things other than other troops falling; then helicopters; then adding shields to units; then finally having skeleton troops which just turn to bones when hit. Each type of enemy when hit causes slightly different effects to the rock: tanks exploding and bouncing it; helicopters dropping and exploding but not bouncing the rock about much and shields causing the rock to bounce quite a distance.

The levels themselves build up introducing different materials in some of the constructs with sand stone breaking in two touches but brick taking two good hits to break and steal not breaking at all. As such there is a slight puzzle element to each level to try and figure out quite how to destroy all the possible enemies.

Now I didn't 100% the game but I did finish the core game. On top of the core game of clearing the map there's a number of challenge areas each with 20+ more levels to try and make it through with the end reward suggested to be an unlockable mustache.

I will say the main downsides are on later levels it does feel like the skill cap of releasing at the right time is a little high such that the game comes down a lot more to luck than the actual skill element. As can be seen in this short video showing me playing some of the later levels and the fluke shots and fails that happened as I tried to complete them.

Also I think it had a really nice little touch at the end and well I felt the idea of having boss fights was a cool idea which the game could have benefited from using more often rather than just having one big final bossfight.

Verdict:

For the price it's a bargain on PS4 and unlike on phones etc there's no micro transactions (which are present I believe on the Android and IOS versions but not the Amazon store version). I won't recommend it however as I know it won't be for everyone and doesn't make itself a "OMG YOU MUST PLAY THIS ITS JUST SOOO GOOD" kind of game it's very much a game for people who love Peggle but want a game that has a little more focus on skill and a little less now owned by EA. Well worth the price as a nice satisfying time filler. Even if you don't buy it on PS4 I'd say it's worth a vote on Steam Greenlight not least because it would be nice to see some more decent titles make it through instead of some of the piles of crap that have been pouring in.

Score:

Noir Syndrome review.

2015-09-23T22:16:00.003+01:00

Format: PC

Cost: £4.99 / $6.99 / € 6.99 (On steam)

Review Bit:

It was a dark and stormy night, the kind of night you even your average street scum stay indoor. During a particular event I picked up the article in question. It was at the point of writing this review that I realised how completely stupid it is to write the rest of this in the style of a noir detective novel, so on with the review.

Noir Syndrome is a procedurally generated murder mystery game which puts you as the one single private detective who can catch the serial killer known only as Anubis whose leaving the police stumped. The premise is simple, go to different areas of the city and search for clues to help figure out who the killer is and talk to people to help get a list of suspects. You have 14 days to solve it and going to each location uses up a day so you have to figure out where it's best to go. Do you go to the crime scene where there are no people but likely a few clues or the public meeting where clues will likely be absent but there will be more people about. Each day the events randomly change and you can often get tip offs about locations which last a day and going there can yield some of the extra clue items which don't help solve the case but help in other ways. You have to manage your money which is used to buy food and other things; your gun ammo which is occasionally used if a hitman comes for you; your hunger which if it depletes fully you die and your reserve of lock picks. All the time you must also manage your time and go to locations that are likely to help you. It works very well as a rogue like really as there's plenty to learn and discover with each game taking only about 15 minutes.

As with most roguelikes these days there is a progression system and in this case it's in the form of achievement like badges, collect enough badges you level up as a detective and gain small bonuses like say $5 more cash or starting with a lockpick and a bullet for your gun.

The game offers a number of modes: Dinner Party, which removes the time constraint but places you and a number of characters in a large house during a masquerade party and you must find all the clues in and solve the case in just the one location. So it gives you very much the feel of being part of the stereotypical murder mystery dinner party style story. The twist is the other guests get upset, their anger rises and they go mad from being cooped up and force to stay in the house together. If they go mad they'll shoot you on sight, after a certain amount of time they will however calm back down. So you must scour the house for clues while dodging people who are angry and will shoot you on sight.

The next is the main mode which is the standard go to locations and search for clues while managing resources. It's separated into Normal, Hard, Impossible and sandbox modes. In Normal mode you get clues faster, items cost less and it's rare if ever a hitman will come for you. In Hard mode you start off with one faction or other after you, either the town's mob or the town's police want you dead and will shoot on sight. This means some areas of the city can't be visited without possibly having to shoot at least one person there or risk being shot, this also plays into the random event system too. Also in hard mode a hitman will likely shot up around day 7 also you start with slightly lower hunger than normal. In impossible mode, both the mob and police want you dead, everything costs insane prices, your hunger depletes extremely quick, you start off nearly out of hunger and hitmen regularly come for you. Sandbox mode is just that a sandbox which removes the number of days restriction on the case and plays like normal mode.

It's worth noting that while the games tutorial does an ok job of filling you in on the basics you are left to discover the more complex aspects of the game yourself. For example a mob take over on a location means all the people are replaced by mobsters and all prices can double or more for items at that location. You can rob from some shops, the bank or the mob's speakeasy. If You rob the speakeasy the mob will come for you, unless the place was a crime scene or taken over by the police at the time. However robbing the speakeasy will often cause a hitman to appear later in the game.

Also both the mob and the police will sell you bullets and lockpicks at different costs. Two of the clue items you get don't help you solve the case but let you get extra money. The Postal receipt lets you go to the post office and collect and deliver packages for extra cash. The other item, the Hunt Club card, lets you go to the exclusive hunt club and take bounty hunting task to go and kill people. The twist being of course that while the hunt club pays more if you kill someone of either faction as a hunt club bounty, that faction will then be after you if you leave any witnesses. Also killing any civilian will cause the police to go after you.

Add to this the bounty hunter which can be a member of a faction (but if they shoot first you can shoot back). In hard mode the Police activity zones and mob take over locations become very important as they allow you access to locations where you're certain a hostile faction won't be present and after you. So if the mob are out to get you then you know a police location will be safe as well as crime scenes and vice versa.

Additionally learning what food are sold where, and how filling they are for the price becomes very important to balancing solving the case with your hunger. The more you play the more you'll learn what parts of each scene are worth investigating and can actually yield clues.

The previously mentioned badge system also encourages you to try some of the other mechanics out and try playing the game differently with different aims. For example: not firing a bullet in hard mode, trying to solve the case fast; Ignoring the case entirely to break into the city vault that's been sealed for 100 years; or how about avoiding locations with rats in them; or just trying to get rich.

I will say this isn't the deep detective system of something like L.A. Norie, you won't be going through deep questioning systems and trying to break apart lies. Instead Noir Syndrome uses a far more simplistic logic based system. Each clue will give you an attribute about the killer, for example a bullet casing means it's a police or mobster as only they have ready access to bullets, find a pair of sturdy boots and it's police or civilian, find a piece of fine fabric then the killer's hobby is either either a tailor or a dancer. Very few clues hugely specific except for the odd piece of evidence like a Male or female fingerprint. You job is to flick through your notebook pages and work out who did it. So for example you could have a male policeman who is a tailor as his hobby being the killer in the end or a female mobster whose hobby is race car driving.

One of the additional progressions systems is the costume scraps system. Costume scraps can be bought from the costume shop in town or more easily found by playing more of the dinner party mode. They are purely cosmetic changes and by default you can play as a male or female detective by going into the costume option and changing the look.

Ok I've seemingly shilled more than a biased journalist whose friend just made a game (Note: I do not know the developer of Noir Syndrome nor have I spoken to them online or offline to the best of my knowledge, this was a joke comment nothing more). It's now time for me to point out the big problems in the game.

Firstly the options menu is very dire and lacking to say the least, no graphics options or resolution options to speak of. Secondly there' a weird kind of screen tearing that happens sometimes in the game making me wonder if there is any kind of V sync at all.

The final complaint is a very subjective one but I think the developer missed a real trick here, every case is tracking down the killer going by the name Anubis, it just changes who the killer is. I really think the developer missed a trick by at not having a variable killer name. I know it would be a bit more work but it would make each case feel more different rather than it seemingly being the same case just with a different killer behind it each time.

Verdict:

For the price I'm loving Noir Syndrome. So far I've put in 3.6 hours into a game that costs £5 and I bought for slightly less during a Steam Sale I believe. I can easily see myself putting in more time as the game offers such a quick short and oddly fun bit of goofy detective fun. I still haven't tried out all the game has to offer such as getting extra tip offs by bribing the mob or police nor have I got that many of the badges or costumes yet. While I know the amount I play will likely drop off a bit and it gets a little repetitive with sustained play I can see myself regularly coming back to this game just for another 15 minute case to solve every so often, or just to have a relax and break from other more in depth games I may be playing through.

Noir Syndrome isn't quite perfect but I highly recommend it if you like rogue likes and the basic logical piecing together clues in murder mystery style games heck I recommend everyone give it a try. Just don't go in expecting a deep conversation system and to be trying to fight through a web of lies, this is a basic detective game not one based on interpersonal drama and hidden lies and secrets.

Score

Politically correct review of Gone Home

2015-09-20T00:50:00.003+01:00

Price: £14.99 / $19.99 / €19.99 (On Steam)

Platform: PC (See FAQ for spec)

Review Bit:

Firstly this review was written by me but in the interest of political correctness it has been run through a political correctness language correction too, to remove inherent bias in the name of inclusivity. If however you wish to read my highly politically incorrect review click here Therefore expect it to make far less sense than normal . What I have to do something different with my review as it's Gone Home by now most people have an opinion on it. Hell from what I'd heard of the game (a lot of perfect or near perfect scores) and what I'd seen of the game (Watching some lets plays) I had a view on this game. So no this time the review makes no sense for a deliberate reason which kind of ruins the fun of grammar MRA Atheist overly hairy scrotums doesn't it?

So I decided to do something that many will yell I should have done earlier on. I played the game.

So has my opinion of Gone Home changed much by playing it? Yes in that I no longer think it' the worst piece of junk out there at least to me.

So with Gone Home I feel it can only be reviewed by breaking the game into two distinct chunks. On one hand the technical aspects and on the other the story.

Technically it's arse. I mean real arse. My machine as laptops go is a bit of a beast and well the game was playable on medium settings. Even then at times it chugged or seemed to lose frames and honestly the recording of it in Raptr is even worse. Maybe the background replay recording impacted the game but if so it's the first time I've ever known such a thing happen at least to that degree. It actually seemed to get worse when I reloaded saves having moved objects round in the game as though it was loading everything into my computers memory in one go and not properly unloading things when not needed / being used. It may be some issue with it being Windows 8, It may be due to using an AMD graphics card. Whatever the case I could either play with poor textures or at less than 10 frames per second, oh and even at the highest setting, the graphics still didn't look amazing. Also I crashed the game 5 times just by changing the graphics settings and the game just stopped running and shut off for no apparent reason. It also should be commended for having the option to turn off motion blur and a working FOV slider.

Mechanically it's extremely simple, you pick up objects and put them down, there are a few puzzles in the game but most barely require though and have the answer either outright given to you, or sat right next to the puzzle itself. At best it's comparable to a hidden object game were interacting with the right object will at times advance the narrative story.

Narrative wise the story is admittedly well done. It is a fairly unique use of the medium to push people to discover the story on their own to quite such an extent. The main story surrounding Sam (your characters sibling) and Lonnie is well done, it's also cliche trash. Well done cliche trash mind but it's the kind of story that was present in 1980's lesbian Pulp Novels such that the trope became almost a joke itself. The additional stories of the Parent falling for a colleague at work and then getting Friend Zoned by him, was ok enough. The story of the main characters Parent and the relationship to the Relative that previously owned the house is a weird interesting one with no definite conclusion only speculation over possible abuse, though with some of the items about it also suggests some kind of accidental drugging thanks to the presence of morphine boxes about. The other story is the Parent and his work as a writer such as his work with AV machine reviews and his previously less than successful novels which were being reprinted. The Parent then seems ready to suggest publishing another novel if the company are willing to do it. It's also strongly suggested the Parent found out about the Parents feelings for one of her colleagues and booked them onto a couples counselling retreat to make sure their marriage is ok.

I will praise part of the narrative of Gone Home for such a successful bait and switch. The game initially very much has the set up of a horror game with the house in darkness a strange mystery and vague implications of the house being the person with symptoms of a mental disorder house and some kind of dark incident in its past. Along with this the game mentions plenty of clues about a possible haunting, even if a lot of the events can be explained away by a wage earner pointing out the house has wiring problems and a few creaky board.

Also worthy of credit are the moments of humour such as the changing on screen text showing your characters reaction to things. For example the slight disgust at finding condoms in her parents room, or the shocked reaction to finding hidden porn stashes belonging to members of the house. Or the shock and then refusal to re-read a piece of her siblings diary detailing her siblings sex life.

I'll also say I'm not sure if it was brave or a foolish design mistake by the developer to structure the game so it's extremely easy to miss a good chunk of the later story as skip almost to the end without finding out some of the more dramatic incidents that occurred.

