PREVIEW / Soundfall (PC)

 

Do you like rhythm games? What about games with guns that aren’t FPS? How about colors? Do you like colors? Well, Soundfall from developer Drastic Games may be right up your alley, albeit with a few caveats. The demo version we received featured only three levels and nothing in the way of actual story, so my understanding of the underlying plot is entirely ripped from Drastic Games’ official website. You play as Melody, a talented young audiophile transported to the land of Symphonia, a world where music comes to life. You can see this happening in a cool animated sequence in the trailer below:

 

 

Soundfall is an upbeat action/adventure game focused on music, rhythm, and an underlying beat which is at the core of everything you do. Over the course of the game you’ll apparently befriend endearing allies, wield powerful abilities and legendary weapons against a horde of malicious adversaries as you race to halt the return of an unfathomable darkness, Discord.

If you’re getting the sense that the demo didn’t have much to offer in terms of anything related to the story, you would be correct. However, it did offer a pretty good screenshot of what the gameplay is like. Each of the three levels involves you appearing at one end of a dungeon and a song beginning to play. You are reminded that you must reach the end of the dungeon before the song ends. There’s a little beat meter thing at the bottom of the screen that tells you whether your gun shots or melee weapon strikes hit at the same time that the beat reaches the little diamond in the middle of the beat meter.

 

 

However, the game doesn’t really explain what benefit matching your strikes and shots to the beat offers. In some cases it’s obvious – there are times where you have to quickly traverse across beams of light and this is done smoothly by matching your movements to the beat. It also looks really cool when you get it right, although it’s not that easy to do on your first few tries. Smacking enemies around felt good, particularly when I built enough energy for my special spinning move which easily takes out lots of goons at once (I’m beginning to think that timing your strikes is what fills up your energy).

There’s no penalty for not striking on the beat, which is good because the faster beats are near impossible to time well while also paying attention to what you’re doing. I could easily time my attacks with the beat meter but not pay attention to the battle and vice versa. I have no real suggestions for how to implement that better, because obviously timing your hits with the beat is an integral part of this music-based game, but unless you really, really sink into the music you’re not going to be hitting all the notes perfectly.

 

 

The environments are pretty and weirdly the detail and enemies remind me of something like in the first Jak and Daxter game, which is fun. It’s got that blocky platformer look with lots of bright, inviting colours.  It feels smooth to run around and attacking feels good. You can pick up lots of different weapons in the middle of the dungeon or obtain more after you’ve successfully completed a mission. The guns feel varied and fun to fire, so Drastic Games have definitely made a game that’s fun to play. If it weren’t for the obvious music emphasis I’d be tempted to tell them to do away with the beat meter entirely. It may even be better to have button prompts above enemies to time with the music, although that would be more graphically-demanding and probably way, way harder to code.

The music is very synth-y and club-y, and they were pretty good across the board, though nothing super exciting. The full version of the game will undoubtedly have a lot more to choose from, which will hopefully add more in the way of variety. Overall, I’d say to watch this one carefully. Other people may not have as much of an issue dividing their attention like I mentioned, but I feel like I’d just end up ignoring it most of the time, seeing as I was able to build up nice combos and energy for my special moves regardless of my skill hitting the right beats.

 

 

Soundfall is still in development, but it’ll be coming out on PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One, so it’s really appealing to just about everyone. Keep a close eye on this one, it may end up being a great one. It’s a unique idea and I’d love to see it when it’s finished, especially if they do implement some multiplayer like the demo suggests.

 

 

 

This preview is based on a demo provided by the publisher.

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The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon looks for 2019 release

 

I’m a child of the 80’s and back then we weren’t allowed to spend all of our waking days sitting in front of a screen. You had to do inhumane things like … go outside … play with your friends and attempt interaction with humanity. I know you all still go out and meet your friends but I’m sorry groups of kids getting together to jointly stare at their phones doesn’t count. Something else that was quite popular was reading because it was on your parent’s “it shuts them up and doesn’t cost much” list.

So what was better than reading? Interactive reading of course! This is where pen and paper, choose your own adventure books came in and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were by far my favourites. One of this extensive library was simply called Deathtrap Dungeon. What has this got to do with the price of fish, I hear you ask? Well, take the pen and paper theme, make it a CRPG and shove it onto our screens and you’ve got The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon and this little beauty is set to release next year. See. I always get to the point eventually.

The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon, which is coming from the crew over at Sentient Play, is the sequel to the gamebook from all those years ago. Very importantly, Ian Livingstone has joined the team. You may or may not know this name but he is one of the founders of the Fighting Fantasy series. If you don’t know him from the books, you may well know him as the president of Eidos. He was the one who grabbed the Tomb Raider and Hitman franchises for the company. Iain McCaig, who is also in on this project, co-wrote Deathtrap Dungeon. He’s an artist and probably more known to you lot for his work on the Star Wars and Avengers movies. The fact that these very talented chaps are working on the title should absolutely keep the game true to form.

