Gaming news

Embr Is In Early Access Now

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10:16AM my phone buzzes. It’s the Embr app. As a Respondr, I make my money by taking jobs through the app. People think we’re like a private fire service, but so few of them read the terms and conditions properly. Luckily I sleep in my customised truck, so I’m ready to roll in an instant.

10:19AM I arrive at the client’s domicile and chop my way through the front door. Yep, that’s a fire alright. On the far side of the room a middle aged man is running in circles screaming. I use my hose to clear a path through the fire towards them. “Oh, thank gods you’re here, please you have to save us, there’s me, my husband, our 2 children and my mother-in-law in the house.” he sobs, clinging to my plaid shirt. This shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m only contracted to rescue 4 of them and the house isn’t that big, or on fire.

“Sir, I need you to calm down and tell me if you have any valuables in the property. Any stacks of cash or high value items.” I ask, but he just goes back to screaming about his family and the fire.

In an upstairs bathroom I find the husband. He’s sitting on the toilet, looking a little sheepish. He’s surprisingly calm considering he’s sitting not 3 feet from the inferno that was once his shower unit. “Well, I hope you wiped already.” I think to myself as I hoist him over my shoulder and head for the nearest window, which I smash with my axe. Taking a moment to estimate the distance to the designated safe zone, I yeet him out the window.

Turns out I miscalculated and he landed a good 1 foot short. My bad. I take out my ladder and carefully descend, before collecting up the husband again and carrying him the last foot to safety.

Returning to the house I find a teenage girl in an upstairs hallway. The passage is a raging inferno, but she’s too focused on her phone. Hopefully she’s tech savvy enough to give me a full 5 flame review when this is over. I start to hose down the walls and floor but I failed to notice and electrical socket. As such, I’ve just swapped fire for a more shocking problem since the floor is now a different kind of death trap. Thinking fast, I look along the cable from the socket and flick the switch off.

The teen hasn’t even noticed so I rush her to the window and leave her there while I drop down a trampoline. Once it’s deployed I grab her again and hurl us both out. It’s a little bouncy, but I get us both to the safe zone without any broken bones this time.

In through the front door again, I see that, despite the fact I made a safe path through the fire on my way in, the client didn’t bother leaving the house himself. In the meantime, the main support beams for the floor above have fallen meaning I have to chop my way through to get him out.

Next up is the basement. Getting through the fire on the stairs isn’t an issue as the stairs have collapsed. I throw down a water grenade to clear most of the flames before deploying my ladder and descending safely. Floating ominously in a doorway is a cloud of green gas. Luckily there’s a nearby standing fan which someone left on and I use it to push the gas away from my entrance.

Jackpot! There in the corner is the family safe. There’s another kid sitting on top of it, but they can be moved. Unfortunately, it’s an electrical locking mechanism. Tossing the kid aside, I spray some water between the safe’s exposed cable and a wall socket. Then I just have to turn on the power and voila, the safe pops open. Come to momma you beautiful green stacks. There must be $100k here. I grab the cash, leaving the whining teen behind for now. There’s definitely going to be a bonus for my for rescuing all this dough. I carefully take my precious cargo out to the safe zone and place it tenderly within, on one of the comfier looking mattresses. Don’t worry friend, I’ll be back to count you later.

I allow myself a moment to think about the new grappling hook I’ll be buying with my cut of that before strolling back in. The fire is much bigger now and the basement is completely engulfed. Guess, junior isn’t getting rescued today. I retrieve my ladder and take it around to the back of the house to gain access to the balcony.

Score, there’s the mother-in-law. She seems completely unaware of the situation so I squirt her with my hose to knock her down before she accuses me of trespassing and carry her to safety.

“That’s me done sir, please be sure to leave a favourable review on the app.” I say cheerily to the client.

“But my house is still on fire!” he screams at me over the sound of the approaching Appbulance.

“I’m just here to fulfil the contract, which I’ve done. Have a good day, and stay safe sir.”