Verdict:

A fairly technically inept and mechanically vapid game whose only real high point is a well told story. Though it isn't an inherently new story, just a fairly new approach to gaming outside of some obscure Twine games. The Story in the end isn't particularly new and comes off as a well done but in the end ultimately cliche story. It's like say the film Love Actually or the earlier Dresden Files books enjoyable enough and well done but very much cliche and retreading old ground of past works and sticking to a genre formula. It has nice touches in it every now and again from the few bits of humor to the music from what I'm guessing is an actual band, but they're just that nice touches on a fairly generic tale. I'd say how well it managed to play the market and abundance of rather poor youtube fodder poor quality horror games is more to its credit but I don't think such a move will work with the upcoming title Tacoma.

I finished the game in a little over 3 hours (including close to 30 minutes sorting out the graphics and testing the settings.) for the price I paid of about £3 ~$4.50 it was nice enough but nothing special. The problem is the game's regular price is £14.99 ($19.99) and it is most definitely not worth that price. It's very much trying to price itself closer to being an almost premium indie title and at least for me it's really not worth it.

I'm not recommending it and would only say it's worth it for people who are very new to gaming or don't play games at all or those who just really do genuinely enjoy hidden object games as it's one of the best of them.

In the end all Gone Home has done is made me a bit more interested to read the review and watch some lets plays of Tacoma to see if it does manage to do something different or if it does the same kind of switch again.

Score

Gunpoint review

2015-09-12T18:37:00.000+01:00

Name: Gunpoint

Price: £6/$10/€7 (On Steam)

Format: PC

Review Bit: In a time when reviewers still think they're fancy art critics one game dared to mock them. Gunpoint is that game and wow was it a weird breath of fresh air. After finishing Arkham Kinight (review coming at some point) I was stuck in a bit of a gaming rut. I chose to play just the tutorial of Gunpoint, just to start it and see. Then I played a level, then another and it was the game I was focussing on.

Having looked at Gunpoint before I thought it wasn't for me. I'm not the biggest fan of Stealth (unless it's silly Metal Gear Solid level stealth) so Gunpoint didn't seem like a game for me. I was wrong. Gunpoint is as much a puzzle game as it is anything else. It's about timing and coming up with bizarre little Rude Goldberg like sequences of events to achieve your goal.

You play as a freelance spy thrust into the a world of corporate espionage. After accidentally smashing through the glass ceiling of a gun maker, offered a job and before you can reach the client to talk more he's killed. The problem of course being you've also been caught on tape near the crime scene around the time of the death.

Gun point has two main mechanics, the frog pants which let you jump great distances and with force and the wire hacking. The wirehacking allowing you to rewire systems in the buildings to cause different results. For example you can wire the light on the floor with a guard to the light switch on the floor you're on. This allows you to turn off the lights and more easily avoid or take down most guards.

The game offers a number of dialogue choices for the player and a small amount of branching in the storyline. It's very detective noir in its story and characters but does allow a level of tongue in cheek interaction where you can pick a number of less serious replies. This tongue in cheek aspect carries on in the game as you can get an achievement for punching a guard far more than the one required to knock them out.

Progress wise the game builds up the difficulty at a nice pace, introducing new ideas and mechanics quite regularly. From upgraded guards to more types of electrical devices and wiring problems it turns what at first appears to be a deceptively simple game into a very complex one by the end with multiple enemy types to deal with and large complex circuit puzzles.

It's hard to really come up with actual faults for Gunpoint that aren't mostly very subjective to me such as it would be nice if laptops were still highlighted while in wiring view (to let you scout the level bit easier for them).

About the only true complaint that holds any weight is the game doesn't actually tell you that your new gadget tutorials are located by clicking the "try it out" button in the store. So I went through most of the game not realising how to use items like the hushcracker (which lets you break through glass without making a huge noise).

Verdict:

A fun little 8 bit graphic styles romp that took me just under 5 hours to complete and could easily manage a second play through to do either a fully peaceful run and / or a run where the Villain surrenders instead of me punching them out. I think it's well worth the money if you like puzzle games. I won't recommend it as a huge must play title however. But it's still well worth the price and for something a little different to the normal, what it does it does well. It's very much a game to just restore you or give you something different to almost cleanse the pallet. The only reason it doesn't score slightly higher is I felt maybe an extra silly subplot going on could have added a little more to the world rather than quite such a focus on what is the main storyline of the murder.

Score:

Invokers Tournament: Should be burned in the fires of Exort [strong language]

2015-08-02T01:12:00.001+01:00

Name: Invokers Tournament

Price: Free

Format: PS4,PS3 and PSVita

Review bit:

I like MOBA games.

I really like MOBA games

Invokers tournament made me want to scrum my PS4 hard drive clean with concentrated industrial bleach to try and remove any evidence I'd even been near this absolute abomination. I'd love to be able to come up with something nice to say, I do like to try and be fair to games but this one I'm just going full grumble on it.

The question isn't so much what score to give Invokers tournament but how many times, without a break, should the developers of this game be forced to watch Uwe Boll's worst critical failure film while fire ants attack their genitals to show them comparatively what kind of abomination they've put out into the world.

Invokers Tournament isn't a good Moba, it's not even a good Game even without the Moba label. It's a huge disgusting Pay to Win pile of shite that somehow escaped onto Sony's store. This doesn't merely make free to play game seem bad it actively makes Sony's entire market feel polluted for it's presence and the fact Sony regularly put stuff from this festering pile of crap into the PSplus discounts section. This game is so bad having it's items presented as PSPlus discounts makes PSPlus look worse.

I suppose it's only right I actually point out what's wrong with the worst fucking game I've played at least this year. The convention in Moba games is simple, creeps spawn and go toward the enemies tower. You want to farm the enemies creeps by getting last hits. After you're farmed a bit you want to push your lane of creeps to the enemies tower and while the creeps tank the towers fire you can destroy the tower itself. Incurable Tetanus doesn't do this. Oh no, you have to spawn the creeps yourself. To do this you have to run out into the garden that have exactly 5 statues, and compete against the enemies to try and smash the statues getting the last hit. Once destroyed who-ever got the last hit gets a creep for their side, the creep then automatically paths to the enemies tower. It's rare if ever the creeps of each team will meet anywhere and actually fight. So the game boils down almost to 1 person of the 3 on the team trying to defend against the enemies push, 1 trying to get creeps onto the field and 1 helping the creeps push in and varying up the number on each side as needed.

Unlike most Mobas in Invokers tournament you don't pick a single character to play all match everyone starts as an "Invoker" and you can bring with you 2 rings each allowing you to transform into a different "champion" when your fury bar is filled. However your fury bar drains so most of the match you'll spend as a basic Invoker only sometimes transforming for a short while for a fight. Everyone starts with the same two basic "Champions" there is no weekly rotation, no hidden free way to get others. The only way to get more Champions is to grind. Oh and it's about a 5 hour grind to get enough for a single unlock, which there's no way to test out before hand so you might buy something you hate. There's no rental system like in other games you can buy outright and that's it.

With most other Moba game there is some kind of advantage or buff. In Smite it's the fire giant which gives a large attack power boost and healing / regen boost. In Dota 2 it's the Ageis which lets people respawn where they died after 3 seconds with no penalty. In League of Legends it's the Dragon and Baron Buffs. In Invokers tournament it's the tome. An item which hugely boosts the attack power of a single person on the team (the person who picks it up) with certain Champions moves this can mean your damage becomes a 1 hit kill and as a normal Invoker it's 2-3 hits to kill. The seeming idea being having the Tome lets you push easier. Let me say that again there's an item in the game which lets you 1 hit kill anyone and it respawns every minute or so.

Add to that unlike most other MOBA games where you buy equipment and items throughout the game in IT you don't, you get random loot drops after each match if you win along with a considerable amount of gold. You can literally go to the games store and buy more powerful items with gold and then start every match from then on with said items. No balance, no progression just whoever can buy the most powerful items gets to start the match more powerful.

Also because of course a product that shares its initials with a Stephen King Monster wouldn't be done there you have to buy consumable items to take into the matches and you can't buy them in match. To the games credit each day you drag yourself kicking and screaming into this vomit inducing slice of what , if I were religious, I'd assume hell is meant to be, it does give you a few item or two. The problem is to heal up in the game without a potion you have to stand by your own tower for around 15 seconds or so. Add to this some of the more insane purchasable items (which you can bring into the game in large numbers). How about an item that lets you spawn a giant high health minnion that can spawn poison clouds around it to stop people getting near? Or how about an item that spawns a freaking deployable turret that cuts down enemy creatures in seconds. You can literally win matches merely by spending gold to buy deployable creatures and just swarm the enemy base and spawn all the minions while the enemy is forced to defend.

As if the game wasn't bad enough it has its own version of killstreak rewards. Unlike in other games like say DOTA 2 where a killstreak is a risk reward thing as you get more gold for kills but have a higher worth if killed. In Irritable Tarantula after your team gets 10 kills you can spawn a Darkoim which is a high health high damage creature that can help defend or push towers and clear the 2 lanes very quickly. So those higher stats people start with by spending more money can easily convert into kills as well. Oh and killing someone in Invokers doesn't stop their killstreak thing filling up.

Add to that that despite being next gen the game offers up graphics that honestly would make even the PS2 look at it as a mediocre title. The special attacks look so pathetic it's almost laughable.

Oh but this showcase of the depths of ingrained Smegmata on the industry still isn't done yet. You see if someone quits the match, there's no penalty for them other than not getting the meagre end of match gold. You can just exit the 30 minute long matches when you want and face no repercussions. Worse still if someone does, the game doesn't rebalance or fill the spot, not even with an AI character. No the game forces you to fight 2 vs 3 and you're lost, even in one match where an enemy went 19 deaths for 1 kill my team of 2 still lost . Oh but just like some fucking horror film the game isn't done with this you see it has to have one last giant fuck you to consumers and try to kill off yet more faith people have in gaming. You see when you die your equipment gets damage, if it gets too damaged it can break (and yes you can have the ring you use to summon your "Champion" destroyed if you're not careful) so after each match you have to repair your items. If you lost you get considerably less gold and at times it can cost you more than the match earnings to fix your gear. Add to that being 2 vs 3 means you'll likely die more having less combined attack power and the game actively punishes you for staying in a match when someone leaves. Let me say that again IF YOU HAVE SOMEONE QUIT THE MATCH, STAYING IN IT CAN ACTUALLY REVERSE YOUR PROGRESS.

Now onto the business model. It's so bad an anti consumer I'm surprised to not see Ubisoft, Warner Brothers and EA's name on it as some kind of unholy trinity of complete shit. If you want to claim other companies and just making sure they don't leave money on the table Irritating Testicles developers weren't even leaving the table they were taking that too just to make sure. Instead of say Smite which lets you pay a flat amount to unlock all the present and future characters Ingrowing Toenail makes you buy them all with gold at about £4 (about $6) for 7,000 which is enough to unlock 2 lower cost champions or just one of the more expensive ones. Or you can pay £8 (about $12) for 17,000 which can buy you about 3 with some change. Oh but the game isn't done yet you see you can also buy a £2.49(~$4) a month subscription to get priority match making and a bigger inventory as well as make items cheaper to buy with gold anyway. Oh you think it's done? Nope guess what they also sell skins which at the cheapest are £0.79 (~$1.23) and go all the way up to £5.84 (~$9). Let me say that again this is a game that is selling skins for some skins for $8-$9 each and has a subscription and still requires you to buy characters or spend 5 HOURS Grinding to unlock each one.

This was taken from a video I did of the game. Yes the game is so bad it even doesn't work properly with playsations capture system.

The game has 3 main game modes. The standard 3 vs 3 lane pushing mode. A second Team King of the Hill style game without creeps and with random health drops etc appearing and it gets old fast. The final mode is a challenge mode which I can best describe as a cross between Diablo and Gauntlet but infinitely worse than either of them. You fight through the level clearing objectives and trying to survive with the limited pick ups and then fight something meant to resemble a boss. This earns you a little bit of extra gold to use but unless you have highly upgraded equipment or are damn lucky chances are you struggle with these levels which are just as much of a slog as the main game. Part of the reason is the general mechanics. Playing as an Invoker is pretty dull, you have two spells which can't be changed (a fireball and an ice shot which has a chance to slow enemies movement and attacks) the other things you can do are dodge roll and hit things with your staff Your "Champions / Summons" also have attacks but on some the cooldown is insane and with others using one attack puts all the others on cooldown meaning you can either transform back or sit wasting fury while the ability recharges.

I've just realised I haven't even mentioned the thing about the summons / Champions. Each has elemental strengths and weaknesses and if the enemy happens to have a summon that uses your weakness they're rip through you meaning you're reduced to 1 of your two champions / summons each fight if you want to stand a chance.