So what is it? Being a CRPG running on the Storybook Hero RPG engine, it’s bringing the choose your own adventure experience back up to date and offering a cinematic theme to the best parts of “old school” role playing. Continuing the gamebook theme, The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon, a ‘novel’ RPG, literally writes the story for you as you play based on the actions you take.

“We’re a small team, proud of how far we’ve taken The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon, but now it’s time to call in some specialists – amazing artists, writers, cartographers, animators, and developers to help us take our game to the level so that we can deliver to you the game we have imagined. With your help, we’ll bring The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon to life in a truly original and amazing way,” said Brad Becker, founder of Sentient Play.

This title is currently over on Fig and is looking for a goal of $200,000. There are obviously a lot of people that want to see Sentient Play succeed in this endeavor, as at the time of writing this, they already have 705 backers and $120,312 in the bag. If you want to give them a hand and get involved, just follow the link provided.

Brad Becker also stated that, “In The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon players are posed a challenge, ‘Enter the world’s deadliest competition: 30 days to conquer a labyrinth designed to kill you – filled with monsters, traps and ruthless competitors. Knowledge is your secret weapon: clues from your skills and equipment are all that stand between you and sudden death as you move from encounter to encounter, finding your own unique solution to each through wits … or force. Strive to survive and gain enough experience, skills, and equipment to become The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon.‘”

This title is boasting a fair few features. Firstly, you can expect all the wonderful elements of a great RPG; including loot, exploration, quests and much more. Secondly, this isn’t really a linear game. There are multiple solutions to the challenges you’ll be facing and with the use of creativity, wit and strategy you’ll come to one of several solutions. It’s worth noting that this title has a virtual game master. This AI will do all of the statistical stuff for you so you can just enjoy the narrative and beautiful old school, hand drawn, black and white illustrations as you play through the story.

The last thing about this title is that just like a book, The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon will be really easy to pick up and put down. Everything you have done is written for you so you can re-read your adventure should you need to go and do real life stuff. This means that you can just pick up from where you left off without losing the thread.

All in all, this sounds like a really interesting project. If you remember sitting in on a rainy day with book in hand and a set of dice in front of you, you’ll probably be hankering for a bit of nostalgia. If the choose you own adventure theme is new to you but you love a good pen and paper RPG, you may well want to watch this project as it unfolds. The Hero of Deathtrap Dungeon is definitely one to keep an eye on. Assuming all goes well, we should be seeing this game appearing on our screens around about this time in 2019.

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REVIEW / Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)

 

Red Dead Redemption 2 is possibly the best video-game ever created. There, I’ve said it. After 5+ years of proclaiming Grand Theft Auto V as being the best video-game ever, it has been over taken by a rootin-tootin ripper of a story, with one of the best storylines ever written and a lead character you really care about. I genuinely never thought I’d say that, but here we are.

 

 

I’ve played Red Dead Redemption 2’s story mode all the way through, and spent about 65-70 hours of doing so. This game is dangerously good. I’ve lost track of time more times than I care to remember. I’ve played in the day and suddenly realized it’s night and the place is dark. I even installed it on my laptop via Sony’s Remote Play so that i could play it in bed at night.

I think I have a problem, but I don’t care.

Let’s start with how jaw-droppingly beautiful this game is. I have been utterly mesmerized by the backdrops, scenery, and the borderline OCD levels of attention to detail. Rockstar Games, well played guys. You have delivered the best looking video game ever made, and it’s going to take something phenomenal to top it. Nothing on this gen, certainly and I can’t see how it could be improved on. From stunning vistas, to a Wild West so impressively made that it almost feels real, like you could grab a bottle and touch it. Or jump on a horse and travel around.

 

 

Graphics alone won’t make a game. Thankfully, Red Dead Redemption delivers where it counts, storyline and characters. I thought Rockstar did an excellent job with the storyline here. Arthur Morgan is the lead character and the only playable character through the main storyline. He’s part of the Van Der Linde gang, lead by Dutch, and featured throughout the original game. Arthur is a bad guy who exhibits hero-like qualities and has a knack for being able to kill anything that moves. His gang are on the run from the law after a botched heist (which will become a recurring theme…).

He tries to help where possible, keep the gang together and after several misadventures which ends in the death of several gang members, he realizes that this life is pretty much over and that he has to save members of the gang, including Dutch, from themselves. This is brought into sharp focus when he is diagnosed with tuberculosis and becomes a dead man walking. He fights the law, other gangs, and even his father figure Dutch.

