Journey to the Savage Planet is a colorful first-person adventure videogame set on a remote planet called AR-Y 26. You are part of the pioneer program which explores strange planets and determines whether they are fit for human habitation. Explore the dangerous Jellywaft Islands and towering Fungal forest then check out the cute but stupid Pufferbird in this interstellar videogame.
Journey to the Savage Planet
This tongue-in-cheek adventure reminds me of The Outer Worlds with eye-popping graphics and strange alien species like the Floopsnoot and the Insectoid Swarm all of which must be cataloged as you explore. It also offers a 2 player co-op option so you can explore with friends and have twice the fun. Listen to bizarre infomercials and propaganda by the founder and CEO of Kindred Aerospace who proudly acknowledges that they are the 4th Best Interstellar Exploration Company.
You start as a junior explorer with no equipment and no idea of what is out there. However, you do have an extremely optimistic AI called EKO who helps guide you. As you scan the environment on AR-Y 26 you collect and interact with all manner of strange biological weirdness such as springy egg sacks that you can bounce on like trampolines or use delicious-sounding food substitute, Grog as bait. Everything is deposited on your ship called the Javalin when you return.
There are different biomes and bosses to beat using the equipment you gather and it looks like the main aim of the game is to discover what intelligent species already inhabit AR-Y 26 beyond the weird cylindrical birds and biological gunk. There’s evidence of intelligent life in the form of a strange mountain-like structure and also skeletal remains scattered about the planet.
Journey to the Savage Planet
Typhoon studios who developed Journey to the Savage Planet have hinted at a smaller gaming experience than other titles due to the company’s small size. However, there will be multiple sub-plots that you can follow and simple environmental puzzles that unlock different areas as you explore.
Journey to the Savage Planet is out on 1/28/2020 on Epic Games store, PS4, and Xbox One.
Even those of us who aren’t big on science can agree on certain things being cool. One of these is dinosaurs and to a degree Paleontology itself. The folk over at Pyramid Games have an interest in giant lizards too and are, therefore, the ones bringing us Dinosaur Fossil Hunter in the early half of this coming year.
In Dinosaur Fossil Hunter you’ll be taking on the role of a young man as he attempts to fulfill his dream of traveling the world and finding fossils that pre-date man.
In your quest, you will travel through the USA by car. As you go you’ll cover vast areas of Montana, Wyoming, and Utah while battling the elements and hazardous terrain in search of fossilized remains. Your prizes will be well hidden in rocks and bodies of water and you’ll need to use your tools of the trade, including a chainsaw, shovel, and dynamite to uncover them.
Your georadar will be one of your most useful assets as this will help you pinpoint hidden fossils. With this tool, you’ll be able to discover many extinct species as you slowly piece together information on Earth’s distant past. This is also going to be painstaking work. The bones you uncover are fragile and you’ll need to take care not to break anything. Only when they have been collected and properly cleaned will you be able to assemble them for your dinosaur museum.
In Dinosaur Fossil Hunter, your museum isn’t just a gallery that sits in the background, it’s an important part of the game. You’ll need to grow and customize this as you go, it’s not just your work in paleontology that matters. You’ll want your dioramas to look the part so choosing the right elements to complement your finds will be important.
If history is your thing or you just happen to like big stompy lizards Dinosaur Fossil Hunter might be a good call for your Steam wishlist. Being the helpful soul I am, I’ve left you a link here. We’ll no doubt hear more about this title’s release in the coming weeks but for now, we’ve got some interesting stuff to be going on with.
From the same developer that brought us Mars Underground earlier this year, Shadows and Dust is a short indie game based on the creator’s nightmares. Players take on the role of a disembodied consciousness. As the game progresses, it is revealed that this consciousness is the deceased father of a little boy. Be warned, this game deals with themes of suicide, suicidal ideation in a child, and other dark imagery related to mental illness.
Gameplay takes two forms- navigating a bare room and visual-novel-like interactions with the little boy. Each portion with the little boy shows a number on its title screen- not a chapter number, but the age of the boy. It starts at four, then six, and so on. The boy himself will note early on that these encounters occur his birthday every other year. His dialogue focuses mostly on how much he misses father and features some really uncomfortable questions, like “why did you leave?” and “is it nice where you are?”
If the game is intended to show the father’s hauntings alternating with his afterlife, then it’s not very nice where he is. The other part of the game allows the player to move around a confined space- almost like a hotel room. There’s a bed, a small table next to a picture window, and a long, low cabinet with a phone on it. This room remains the same… mostly. The view outside the window changes, and the door, which at first has no handle, seems to grow one piece by piece.
The interactions available in this room are the light switch, the bed (which triggers the next encounter with the boy), and the phone and door. The phone will not stop ringing, and someone is knocking at the door. This never stops. When the phone is selected, the knocking continues. When the door is selected, the phone keeps ringing. The entities never identify themselves, and although the dialogue options often feature the question “Who is this?” they do not receive a response.