I’m barely back in my truck when the app buzzes again. A restaurant on the other side of town. Guess I’d better Crab n’ Go check it out.

Embr is out now on early access and available through Steam. It’s highly playable in it’s current state and hugely improved over the version I played last year at CoxCon. I’d highly recommend anyone play it, it’s loads of fun, especially in multiplayer. Just don’t think too hard about the premise of a private fire and rescue service.

Bulk Smash

For months, most of the big noise online has been about Smash. Smash, Smash, Smash. It’s like the Incredible Hulk has used their bonus action to enter rage and then furiously bashed out their thoughts on – what I imagine must be – a heavily reinforced keyboard. If people weren’t hyped about the latest character announcements they were complaining about the latest character announcements. If they weren’t excited for some feature, they were sending death threats because the skinny, angular-moustached one wasn’t going to star. In many ways, it’s good it’s finally out, if only because it should calm most of the related anger. Oh, and I get to play it. That’s also nice.

If you’ve played any of the previous Smash Bros games, you’ll be right at home with this iteration of the popular fighting franchise. Personally, I needed some time to practice my skills as I’ve not played since Melee, around 15 years ago. As is typical, you have a small roster of characters to start with and the more you play, the more will show up to challenge you. Once defeated, their yours to control. Hurrumble!

New for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, is World of Light mode. A single player adventure in which an angelic (in the Bayonetta sense of the word) entity has captured all the playable characters, with the exception of Kirby – the world’s second greatest pink balloon (Jigglypuff is best cutie pink frond) and is making sinister clones, controlled by the spirits of yet more gaming characters. Your mission is to travel across the land (searching far and wide), defeating spirits to claim them as your own. Primary spirits will align to a particular element and will (mostly) have some slots for secondary support spirits, who will grant you boons in each WoL battle (spirits default to off in normal games, but you can customise rules as you wish).

That’s a lot of word soup so I’ll try to break it down. Say you’re challenge is to defeat Pauline from the original Donkey Kong. The character will actually be Peach, in a red dress. The parameters state that she won’t fight, that your jump height is reduced, that some enemies start with a hammer, and some are giant. The level starts, you’ll have Peach jumping around to avoid you, Mario appears with the classic hammer weapon, a giant Donkey Kong will appear. The boys will try to kill you while you try to take down Peach. If you win the battle, you’ll get Pauline’s spirit (she who possessed Peach) to assist you in future battles.

There are tons of different parameters which can affect WoL battles: inability to swim on watery levels, floor is lava/poison/electrified, high winds, screen/controls will randomly flip, giant enemies, tiny enemies, low jumping height, enemies having increased attack/defence, enemy favours up/down/side smashes, and loads more. This adds a huge amount of variety to the battles and really helps to keep it interesting.

Winning battles will earn you rewards above the spirits you free. This could be snacks of various sizes (food to level up spirits), skill spheres (used to power your main fighters up on a Final Fantasy X style sphere grid), gold (to buy stuff in the main shop – outside WoL), and spirit points (to buy stuff in WoL shops, as part of the cost of powering up spirits with snacks and for taking extra shots in Spirit Board mode).

As you move through World of Light, you will come across various characters which, once defeated, will unlock for use in all game modes. Additionally, you can play normal Smash battles and every ten minutes or so, a new challenger will appear. Again, defeat them to unlock them for use However, characters unlocked outside of WoL won’t be unlocked for use in that mode.

If you’re looking for a really quick way to unlock everyone, because you’ve got a party planned and hoping to have a big ole tournament with everyone, there is a super easy way to unlock everyone:

10 Start a match with one life.
20 Jump off the edge of the map.
30 Get challenged to a fight with a new character.
40 Reset the system.
50 GOTO 10

It’s less fun, but it works, and this way you can unlock everyone in about an hour. Should you fail to defeat a character challenge, an icon will soon show up on the menu to give you the opportunity for a rematch.