All the bullshit of the game might possible have been fine if the matchmaking worked but I regularly found myself the most experienced person on the team with two total beginners vs a team of 3 enemies all with top 5,000 gold summons and nice full sets of high end gear. The game doesn't do anything to match people based on total item worth or seemingly even time played so it very much becomes those who pay have access to better more powerful items and summons / champions.

The game even starts off with a giant fuck you to the player as reading this review, you've learned more than the game teaches you at the start. I'm not even joking here's the full tutorial for you to watch.

Verdict:

I'm gluten Intolerant. Invokers Tournament is the kind of shit I'd take after gorging myself on wheat for a week. It's digital gonorrhoea. Invokers Tournament isn't a game it's a monument to every shitty practice in video gaming that's appear in the past 10 years. It's an active environmental disaster in the heart of the PSN Store. This game is so anti consumer and full of pure grade A 5 year old Smegmata that it's thrown my whole scale off and made me look back at Zombies Zombies Everywhere and think "Ok it wasn't quite that bad". This is a game so bad if I had a Sheldon Cooper esc list of enemies the developers of this would be at spots 1, 2 and 3. This game is so bad that after the 5 hours I spent on this game I want to take those little pineapple chunks of on a stick at most parties and slowly insert some under the fingernails of the developer, without removing the cocktail sticks. This game is so bad even Desert Bus may be a better experience than it. If someone told me this was a game cobbled together out of free unity assets I'd actually believe them.

Do not Play it

Do not even install the putrid piss on your console you don't want this thing to have ever been near your account.

Invokers Tournament is an abomination that seemingly tried to combine all the whale shit of the mobile market and somehow put it on console. This is an idea that should have been aborted before finishing it and the person who came up with these decisions put into a mental Asylum to make sure such ideas could never come into contact with anyone stupid enough to try them out.

Invokers Tournament isn't a game it's everything every gamer has fears will be brought to console gaming from mobile; almost every anti consumer piece of bullshit ever shown on the Jimquisition; it's the existential horror of video gaming and it is staring into a void of sheer darkness and knowing that the darkness itself not just something in it is staring back at you.

Score:

And that's only because I refuse to introduce a scale that goes into the negative to truly grade this putrid pile of anti consumer smegmata.

Widdly Pee Misadventures

2015-07-30T20:23:00.000+01:00

Name: Woodle Tree Adventures

Cost: £1.99, $2.99, €2.99 on Steam

Review Bit:

Woodle Tree Adventures is an attempt at a 3D indie platformer game at a guess more aimed at a younger demographic. So to be dutifully fair to the game I decreased my own ability by getting rather drunk before playing it. Even after alcohol I found the game to be painfully easy. It really does feel like it's made to be a child's first platformer game. The closest thing I can compare it to would be Plucky's 3D Adventure a game I reviewed a long time ago. However while Plucky seemingly does most things right Woodle Tree Adventures manages to screw up rather spectacularly.

The game has minimal graphics settings found in an external launcher and on my machine even on Simple (the mid range setting) the framerate randomly tanked on some parts of levels seemingly randomly. On the top setting it ran at maybe 20FPS with little to no seeming graphical difference. I also experienced some rather nasty screen tearing while playing suggesting there is no Vsync as part of the default graphics options. There's no options to adjust the music or effects volume either.

In game the controls are pretty simple, there's a jump button and an attack button. Your attack button means you swing a leaf at enemies. Later in the game after collecting enough fruit you get access to leaves which throw out a gust of air to give you a bit more range on your attacks.

The objective of each level ties into what could loosely be described as a story. On each level you have to collect the three magical giant water droplet then place them on the podiums at the end of the level. Along the way you can collect fruit to try and get access to a better "weapon" and of course gain access to a single level locked off with a fruit requirement. You can however repeat levels multiple times to grind out the amount of fruit you have. After finishing a level you unlock the next by default and after finishing the 6 default levels you get a conclusion to the story and then the credits, which require you to exit the game entirely to go back to the main game itself.

I managed to unlock all the items in the game and both unlock and finish the bonus level in 118 minutes total and that includes grinding to out the number of fruit collected.

Another of the major problems the game suffers with is a fixed camera which switches to what the game considers the best perspective for each section of the level. The amount of control over the camera you have is you can zoom in or out, oh and you can zoom very far out.

The additional problem is sometimes the camera ends up getting stuck in weird positions which make regular platforming very difficult and with no way to change the camera angle it's a huge problem.

The character you play as is sometimes blocked from view as the camera decides to show above platfroms you're under and in this case to top of a tunnel,

The camera also got stuck like this at one point so I couldn't see the upcoming platforms or be able to see platform positions to make and judge jumps.

Add to that some of the rather bizarre gameplay and style choices. One of them being that the more fruit you collect on a level the larger your characters backpack becomes. This seems like a nice idea with some cool visual feedback on your level progress. That is until you find out the backpack can become bigger than your character and with the fixed perspective camera it can often obscure your vision of your character and make plat forming needlessly harder.

Oh and speaking of jumping on certain surfaces your character Jumping causes them to do a weird kind of trip fall. So of course I decided to abuse this and decided to see quite how far I could push this. Turns out it's quite far.

Yeh I got the character completely upside down just by jumping.

I will give some credit to Woodle Tree Adventures for attempting to provide a nice range of varied enemies and environments present even when the game is only 6 levels long (7 with the bonus level) the game does a nice job of making the levels vastly different and the enemies feel very distinctive. It's clear that the developer Fabio Ferrara did try with this game and as a first title by a new developer it hopefully means subsequent titles won't suffer from quite these problems. However being a first title isn't going to result in me going easy on it.

Another bit of credit to the developer in that there is a demo available for the game should you wish to try it beforehand. There's also a local Co-op mode which I decided not try and so can't comment on the competency of said mode.

Verdict:

A nice idea mired in technical problems and poor design decisions. A game that really is meant to be babies first platformer but due to the problems I think kids would end up more frustrated than entertained by the game. It's clear under all the errors was a workable idea and it's clear attention was paid to making sure there was a nice variety in the enemies and environments.

Honestly there are better 3D platformers out there in the past and arguably still in the present on the Wii U. I'd say Woodle Tree Adeventures is one to avoid due to the slow game pace and lack of depth or devlopment of mechanics during the game.

Score:

Unrest review

2015-07-27T18:30:00.001+01:00

Name: Unrest

Price: £9.99 / $14.99 / € 11.99

Format: PC (See FAQ for specs)

Review Bit:

Ok Unrest was a game I'd initially not heard of at least not more than a passing comment and I probably wouldn't have heard of it if not for the #Gamesmatter people who help distribute codes for indie developers to try and help them gain honest feedback. Now I didn't get my code from #GamesMatter I bought unrest in the Steam Sale for a little over £3 with the soundtrack.

I think it's fair to say the following for Unrest: "If you can, don't pay full price". That's not to say the game is inherently bad but it does have some quite big flaws I'll talk about later on.

So for those who don't know Unrest sells itself as an adventure RPG game. In truth I don't think these fully describe the game really a better description would probably be an adventure Visual novel with elements of choose your own adventure. The game has a combat system but it's rarely used and in my playthrough I never ended up using it. The majority of the game is spent talking to various people and making a number of choices along the way.

Unrest is very much a cultural product of an Indian developer, it's plot involves the ideas of the caste system and a section relating to the idea of arranged marriages. Throughout the plot you take on a number of roles each of which has their own motivations and play their own role in the larger story. The story of Unrest is of a mythical race of snake creatures (Naga) whose large empire helps step in to save a human city whose draught has caused problems growing enough crops for its people. The problem start when the diplomat from the Naga empire and the cities own rulers (also its monarchy) are killed off by an advisor in an act of betrayal. The main story revolves around the chaos that ensues as Immigrants from the Naga empire try to make a home in this new city which already struggles to cater for its own people's needs. None of this is helped by a radical temple preaching hatred against the Naga complete with its own militia in the streets. During the story you play a number of characters and the actions you take as each can influence elements of the story later on and even the endings you get.

I won't spoil much of the story but in narrative terms this isn't a nice happy little fantasy tale. It's almost comparable in terms of tone to Game Of Thrones. Due to the design decision of multiple characters it allows much more freedom and means that in the narrative it's possible for the game to just brutally cut down other protagonists. Also should you wish you could have your own Game Of Thrones esc moments as you can use underhanded tricks you can play the characters a number of ways and you don't have to play all of them as inherently good. This is a game where your own actions can lead to the character you play being killed and it impacting the story. The ending itself even the best ending isn't a truly happy one but it was one I was fine with though again some people may be rubbed up the wrong way without a true happy ending.

For a quite new indie studio the art style is rather beautiful and rather a change from the now almost expected Pixel Graphics indie studio. The art style isn't some super complex thing such as that of Dust and Elysian Tale it's more simplistic however I feel this works a bit more in the games favour and provides a unique style to the art itself.

Ok I've waxed lyrically about the game enough I said the game had problems and it does. The first and biggest problem (and most talk of on the Steam Forums) is the instability of the game when you launch it for the first time. Personally running on what is not a hugely underpowered laptop (See FAQ) I had the game crash 3 times while initially starting it up. I have no idea about what causes this crash but it seems to be some kind of error in creating some initial save file for the game. During one of the sections in the game it slowed to a crawl in some large open spaces while birds flew across the screen. This is not some high end game, I shouldn't be having the frame rate and game itself drop to a crawl on my machine not in what is at least partly a 2D game with animated sprites.

In terms of options there are a few graphics options such as fullscreen and resolution, there's also the important option to confine the mouse to the window in windowed mode. You can also choose to have the trees animated or not. There however isn't an option for anti aliasing. There is V sync though should you want it. Also it has separate audio sliders for the games music and it's graphics.

Honestly I'm going to suggest that to me it seems like a problem that the game is selling itself as an RPG. While technically correct it does feel far more like the next level of visual novels and like it would most likely find itself more at home with visual novel fans than with people expecting a 40 hour RPG with stats and levelling.

I'd also say maybe the pricing is a little high as I finished the game in a little over 3 hours and I think maybe it could bare a second play through but it would still seem quite pricey. More so for those in the USA with the $15 price tag.

I do think the game tried an interesting approach by letting people look into the lore etc at their own leisure with information about the characters appearing in the Traits section. The Journal also allowing you to read about the deep lore and story about the locations and people you meet. It lets you look into the world as deeply as you want or ignore much of the additional depth.

Also I have to give the developer serious credit for not only providing modding tools but detailing on their own site how to work it with a very detailed tutorial. Honestly this game allows modding to the level that if someone wanted they may be able to make their own entirely new stories and tales that radically differ from the main game. I will say the modding is at least in part going to require people willing to learn to code (or at least to manipulate existing code) or with experience in it to fully take advantage of it but credit to the developer for laying quite bare how the game works and hopefully someone will be able to use this somehow.

Also I'd say the games system relating to conversation actually really help with the world building and building up the character of some NPC characters in the short time you speak to them. As you talk and pick conversation options you get to see how the person reacts via their words and the changes in the NPCs three bars. The three bars being variations on: accepting, appreciating and Wary or various other versions including comfortable vs hostile etc. As you speak to NPCs and these bars change it gives you a very visual display of how they're reacting and thus their personality. For example as a Naga character you might find some characters very resistant and angered to the idea of Naga and Humans sharing and working together. You'll find some characters who'll respect you more for bold claims and actions or others who very much dislike you challenging their world views. I'd say this is a really interesting mechanic and quite different to the more RPG like stats building found oddly enough in many visual novels.

Verdict:

Unrest is a very nice game with some rather unfortunate issues both technical and in terms of decisions around selling it. What it presents is a very interesting and unique world worth experience especially for those who constantly claim gaming should be presenting and showing more experiences and cultures. I unfortunately can't recommend it at present due to the pricing and technical issues however I can suggest people pick it up and try it when it's on sale and the two scores given will represent this.

It's a really nice first title from an indie developer which is mostly bogged down by a few rather nasty technical problems and a few questionable choices. Honestly I'd love to see the developer do a few more games using this engine and maybe work out some of the engine related problems that seem to be present. I think the engine and systems seem like with some work they could be very versatile and adaptable.

Score

At present price

On sale at about £6

Chainsaw Warrior Lords of the Night Review.

2015-07-23T18:58:00.000+01:00

Name: Chainsaw Warrior Lords of the Night

Available on: Android (High end device required) / IOS / PC

Cost:

Steam: £4.79 / $5.99

Googleplay: £4.70 / $5.99

Itunes: £4.49 / $5.99

Reviewed on: PC (See FAQ for specs)

Review

Ok so Chainsaw Warrior Lords of the Night as best as I can tell is an original sequel based on the old Games Workshop card game Chainsaw Warrior. The game itself follows on from events of the first game (assuming you won and didn't die doing it). The basic story is after defeating the Darkness in New York it didn't die but fled weakened by your attack. The Darkness is now making an attempt at a come back to full power being helped by a Mayan moon god.