At first, the questions coming over the phone and from the other side of the door seem benevolently concerned:
“Are you okay?”
“Are you on your way?”
“Are you coming out?”
However, they quickly become annoyed, and then outright hostile, finally goading the player to kill themselves.
This escalation corresponds with the little boy revealing first that his father committed suicide, then that the boy himself is beginning to feel symptoms of depression and the desire to isolate himself from others, and finally that the father committed suicide on the boy’s second birthday. Again, the door handle is at first missing, so it is impossible to open the door even if the player wants to do so. Certain dialogue paths will allow the player to communicate this with the entity on the other side of the door. This leads to possibly the most chilling response of all. The person on the other side of the door just laughs. And then leaves. And then starts knocking again.
When the boy turns twelve, he tells his father’s ghost that he shouldn’t return again. The boy wants to move on. Hypothetically, this should be a happy ending. The game returns to the room. The scenery outside the window has returned to a solid gray mass. The phone is off the hook. The lightswitch no longer works. The door handle is complete. It opens onto darkness.
Pressing forward and braving a few large, eyes in the black, rewards the player with a birthday party in the kitchen. Balloons, cake… the big staring eyes still there, but it’s still a party so I guess they’re part of it? But take another step towards the kitchen table, it gets further away. And further away. And further. There are a couple of other secrets to this game that I don’t want to give away. The last thing I’ll say is that there is exactly one achievement for this game and you get it when you quit.
As someone who has suffered from mental illness for a long time, and who watched a parent suffer from the same mental illness (thankfully neither of us from suicidal ideation) this hit home for me in a lot of ways. The feeling that the only way you can escape is by going back to sleep, that no one can hear you or understand that there’s nothing you can do to help yourself no matter how many times they say it. Or even the replacement of “other people” with toxic, intrusive thoughts that come back, again and again, no matter how many times you address them.
Gameplay can be relatively short depending on how long you take to explore the environment, but I pondered the game long after I was done. I asked myself if I was playing as the father, the son, or both. If the entire game took place in the afterlife or in the mind of a character. If the choices I made in dialogue made a difference. If any of the choices I made had an impact at all in the outcome of the game. I still don’t have definitive answers and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to.
I will caution sufferers of certain disorders that this game could put you in a bad headspace. Don’t play alone. This is a horror game, not a therapeutic one. If you’re looking for a more positive game dealing with this subject, I recommend Depression Quest or Night in the Woods.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
If you put Monkey Island and Dr. Strangelove into a blender and hit puree, you’d get something not altogether dissimilar to Irony Curtain. The most recent release from developer Artifex Mundi, Irony Curtain stars Evan Kovolsky is an independent journalist and die-hard socialist in a parody of 1950s America, The States. When he shares his views on a televised debate, he catches the attention of Anna, a secret agent from communist Matryoshka, who spirits him away to the motherland. Will Evan foil a plot to assassinate the Party Leader? Or will everything go horribly, horribly wrong?
Not Really A Spoiler Alert: Everything is going to go wrong.
Evan is intentionally naive, obtuse, and weirdly self-confident; the same kind of Idiot Hero trope that many other point-and-click adventure game protagonists tend to conform to. It works better in cutscenes than in the flavor dialogue. However, as veteran players will know, no matter how many variations of “that doesn’t work” are recorded, by the end of the game, they’re still stale as thrice-traded meat ration card.
Irony Curtain is, from a narrative perspective, a rather short game, with fewer than ten self-contained areas. However, like most adventure games, a metric ton of backtracking is required to solve all the puzzles in order to unlock the next area. This becomes progressively more frustrating as you go from relatively self-contained levels like Evan’s house and his hotel room to all of Crimson Square, or the Metro level which includes the station itself and multiple stops.
The puzzles are standard point-and-click fare, with a fair amount of “wait, really?” moments up to and including: joining the army to get a condom and making a balloon out of it, making a slingshot to retrieve a pair of boots to trade to a hobo for a votive candle that you will fashion into a pipe, and milking a cow to lubricate a tank’s loading chamber. There are at least a couple of instances of the classic “get this for Character X so they’ll give you something for Character Y so you can repeat that process a couple of times before you get the thing you actually need” scenario.
Irony Curtain actually does a good job of strongly indicating what you need to do to accomplish your goals through dialogue and environmental elements. They also include two mechanics to keep players from getting stuck: a helpline that takes different forms, carefully marked in each level by a yellow light bulb, and the space bar, which reveals all elements in the area with which the player can interact.
One interesting choice is the opening tutorial sequence, which takes place chronologically later than most of the game. The amount of plot revealed in the opening scene sets up certain expectations which make the third act reveals more impactful, as well as providing a simplified puzzle to get one’s feet wet.