 

 

Depending on how good/bad you were in the game, and some of the decisions you made, you had three possible endings. First, you can get John Martson out of the life and to safety but die after a final struggle with Micha Bell and Dutch. Second, you can go back for the loot and face a final shootout with the law and meet your demise. Lastly, you get a third ending that is close to the first, but with a different visual of your spirit animal before you die. All three endings are incredibly sad and I’m not ashamed to say I had a tear in my eye when Arthur bit the dust. He was the kind of character you could really get behind and care about.

The pacing of the game makes it so immersive. This is a casual stroll of a game, where it takes time to get from place to place. Where you can lose yourself in a simple task of fishing. Where you can spend time watching the scenery around you. Where you can rest at a camp and watch the world go by. So when you do have a mission, or a shootout it feels frenetic and brutal.

 

 

Finally, Red Dead Redemption 2 has one more thing that makes it a classic, replay value. There is so much to do in the game that you could almost never get bored, and with Online on the horizon, I’m expecting many more hours of fun playing this game. You can also explore the story from “bad” or “good” perspectives, depending on the choices you make and how violent you are. If there’s one thing I got frustrated about with the game, it was how often I killed my horse by smashing headfirst into a tree while shooting at lawmen.  However, it’s a testament to the game that it’s the only gripe I had.

 

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PREVIEW / Pit of Doom (PC)

 

“It depends.” This is how I would respond to someone asking if The Pit of Doom, the new-ish rougelike/FPS hybrid from developer Kerberos productions, is worth the $10 price of entry. There are interesting aspects to it that may keep fans of the genre interested for a plethora of hours. Outsiders, however, may want to hold off on this game for now.

 

 

The Pit of Doom is an FPS re-imagining of the developer’s 2013 indie rogue-like Sword of the Stars: The Pit. Garnering a “very positive” review score on Steam with almost 1000 reviews, the 2013 game has the player descending into a seemingly endless chasm of hostile levels. 2018’s The Pit of Doom attempts to bring that game to the world of the FPS. Just because the perspective has changed does not mean the game is making drastic moves towards an arcade-y feel; this is very much an RPG.

Outsiders looking in may be baffled at how your weapon can still miss its mark even though you are a dead-eye with a mouse and keyboard. Your character’s various stats affect his or her performance in the game in different ways. Just because your pistol is lined up to hit its target does not mean you will be successful. The shot may (and often does) result in a miss if you are too far away or your character’s accuracy is not good enough. This may turn some people off from the game, but to me it is not much different than a character’s ability to unlock a door. Just because I can hold my mouse still does not mean that my character will be able to hold their weapon as steady.

 

Attribute and Skill Screen

 

Players familiar with the RPG genre will see some familiar traits. You character can be enhanced by leveling up their various skills such as using lock-picks, pistols, medical items, and more. This allows you to customize your character to the specific play-style you want to employ at the time. I particularity found the lock-picking skill useful as you will often be unlocking doors in order to rummage through a room in search of food, munitions, and other essentials.

The game requires you to be slow and deliberate. Enemies hit hard and med-packs are not easy to come by. Moldy food can poison you, but you have to eat. The game does a good job balancing the need to manage the character’s health and hunger while not feeling overbearing. This game is much about its mechanics. What I mean by this is you may spend as much time managing the character, rummaging through piles of guts in search of useful items, or curing yourself of multiple poison levels, as you will spend shooting at baddies.

 

 

Being an early access game means quite a few things. It means a game is unfinished; this applies both to the occurrence of bugs as well as the quality of the game mechanics. Unsurprisingly the same can be said for The Pit of Doom. The textures and environment are reminiscent of Doom 3‘s dark and broody world. This one, however, is experienced in a much slower-paced fashion. Unfortunately the graphics are muddy, repetitive, and overall uninteresting after seeing the same looking hallway or room dozens of times.

I have been informed by players who reached lower levels that the biomes do differ the further you go down. To my understanding you will still have to run through the same ones on each new attempt. Players who become familiar with the mechanics and hone their skills may be able to breeze through these quickly. In terms of bugs, occasionally the game would freeze on launch and required a force-kill and restart.

 

 

The game does get the atmosphere and the sense of helplessness right. Soft eerie sounds and the scurry of feet down a hall bring about a sense of fear. These traits are not typically seen in an FPS. The weighty weapons feel good to use as you aim and take down a target. Enemies are varied, though they are not very interesting to fight against. They employ different attacks but most of them entail them coming directly for you and attacking when close enough. This repetitive AI can be a little uninteresting. Thankfully the inclusion of flying and ranged enemies helps change things up a bit.

Currently the game can be purchased from Steam for $9.99 which I believe to be a fair price of a game like this in early access. Everything can (and I’m sure much will) change. I would be surprised if the current textures are not replaced with higher fidelity ones in the future, and if the environments aren’t updated to be more varied. There is plenty of time to update the AI of enemies to make them more enjoyable to battle.