There are quite a few changes this time round with a weird lack of devices and gadgets and more emphasis on weaponry and a mechanic where you'll often be called upon to fight groups of enemies. The new mechanic is a that some weapons allow you to attack multiple enemies at once at least in ranged combat. The benefit being of course that you save time by using such weapons.

As with the previous game you have 60 minutes on the clock to reach the Darkness and destroy it or all is lost. Each action as with the previous game use 30 seconds or more of your time also at the 30 minute mark the sun goes down making hand to hand combat harder by reducing your hand to hand stat by 1. Some of the main changes this time are you're dealing with 3 decks of about 25 cards instead of 2 decks of far more cards. In a new twist as well a new enemy type is introduced in the form of the Shades which if are some of the tougher enemies in the game but help make the Darkness weaker when / if you reach it. One of the other new mechanics introduced are the temples, each temple containing a large boss monster to fight and if you win you get a one of a number of possible blessings, all with wildly varying levels of usefulness. Also at the end of the 2nd deck will always be one of a number of bosses. One of the final new main mechanics is armour, armoured enemies can block damage rather than being killed and their armour roll is (at least in theory) the same as if you have to roll for armour, as such you can get armour piercing rounds.

Chainsaw Warrior Lords of the Night also tries to add additional replay ability with an unlock systems. The unlock system seemingly based on how many times you kill the Darkness and some based on fighting and defeating certain bosses. This has the advantage of adding incentives to replay the game more but a downside in that the already slightly smaller inventory selection is even further reduced and limited starting off.

In terms of graphics and animations the game has seemingly seen a fair bit of improvement and the PC port seems competent with a decent range of graphics options. The UI also seems slightly cleaner.

However the game does seemingly have a number of issues. The first one being an insanely silly graphical bug which is still present months after launch. The bug occurs after clearing a temple and puts the new card on top of the text saying what blessing you got from the temple.

Look at that the card is infront of the event text and this is months after release. This needs fixing.

Another problem being that the tutorial doesn't tell you quite all you need to know as the game introduces bloated zombies which explode when killed. The game doesn't tell you this and the bloated trait is listed at the very bottom of the cards so you'll often end up getting into a rhythm and not realising about these zombies until it's too late. So the game punishes you for a small lapse of concentration. Also the game doesn't tell you what each blessing does until you pick it up so one of the traits which lets you identify temples and the contained blessing is useless early on as you'll have no idea if the blessing is of any great use or is one that you'll rarely use like bonus rolls on lucky shots. Lucky shots being something you'll learn not to do very often as there's a very low chance of success and an equal chance to break your weapon or hurt yourself. Also the game isn't as detailed in showing you all the combat stats such as enemy armour rolls which does make it feel like the game is cheating you sometimes when the enemies block 3 attacks running with their armour.

The game has taken a step up from the previous game. Better animations and a slightly better motion comic style being used. Also with multiple modes including normal, hard and classic there's a selection to play and some unlocks seem tied to these other mods to encourage people to try them.

Verdict:

Not a giant leap forward with some steps back from the previous game but also far more strides forward and far more advancements. The game weirdly still has some problems. At the present price it feels worth the money but I wouldn't say it's a must play. I'd only suggest it for people who loved the previous game and just want some more adventure of the chainsaw warrior.

Score:

Review, Detective Grimoire - it's a case of a real cracker

2015-05-09T21:00:00.000+01:00

This review has been updated with more recent pricing and stores since originally being written.

Name: Detective Grimoire

Available on: PC, IOS, Android, Amazon app store

Price:

Steam: ~~£4.99 / $6.99~~ £5.19 / $6.99

IOS: £2.99 / $3.99

~~Google play: £2.39 / $3.99~~ (presently not available on this store)

~~Amazon app store: £2.40 / £3.99~~ (No longer available on the Amazon App store)

Reviewed on: PC

Review bit:

See you thought I was done with SFB games but no it's time to rake them over the hot coals of critique again. Yes damn you SFB games you totally ruined Broken Age Act 2 for me...... Yes I know that sounds completely insane but to an extent it really did. Detective Grimoire is a crime puzzle game very much in the vein of older point and click puzzle games (Except in difficulty) and it puts Broken Age to shame for the most part. I wish I were joking but animation wise it seems as good as Double fine and the backgrounds seem almost as vibrant and detailed and this isn't a game that received millions in kickstarter fuding, it received $29,000 infact . While the game only took me around 3 hours to complete (I did look up the location of one items after getting fed up looking and the hint system deciding not to work). It felt on par if not better than Broken Age act 1.

Would you look at that art work

The voice acting is competent if a little over the top from some characters (though it comes off more comical or deliberate than anything else). The two stand out's are the voice the little girl and the voice actress behind the character Sally Spears. Both of whom seemingly nail their performances perfectly. Which I'm going to suggest in a small part may be thanks to the script which for Sally Spears kind of makes me want her as a recurring character turning up in future games randomly with a new job each time or something. Sally Spears interactions with Detective Grimoire just added such a comical twist really with the mix of genuine interest and snarky comments.

The Puzzles in Detective Grimoire for the most part I have to say are kind of incredibly easy and solving the murder mystery isn't a huge challenge even without using the hints system. However the reason to play is more uncovering the mystery and backstories behind the characters along with their dark secrets and motives behind the murder. It's a testament to the story that while you might have an idea who the killer is quite quickly you'll still have doubts and suspicions of other characters for quite a while into the game.

The game also has a very nice mechanics where you have to help Detective Grimoire put his thoughts together to make important realisations. This seems like a really nice mechanic but I think this led to much of the easy feeling to the game as it felt very directed by interrupting standard gameplay to confirm the important revelation. If possible I'd love to see this idea returning in future games but built upon so it becomes almost like part of the hint system. Say if you're feeling majorly stuck you can click on a button to "collect your thoughts" and trigger sort of extra puzzles which give you clearer direction of how to progress. So for example when you find out an important piece of information the extra dialogue options with relevant characters etc unlock but it doesn't explicitly tell you to go and talk to that person unless you then choose to collect your thoughts. This way you could progress without needing guiding so much but the option would also be there if people felt the need to use it.

The Audio options are quite impressive (though numbers on the slider wouldn't go a miss) but it's clear the developer did think about audio quite a lot to help give an ambience to the locations in the game.

Ok so I have two negatives one very nit picky and one which I think the developers might expect if they read my previous review.

The biggest problem would be the lack of resolution or graphics options. This is a PC game and while it should run on most things being a 2D resolution options beyond simply windowed mode are something PC games should have by default.

The rather nit picky problem was the location of the lock pick. For a game that was so clear on the direction for many things, I felt with the lock pick there wasn't much indication of where it was. For example there was no real reason to click on its location. No-one says about when they dropped something into the swamp something happened to the swamp water in that area until they fished the item out. There was no real indication of anything being hidden there like say a glint in the light or something.

That's really my only problems with the game personally. I also loved the ending which I won't spoil but it closes the present case but shows the starts of an overarching storyline that I'm guessing will run through a number of future cases. It's a very nice format for future games with each being a case on its own but tied together by a larger story.

Verdict:

less than 100th the budget of Broken Age

Just over 1/4 the selling price of Broken Age

Close to the same gameplay time as Broken Age Act 1

As good if not slightly better than Broken Age Act 1 (only held back by fairly minor issues) and as a package overall it's far better than Broken Age.With beautiful backgrounds and well done animation. Good to excellent voice acting. A good story which remains consistently good with plenty of twists throughout the game with plenty of interesting characters to talk to and uncover their dark secrets. It puts Broken Age and many other game in the point and click genre quite to shame. While it may be short clocking in at around 3 hours or so it's so high quality it more that justifies its present asking price on PC for such high quality. It does have its issues such as the lack of graphics options (but in unlike Haunt the House these do not cause problems at any point). It could also be said the puzzles are a little on the simple side (though innovative and enjoyable). I'd say part of the lack of difficulty comes with how well most of the game directs the player maybe a little too much such that some of the, very well done, mechanics around directing the player could be put as optional things to help the player, rather than mandatory aspects of the main game.

For anyone who has recently finished Broken Age and was left disappointed or wanting something to play. Detective Grimoire is the game to play. I give it my recommendation and suggest you go and buy it now.

More of this series please SFB games

Score

Haunt the House: Terrortown

2015-05-06T17:31:00.002+01:00

Name: Haunt the House: Terror Town

Format: PC, IOS, Android, Amazon play store, Playstation Vita

Price:
Steam £3.99 / $4.99
IOS: £1.49 / $1.99
Google Play: £1.32
Amazon play store : £1.31 / $1.99

Reviewed on: PC (For full specs see FAQ section)

Review Bit:

So Haunt the House: Terrortown is one of two games I picked up recently at the Gadget Show Live event. They were actually on sale by the developer them self on the stand and hey two indie games for less than £10 I'm not going to pass up on that at a convention.

So Haunt the House: Terrortown puts you in the role of a ghost, whom disturbed from his slumber sets out to quiet the town down by scaring everyone away from the local attractions. If I had to compare it to another game the closest I would say is either the upcoming AfterLife Empire or an old favourite of mine called Ghost Master. The key difference between Haunt the House and Ghostmaster being you have more direct control over a single ghost in Haunt the House and I'd argue a few more interesting interactions . In terms of similarities though both require you to build up energy levels to be able to use more and more powerful scares. You aim is quite simple drive all the people from each of the 4 locations in turn.

Initially you start with a low amount of "energy" (which isn't consumed I should make clear) meaning you can only activate smaller level scares to make people nervous say making things move or bars and chains etc rattle. As you do more of these things an un-nerve some people your energy level goes up letting you do bigger scares. Scares such as opening a seeming void to hell in a boiler room or causing massive spectres and ghoulish apparitions to appear even bringing the furniture to life. Some people seem to have higher tolerance and require more powerful scares to drive them away giving a small tactical element beyond going to rooms with large amounts of for maximum effectiveness. The level of expression on the people is quite impressive with them being nervous right up to screaming and running in fear and steps in between. You can force the people to be sweating with fear which causes them to leave or screaming in panicked fear which can cause them to leave via any exit including jumping out of windows.

On each level there are certain interactive feature that help "Free" other ghosts either by killing someone on the level or in a few cases releasing trapped ghosts. These freed ghosts give a slightly different look and sound effect to the ghost but beyond this they're mostly for aesthetic purposes. The game itself looks beautiful an d really nicely animated with an impressive range of object interactions.

The controls work well and are clearly displayed, also additional credit has to go to the developers for allowing a seamless switch between keyboard and mouse and controller without having to change settings in the options menu to switch between them. However the controls are not rebind able which if it were just on the controller could have been a lesser issue but even the keyboard controls are not rebinding at least in the game itself (as yet I haven't found a way to edit the controls though it may be possible be editing the config files)

OK you knew this couldn't go on forever it's time to address the poltergeists in the room. The game is painfully short even with the newly released free Christmas themed expansion. I've played through the main game 3 times and the expansion twice. and I've only put in just over an hour and a half.

You can finish the game in around 25 minutes with the expansion being about 10 minutes extra. It's woefully short.

Next is the problem that there's no real progression or challenge beyond score attack. The game presents no real opposition. In Ghost Master there was a deliberate opposition in the form of psychics , Exorcists, mediums and ghost hunting teams all of which forced you to watch out around them or absolutely blast them with insane things all at once. In Haunt the House there is no such opposition so you don't feel like you're fighting against the game in any meaningful way but you just feel you're drifting through it with no real challenge.

Now the biggest issue is the lack of graphics options. OK the game does try to pick the best graphic and resolution options automatically but this is PC gaming, having at least resolution and window mode options is almost a requirement. Add to this even with the game automatically selecting the "best" setting for my laptop I still had this graphical error show up.

And no I get this isn't a one off it happens every time at the end of the main game.

Verdict:

Clearly attention to detail and work went into the game, it's very well made, the big problem is there's so little of it for the asking price on PC. It feels like a nice proof of concept but as an actual game it just feels like it needed more of things: more options in the options menu; more levels or areas and most importantly more evolution and development of the gameplay to actually progress the game and give the player some kind of challenge to overcome.

For the price while the quality is there mostly it feels woefully short and as such I can't recommend it not at its present price and I feel it's score reflects the length present. Now because I'm guessing the developer will most likely want to ask something like this, I'd say at a lower price point say the £1.99 price point the game would do far better and score far better out if it.

It might not get a recommendation at that price point without a little more work but it would still score higher than it is now.

Score

I'm not done with SFBgames yet though. On Saturday it will be the time for Detective Grimoire to be reviewed.

In the interest of providing readers with other opinions and points of view beyond just mine Indie Gamer Chick did check out Haunt the House on her site.