If it wasn’t clear by now, the game is just stuffed full of Soviet Russia stereotypes. Aside from the fictional country being named after Russian nesting dolls and Anna, the redheaded femme fatale spy, there are jokes about traditional dishes (borscht and vodka), the exchange rate and inflation, and endless permits and applications for everything from using the bathroom to ordering from the hotel restaurant (each with their own minigame). There are a few more subtle environmental gags that are never explicitly called out in the game, like the “skyline” of the capital being mostly made up of cardboard cutouts and tanks that are actually helium balloons.
The voice acting in this game is decent, but there are a couple of stylistic choices that make it really stand out. Characters that are established to be speaking English are voiced with Russian accents, but characters speaking Matryoshkan are represented by analogous regional dialogues in the western world. Although initially garbled, once the player finds and utilizes a Matryoshkan phrasebook, the citizens’ dialogue is in English. The farmer in town to make a delivery speaks with a country drawl, the lady welder working on a construction site has a little bit of a South Bronx vibe, and the crazy old moonshiner past the city limits sounds like… a crazy old moonshiner.
Evan blindly believes in the virtues of communism, to the point where even when he is in the country and witnessing the fascist dictatorship rather than the socialist paradise he expected, it takes him a while to come around. He mentions multiple times over the course of the game that he has been exposed to nothing but government-sanctioned propaganda, and that he trusts the information he has gained from it wholeheartedly.
Considering where the story takes him by its end, there are one or two plot holes we could contemplate, but what’s more interesting is how Irony Curtain portrays such a tense period in world history. We get to see something of the ostracization and scrutinization that anyone with socialist leanings experienced in the U.S., and we are beaten over the head with the realities of life in the Eastern Bloc, especially corruption in the government and military. The conclusion of the story is a weak sort of compromise that still manages to put the US as a sort of savior working with the Matryoshkan resistance.
However, it’s hard to think really deeply about a game where the main character refuses to take a bath until it has bubbles in it. Irony Curtain gives players classic adventure game shenanigans in a new setting, and that’s honestly enough. For fans of Zork, Monkey Island, and Thimbleweed Park, this is definitely worth a playthrough.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Do you have a desire to bludgeon, crush, chop and thump your way through the wild west using ultra-violent combos? If the answer is yes, then this videogame is for you. Exact revenge on your killers using a multitude of macabre methods by making use of everything around you from hatchets to carrots – yes, carrots are extremely dangerous due to their pointy ends.
Bloodroots
Bloodroots is developed by Paper Cult, an Indie videogame developer based in Montreal. Their quirky quick-paced videogame looks like it will offend anyone who has an aversion to violence since the aim of the game is to kill everyone and exact revenge in elaborate and macabre ways.
You face fearsome odds as Mr. Wolf, the maniacal protagonist, in a stylish combat videogame that takes no prisoners – literally, you kill everyone who looks at you. Every level is hand-crafted and has a cartoonish style that allows you to improvise with spectacularly chaotic melees.
Half the fun of this videogame is choreographing your own combat moves as you search forests and mountains using ladders, axes, swords, and cartwheels to viciously remove anything that’s in your way. This 3D platformer also allows you to steamroll NPCs with barrels squashing them like bugs, squelch!
Bloodroots
The cartoon aesthetics shows a playfulness to juxtapose the macabre nature of this videogame which otherwise might be too violent. However, in true Tom and Jerry style, they pull it off with such over the top violence that it puts a satisfying smile on your face.
Bloodroots is available for pre-purchase now at the Epic Games Store.
Pokemon Golooks very different now from how it looked at launch a few years ago. There have been a ton of new features added over time, including raids, trading, PVP battles, Team Go Rocket battles, research, and more. But one I feel players tend to take for granted is the Buddy mechanic. For many it’s a “set and forget” sort of thing. And while it’s nice to have another way to get candies for your rare Pokemon, it always sort of existed in the background.
But now, all of this has changed thanks to the new Buddy Adventure feature. Buddies still have the effect they had before, but now with a lot more. One major addition is that you can use AR mode to play with and feed your Buddy Pokemon, much like the mechanics the main series introduced inXandY. The happier your Pokemon is, the more benefits you’ll unlock. Your Buddy Pokemon will start following you on the map, and if you keep them well-fed and do activities with them, they’ll give you bonuses in battle and when trying to catch new Pokemon. The new mechanic is quite fun, even if it is rather basic in practice; it really promotes the emotional connection between trainer and Pokemon, a concept that’s been key to the lore of the franchise from day one.