 

 

If you enjoyed 2013’s The Pit then this game may be an easy choice for you to pick up. It attempts to bring that world to a 3D FPS setting. Players who have not experienced that game may want to hold out for changes that are sure to come in order to play a more polished game.

 

 

 

This preview is based on an early access copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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REVIEW / Spyro Reignited Trilogy (X1)

 

Our favorite purple dragon is back in high definition and we have missed him greatly. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy released a week ago and it has largely been the only game I have played since. The collection contains complete remakes of the first three Spyro games that Insomniac Games originally made 20 years ago. This includes Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

 

Graphics and Sounds

The first thing you notice booting up the game is how good Spyro looks now. Toys For Bob went with the more traditional design as opposed to the Skylanders version that we have seen for the last decade or so. It’s a good thing they did too, because the abomination of the design would have turned many people like me away from this. Regardless, all the characters and worlds look great. Tom Kenny, who is also the voice of Spongebob, has returned to voice Spyro. He first took up the role in the original releases of Ripto’s Rage and Year of the Dragon, so it sounds natural having him back.

Not all original voices return for the cast. In some areas this is fine, but in others kind of threw me off. For example, Elora the Faun has a new voice that fits the redesign of the character very well. She does not sound as sassy as the original actor did. It’s a friendlier voice to accompany a friendlier design. On the other hand, the new voice for Hunter the Cheetah only reminded me of how much I preferred the original. As a kid, I always thought of Hunter as the lovable oaf of the group and the voice fit that. Now with his new design and voice he just feels off to me as a character.

The worlds and music all got updates as well. There is an option in the settings where, if the player wants to, they can listen to the original soundtrack while playing. By default, the new “reignited” music plays and either way I enjoy it. Occasionally, I would swap between the two on random levels to see just how much the Stewart Copeland tracks would change up. In all honesty, I don’t recall ever noticing a huge difference between the two, but someone with a more keen ear could point out the differences better than I could.

All the worlds look amazing compared to their PlayStation counterparts. Looking at YouTube footage of old gameplay really makes me realize how far games have come. I wish that there was a way in-game to switch between classic and new graphics a lot like Halo: CE Anniversary did though. Seeing that comparison in real time would have been amazing. Little touches like that could have made this an ever better experience than it was.

 

Spyro the Dragon

Spyro the Dragon was our first experience with the purple dragon. Gnasty Gnorc has entrapped all of the other dragons in the world in crystal statues, missing only Spyro because he was so small. Spyro and his dragonfly buddy Sparx set out to free the other dragons and hunt down Gnasty Gnorc.

This game got my nostalgia juices running for the entire duration of my time with the game. As a kid, I never beat the first game, but while playing the game screams 90’s platformer as you progress. Simple design, simple story, not overwhelming collectibles, and enjoyable gameplay fun for adults and kids.

Each world contains a few dragons and a few hundred gems to collect. Dragons are super easy to find as they are giant crystal statues, but finding every gem can get annoying when you find yourself missing just one. Luckily, the worlds are not too large so finding them doesn’t take too long, but can still get irritating. Worlds later on in the game grow a little and involve supercharges and jumps that can make finding every gem a little bit of a task, but never anything that feels unachievable.

Some levels will also have a thief who has stolen a dragon egg. These guys clad in blue robes taunt you until you run them down. I remember as a kid how frustrated I would get chasing these guys around for so long. As an adult, I know to cut corners and I have much better reflexes so not nearly as aggravating. The longest it ever took me to catch these guys now was 20 seconds at most.

The worst part about the first Spyro game is the boss fights. They are completely pointless with how easy they are. To defeat every boss, all you have to do is charge at them and flame them when they are close enough three times. Even the final boss is just charging at him until he stops moving to flame him twice and your done. I much rather would have had another world where I look for dragons and gems. This is a complaint more on the original games development though, so I won’t complain too much here.

 

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage

Ripto’s Rage was my favorite Spyro game growing up, and it still is today. This game introduced us to more people besides Spyro, Sparx, and the random dragons who were never memorable. Spyro and Sparx want to go on a beach vacation to Dragon Shores after the Dragon World has been seeing rain for days. As Spyro jumps through the portal to his vacation, a group of people in the world of Avalar are tampering with portals to bring a dragon to them. A different experiment with portals has brought a tyrannical sorcerer and his henchmen to their world and it is apparent that he dislikes dragons. Spyro gets tossed into the middle of this feud and is essentially forced into getting rid of Ripto.

This time, the player needs to collect a talisman from every world they encounter. These allow for the story to progress. Orbs are another collectible that are gained for doing almost all side objectives. The first game had no world building to it. It was a land only for dragons and the gnorcs. This game however had many different species and people in it. Every world had NPCs to talk to Spyro about their specific problems and give him more tasks to do. It does not feel nearly as linear as the first game does. Whenever entering and exiting worlds a short cutscene is shown further developing that world and giving comedic takes on the situations those people are in.