Broken Age Act 1 & 2 Mostly spoiler free review

2015-05-02T23:00:00.002+01:00

Name: Broken Age Act 1 & 2

Cost: £18.99 / $24.99 on PC

Reviewed on PC

Review bit:

Ok Tim Schafer has said he wants Broken Age Act 1 & Act 2 to be reviewed and rated as a singular package. I'm not going to do this because honestly this feels like two separate games. If Broken Age were a film I'd have compared it to Guest House Paradiso, which I looked at on my other blog a while ago. Broken Age feels like an Alfred Hitchcock film that was left unfinished only to be completed by Michael Bay. So what I'm going to do is this is the Spoiler Free version of this review, if you so want you can read the more detailed Spoiler filled version if you're not content with this one and don't mind having the game spoilt for you.

Story wise Act 1 does a brilliant job setting up then revealing the big twist and setting up the characters and locations. Shay's story plays out like a strange mystery game as you try to find out the truth of Shay's situation. Vella's story plays out like a grand sprawling adventure as Vella sets out to take down a monster.

In Act 2 however the main story threads seem to be thrown aside or at least relegate to small comments with little true explanation or satisfying conclusion that ties up all the nice loose ends. A few plot threads are tied up but oddly not the main one. Act 2 not only leaves you with many questions from act 1 but also brings up its own series of brand new question. The big question being why the hell everything changed ? The timeframe between Act 1 & Act 2 is meant to be a matter of minutes or hours at most, yet people have changed, in some situations fairly dramatically. Vella's family have somehow managed to easily follow and catch up with her along with launching a missing person's campaign. Broken Age Act 2 feels like it's taking place the near 1 year's worth after Act 1 the game is in actual time. This creates a big feeling of disconnect between the two. Act 2 seemingly replacing much the intrigue and answers with flashy explosions and almost action scenes, I wish I were joking here.

Gameplay wise Broken Age act 1 received much criticism from many people for being a little too easy. I would say I kind of agree as a smashed through Act 1 getting stuck on a single puzzle and finishing the game in around 4 hours. The only puzzle which caused problems in Act 1 required combining items (which the game hadn't much up to that point) and a slightly sort of warped logic which still made sense. In Act 2 it felt like a lot of busy work walking through the areas with many of the puzzles relying much more on obscure little things people say on Shay's side and on Vella's side it's often about finding the small bits of the scenery you can interact with. Act 2 brings in two new things, firstly using items from the inventory directly by double clicking on them and secondly puzzles which can only be solved by playing through both stories part by part.

In Act 1 the puzzles could be said to be simple, however for the most part they made logical sense in the narrative, in Act 2 switching between characters to solve puzzles really makes you feel like you're playing a game and not part of two epic stories inter-twined. In Act 1 while the stories crossed over there wasn't a point where one character magically gained knowledge based on the others actions.

In Act 2 some of the more deplorable puzzles require you to find information as one character then remember it and switch to the other character and use the knowledge you as a player have gained. That's the problem though it makes you feel like a player and not like you're the character trying to solves the puzzles in a way which could make logical sense in their own individual stories. By making Act 2 feel like a game and not characters stories it's hard not to feel ludonarrative dissonance at times at the disconnect between the story and the gameplay as from a story perspective the characters don't learn so much as magically gain the knowledge they need thanks to the player imparting that knowledge. Playing Act 2 over a year on from act one also has its own problems as many times the game calls back to knowledge and information in Act 1 and again often only tiny little comments that were made.

I'm now some puzzle game noob, I've played a good portion of some Broken Sword games, I've played some of Sam and Max, I've finished the old Famous Five point and click and even finished Machinarium. I've recently clocked Detective Grimoire (review coming in the future) after looking up the location of a single item which I'd been unable to find. I've solved multiple room escape games with varying degree's of insane puzzles. I'm not some puzzle game noob but the puzzles in Broken Age Act 2 had me reaching for a guide in some places. The big problem being mostly in the presentation of the puzzles as Act 2 and the requirement in some cases to switch between the two stories to gain the required knowledge. In some parts of Act two the puzzle and problems you come across are very much a game of merely trying to find quite which bit of the environment to interact with.

Act 2 also has a significant amount of traipsing from one area to another then backtracking with newly found information to unlock different interactions. Some of the puzzles in Act 2 also feel like repeats of previous puzzles such as using teleporters in a certain order or using certain natural products to harden things. It's very clear playing through Act 2 that playing through Act 1 and Act 2 at once is far better than trying to play Act 2 over a year later however the problem will be the similar puzzles / repeated puzzle elements would stand out far more (Over a year on and I'm managing to point out similar elements). Broken Age act 1 is possible to complete with little struggle without referring to a guide, Act 2 however does start to become a case of trying to read the mind of the designer and realise what they wanted you to do, even if in the game it doesn't make a huge amount of sense. One particularly nasty puzzle requires you to do something in Act 2 which in Act 1 of the game causes a game over, that's right in Act 2 the rules change and the puzzle in question requires you to do nothing for 2 minutes in a situation which in Act 1 killed you.

Verdict:

Broken Age was clearly meant to be played through in one got with both acts yet at the same time Act 2 repeats some puzzle elements of Act 1 doing rehashed versions of them almost. Mechanically and story wise Act 1 and Act 2 fail to remain consistent with Act 2 bringing in a new mechanics including the character switching puzzles. Character Switching puzzles which cause the game to lose internal logical consistency and disconnect the player making you clearly feel like you're playing a game. Act 2 seemingly introduces less new locations and characters and mostly re-uses previous ones with some changes yet there's seemingly no consistency in the story or characters as over the course of minutes or hours between Act 1 and Act 2 in game time some characters have undergone quite vast changes while others have remained almost unchanged. While Act 1 clocked in with me at a short 4 hours act 2 took me 7 hours to finish the problem is it wasn't much longer it just took longer due to more back tracking, busy work and more obscure more logic bending puzzles. Most likely anyone with a lower tolerance of annoyance before reaching for a guide will finish the game far quicker than 7 hours.

Broken Age Act 1 and Act 2 feel like different games. One being a well done if slightly easy game with a story of intrigue and the other half being a game of obscure puzzles which create a feeling of ludonarrative dissonance which throws out deep plot development in favour of flashy action sequences and explosions.

Did I enjoy my time with Broken Age ? Act 1 I did, Act 2 felt like a slog due to the story disconnection and the moments of actual story seemingly not explaining many if any of the multitude of questions that come about.

Can I recommend Broken Age as a whole ? Well no as people who want these cool stories will be let down by Act 2 and people who want plenty of different innovative puzzles will find plenty of elements and themes being repeated included one part where the same puzzle concept is used 3 times in Act 2.

When the only way to logically explain how characters can magically do something or gain information they wouldn't know in the game in any natural way, without simply going "it's a game, is to suggest magical psychic powers. Well you know you've jumped the giant Mog Chotera monster into being just plain silly.

The Visuals are nice and the voice acting for the most part fine but the story and the gameplay just come into conflict such that the story suffers. Yet the lack of logical consistency often means the gameplay and puzzles suffer as they become frustratingly obscure or even counter intuitive.

Score:

Act 1

Act 2

Overall

Preview: BFF or Die

2015-04-29T21:00:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer

The preview footage presented is of the Alpha (0.2) build of BFF or Die
Footage has been captured in 30 FPS the game itself on my system ran at around 60 FPS consistently and this is in Alpha still
Any frame drops apparent in footage are due to recording using a different method than my computers standard internal capture system (The game is so new I couldn't use AMD graphics card capture)
Unlike other previews this preview does not feature footage from the show floor. I did record footage but given the opportunity to download the demo I chose to capture better quality footage.
Unlike other previews I spent quite a bit of time with the demo for this game just not at the show.

BFF or Die is a co-operative Puzzle adventure game by Honey Tribe Studios which tasks you with playing a group of time travellers whose ship has crashed somewhere in in the past. Each level requires you to collect all the fuel in a maze and then have to high five to finish the level.

As you progress you gain access to more of the ships gadgets and are required to use them to navigate the mazes.

Now before I carry on I think it's time for the preview footage so you can see what I'm talking about.

Now you may have noticed the game is designed with controller sharing in the controls which is an interesting idea and almost seems custom made to allow shows like How to with Joel and Adam Or Play Pals to really be able to showcase the game. Oh and just to be clear no I'm not saying this is a youtuber bait game I'm saying it's a game that could be used by such shows simply due to the controls. You can play the game single player but to quote the developer recently on twitter "You need ninja skills so yes for the really hardcore gamers out there that's a challenge for you already to try and complete the demo solo (it is possible I have done it).

What makes the game is the different roles. With two players one of you will be running through the maze while the other will be working the gadgets on the ship. In the Demo the gadgets are as followers: Spotlight to see the maze; deployable decoy activated by shinning the light on an enemy and pressing action; a grabber that allows you to lift objects up and even over walls; a teleporter which lets you set up a single use teleport to move about and a jump block that is activated by the spotlight and lets you jump over walls etc. Now the teleporter and the grabber arm have second uses with the teleporter able to drop stun bombs that stun enemies for 2 seconds and the grabber arm able to destroy walls on the level. Oh course only on a few levels in the demo do you have access to everything, so while one player is running round the maze and dodging enemies the other is acting as their support trying to keep a light on them or keep enemies off them while they gather the required fuel. If you are playing single player that means trying to keep the maze runner alive while you switch positions on the ship to activate different gadgets. Obviously with more players it would be easier as you're able to have people operating individual gadgets and thus have both the light and say grabber arm in use at once. Each gadget has it's own power gauge too thus limiting it's use slightly to prevent you spamming say the decoy. On the later levels of the demo managing the power (which does regenerate over time) become a real part of the game as you desperately try to stay alive long enough to be able to distract enemies with the decoy again.

While you can probably tell the game is still clearly in alpha by the lack of actual animations on the main playable characters it seems to be progressing well. In the full 30 level demo I ran into only two minor glitches. One being around level 15 -17 where if your character was stuck on a wall as it raised up then you could float above all the walls and still collect fuel ignoring the maze. The second was on a level between 17-23 where the enemy didn't leave the doorway and thus the door shut with the enemy still behind it blocking them from entering the level.

The game really is a balancing act and a fun one at that. With the 3 types of enemies in the demo it pushes you to try and keep the different enemies from reaching you. The mummy enemies walk round following the maze path to reach whoever is in the maze, they also follow the paths to the decoy. The blobs will move towards the decoy round the maze but otherwise don't move. The final enemy type in the demo, the ghost, moves directly to whoever is in the maze ignoring the maze walls entirely. If you get caught by a enemy then your character turns white and is essentially petrified, you can however be revived if another player / character can reach you. If the person / people in the maze get caught the monsters will then come for whoever is in the ship working the gadgets.

What I will say more towards the developer is I really hope being on console is part of the plan for this game as it would seemingly sit perfectly with the idea of console couch Co-op gaming. I'll also say that for PC you really will need to put in some kind of online mode at least in the present PC gaming environment. It's not that common for people to gather round a single PC to play Co-op games at present. If the PC gaming environment will hugely change with Steam Machines is unknown and as such and uncertain risk so online co-op is at this stage almost a requirement.

For those who want to know more have a look at the developers website where there are plenty of other video of people playing the game and footage of the developer working on the game itself so you can see it's progress. Or you can reach the developer on Twitter @HoneytribeStu. Or go download the demo honestly it's a good hour or more of gameplay already and it's only the demo.

I may also have a longer second preview video coming some time soon.

Preview: Theo & Lizzy

2015-04-22T21:37:00.003+01:00

Disclaimer

This preview is based on a short amount of time with the game and should not form your entire basis for a purchase or be considered a review. I'd encourage you to check other places for more information and be an informed consumer..
Footage recording was done so with an 8 Megapixel phone Camera recording a monitor so the real game will obviously appear far better with less video noise.
The Video Audio is muted as the footage was captured at a technology show on the show floor the game itself is not muted / silent.

How to describe Theo & Lizzy ? Well the best way I can describe it is a timing based platformer similar to Super Meat Boy but without direct control over the character. Theo constantly runs forward until he bumps into a wall, at which point he turns round. The gameplay comes from being able to switch which surface Theo is running on from running on the floor to running on the ceiling.

Have a look at some of the footage I managed to acquire.

The first part of the video shows a level which has presently been cut by the developer. Though I'd strongly encourage the developer to try to keep the level in if only as a bonus level, especially considering there was a child of about 8-10 I witnessed managing to beat it.

Hiding Under what, from the poster and other bits of media, looks like what might get called an "Art game" is actually something that looks like it will be able to blend both narrative and gameplay. The simplicity work well not just on PC and console but be playable on tablet and mobile devices.