As well as spirits unlocked in World of Light, there are others that are unlocked by certain achievements in that mode. Just dip out after a while playing and you’ll be shown the art you’ve unlocked, awarded any spirit points, and unlock yet more bonus spirits. Additionally, you can head to the Spirit Board and directly challenge spirits to a battle. If you’re able to defeat them, you’ll get a chance to shoot them, as a shield, with a single opening circles them. Should you fail to get your shot through, you can either wait for that spirit to show up on the board again at a random time (ergh), or spend spirit points to take another shot (also kind of ergh).

There is soooooo much in this game. Tons of modes, tens of hours of play in World of Light, 76 characters (most of whom need unlocking), 103 stages, beautiful artwork, unlockable music (there’s some great remixes of classic tracks to be heard), abundant weapons and items to enhance or irritate, customisable game modes, tournament settings, replay saving, and more.

That’s all great, but…

My biggest gripe with Smash Ultimate is that it doesn’t explain itself. As I said earlier, it’s been a while since I played one. Regardless, there are going to be people who come to the game as their first Smash. There is a training mode, but it doesn’t really tell you much. Looking up the controls menu wasn’t much better. The only thing I did find was an attract mode demo if you leave the game on the start menu for a while. However, even that is vague and it seems silly not to at least make this a video you can play at will, by going into the menu where the training mode is.

I was 3 hours deep in World of Light mode when my seasoned Smash playing fiancée noted that there was a couple of moves I just wasn’t using (because nothing in the game had told me about them). For a game with so much content, it seems a real oversight on the devs part to miss out such a basic entry point to the enjoyment to their game.

Pros:

  • Huge amount of content.
  • Extensive single player mode.
  • Really pretty and polished.

Cons:

  • Not enough of a tutorial/training mode.
  • Spirit Board mode is kind of annoying.
  • No option to play as Rabbid Peach (see how I managed to type that without using all caps. It’s really that easy).

Final Score: 8/10

Andrew Ryan Animations

On receiving a letter from ex-colleague, Joey Drew, you head to the old animation workshop to find out what’s new. That’s all you need to get started, you play game now.

You, as Henry, arrive at the animation studio to find it seemingly deserted. The whole building is a sepia tone cartoon from the earliest days of animation. Outlines and minimal shading in black. A few off-yellow lights serve to draw attention here and there. Holes in walls are boarded up, doors too.

Standees of the studio mascot, Bendy the devil, are everywhere. Sometimes even peering out from around corners, before disappearing. Strange black pipes run through most rooms, occasionally dripping ink on the floor. The walls are plastered with artist notes near their drawing boards. Posters show some of the studio’s titles, introducing Bendy, Boris the wolf, and later, Alice Angel (of course, of course you make classic style cartoons about demons, angels and wolves. Of course it’s about going to hell in a handbasket, putting out the hell fires, and darling devils. That seems like jolly good, wholesome entertainment).

The game’s art style works really well. Bendy is about, and in, a classic cartoon. The only problem with making the whole world two colours is that it can be a bit difficult to navigate. As things move on, you will start to see a few areas over again, and this definitely helps you learn the layout, but for someone like me, who struggles with orientation in games, it’s very difficult to navigate some parts. Additionally, you can miss key items because you didn’t directly move your crosshair over them, to make them light up (I’m looking at you axe that I missed for 5 minutes in that boss area. Well, I’m clearly not, because I didn’t spot the damn thing for far too long, but you get the point).

You’ll start out by trying to get through doors, gather items to activate the titular ink machine, and solve basic puzzles to unlock the next area. All this under the watchful eyes of Bendy cutouts, Bendy plushes, Bendy character sheets on drawing boards, Bendy posters, Bendy Statues. Bendy is everywhere, always watching you. Their fixed grin more menacing than jolly or friendly.

Once the machine is active, the dripping ink becomes more prevalent and more… lively. Black creatures born of the ink rise up and swing for you. Their oily bodies somehow fitting with the rest of the art style, but their rendering making them look more realistic than Bendy’s more illustrated style.