One key difference between Ripto’s Rage and the first game is that when defeating enemies they no longer drop gems. Instead, their soul is transported to a power up gate. Kind of dark for a kids game when you think about it, but every world has these gates that allow Spyro to fly, fireball, be invincible, or supercharge without a track for a short time. Defeating the proper amount of enemies powers the gates allowing for varied approaches to certain areas of the map.

Boss battles are handled much better here than in the first game. Spyro is put into an arena where he will need to dodge attacks and find the right moment to attack the boss. We are talking about a kids game here so its never anything too difficult, but it’s not as laughably as bad as the first games bosses.

 

Spyro: Year of the Dragon

Year of the Dragon was Insomniac’s last Spyro game. An evil sorceress has instructed her pupil, Bianca, to capture all dragon eggs from the dragon world to bring magic back to their world. Spyro and Hunter follow her back and need to find all the eggs.

This game personally is my least favorite of the three. In some areas it tries to build on the things introduced in Ripto’s Rage. More worlds filled with their own citizens as well as new playable characters. The redesigns of these extra characters is great. In the original game, all the extra characters looked extremely basic. Sheila the Kangaroo has hair and vest now, further showing shes Australian. Sgt. Byrd looks more like a penguin that has a military background. Bentley looks completely different for the better. Finally, Agent 9 got probably the least amount of changes to his design, but looks much more lively now.

All four characters have certain areas where only they can be played. It is nice for the change up in gameplay, but some areas are just frustrating mini-games. For example, Bentley has one area where he needs to box another yeti. The controls are as bad here as they were 18 years ago when the game released. Hit detection here is also awful. I only played this section about four times and I felt incredibly aggravated the whole time. I really had hoped with the remake that these kind of areas would be better than in the past.

There are a lot of other little mini-games that feel more like time wasters than engaging experiences. Skateboarding at the time was big and does not translate greatly, and there are plenty of side missions where you need to ride a machine or animal and shoot flying targets. The controls feel far too loose in these areas and are more aggravating than they are worth.

In the Reignited Trilogy, this was by far the buggiest game of the three. Multiple times I had to leave worlds and reenter for enemies to properly load in. This is also technically the only game of the three I did not 100% complete. I ran into a glitch where the world Charmed Ridge did not recognize a chest that I had blown up to collect 22 gems. Those 22 gems are the only thing standing between me and 100% completion of the entire Reignited Trilogy. Of course, this can fixed with a patch, but after marathoning through all three games in the last week, this is a terrible feeling to end my playtime on.

 

Conclusion

Overall, the Spyro Reignited Trilogy was a great trip down memory lane. Aside from a sour ending ruined by glitches, I thoroughly enjoyed doing everything I could in the games. The original Spyro trilogy is a classic 3D platformer that Toys For Bob have successfully re-imagined for today. If you have never played these games before, give them a try! Include your kids. Pass the controller back and forth every time you die or complete a stage. These are three great games for all ages.

 

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REVIEW / Slay the Spire (PC)

 

There are two things that draw me to the roguelike genre. Firstly, these games are different every time you play. I love procedurally generated games because they generally have a longer life span than their counterparts in other genres. Secondly they’re hard and I don’t like overly-hard games (Dark Souls is not my idea of having a good time) that feel difficult for the sake of it. There is a very fine balance in a well-written roguelike where you know it’s bloody hard but you keep wanting more. This gives you a real sense of achievement as you progress because you know you’re getting better. There is also an element of luck in these games which gives you something else to blame for being atrocious. Both of these factors are present in Slay the Spire, a dungeon crawler from developer Mega Crit Games.

 

 

In Slay the Spire, you choose one of three characters (two of which are unlockable) to send into The Spire in the hopes of them not becoming food. The floors are procedurally generated and there’s a varied mix of things wanting to make you expire. We’ve seen this before; in fact it’s the basic chemistry behind a lot of games in this genre. There are a few things, however, that make this title stand out and these are the features that we’ll be looking at in a bit more depth.

The first thing to note is that this is a card based game. Everything your character does from attack to defense to their skills come from a deck of cards and each character has their own. The thing I like most about this is that you don’t start with the majority of the cards you’re capable of playing. You have your basic attack and defense cards, one or two abilities and very little else.

 

It’s all just a matter of choice.

 

The more powerful skill cards are picked up by defeating the dungeon’s denizens. This means that you have no idea what mix you’ll get during your game and stops you falling into an over-used play style where you just spam the same skills repeatedly. You have to be smart as you go too. Each time you kill a beasty, you get a choice of three cards and you can only collect one. You have to always be thinking what your deck is doing and how you’re improving it; which is really clever.

Something else I love in Slay the Spire is the way artifacts (or relics as they’re known) are built. You get these items by defeating bosses and mini-bosses, finding chest rooms or from the store-holder. In a lot of games out there these items are either powerful but really hard to find or they’re good for about five minutes before something better comes along. Either way you’ll be picking up and using everything.