Hint: Even though it's cut throat if it's not much more work then mobile is worth doing if your game has mechanics which would fit the platform. Also remember there's 3 main app stores so while the Google and Apple stores are well known for their volume of titles the likes of the Amazon Marketplace isn't quite that level,

Having played a bit of it, including the level that was taken out, it's very enjoyable to play and I think it will easily find an audience especially if there are a few bonus levels or bits in the game for players who love a bit more of a challenge. Difficult isn't a dirty word or at least shouldn't be in gaming as it makes the success even more enjoyable. The only time people really object to difficulty is when it feels cheap. From what I saw and Theo & Lizzy so far the game does a good job of teaching its core mechanics and slowly ramping up the difficulty. If this is representative of the rest of the game I really think it will be one to look forward to. It seems like it will have both enjoyable gameplay and what could be a very interesting story meaning they'll be something for most people to enjoy.

So with a nice art style, potentially a intriguing story line and simple mechanics which are quite easy to learn yet could provide some quite complex levels and gameplay without feeling difficult. Seriously the game's art style does look great.

For more information you can look at the trailer:

For yet more information you can go to the developers website or the Game's Website or find the developers on Twitter @_Butcherlab

Preview: Raging Justice

2015-04-21T19:01:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer

This preview is based on a short amount of time with the game and should not form your entire basis for a purchase or be considered a review. I'd encourage you to check other places for more information and be an informed consumer..
Footage recording was done so with an 8 Megapixel phone Camera recording a monitor so the real game will obviously appear far better with less video noise.
The Video Audio is muted as the footage was captured at a technology show on the show floor the game itself is not muted / silent.

Disclosure

I did get given a free gift from the stand (this was a standard hand out thing and not something specifically given to press, just to be clear.)

Yes I got a free beer mat.

Ranging Justice is an upcoming side scrolling beat em up by by Makin Games and is coming fairly soon to Xbox One and Steam. There are some standard elements of the side scrolling beat em up genre such as special moves that use up a small amount of your health. What seemingly sets it apart is the art style. Have a look at the video I captures (note that's not me playing).

As you can see it's a rather unique art style that (unintentionally, I did ask) brings back memories of the old claymation art style some games in the past used. At the show the version there offered Co-op play and was running using a 2 player fight stick variant (so fight stick support looks very likely on the PC). I do hope that Co-op on both Xbox One and PC is both couch co-op and online play as PC players aren't known for local co-op play that often and Xbox One players might appreciate local co-op for couch play.

Having a look over the developer's website I noticed a very intriguing which I didn't actually see in play in the game. The idea of multiple approaches to the game with the option to arrest or pummel criminals into the ground with possible consequences from this. I really hope this is still part of the game or at least the plan for it.

At present Raging Justice is planned to release on Xbox One and PC at the same time. The developer has hinted maybe later down the line the game might also find it way onto PS4 after any Xbox release rules / timed exclusivity expires.

For those who want more you can check out the trailer:

For yet more information check out the developers website
or
contact them on twitter @Makingames

Preview: Horizon Shift

2015-04-17T21:00:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer

This preview is based on a short amount of time with the game and should not form your entire basis for a purchase or be considered a review. I'd encourage you to check other places for more information and be an informed consumer..
Footage recording was done so with an 8 Megapixel phone Camera recording a monitor so the real game will obviously appear far better with less video noise.
The Video Audio is muted as the footage was captured at a technology show on the show floor the game itself is not muted / silent.

So one of the games I got to have a look at was a retro inspired indie shooter / bullet hell Horizon shift by Flump Studios. Who themselves started out in the XBLIG using the XNA system so it's nice to see a studio having crawled out the the wreckage from the collapse of the XNA / XBLIG and keeping going.

I played a short amount of the game and captured some footage of others playing to show so first lets do the showing.of the footage.

The game is a quite enjoyable retro inspired shooter which while not quite looking like it envoked the feeling of titles such as Space Giraffe (which itself was based on Tempest). I think this comes from the idea of being able to flip over the central line to shoot approaching enemies from above or below. I particularly like the idea of parts of the platform itself being able to be blown apart giving an incentive to take risks to stop certain enemies reaching the line.

With a range of power ups and of course the boss enemies this seems to be a game that is a love letter to retro games of old but mixing in modern technology to advance and add to them. This may not be some huge super HD high graphics masterpiece but at the right price on Steam I'm sure this will find an audience.

Trailer:

For those who want to know more you can check out the Developer's website
Or contact the developer via Twitter @Flumpstudios
Horizon Shift will be out on Steam soonish. (The game has been cleared for release on Steam but the developer is just polishing the game up and trying to make sure it's as bug free as possible).

Preview: Stand Point

2015-04-16T22:50:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer

This preview is based on a short amount of time with the game and should not form your entire basis for a purchase. I'd encourage you to check other places for more information and be an informed consumer..
Footage recording was done so with an 8 Megapixel phone Camera recording a monitor so the real game will obviously appear far better with less video noise.
The Video Audio is muted as the footage was captured at a technology show on the show floor the game itself is not muted / silent.

So I told you I'd bring you some stuff about games. First up (because it's out now and not already in the review queue) is Stand Point by the developer Unruly Attractions. It's a narrative based indie puzzle game that...... Oi stop that....... yes you reading this...... I know you're reaching to click close aren't you..... well before you do give me a chance to talk about what I saw of the game.

So as I was saying Standpoint is from what I saw a narrative based indie puzzle game in first person and yes I do mean game. I know some of you who read my Destructoid C-Blog stuff have seen me rip into Gone Home enough times so hopefully you'll understand when I say this one seems different. The narrative according to the developer is based round the 5 stages of grief and while some of the events are uncovered via standard progression not all of it is. According to the developer some elements of the story are out there in the game for the player to discover and not simply drip fed to you like many AAA games. Trusting players and giving them their own experience shows some bravery from the developer. The game play itself consists of manipulating the direction of gravity to get round obstacles. Have a look at my terrible low quality footage of someone else playing it.

From what I played the surrealistic art style fitted in extremely well with the deliberately "unusual" delivery of the narrative. This really did feel like a game where if I were to give it a full review I'd probably say the mechanics complemented the narrative to an extent. This seems like a well thought out game with a nice puzzle mechanic that honestly slipped through the gaps in mainstream perception. From my short time on the game at the show I felt like this game is most likely far from a simplistic game you could complete in 5 minutes (Which Gone Home can be). However I didn't feel the puzzles at least early on seemed hard or alienating to players. It's a shame in this age with so many major publications on about games as art, that what may well be one of the best balances between game and accessible art is being overlooked such that I'm one of the few actually talking about it. Have a look at the trailers and see what you think. (Side note to the developer: these need to be in your press pack , at present your press pack says no videos available and I had to search round to get these)

For those who think it looks interesting it's on Sale now on Steam

If you want to know more you can find the games developer at their website.

Cheap VR Headset using your phone.

2015-04-15T23:43:00.000+01:00

So last year I finally got to try the Oculus Rift. You might have read about it on my Destructoid C-Blog. Well this year there was seemingly not an Oculus in sight at the Gadget Show Live. However there was something rather different there which I got to have a try at.

Now because it was in near constant use I'm using some pictures out of the magazine for the place selling this VR headset.

The headset itself is essentially just a casing and holder to put your phone in much like the touted Google cardboard but the design has much in common with the Oculus Rift. The game I got to try was a simple on rails Zombie shooter (Yes I said on Rails meaning I had no control over the movement direction). From what I could tell the software uses the phones own accelerometers and devices to work similar to the rift and uses a stereoscopic 3D system to create the illusion of 3D.

I have to say my experience with it (not using my own smartphone but a demo model set up with an Iphone 6) that the short time I had at the show with it was by far the best VR experience I've ever had. I don't know if it was being able to move more myself or just the device itself (I highly suspect the device itself helped far more) but unlike my experience with the rift I wasn't left feeling sick and having to run from the stand. Also the device felt far more light weight than the Oculus.

According the the sites catalogue the device is functional for devices with screens between 3.5 inches and 5.7 inches. And Smartphone sizes up to 154mm (15.4cm) length and 82mm (8.2cm) width,

The device itself was being sold for pre-order only at £20, if this is the actual retail price I'd consider it a very good deal. After the Oculus Rift left me feeling disheartened with VR these virtual reality goggles as they're called have lifted my spirits back up for it. Also unlike the £100+ Rift this device uses what many already have available to cut the costs down.

With Nintendo having already tested streaming gameplay to a smaller screen device and Sony trying similar with the Playstation TV is seems almost like the next logical step for VR to actually become accessible by using your Smartphone as the screen.

For those interested in this device the company behind it is called Blue Chip World and their site is www.Bluechipworld.biz the Virtual Reality Goggles are not up for sale as of me writing this article. Oh and just to be clear I was NOT paid to plug them NOR did I get any free stuff. I'm plugging the company purely because the Virtual Reality Goggles were being sold by them and as such I wouldn't have got to try the product if they hadn't been willing to let the public test and try the product before they were even selling in their online store.

Gadget show live stuff intro

2015-04-15T16:28:00.002+01:00

So very recently I attended Gadget show Live (as I do most years now) and I collect some footage of the weird and wonderful stuff on show and also the games section to bring you previews of some of the newest games coming.

This year's Gadget Show live was shockingly lackluster with no major publishers showing up (I'm guessing after I broke the story about Star Trek being a terrible game maybe some of them have got a bit gun shy. Either way with no major publishers there I'm not getting to bring you some stuff about big AAA games. However there were games there and games far closer to the indie of this blog. Indie games. After the indie booth was there last year I was pleasantly surprised to see it at the show again. This means I get to showcase some upcoming indie titles and talk about them.

Now I was planning to talk about them as before in expected release order. However 3 of the titles have already been released and whilst at the show I bought copies from the developer on the spot. Also one title there was Terra Tech , which I looked at last year. I did have a brief look at Terra Tech and couldn't really see what had changed (I'm sure plenty has though) but for the purposes of here I'd just be repeating most of last years thing.

So the two games I bought are going to not be shown in the preview stuff from Gadget Show Live but they will be joining the list of titles waiting to be reviewed. The two titles I bought were these two. Haunt the House TerrorTown and Detective Grimoire Secrets of the Swamp.

So while I try to improve and enhance footage as well as capture footage of one of the other games from a demo I'll release a little short extra thing here today about my experiences with a gadget which could well revolutionise VR.

Side note: To whoever was / is incharge of organising the indie booth can I suggest next year trying a different lighting thing as the spotlights made it hell to get photos of the game art / posters without serious glare.

Sentibores of the Multiworse

2015-04-12T04:01:00.000+01:00

Name: Sentinels of the Multiverse

Available on: PC / Amazon App Store / Google play store / IOS

Prices:

Steam : £10.99 / $14.99

Amazon: £6.55 / $7.99

Google play: £6.55 /$7.99

IOS : £6.55 / $7.99

Reviewed on: Kindle Fire HD 7 also tested on the Samsung Galaxy S3

Review bit:

Well Sentinels of the Multiverse is deck building co-operative strategy game based around the idea of you and friends playing a group of Heroes all using your unique hero's powers to take down a super villain. It's an interesting concept and stylistically amazing. However for all it's well done style the game is pretty bad. However we'll get onto the bad later after talking about the good.

The games concept and art style are amazing. Most of the hero characters from a diverse cast feels truly unique and while some have similarities to well known super heroes they often differentiate themselves from said heroes quite well. As such the Heroes don't feel like reskinned versions of popular characters and really do feel like they have their own continuity. This idea of each hero being their own unique franchise is reinforced in character art and card art, making it feel that each hero really is from their own unique series all in the same shared world. Essentially Sentinels of the Multiverse from a thematic point of view (oh fancy words) is similar the The Avengers or the Justice league with a number of Heroes joining forces to take down villains. The concept is quite cool with environment cards designed to help with the idea of playing out a battle in one of the 4 almost stereotypical fight locations. It's clear plenty of work has gone into making lore for the game.

The concept is simple you take a team of heroes and fight it out will a villain and their minions and weapons in a typical comic book style location such as a base on Mars or the lost city of Atlantis. The game starts with the villains set up and turn. Each turn every player in order plays a card then uses a power before drawing a card last thing. Your 1 card can be a piece of equipment to boost your powers permanently, an ongoing power card to give you alternative abilities or a 1 shot special card which do a number of things such as prevent anything being drawn by the environment deck to doing one off damage burts or finding equipment / drawing cards. The trick is to balance building up your hero when you can with using 1 shot cards to do damage in the fight when needed. After all the heroes turns an environment card is normally drawn which introduces hazards such and bombs, weapons for the enemy or effects than change healing and damage values.