Another new feature associated with Buddy Adventure allows multiple users to share an AR view of their buddies. So, if I take out my Pignite and my friend takes out his Turtwig, in this mode, we would both see both Pignite and Turtwig in the same place the other person sees them. It’s a really cool idea, but sadly, I haven’t been able to test it out yet; the feature requires AR+ to be enabled, and my friends’ phones don’t currently support that mode. It sounds like a fun idea, though, even if AR+ is still a little shaky. For full details, check out the official blog post here.
“Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is.” This is the guiding principle of Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is based on the first season of Netflix’s popular crime drama. You can play as agent Murphy and lead your squad into hostile territory against drug kingpin Pablo Escobar or complete some campaigns for the DEA and then work for El Padron in the Medellin Cartel.
Narcos: Rise of the Cartels plunges you into the gritty narcotics trade of the 1980’s with footage and narration from the actual Netflix series. The graphics are created with Unreal Engine and the locations are also realistically recreated from the series with Rodrigo Amarante’s bolero “Tuyo,” as the theme music. There is very little detective work in this game, no surveillance or interrogation you let your gun do the talking, shoot first then ask questions later.
Sometimes you will need to collect documents about key figures in the Medellin Cartel or target DEA officials depending on which side you choose, but the main focus is on RTS style gameplay which feels very similar to XCOM’s combat mechanics. In fact, I expected an alien scout ship to appear at some point and drop a couple of Sectoids on to the grid as light infantry.
When you’re on a mission there are shield symbols displayed on grid squares that show protection from enemy fire, also your view changes to a first-person perspective when you can either take a “kill shot” or “counteract” your opponent; not too dissimilar to another videogame which I won’t mention. When squad members are killed they are dead, no rejuvenation — “Vaya con Dios”. This means you have to ask for more funding to recruit members for your squad.
As you complete more missions your individual players can be promoted with more skill points, alternately you can retire your entire squad and recruit new ones, such as special Ops which have higher health and better weapons; your squad also receives a bonus every time your mission is successful and the roster capacity increases allowing a larger choice of recruits.
If the leader of your squad is killed then you lose the mission, so agent Murphy and Primo are generally confined to the backbenches skulking safely behind a bush or bin. The game’s A.I doesn’t force you to move each squad member. Therefore, tactically you’re encouraged to leave valuable recruits in protected positions while using one unfortunate squad member as bait to entice the other side to move.
The dumbass A.I would normally dispense a couple of Narcos wearing shorts and gold chains into an ambush or some rookie DEA agents. This is a shame because it really does take the edge off the real-time strategy element as it feels like your playing against an A.I with zero tactical awareness. Sometimes opposition members just walk up to you and offload several rounds reducing your HP by two, then you simply shoot them dead at point-blank range – “Adios Amigo.”
You can change weapons using the pyramid button on your controller but make sure you reload and regenerate your HP regularly because sometimes enemy bullets will get you when you least expect it leading to some frustrating one-shot kills. The locations are created with nice lighting effects and details but the characters could do with better rendering, specifically those 80’s stashes which look quite pixelated.
The voice acting is very good and adds a certain level of realism to the gameplay but it’s a shame that Curve Digital didn’t focus more on detective work and surveillance and perhaps the ability to arrest suspects for interrogation which would have set it apart from other games. Instead, it feels like a game that borrows heavily from others.
If you like slow real-time strategy games then Narcos isn’t a bad game, but it’s not a brilliant one either. The lack of variety in the missions gets boring after a while and although the missions are challenging at times the A.I mechanics are repetitive and need more refinement. Game progress doesn’t really offer any substantial perks in my opinion and the developers should have focused on a more police-centric plot instead of an XCOM ripoff.
Rift Keeper is a roguelike platformer about a chain clad adventurer who’s been summoned to a sleepy town—well more of a cul-de-sac really. Once you’ve arrived on your trusty horse and cart you have to heal the strange rifts that have appeared. This arcade dungeon dash pits you against a host of weird creatures as you battle your way through procedurally generated levels.
As the title suggests you play a Rift Keeper, a kind of knight-protector of the realm. However, you’re not wearing armor or brandishing a sword, at least not at the beginning; instead you’re wearing chains, leather cuffs, a mask, and red hair. You’re the Obi-Wan Kenobi of fetish fashion, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game.
The sleepy town consists of some shops, one church and not much else. At this point, it becomes clear that the extent of this game’s technical prowess is three shop keepers with heads the size of melons and another Rift Keeper who does nothing except spout benign comments when you pass. “When I was your age…blah blah blah.” As if your ostentatious outfit wasn’t enough, when you enter the dungeons you’re confronted with all manner of anatomically incorrect creatures. These mindless sprites don’t follow or interact with you unless you approach them and many can be easily killed by striking them with your chains. Yes, not only do you wear them, you also use them for combat.
There are 30 dungeons to explore in total and you have to complete 10 before you reach a boss battle. Each level gets harder as you progress and If you die in any dungeon beforehand, you have to start again. As with most roguelikes, you collect coins which are used to upgrade your weapons and skills. This is done by visiting the three bloaty-headed vendors in town.