 

Meet the shopkeeper. Odd how these guys always show up in the most dangeous places …

 

In this game you get a choice of three at a time from chests or boss kills. You can pick one item and you have to think what you’re going to want more because many relics are double edged swords. Here is an example of my last run. In a chest I found the following: A frozen core, which gave my Defect a new basic orb; The Soza, which game 1 extra energy each turn but you can no longer use potions; and a busted crown also giving me an extra energy but only letting me pick one card on choice screens. That was an easy pick. It often isn’t.

I just mentioned energy. This is what you need to be using to play your cards. Each character starts each turn with three energy points. As I’ve just mentioned there are ways of getting more but you really need to be smart with how you use it. There are some really expensive cards with great benefits but they can be costly and burning all your energy out in one go to play something clever might just get you killed. Slay the Spire is a game of decisions and you are forced to make more with virtually encounter. There is a level of strategy to this that I find really enjoyable.

 

There’s plenty of folk living in The Spire. Thankfully not all of them want you dead.

 

The characters boil down to your basic warrior, rogue, mage classes though this is over-simplifying things a bit unfairly. You start out only being able to take control of The Ironclad he’s your heavy hitting warrior class and is perfectly balanced for learning the ropes. The next character you unlock is The Silent, she’s your rogue class and because she relies on speed her deck has quite a lot of cards which give you the ability to draw. She can also inflict poison on your enemies. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by telling you what it does but suffice it to say it’s bad news in any quantity.

Lastly you have The Defect. The Defect is a robot who has the ability to channel orbs. These inflict elemental damage or in the case of Frost bolster your armor. This is my favorite of the three and the one I’ve spent the majority of my time with this game playing. All three classes are brilliant in their own ways they just take a bit of practice getting used to, especially when you’re choosing the cards they’ll be using.

 

There’s plenty of weapons in your arsenal.

 

Slay the Spire is a game that’s still in Early Access. This being said it actually feels very finished and polished. There is a very strong foundation here for the devs to work on and I’m assuming they’ll be looking at making the game bigger, adding new characters etc. There doesn’t really seem to be a great deal they need to fix other than the odd bit of card balancing which is something and nothing but as new enemies are added adjustments will probably need to be made

Coming down to the nuts and bolts this is a really easy title to pick up and play. Everything is mouse controlled so there’s nothing clunky about the UI. The artwork is visually appealing and very well drawn and musically everything fits well for the theme. As I say, Slay the Spire already feels very finished and this shows in the aesthetics. I can’t comment on the length of this adventure because it’s so bloody hard that I haven’t made it far into the third floor of The Spire. The game being slightly different every run just adds to the fact that you aren’t going to race through in one sitting and the replayability helps you get the bang for your buck you might be looking for. Not that this game is particularly expensive to begin with.

 

 

All in all this is a really good, solid little title and one that I think I’ll be playing for a good while yet. I’m really curious to see what the remainder of the Early Access is going to bring and what changes will have been made at launch. I think buying Slay the Spire now is a smart move. I’m not sure that this game will become more expensive when it’s out fully but if the experience has been added to and it’s been done well I wouldn’t mind putting in a few extra pounds. If you like a good roguelike, this is definitely one worth trying.

 

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The Galaxy of Lemuria hits Indiegogo

 

I’ve pretty much fallen out with the MMORPG genre. There’s a few reasons for this but the primary one is that they all start feeling a bit carbon copy after a while. There’s a basic formula that exists in many if not all MMORPGs regardless of their setting or style. Build character, run tutorial, find quest givers, mine or make stuff, add infinitum. I know that’s a really basic way of looking at it but that’s pretty much your bare bones. There’s only so many of a creature you can kill or so many dungeons you realise you can’t do because you don’t have an army of friends before they all start to blur a bit. I’m seeing what might be a break in the norm with this interesting little game called The Galaxy of Lemuria.

This first thing that drew my attention to this survival RPG is its roguelike nature. In The Galaxy of Lemuria, the planet on which you begin is procedurally generated. This means that there may or may not be other players already there making their own attempt at surviving. Importantly this isn’t just something that’s generated at the start of the game. Each time you begin anew you will find yourself somewhere unexplored and different. This is brilliant for keeping the game fresh and appealing.

Don’t just expect to be given one map to explore; you’re part of a galaxy of worlds so there’s plenty of adventure to be had. Speaking of exploration … you will need to gather resources in much the same way as you do in many other games of this genre. Not all of these required items can be found on the planet you’re on; going off-world will more than likely be necessary. You have the A1 Explorer, your own customisable spaceship at your disposal for your journeys among the stars.