Ok now onto the problems. The app is one of the most expensive I've probably ever bought yet it's single or local co-op pass the tablet only. I wish I could say this were different but on Steam it's local co-op only. For the price no internet multiplayer is a big red mark against it as to play it either means sitting round a computer screen or passing a tablet round. It really does seem like a poorly thought out concept. While the physical card game it's based on would work with multiple players round a single table this isn't something that converts well to local player on computers. Hell it's the reason things like tabletop simulator exist to let people play these kind of games online.

The second main problem is the game itself seemingly wasn't thought out brilliantly by it's designer. Imagine if you will any co-operative game where your enemy is the game itself now imagine in say Pandemic before you took your turns as players the infection spreading took 5 turns. Or Shadows over Camelot with the game having 5 turns with you doing nothing, or even Battlestar Galactica where you have 5 crisis before anyone can take an action. It feels so much like a game with promise but oh so often you feel like it's really not willing to let you win. To give you an example one of the villains called Grand Warlord Voss is an alien army commander and comes with his invasion fleet . He gets 4 minnions on the field to start each of which can attack and can play a 5th card, almost always a minion, which also attacks. In some cases your heroes are reduced from about 30 health to 22 or less. That's right the game has a situation where you can have all your characters lose nearly 1/3rd of their health and you can do nothing to stop it. Infact being able to do nothing to stop things is a running theme. All you can do is get equipment to reduce damage or sometimes negate it briefly but it's so random often you'll never have the equipment at the right time. This situation is made worse by the lack of mulligan with starting cards meaning you can have a totally useless hand. The totally useless hand often being because certain heroes are overly reliant on drawing very specific cards for them to be anywhere near effective. Grand Warlord Voss exemplifies the feeling of being screwed over as one of his cards allows him to resummon all the minions you've killed also for every minnion on the field he gains damage resistance so you're forced to fight and kill them all over. Worse still the resummon cards is extremely difficult to truly counter with only about 2 cards in game able to do it and only about 2 more able to delay it. Also if there are more than 10 minions on the field by the end of the villain turn it's game over so a resummon can be almost instant game over.

The environment deck is a cool idea to make it seem like it's an every changing battlefield but often in practice it will seriously hamper you as the heroes while barely doing anything to the enemy if not outright helping them. From cards that destroy your equipment but leave the enemy untouched to one area with a count down bomb often environmental effects can mount up and as such you often feel like you're fighting two villains at once.

The turn order just seems insane as it would make slightly more sense to vs the lesser environmental hazards first then be able to have a turn gearing up before the enemy gets to attack and possibly have minions doing their damage at the start of the enemies next turn not the end of the turn they're summoned on (the same could be applied to using Hero equipment). The game also seems to have been programmed quite basically with cards allowing you to damage multiple targets letting you damage other heroes if you don't select the "Stop doing damage" target rather than the game simply stopping you damaging allies. There seems to be no real reason with the characters in the game so far that you'd want to damage your allies either making it seems like lazy programming.

I should also say the game eats battery like almost no other. Able to drain half of the battery on either of my tablets in 45 minutes play. For a 2D game with mostly static frames and minimal effects this is insane and puts it's power consumption on par with the 3D animation of Evolve Hunter's Quest or Grand Theft Auto 3 / Vice City on mobile / tablet. Which to put it in even easier terms is more battery intensive than streaming HD video on a tablet device.

Verdict:

I love Sentinels of the Multiverse as a concept and a fictional world but I really dislike the game. It feels ill thought out mechanically and the digital conversion of it feels lackluster. To be charging almost twice as much as the digital version of Elder Signs Omens on tablet and barely £1 less than the complete Elder Signs Omens on PC (which comes with all the mobile expansions) it's a joke. Worse still it's an unfunny joke as they're charging £15 on top of that price for all the expansions on PC and slightly less on tablet. (admittedly Elder Signs Omens has no online play either but at 1/2 the price on tablet it's easier to overlook)

Sentinels of the Multiverse as a property and or franchise in its own right is more interesting to me than the lackluster deeply flawed deck building game. If I had any words of advice for the makers of this. I'd say the card game needs a lot o work itself but the property itself , the characters and the setting could have legs far beyond the card game. It's honestly just begging for an independent comic company to pick it up and make them into real comic books ( Look a black female with Angel wings who fights demons using Templar weapons is a cool concept).

Heck maybe even get in touch with the developer behind Cthulhu Saves the World and Penny Arcade episodes 3 and 4 and have an RPG made using the character. Just something else beyond it being merely a flawed card game and nothing else. I want more Sentinels of the Multiverse more of that universe, just not as a rather poor deck building game. Make it an RPG, hell make it a crappy MMO and sell the character rights to some company looking to make one, I'd love another super hero MMO just do something else. Or even more of the comic (Which can be found on the companies website)

I can't recommend you buy Sentinels of the Multiverse on any format. It seems far too pricey compared even to similar deck building games (Except Talisman) yet on tablet it does nothing to justify this price.

Score:

Review: Claire - survival horror has a new queen.

2015-04-05T15:48:00.000+01:00

Name: Claire

Price: £6.99 / $9.99

Format: PC (available from Steam and Desura)
PC specs used can be found in this sites FAQ section

Review:

Ok I got a request to review this game and honestly I was more than happy to do it as Claire is a game I had seen about and while it looked nice I never really felt like trying it. The simple reason is I thought looking at the game initially it would be quite tame. After the whole thing of Beyond the Sleep turning out to have a twist like ending and not being some super horror game you could say I was gun shy. Beyond the Sleep was a game I had planned to get and after I ran into the ending (I forget how but I didn't plan it), I really didn't feel a compulsion to play the game or many other horror game. Now I had planned to look at Lone Survivor but then that's really well known. So when I suggested people take a look at Claire and one person asked me "Well why should we beyond the developer sticking up for their consumers?" I had to say to myself fair point. Hence this review.

Now I know a lot of people are going to shout from the roof "Nepotism" because of this review and let me say this. The developer standing up for their customers earned me buying the game and suggesting others look at it. It was a person asking for a review of the game that spurred me to actually do a review. Now I could have just done a quick forum review of the game and moved on. It's a testament to the game itself that I'm choosing to give it a full review here. Some of you who follow me on Twitter might have noticed I announced the delay, the reason for this is I really wanted to explore the game more.

Now I did miss a few bits, if the developer is reading this I missed the guy in the school bathroom and still can't find where he is, help please! I did however really enjoy the game and it's possible to get the best ending (Ending A) without an absolutely perfect run which is good as it's quite easy to miss things even if you were trying to comb every inch of the game like me. This is a game having reviewed (and pushed myself through) I can see myself coming back to in the future and not feeling quite as pressured in the playthrough. Claire is a game you savour not rush to the finish line on. My playthrough missing a few bits took a little over 4 hours. Now thanks to me being a save scummer and repeating some sections etc my total play time is closer to 7 hours. I'd say 4 hours for your first playthrough 5-6 if you're going for 100% first try.

So I think it's only fair I get onto talking about the game itself. Claire is an instruction manual titled "How to make a working horror game beat for beat". If Five Nights at Freddy's is the king of Jumpscare horror then I have to declare that this generations Queen of psychological horror is Claire. Everything works so well to unsettle and disturb the player. I consider myself someone that's hard to effectively scare: I've played horror games before mostly to no effect; I've walked alone through a fairly secluded area of forest in the black of night; I've stayed in essentially a small log cabin in the middle of a forest with a metal shutter for one of the windows and watched the film Dog Soldiers then walked 15 minutes in pitch black through a forest area to say hi to people on a campsite. Those things didn't scare me, Claire did. I started playing Claire in broad daylight at 3pm in the afternoon with headphones on and the game is so well made it had me almost shaking in fear. Only 1 other game has ever inspired such fear in me and it's the game Call of Cthulhu. Claire is just so well designed to inspire dead from the dark mist like shadows lapping at the edge of the screen to the enemies that let out an unsettling screeching noise to the music itself, which when used often inspires dread. The limited ball of light provided by the lighter and need to conserve the torch power helps the darkness feel ominous, all consuming and oppressing in on you from all sides.

The Monsters themselves while they shouldn't be terrifying do manage to come off as such, not instantly repulsive but they feel horrifying on a deeper almost primeval level. When they appear suddenly all your instincts are to be afraid of them. This deep seated fear is a testament to their design with a sinewy twisted shadowy forms. Their movement is unlike anything else in the game creating a confusion of slightly blurred movement. The monster even play into the idea of the uncanny valley a bit by seeming so much like a discernible identifiable something but being just different enough and indefinable enough that your body itself screams these things are wrong. While most of the enemies pose little threat they're so well designed they inspire fear and dread be it when your dog barks to warn you about them (and set you n edge) or when they've chased you out of a door. Even when you've left a room having been chased out you hear them banging on the door before breaking through to continue the chase, forcing you to try and lose them in the labyrinth like levels or hide if, you can find a place.

The level designs themselves are also a great demonstration of how to do horror well, not just for the theme of each level. Each level while seemingly playing on a near trope level standard horror location shows how with a few minor changes such locations can be made horrifying. It's not so much about horrifying images but changing things enough to make the players mind constantly tell them that the location isn't right be it from a quite dirty run down hospital to a near empty school or a dark foreboding apartment complex, all are familiar yet also wrong. With each level having a vague story in it's own right and talking about how this loosely connects to Claire's own life story.

I've seen plenty of people complain about the pacing and honestly I think the slower pacing and lack of constant scares helps build the tension up. While you may feel the actual scares and monsters are a distance apart the game does an expert job of keeping you on edge and unsettled.

I also need to give credit to the games art as while it is a retro art style the animations are superb. From Claire moving the torch about to the idle animations almost all the in game animations look beautifully created.

The story itself (which I won't spoil) is almost a master piece and really pulls at the heart strings in places making you feel sorry for the characters all trapped in this horrifying place. Each character seemingly having their own story and tale to tell all of it mounting up and adding to the main story and explaining the warped world of the game. These are not merely some stock characters but feel like real people with real world problems who reacted in a fairly realistic way to them. I don't want to say more lest I spoil it.

Ok so enough of me gushing about how this game is some superb horror experience as to say the game is perfect would be a lie. The game does have a number of issues which can hamper the experience or minor changes which could greatly improve it.

The controls are a big problem for a number of reasons. For whatever reason on my system the mouse seemed to suffer some degree of mouse lag and as such this is a game I can only recommend playing with a controller. The problem is the controller set up itself has a few problems and a case of multiple actions bound together. This would be fine if you could change the controls but for whatever reason on my system only the keyboard controls can be rebound and not the controller buttons. The big issue being that the accept button for menu control is the same button as interact. This wouldn't be such an issue if being in a menu paused the game but it doesn't. Multiple times I found myself accidentally coming out of hiding while trying to check my map or accidentally entering rooms while trying to look at note, maybe this could have been solved by having accept be bind able to another button (or key on the keyboard settings), or having the menu accept button being different from the enter / interact button. There does also seem to be a minor bug relating to the controller and it's interaction with the note menu, a number of times a scrolled down the notes only for the selection to refuse to return from the scroll arrow. This bug meant to read the later notes I had to enter the note menu, scroll down, close the menu and re-open it to read the later notes.

While the controls are a problem they're not the only issue I found. If you create a lot of save files the game seems far slower to actually save (though this may be due to additional progress through the game also being saved not just more save files). Worse still this problem is made worse by the lack of an easy delete save option to erase older saves if they become useless. The only way to seemingly erase the data is by finding the save files on your computer, which is quite tough to locate (and no I tested erasing all local contents doesn't erase your game saves too).

The games map can be a problem with the map sometimes failing to register blockages, marking blockages incorrectly on the map and even in one case a door (top left on the second floor of the final level) being shown in an entirely different location to its actual position in the room. I also feel like the map needs to do a better job of indicating passages and newly opened holes in the walls as these are not only extremely easy to miss but often very frustrating to try and find leading to plenty of time wandering round getting frustrated with seemingly no direction to go. A map indication of these things (if you pass them) would greatly benefit the game. Also I'm going to suggest this and it may be unpopular but a minimap wouldn't go a miss (or at least a single static picture of the room you're in orientated as it is in game) This would cut down on confusion and constantly having to check the map to figure out which was the rooms are orientated and as such which way you need to go to progress.

The blockage to the left of the blip on the map is meant to be over the door not floating in the middle of the room. Also the room in the top left on this map doesn't line up with the the doors position in the adjacent room itself.

The enemy AI while mostly fine could do with a tweak or two to stop it door camping (a complaint I noted was also brought up by some of the Steam forums). Also the enemies simply appearing without warning (it only happens twice or three times all game) make any damage taken here feel cheap, one such instance being a particularly egregious example as the enemy comes out of a vent / box without warning right infont of you. These instances of door camping and enemies dropping in instantly without warning in a couple of locations simply feel cheap and the player feeling like they were somehow cheated takes away from the experience. If the enemies spawning are meant to be an attempted jumpscare then maybe them being hallucinations or illusions would work better. To stop the door camping it might be an idea for the developer in slightly increase the distance at which enemies can break through into adjacent rooms.