As you traverse your way through the labyrinthine levels you realize that you can’t use any aerial attacks which apparently weren’t mapped to the controllers when the videogame was designed. This really does limit your moves and your ability to perform complex attacks. You have to stand on the same level as each enemy before engaging with them.
The collision detection on most of the enemies is very lackluster as they generally pace up and down like they’re on conveyor belts, apart from a few flying ones who engage but can’t easily be killed from where you’re standing. Some of the enemy sprites unintentionally hover off the surface as they walk and the levels feel generic and not very cohesive in design.
Rift Keeper is inspired by the original Castlevania and Metroid games. It has none of the effects we come to expect from more modern roguelikes such as Dead Cells. There’s no parallax scrolling and limited lighting effects which does give it a much more retro look which might have been Frymore’s intention. However, its crude graphical style still feels like it was a development issue rather than an aesthetic choice.
In the same vein, there’s no chunky 16, 32 or 64-bit graphics either. Its style feels more contemporary but ultimately worse for it. Rift Keeper has tried to emulate games with a much stronger identity and has created something that feels lacking in comparison. Its soundtrack is a heavy techno beat that thumps its way into your brain like your at an 80’s rave and the sound effects also feel reminiscent of this era. It would have been nice to interact with the chains that hang from the ceilings and the many doors that are part of the background but unfortunately, they’re just scenery.
The gameplay does become more challenging as you progress. Unfortunately, you never feel like you’re upgrading your skills or finding new objects that actually change the combat or flow. Instead, the lack of variety makes the game feel more of a labor than a joy. Game development is competitive and it’s good to encourage Indie developers to create new and interesting content, however, this game feels like it was too ambitious and perhaps needed more refinement to realize its true potential.
Rift Keeper doesn’t do anything different from other titles that have gone before it and it doesn’t add anything new to the Metroidvania subgenre. Frymore has created a videogame that is mediocre in design. Although there are elements of its gameplay that are good there’s not enough to set it apart from its contemporaries.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
When Shakespeare coined the phrase “to be or not to be,” I don’t think he was deciding whether or not he wanted little wings, a fluffy bottom and a predilection for pollen. Some of you, however, may have wondered what it would be like to be one of our little honey making friends. If this is the case, Bee Simulator might be an ideal choice of game. I’ve been playing the PC version and my views are a bit mixed.
First off, I love the sentiment behind Bee Simulator. At the very least this game is bringing much needed notice to an endangered species through the eyes of one of it’s members. This in and of itself is brilliant, we’re all good there. After this, I start having problems…
Bee Simulator is a game that’s clearly being pitched at families with younger children. The narrative is like something straight out of a kid’s TV show and for little ones this is fine. The problem here is that this is also a game that should have a message for everyone and the child-like narration, while fun, isn’t going to appeal to the adult player. This could be forgiven if there was a solid game here but I’m not sure this is entirely the case. I also need to mention that this review is obviously based on my views as an adult playing the game, as I’m not part of that intended audience I’m going to come across a little more critical than a younger player.
So you have the basic gameplay which involves you following story elements and flying about the place collecting pollen. I don’t do story telling as you know but you’re basically working for the hive until your tree is threatened. The adventure to re-locate, (amongst other things,) begins from there. Pollen collection is expected, you’re a bee, it’s the way this is done that puts me off. Who remembers that much memed Superman game that just sees you flying through rings for hours? Take that and make the graphics look nice and you have a similar idea. It’s no more enthralling now when it’s been tarted up a bit than it was then.
After the pollen collecting comes a series of mini-games. One of these is dancing. When other bees want to give you valuable information you have to copy their dance moves to open an indicator on the map. This is just basically a case of Simon Says. If you have any sort of basic pattern recognition skills and a half decent memory this isn’t going to be any sort of a challenge.
Combat is another story. Is it fast paced and dynamic I hear you ask? This would all depend on your definitions for fast paced and dynamic. You get given a pattern and have to match it. This involves a string of colored bars, red for attack, blue for block. Hit the bars in order and you’ll succeed. Sound about as exciting as a conversation with a table lamp? Sadly, it is.
You will be given other jobs to do as you go through the game. These include races which would be fun if the controls didn’t feel so wonky. There shouldn’t be an issue with this on console releases but for us PC gamers trying to chase something while being hampered by a wobbly camera isn’t easy.
I’m going to have a bit of a moan about the graphics next. Before I do let me add a little caveat here. My rig is powerful but it isn’t top of the range by any means so some of my woes might not effect you. The graphics are gorgeous. Everything is just the level you’d expect from a triple-A game. They are also automatically set to ultra. M
y first go at Bee Simulator left me with a thirty minute bout of motion sickness thanks to bright colors and some really blurry effects. I switched things down in the settings and this alleviated the problem. This is, therefore, more of a general moan. We don’t all have brand spanking new PCs, please set the game to something that isn’t going to give us a brain hemorrhage and let us up the graphical quality if we want to.