The other really interesting things about The Galaxy of Lemuria are the way skills and abilities work. Instead of pumping points into a skill tree you are given a choice between several decks of cards. These cards represent your skills and abilities. Your character’s starting stats will pertain to the chosen deck but as you progress you can find and collect cards. These are also a tradable commodity within the game. There is also a reward system present within this title that will grant booster packs teeming with new powers and abilities when certain criteria are met. In an interesting twist these cards can only be used so many times in one lifespan. When a player dies and returns to their home hub these cards are restored for future use.

Many online RPGs give you the ability to have a pet. This is no different in The Galaxy of Lemuria. What is different, however, is that these aren’t just pretty ornaments; they have needs including food and HP regeneration. Another important point to make about pets is that these aren’t just things you buy. Your pet starts out as one of the monsters you will face on your journey. You will have to use your character’s persuasion skills to get the target creature on board. If you keep your pet happy and loyal they’ll be there fighting by your side when you need them. As your pets come as monster cards you can also apply them to your weapons instead of adopting them to give them extra abilities.

Something that really stinks when you’re doing well in a game such as this is that you’ll lose your favourite items when you die. To take some of the sting out of this experience you have trancendental items. You are able to enchant some of your favourite gear so that it will carry over with you to your next play-through when you die. This ability has its limitations and only one item can be made trancendental per run but this all certainly helps.

This isn’t just a game where you move around in a purely nomadic fashion. You can build your own base on your home planet with materials you’ve been collecting. You have to be wary. When you’re away doing your thing other players can come along and ruin all your hard work in your absence. On the other hand, make some friends and work together, and you might end up with your own little shared palace. Making friends and influencing people is probably a good idea. You have to be on your toes. Your planet can lose power and be plunged into darkness. You don’t want to be alone when this happens as the biggest and meanest monsters will be roaming the night looking for you. Stay and protect your home or get off planet sharpish, the choice will be yours.

If you happen to be finding all this interesting, The Galaxy of Lemuria launched on Indiegogo this past Wednesday. Assuming the game gets the funding it’s looking for, release is planned for next year on Windows, Mac, PS4 and Xbox One. If you want to learn more and maybe get involved you can find more details over at the pre-launch page here. To quote a pertinent phrase, “A change is as good as a rest.” This genre has been needing a good shake for a while. Maybe The Galaxy of Lemuria will be just the game to do it.

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Magic: The Gathering 25th Anniversary group art exhibit

 

Last week That VideoGame Blog was invited out to preview an art exhibition dedicated to the 25th Anniversary of Magic: The Gathering. The game, created by Richard Garfield, was published by Wizards of the Coasts on August 5, 1993. The high-fantasy based game is not only one of the most popular trading card games to date but is also considered to be the first modern trading card game ever.

The exhibition took place at Gallery 1988, an art gallery in Los Angeles that prides itself on showcasing pop culture-inspired art. While the venue felt a bit cramped during the event, the Magic: The Gathering-centric pieces inside were amazing. The art was created from a variety of mediums and were prominently displayed for all to see.

The most popular piece was easily the uncut sheet of Magic: The Gathering beta cards. Seeing some of the original card art truly showed how much the game has evolved over the past two and a half decades. There were also complimentary starter decks for those who were interested in learning the game.

 

To learn more about Magic: The Gathering or its newest expansion, The Guilds of Ravnica, check out its official website.  To view Gallery 1988’s current or future exhibits, please click here.

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REVIEW / GRIP: Combat Racing (PS4)

 

GRIP: Combat Racing is a hardcore combat racing game developed by Caged Element which combines insane speeds, armored, customizable cars, and heavy weapons. In addition to ferocious speeds (up to 767mph/1234kmh!!) and smacking around your competitors with nasty weaponry, GRIP harnesses gravity-defying physics to allow players to scale walls and ceilings in addition to your standard, run-of-the-mill, floor-bound racing.

 

 

GRIP offers a campaign mode which basically just takes you through tournaments of increasing levels of difficulty. For example, one of the first levels doesn’t even have any other racers, it basically just allows you to get a feel for how the game works. I mean, there’s also a tutorial you can easily access for that, but the game chooses to ease you in. However, despite both of these aspects, the game either fails to explain fairly critical things. For example, it told me to rev my engine at the same time that the race started to get a boost, but it didn’t tell me that R2 was the accelerator. It also lacks what I would call basic features that a racing game should include, such as a recovery button for when you’ve fallen off the track and continue to fall for forever before finally being rescued by the game and plopped back onto the track.

As you might expect, with a game like GRIP where you’re actively playing around with gravity and sliding around upside-down and on walls, falling off the track is an inevitability. If you fall off the track or fall into an obstacle even once, the race is pretty much over for you. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no recovery button as you tumble endlessly into the environment. What’s worse, however, is that sometimes you end up in, say, a pile of debris and you wait for the game to return you to the track. You wait a while and nothing happens, so you start to reverse and move around to find out where you are and only then does the game put you back into the race.