Getting deeper into the game, you’ll start to encounter, what I refer to as, the “real” Bendy and Alice. These are inky horrors, parodies of their cartoon forms. These twisted, monstrous beings are of the ink itself, more like the oily ink monsters than their artist’s original designs.

At first the story is only fed to you through Bioshock-esque audio diaries. The various employees tell of their grievances, the story slowly being teased out. Here I will mention a problem. These audio recordings are equalized to sound like they’re being played from fairly poor quality tape recordings. This means that it can be difficult to make out what their saying. They are accompanied by transcriptions on one side of the screen, but the text is so small you’ll need to be super close to read it. On a smaller screen, it would be impossible.

As you move on you will meet Atlus Alice Angel. Should you agree to their requests, you’ll end up on a series of (maybe one too many) fetch quests around the building as they explain some of their woes. This does a lot to flesh out Alice’s story and give some hints about the nature of the ink itself, but larger mysteries remain.

Should you die at any point, you’ll find yourself in a weird swirling tunnel which reminds me of Silent Hill 4’s bathroom hole. Once you’ve crawled out of it, you’ll respawn at the nearest Bendy statue, which is very reminiscent of Bioshock (I know, everything’s been done before. I’m not criticising that, the game’s brought all these things together in its own way very nicely *pats game on head*).

Overall, the mood is really creepy, the world is interesting and keeps you wanting to know what’s happening and where it will lead, the sound design is very good and atmospheric (though sometimes you can hear radios through walls, like you’re right next to them), and the character designs are great. I’d say it’s definitely time and money well spent, if survival horror a la 1920’s animation is your thing.

Pros:

  • Good art style
  • Wonderfully creepy
  • Great character design

Cons:

  • Transcripts of audio logs are hard to read on smaller screens (especially in handheld)
  • Combat can be frustrating with certain weapons
  • Loading times are a little long

Overall Score: 7/10

Bendy and the Ink Machine is out now on Switch, Xbox One, PS4, and PC

Stardew Catty

Life is like, fairly chill.

Here in cat town.
Rabbits, mice, and hares to slay.
It’s a cat blur.
You might solve a mystery.
Or be a kitty.
Cattails (Woo-oo), is a cat life simulation RPG, where you take on the role of a cute little kitty, who’s owner’s parent decides they’ve had enough of having a happy child who is learning responsibility for another life and dumps you by the roadside (You know, like a responsible adult would). You find yourself alone and without the kitty knowhow that a more wild cat might have.

The graphics are rather simple, low-res pixels, about the quality of a 16-bit era console title. Not that that’s a bad thing. The character portraits are well done, animals can be identified, the local flora is nice, and the gameplay is such that having high definition graphics really wouldn’t add anything. My only real complaint here is that there are some areas that are super drab, and while I realise that this is supposed to be a very outdoors and earthy game, it could have been perked up in a few parts. The changing seasons will bring more colourful trees and plants, more vibrant grass, but underground areas remain quite visually uninteresting.

The music is pretty basic as well and reminds me of something that you might hear in The Sims. More variety here would have been most welcome.

Once the opening vignette is over you’re greeted by Coco, a mysterious black and white cat who teaches you the basic mechanics of the game, including foraging, hunting, and fighting. They then offer to take you to join one of the three local cat colonies. The forest cats live in the vibrant green, western side of the map. The two other cat factions – my sworn enemies – are the mountain colony to the north and the swamp-based Mystics to the east. Glory to the forest colony!

After you join a faction you are provided a den to sleep in. Here you can also save and store items. After a cat nap, you can take a turn around your village and get to know your kitty comrades. Much like Stardew Valley, you can improve friendships by giving gifts to the other townscats. Bribe all the kitty friends!

While on the subject of Stardew Valley, let’s get on to the main story. Not long after you begin your journey and are settled into your den, Coco will turn up to ask for your help with something. They take you to a temple which holds many strange standing stones. As you approach the first, it begins to glow and shortly thereafter it reveals that it wants you to bring it a bunch of dead animals. I have no idea what a stone pillar will do with some mice, squirrels, rabbits, and a hare, but who am I to judge. You live your best life pillar. Your best life, surrounded by carrion.