This is a PC review so everything might be a lot rosier with a gamepad, but the controls felt sluggish and generally weird and a lot of this came down to camera. As in many PC games WASD is your movement and the mouse covers your line of sight. Movement is fine, the mouse control isn’t quite sensitive enough though. Instead of panning the camera in one fluid movement you find yourself moving the mouse two or three times to get you facing in the right direction. When you’re used to very smooth camera mechanics this feels really clunky and odd. Again this can be changed in the settings but these changes should be improving the experience, not righting it.
Bee Simulator can be seen in one of two ways. You can see it as a piece of educational software. It’s full of interesting facts and you’ll fill an archive with fascinating stuff as you go. You can also spend knowledge points on statues and new skins for your bee. This in and of itself is great but to want to learn all of that information you need to want to play the game. Gameplay isn’t really addicting so that might not happen for long.
If you are going to try and call Bee Simulator a game, you can, but it isn’t a very good one. The core gameplay isn’t engrossing and after that it’s just a string of fairly simply put together mini-games. I completely get that you don’t want anything too hard when there’s a younger audience playing but by simplifying things this much you’re in danger of ruling out the rest of us. The story isn’t very long either so there isn’t a great amount of bang for your buck here.
As a side note … there’s the option to play Bee Simulator in co-op through either remote play or via split-screen. I’m not sure there would be enough here to make me want to keep playing for a long time on my own, let alone bring my mates on board. Having multiplayer functionality is excellent, but get the core of the game right first.
All in all I’m really torn about Bee Simulator. I completely get what this game wants to be and what it’s trying to accomplish and I don’t want to take anything away from this. From a purely educational stand point the game is good but it’s still a game. I’m just not sure these two elements are working harmoniously enough with each other to make it worth your while.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Ever wondered what it must be like to dress up in a loincloth, take up your sword and fight in an Arena – oh, it’s just me, then! Gladiux is a brutal combat videogame set in ancient Rome where you fight for fortune, glory, and freedom. Yes, you can be like Maximus-Disastrous Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North and achieve fame and six-pack abs.
Gladiux
Starcaster Games has created a “Gladiator begins” reboot developed in association with Acquire, depicted in realistic 3D rendered characters and lavish environments that look like they’re captured straight from Ridley Scott’s movie epic. Its predecessor was released in 2010 for the PSP and focussed on a secret feud between Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and General Cassius‘ succession to the throne.
Of course, Gladiux isn’t associated with the movie, but there’s no denying its visual comparisons. Hopefully, it will expand on its predecessor’s story and characters, taking the repetitive combat from the original title on the PSP and creating a more dynamic, story-driven videogame that doesn’t just rely on button mashing. This bloody retelling shows a glorious return to an era of swords and sandals where you have to refine your battle skills and fight for your life.
Gladiux is developed with the Unreal engine and the graphics are still in early development, which hints at a super realistic combat RPG judging from the look of the images. This videogame also looks very violent, similar to its predecessor, with plenty of blood and gore. Hopefully, there’ll be a stomping epic soundtrack to go with the videogame.
Gladiux
Starcaster games have helped develop other titles including So Many Me, a platforming, puzzle-solving game, and A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda EX,a 2.5D action-packed side-scrolling game.
Gladiux slice ‘n’ dices its way to consoles and PCs in 2020.
With the year coming to end, it’s time to reflect on the best in gaming in 2019. That also means it’s time for The Game Awards, hosted by Geoff Keighley. While gaming sites put together their ‘best of 2019’ lists (and in some cases, ‘best of the decade’), Keighley and team have been busy putting together their own lists for the year. You should take a moment to check out the list of nominees.
Although this is a relatively new award in gaming, the first 5 years of the show have shown tremendous growth. Last year in particular included some of the most memorable moments from the show that will likely be shown leading up to the broadcast. You should expect a new game announcement or two, some live musical numbers, and a slew of guests in and around video games.
Is Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding a lock for Game of the Year? What categories can we expect to see Outer Worlds take some hardware? Untitled Goose Game? We’ll find out the best of the best when The Game Awards streams this Thursday, December 12, from 5:30-9pm PST. You can catch the stream on your favorite services like YouTube or Twitch.
For more information on how to watch, head over to thegameawards.com
There are thousands of games out there with good plots. A title having a good storyline is often what pulls us back and makes us want to play more. It’s like reading a good book; you always want to know what’s coming next. This obviously isn’t news, but how many games are actually about telling stories? Not as many as you’d think right? This is where a new title, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, comes in.