I feel like the hiding mechanic is under used or poorly used as while I understand the desire to make hiding places scarce they feel too spread out. While I don't want them as abundant as the final boss "fight" I think maybe a hiding space every 2-3 rooms around the starting location of enemies would be a better fit. As while running from your life that last thing you want to have to do is stop an open your map to find where you marked a hiding spot on the map.

Speaking of cheap stuff the forced terror sections feel often quite cheap. As your mental state drops in the game you have the screen haze up and darkness close in and your actual health drop. This would be fine if in certain sections the game didn't force your sanity to drop essentially creating areas where your health slowly eats away. I think the idea of these sections is to push the player on and give a feeling or terror and panic. The problem is they feel like a very cheap way to drain precious resources like health items. These sections could be made to work if the game gave a way to undo their impact after passing through (and make passing through a second time not induce the same terror effect) Maybe have some lights turn on or appear in the terror areas to make them safter to pass through to backtrack / explore more. Maybe a single use thing like a cuddly bear toy that vanishes when approached but restores you either to full or to a state recorded before entering the terror section.

The final problems (and this is minor t best) would be to add better visual feedback when Annubis (Claire's pet dog) barks. In game Annubis barking is designed to alert you to the presence of enemies and put you on edge but with only an small subtle animation showing this. I feel it needs more visual feedback such as either the word bark being displayed or (and saving on any possible translation) a small sound wave like cone being shown after Annubis barks. The second one is can the torch please give consistent light levels. I understand that in real life torches get dimmer as in the game but when you're limiting the use of the torch via the battery draining it feels rather cheap that often you'll have a far worse torch beam due to being near the end of the battery. As visual feedback it's nice but in a gameplay sense it's annoying. As an alternative maybe as the battery runs out have the torch sometimes cut out for a half second before returning to when the battery is on its last 1/4.

What seems so strange is the game despite all its flaws has some very nice touches. the different lighting effects from the lighter, the torch, candles in the level and electric lighting look beautiful and unique to gaze at. The Lighter creating a warm circle of light while the Torch given a nice white light beam you can direct around and candles giving off an eerie red glow. As I previously mentioned the animations and even idle animation are quite cool and well done. Annubis while being a relatively small part of the game really is amazingly done as a horror tool as while he will sometimes bark at shadows putting you on edge only to let you down, boy do you miss him when he's not around (and I really dislike dogs normally so making me miss a virtual one is a testament to his design).

So what I'm going to do is lay out what I think is the best way to experience this game / play through it and some hints / tips.

Self impose on you the following

• Only use grandma's candy when you absolutely have to (such as in the terror areas)

• Accept that your first playthrough will not be a 100% run, you playthrough, get an ending then play again to go for 100% (and a 3rd time on new game + if you want the secret S ending)

• Understand you can't save everyone and accept that whatever choices you make stay. This is one game you really need to play essentially with your choices etc locked in and accept them.

• Use the following puzzle hints below and gameplay hints to help you as hopefully they won't spoil too much.

So Puzzle and gameplay hints

The Hospital

The Clock

- Set it to the same time as the others

The Lift

- You can close the vents. There are two in the lift one on the left one on the right.

Staff portraits

- The dead hide their secrets well

Power puzzle

- Down is not the same as turning it off, just mess about till you get all green lights.

School puzzles and stuff

General

- The nobodies (the harmless creatures in the area) often scratch holes in the wall you can get through. This happens at specific times in the game so you're going to need to keep an eye out for them (especially as they don't get marked on the map)

Chess puzzle

- Read the pieces and relate the messages to the identity of the chess pieces, So pawn, bishop, king, queen, castle and knight

Piano

-The biggest clue is the bear song but you can solve this one by experimenting away.

Apartments

Doll house

- the clues for this one are all in the subsequent rooms, just remember to light a candle for the dead.

Frat guy

- He might not have cleaned everything out just of where he is, just look about the apartment.

Symbols on the wall

-Look up the 5 stages of loss / grief and that's your order.

The flesh maze

-You want to go through the flesh doors as these will lead you to where you need to go.

Valve puzzle

- 33 minutes past 3 in that order

Verdict:

Claire is a game that really should be studied and examined by prospective game developers and anyone making a horror game.

For anyone making a horror game it's a beat for beat instruction manual on how to create real horror and true dread in players from building tension to creating horror.

For anyone designing a game it shows some of the common mistakes it's easy to make and shows the importance of designing the game to be intuitive for players and to minimise the player hassle.

As a normal player the game is something well worth experiencing especially if you happen to be a horror game fan who has been let down by almost all big budget horror games recently as they tried to become action games (Alien Isolation being the exception to that rule of letdowns). Even if you've only a passing interest in horror games this is one cheaper title to look out for. Oh and while I started playing in daylight I made in my intention to wait till night and finish the game in a near pitch black room lit only by the glow from the screen and my controller. It was utterly terrifying such that I'm sure I was shaking for upwards of an hour after finishing the game.

The story is beautifully crafted and while some games claim to be emotional this is one game that can legitimately make such a claim as it runs the gamut of emotions from: Horror to relief, Love to loneliness and despair to joy. This is a game that will make you feel sad, happy, confused and many other things. So if you wanted a game with an emotion other than despair / sadness this is a game worth playing.

Now the tough part. Can I recommend Claire? No, at least not at full price as it's both brilliantly made and yet so rough round the edges. As a first title by Hailstorm games I have to give them credit for making what seems like quite an ambitious title even if it is this ambition that's often it's downfall, along with a few common issues. So I'm going to do something strange now and give a list of the bare minimum changes it would need to get a recommendation.

• re-bindable controller buttons (including using the shoulder or trigger buttons)

• A minimap of some kind, even a static picture of the map orientated the same as the in game room being shown on screen would help.

• Fix the enemy AI to stop door camping

• Some kind of visual feedback when Annubis barks

• Do something with the forced terror areas be it removing the impact to allow backtracking through them without the risk and a thing at the end to undo the damage they do to the player or mark them more clearly or even better have the terror immune items have a timer say 2 minutes not simply a single room effectiveness.

• Sort out the save system if possible to make it easier to delete old saves

If you see the game on discount this is definitely worth a play especially on sale where I've seen it drop below the price of many paid for tablet games.

Trailer

Score:

This score is based on the game at it's standard retail price. on discount it may be more acceptable for people to overlook its flaws. The only thing holding it back from far higher scores is the need for a little more polishing to iron out problems.

Jazz spunked this one out

2015-03-29T19:01:00.000+01:00

Name: Jazzpunk

Format: PC

Price: £10.99 / $14.99

Review: JazzPunk is a game that really suckered me into loving it using a retro style that will be familiar to fans of older Sci-fi and spy espionage shows such as The Avengers (No not the Marvel ones) and Danger Man. In fact the intro to Jazzpunk is very of the style of titles used by Maurice Binder, just take a look at the intro sequence for the film The Billion Dollar Brain for example. (Some flashing images)

Throw in so retro futurism style elements such as flying cars and robots but film still being black and white and computers still using tape storage and you have a very stylish game at least starting out. The main problem with Jazzpunk is while it has a great high flying start it seemingly loses much of this in favour and random (purple Monkey Dishwasher esc) humour. The game for the most part is at it's strongest when it's playing to it's spy theme and weakest when it's deviating from this.

The gameplay is a mix of puzzle and exploration with random somewhat referential minigames and other elements scattered about. For the most part the references feel like they're to solid enough franchises and entities that this isn't going to lose much with age just like the hatred towards Friday by Rebecca Black.

To the games credit there is a rather suspiring amount of dialogue for each character. To it's detriment the subtitles often only tell part of the actual dialogue meaning this is a game you have to hear to really appreciate much of the humour especially from side characters.

The Initial level feels very open with plenty to explore and a long twisting series of tasks and plenty of colourful characters to talk to. The level feels very full and works well with it's take on the spy cliche' of sneaking into the Soviet embassy to recover stolen data. The second level however seemingly cuts a lot of this freedom in favour of a very linear directed experience switching the spy aesthetic so something feeling more like the fugitive mixed with blade runner. It's this second level that really brings in the more random humour and it feels very much to the games detriment. The third levels set in a hotel is nice to explore and the story aspect plays on the cliche' of a darling mission to steal intelligence from the villain via a slightly convoluted plan.

While the third level does have plenty to explore and arguably more to do than the first level it feels at times still rather empty. For example at one point you can acquire a master keycard for all the hotel rooms (the nice touch being all of the keys are computer punch cards) the problem being only 2 rooms seemingly have anything in them. A comment by a member of staff that the hotel is haunted lead me to explore many of the rooms to see if there was some hidden joke but there was nothing. The third level feels like it had a huge scope but had to be cut back by the developer such that if feels very underpopulated despite there being arguably more to do, it's just spread thinner.

The fourth Cyberspace inspired level works for the most part and the very surrealistic humour actually finally seems to have found a place it works with some very well thought out gags such as a fake blue screen of death.

The Final level though just seemingly ends up entirely filled with random humour except a single joke about picking a lock. While some of them work it just feels like they threw as many random jokes in as they could and yet the jokes don't feel evenly spread as some parts of the level feel absolutely packed while other areas seen one or two jokes. The final level also feels like the story elements embrace this random humour far too much while discarding most of the spy theme. While it does sound great to have some grand confrontation with the villain as they take you on in a rigged series of contests but it just feels to random and too out there, not least thanks to the flying golf carts. The last level doesn't feel like a very satisfying pay off to the game at least it didn't to me as it felt like it had abandoned all of the spy theme to simply do some weird twist ending out of no-where. Now this kind of ending itself isn't bad as The Twilight Zone and Tales of the Unexpected have shown on TV in the past but if felt very out of place here with no build up or hint it was about to happen.

The gameplay is quite simplistic very much like a point and click game with some added elements. The minigames range from quite enjoyable parodies to some that feel only just fit for purpose. The stand out one being the cat destruction simulation found on the final level

Verdict:

Overall Jazzpunk feels like a game that set out with big aims and starts off well but just seemingly loses its way as the game progresses as it drops the spy spoof theme in favour of random humour. It feels like a game that the developer wanted to do much more with as sizable chunks of some levels are devoid of anything and just left as almost entirely empty space.

Can I recommend Jazzpunk at full its present price? The answer is no, I do think it's worth experiencing and picking up if it turns out with a decent discount on sale. At its present price I feel Jazzpunk doesn't manage to justify its price other than being "something a bit different and a bit weird".

At its best Jazzpunk will have you in fits of laughter, at its worst jokes will have you scratching your head going "huh.... well that was a thing".

Score:

Polar Roller review, I see you rolling, I'm reviewing.

2015-03-21T16:51:00.000+00:00

Name: Polar Roller Nights

Cost: £0.58 on the google play s

tore

Reviewed on

Samsung Galaxy s3

and

Sony Xperia M2

Review: Polar Roller Nights is a game I really hoped I'd enjoy or would end up finding was some great hidden gem as it's developer was recently let go from his job. The problem is Polar Roller Nights is rather atrocious. The physics don't feel consistent, the physics are consistent to an extent but they vary depending on the platform type you're actually on and in a fairly fast paced game this gives the illusion of seriously inconsistent physics. That should tell you right away if one system or mechanic is creating the illusion of serious bug in the game, then you've got problems.

Polar Roller Nights is a score based infinite runner that reading the description on the google play store it had some pretty cool ideas. The reason I was reading the google play store description is because the ideas while there in the game I couldn't actually tell if they were intended features or unfortunate glitches in the game. The game creates a random (or at least it seems entirely random) level and you have to try and keep the little ball from falling off. This is done by precisely timed jumps to try and land on other platforms. Should you screw up a jump and hit the front of the next platform you can wall jump up, which I thought until reading the google play description was a physics glitch. If you stay on the platforms without jumping and the number at the bottom of the screen reaches 100 it's game over, because reasons.

Ok now onto the main problem. The game runs like me after 8 pints while still recovering from a broken ankle. So for those wondering the answer is very badly. I'm not sure what the reason for it is but I've tried it both on my Samsung Galaxy S3 tablet and my Sony Xperia M2 smartphone. Both struggled to run it as even close to 30 FPS and weirdly even lagged seemingly at times. This suggests to me that the game is quite poorly optimised or optimised more for very specific hardware and not many others. In a game where precision timing is a requirement the idea of it experiencing graphics lag is pretty unforgivable.

Verdict: Polar Roller Nights is a mess. A game that started out with good intentions and ideas but utterly fails at implementing them in practice creating a frustrating and joyless experience. The game suffers so many problems that even as a free game I'd hesitate to suggest it's worth your time. The random level layout often leads to unavoidable or seemingly unfair deaths. From me Polar Roller Nights gets and avoid.

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