 

 

A lot of the time it’s impossible to tell whether you should be helping yourself or waiting for assistance, and it only pushes you further back into the race. There is actually a menu option to enable rubber banding for when you get really far behind, and that’s pretty common in racing games. However, I often find that it works super hard in the AI’s favor when you’re mildly ahead of the curve and suddenly you’re being pummeled with high-level weaponry.

I’m actually quite a big fan of the concept of the anti-gravity system It’s not perfect by any means, but it adds an extra element to the races that you wouldn’t experience in other games. It reminds me of the rush I felt playing Sewer Speedway in Crash Team Racing, flying around on the walls. This feels just like that, but multiplied by a thousand. You don’t see many car racing games coming out anymore, and when you do they’re all pretty standard. I think GRIP had the right idea in trying something not necessarily brand new, but enough to make it stand out. In general the gameplay feels pretty good, but targeting with weapons is a bit stiff and it does sometimes feel like you don’t have a lot of control, which can make one a bit hesitant to use all the glorious speed allowed.

 

 

The power-ups aren’t too varied – you’ve got extra acceleration, shields, missiles you can target, the usual pickup that you get when you’re coming last that disrupts everyone else’s controls, and a few others. Only a couple of them are explained in the tutorial, so it’s up to the player to figure out what the rest of them do. I wouldn’t have minded a bit more variety, or maybe even some more distinct colors so I knew from a glance what I was picking up. According to the game description, there are nine different power-ups and weapons, but it’s possible I didn’t get far enough into the “campaign” to see them all.

The campaign is interesting because you’re presented with tournaments that you have to get through, but even if you continue to not place in first, the game will feed you experience relative to how well you did and you’ll still unlock new customization items from each level you gain. I can’t comment on the car customization with too much depth – it’s easy to customize based on speed and grip and other factors because when choosing you get a bar graph readout of what stats will be applied when you race. In total there are 15 armored cars to unlock and choose from, all of which can be customized to suit your racing style. I’m sure experienced racing gamers or car enthusiasts would hold stronger opinions, but I’m neither of those things. Either way, it’s accessible and none too complicated to improve your car. You can also change decals and colors and other aesthetic bits like that, which is nice too.

 

 

GRIP features truly appealing track designs. There are 22 tracks in total across four planets and some are really, really interesting to drive through. There’s a particularly red track with lots of towering scaffolding and radio or TV towers where static clouds your screen as you drive below. Caged Element did a fantastic job in making the tracks varied and full of unique design. What’s really appealing is that there are other modes such as Arena mode for when you feel like blowing each other up instead of blowing each other up while racing. As a small aside, the music chosen for each track is a bit repetitive, but honestly well-suited to the game. It’s high energy, thumping dance music with maybe a bit of synth thrown in for good measure. Nothing super exciting but appropriate!

Assuming you have and can find some friends to play with, GRIP features both offline split screen co-op multiplayer and online multiplayer. I didn’t check out the online multiplayer, but I gave the couch co-op a go and it was honestly heaps of fun. The other person is limited to the absolute basics in car customization rather than everything you’ve unlocked, so you will want to keep that in mind if you want to keep it as fair as possible. The split screen was also horizontal, rather than vertical, which was a godsend and the way things should be. You can customize the races based on track difficulty, specific tracks, number of laps, and all the usual stuff. The level of experience customization is really good and would definitely contribute to replayability.

 

 

In general, GRIP is a pretty good game, but I want to take this opportunity to point out its most glaring flaw that needs to be fixed:

The load times.

Races last maybe a few minutes if the lap number sits around 2-4, yet the load times are both inconsistent and long. I timed the load screen a few times and it hit over two minutes of loading on several occasions. Yet sometimes I’d select my race and it’d load instantly. I can’t fathom why, especially since I was playing on a PS4 Pro. I can’t imagine what the load times would be like on a standard PS4. It’s honestly game breaking and if it doesn’t get fixed, people aren’t going to want to play it. It definitely hindered my ability to play the game, since I could easily pull up a short video to watch or a thread to read as I waited for my race to eventually kick into gear.

Please fix the load times, Caged Element. There’s so much potential here, I swear, and this is killing your game.

 

 

GRIP: Combat Racing is pretty good, but I absolutely wouldn’t recommend it until the developers fix the unacceptable load times. After it’s been fixed, I reckon that this would be a fun party game to have hanging around the house, though I don’t know if I’d bother burning a lot of time customizing things and going through the storyline, as I’d probably just want to play co-op all the time, which was really the best part. GRIP is available now on Steam in early access and coming to PS4 basically right now. If you can’t stand to wait…well, then expect to wait a lot when you actually play the game. If you can keep it together and wait for the load times to (hopefully) be fixed, then I would recommend that course of action.

 

 

 

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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