In Where the Water Tastes Like Wine the story, or should I say stories do more than just give you and idea what’s going on around you, instead they’re a currency. This subtle but enormously important difference is what makes this game so interesting for those of you that, like me, need to have a good plot to keep you hooked.
As you wander around a folkloric Depression era United States this narrative adventure will see you meeting various strangers. Communicating and becoming acquainted with these characters will grant you unique stories which can then be re-told to unlock new interactions. It is up to the player to pair the correct stories with the right characters to further the game. If you do well, these characters will reveal their true selves, bestowing you with the most valuable stories.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine not only takes tales as currency, it focuses on stories as living things. Stories grow and are re-shaped with each re-telling and this is something the game really draws from. This is brilliant for anyone with a love of a good plot.
Any tale will fall flat if it’s told by the wrong person. I don’t think you’re going to have that problem here. There are some brilliant names in Where the Water Tastes Like Wine‘s cast. These include Dave Fennoy, (Lee – The Walking Dead,) Melissa Hutchinson, (Ashe – League of Legends,) and Sae Nijima of Persona 5 fame to name but a few. Even Sting from The Police is getting involved!
If a story about stories is something you want to explore then Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is available for your Xbox One, PS4 and Switch consoles now. Why not head over to your respective stores and take a look for yourselves?
Niffelheim is a harsh world of ancient spirits, a place for fallen warriors trying to reach the celestial halls of Valhalla. This side-scrolling resource management game is based on Norse mythology where you can choose from four playable characters who are trying to ascend to the dizzying heights of martyrdom. Join your ancient ancestors by fighting fiendish foes and building a strong fort to protect your totem.
A host of characters are at your disposal including several burly bearded men with hands the size of hubcaps and bellies like beer barrels or a Valkyre, the only female character who has a sure aim, wears war paint and generally looks formidable. There are four side-scrolling worlds you can explore:
The ancient bear mound
The one-eyed wolf forest
Moor of the desert Eagle
Ice dragon wasteland.
None of the aforementioned worlds are particularly friendly places, inhabited by wild wolves, walking skeletons and other beasts that you have to fight. However, there are plenty of trees to fell and rabbits to skin for feeding your belly and building your Fort.
Niffelheim is an Indie title developed with the Unity game engine and uses hand-drawn animation techniques that give it a quick and jerky feel similar to traditional stop-frame animations. Its mechanics lack fluidity in some areas, for instance when you die your character falls over unceremonious like a sack of potatoes accompanied by a moan like your passing a kidney stone. However, its simple side-scrolling levels are detailed in a quirky illustrative way that sets it apart from other games in its genre and there’s no denying it’s artistic style.
A slow burning Indie title
As you explore the ethereal world of Niffelheim a strange crow flutters down to a nearby perch and gives you some advice, well it’s not really advice it’s more like a mini-quest that you have to complete to unlock more resources. There are many other characters throughout the game that give you other quests which push the gameplay forward but the ultimate aim is to form the portal to Valhalla by collecting different magical pieces.
I have heard some people refer to this game as an RPG. In my opinion, it’s more of a 2D resource management game similar to Kingdom with elements of an RPG. Yes, there are skill sets and weapon upgrades but there’s no multiple choice dialogue options that change the flow of the game. Everything you collect helps to upgrade your Mastery level whether it’s cutting down trees or killing animals and collecting herbs for cooking. In general, the gameplay is quite linear and you can walk or warp to different areas to forage for more resources.
If you kill enough wolves you can upgrade your armor at the forge with a wolf helmet, boots, and a bone harness and as the game progresses your armor becomes more elaborate and sturdy. You can place items in a quick access menu for when you need them during combat or for food. The other items that you collect are easily accessed by scrolling through the menu with the R1 and R2 buttons on the controller.
There isn’t much voice acting, most of the speech is in the form of written excerpts. However, the intro scene has some narrative exposition by a gravel-voiced actor introducing the game. “Holy flame destroys all Earthly ties.” Kinda makes you feel like brandishing a sword, growing a beard and renaming yourself Bjørn Schniffelheim. Okay, perhaps I was getting a bit carried away but the narration is still good and worthy of a mention. The transition scenes have nice static artwork that reminded me of Pillars of Eternity and the melodic music and bagpipes fit this stoic retelling of, a Norse legend – Niffelheim The World of Mist.
Your fort is your stronghold and within its infinite walls, there are plenty of strange devices for creating new things such as a sawmill, a forge and an Alchemy workshop for creating spells. You can also make some home improvements by chopping down more trees and upgrading your building to a castle or citadel. The stronger your fort the easier it is to resist the attack of the hoard which spawn periodically and lay siege to it.
Food is one of the main focuses in Niffelheim and you have to kill animals and gather resources or you will starve. It is a constant battle to fill your belly throughout the game. In fact I had to eat so often that I felt like a diabetic who had to keep their blood sugar under control. However, be careful what you eat when your roaming, raw meat isn’t recommended and can reduce your health points by 40 causing nausea, promptly followed by death. Ouch!
Combat is quite tedious and when I say this I mean it’s like having a slapping contest with your little sister. The mechanics are basic with the square button assigned on the controller for either kicking enemies to death or using one of your weapons such as an Axe or Bow. You can easily switch weapons with the L2 button on the PS4 controller but combat doesn’t feel like it was the game developers first priority and as such feels lacking.
The game has some frame rate issues and stuttering which did start to bother me the longer I played it and the worlds could do with some expanding. However, there is a wide variety of different weapons and spells that you can upgrade or buy from the merchant’s shop in Temple city and the gameplay does become quite addictive once you get in to it.
Verdict
The action tips which were added in an earlier mod are welcome and help flesh out the overall mechanics of this videogame creating something that is a slow burner with some intricate survival mechanics. Anyone who wants a quick fix combat game will probably be disappointed as this isn’t its aim, survival, and consolidation of your resources is more of a focus. there are many different beasts and baddies to discover if you put in the time and effort.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Decay of Logos, at its heart, is a plucky, independently developed third person action-adventure aspiring to fill the behemoth sized shoes left by massive hits like Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Dark Souls. It’s easy to see those inspirations in the game, utilizing the enemy respawns at checkpoints similar to Dark Souls and the vibrant colors and dungeon puzzle solving similar to the iconic Zelda series. Undoubtedly, Decay of Logos on the Nintendo Switch has a vision and goal in mind, but unfortunately it falls well short of the mark in terms of execution.
Time to fight the trees.
Decay of Logos is packed full of ambitious and interesting mechanics, but it’s certainly a shame that nearly all of them feel so poorly implemented and broken that it makes the game a slog. The most egregious example of which is undoubtedly the mystical elk companion that the developers themselves say is intended to be the core of the gameplay. The elk companion is used as inventory management, a solution for puzzles, help for traversal as a mount, and occasionally a partner in combat. The only issue is that, at least in the Switch version of the game, the elk companion is frustrating and unreliable to a point of hindrance.
In my time with the game, the elk was missing a majority of times, rarely came when called upon, frustrating to use as a mount, and a test of patience to get in position for a puzzle solution. The inventory management aspect of the elk was difficult to use, as when my character found something new the elk was nowhere around and I would have to make a decision about which gear to leave behind. It was simpler to leave the elk alone due to the frustration that ensued in trying to make it useful, but the issue would always rear it’s antlered ugly head when Decay of Logos required the use of the frustrating elk.
Elks: The bane of my existence.
Elk related issues aside, there are problems abound in the gameplay mechanics of Decay of Logos. The player character has an internal meter of exhaustion and if you do not sleep at the designated save points often enough her stats will diminish and ultimately lead to her hits being half as strong and her defense lowered. The exhaustion mechanic wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but it seemed like your character never stayed well rested for very long and the rest locations were spaced fairly far apart.
Functionally, the mechanic felt like a permanent stat de-buff that ranged in intensity. For example, I rested at a save point then ran across the area to a puzzle location only to find out I didn’t have the required items, but in checking my inventory I noticed my stats were already de-buffed due to exhaustion. This seemed to greatly hinder my willingness to explore, which is one of the pillars of the game’s design.
Decay of Logos prides itself on a hands free exploration that tosses the player into the world and tasks them with figuring out things for themselves. Whether or not this is a positive is a matter of taste and experience with the genre, as there are games that can pull off a hands free model exceptionally well. However, Decay of Logos would greatly benefit from some more player guidance due to some confusing map designs that will often have the player running in circles, without so much as a map, looking for items to complete puzzles.
These are deep mechanically intrinsic issues I have found in the game and it only gets worse from there. The Nintendo Switch port of Decay of Logos is severely broken in ways I’ve yet to see on the system before. I could rattle off my laundry list of bugs and glitches all day; I took a hit from an enemy and the game lost sound, I paused the game a few minutes while my Switch was docked and the game ran at an abysmal and laggy framerate until I undocked and re-docked, I tried to use a healing item and I lost all ability to move my character, I fell off a platform and was stuck in the falling animation inches from the ground. The list goes on and on and is frankly unacceptable for a game claiming to be out of beta or early access.
The most heartbreaking part of all of these issues is that when you play Decay of Logos, it’s clear to see the intentions and the artistic flair the developers bring to the table. The game has a striking crisp style paired with a moody atmosphere and thought out world that’s built by exploration and interaction. However all of the faults quickly pile up and make the game a true test of patience that unfortunately make it nearly impossible to recommend to anyone, especially the Switch owners who have an added amount of bugs and issues to contend with. Only the most masochistic gamers with an overabundance of time on their hands should willingly attempt to tackle this beast.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