Once the first pillar is cleared, the others all come to life and your charged with finding several sets of items for them. Some want a bunch of fish, another wants bugs, and so on. Here again I have to draw comparison with Stardew Valley, particularly the town hall missions, where you’re gathering sets of items.

Between gathering all the stuff for the main quest, you can forage for food, medicine, and items. Finding various bushes around the map will yield all sorts of goodies, some of which will make fine gifts for your friends. Foraging is the easiest (and least fatal) way to gain experience at the start of the game. Though you won’t be earning much like this. However, you can sell items you don’t need at the shop, to gain some Mews (the local currency). This in turn can be used to buy extra skins for your cat.

Did you feel that only being able to choose plain fur colours was boring at the beginning? Head to the shop to unlock new skins and turn yourself into a calico, tiger stripped, or other more fancy styles. I can only assume that you tear your own skin off and replace it with something else, which has been gained from the flayed corpse one of your fallen foes. Wait… did I not mention fighting yet. Wow, what a segue!

While your own areas are well defended by your allies, there will be incursions throughout the day. Checking your map will reveal where these are taking place and head over to support your comrades, with your sharpened toe bean razors. Defeated enemies will drop additional mews for your purse (where do you even keep that? or is this like an eat it and then cough it up type thing? What the stuff?! I had like six doves, a couple of squirrels, and some lavender earlier, how does any of that work?! Does my cat have pockets. WHY WON’T ANYONE ANSWER ME! Ahem). This is another good way to gain experience.

‘You keep talking about experience, can you use it for anything?’ Why, thank you for asking fictional voice. You can indeed. Earned experience can be used to power up passive abilities or purchase active abilities. Want to be a better hunter, fighter, swimmer, etc.? Pop some experience in and watch your badassery grow. Tired of getting whipped in fights? Sharpen those claws and wreck some enemy business. Tired of those precious bunnies escaping your reach? Hone your senses and stealth and mess small creatures up with renewed efficiency. With enough practice, you will be the finest specimen of cat that the world has ever known.

Bwahahahahahahaha! Look out colony leaders. Soon I will be ruler over all! All will bow to me! Forests, swamp, and mountains! (Though, maybe not the swamp, it’s all squishy and makes my fur all muddy. But all the good bits, they will be mine). Mine I say.

‘Mine you say? Damn Jane, you are killing these segues.’ Yes, kill, destroy, rule all. ‘No no, dial it back. I was asking about mining’. Fine.

Yep, there’s mining. Head to a pickaxe on the map and enter the mines. Here you can break rocks to try to uncover resources. The deeper you go, the more valuable the debris/metals/gems you uncover. These can be traded to the mole people for mole coins, which will pay for more inventory expansions, skins for your glorious kitty to wear, etc.

As you move further through the game, you can pay to expand your den, this will give you space to start building a family. Romance a friendly cat, get married and have little kittens of your own. If only you could find a camera phone, you could become web-famous for filming the antics of your adorable offspring.

Days go by pretty quickly in game, and white there’s no requirement to sleep it will grant you some experience and top up some health. Each season is 10 days and on the last day there’s a friendly gathering of all the tribes at the central shrine. Here you can play a themed game, up to three times, in order to win a third currency that can only be obtained at these festivals. Games include turtle racing in summer and snowball fights in winter. Each season will have exclusive cat skins available to purchase from Coco at the festival shop.

Overall, the game is quite sweet, with plenty to do and see. A nice little budget title.

Pros:

  • You get to be a cat. Cats are awesome.
  • Like Stardew Valley, but without the crop watering and with more cats.
  • You don’t have to sleep, and won’t be penalised for staying out all night.

Cons:

  • Music could be a bit better or have more tracks.
  • Quite drab in places.
  • Has lost the dynamic lighting seen in the PC version.

Overall Score: 8/10

Starlink: Battle For Fat Cash

I’ve had the chance to sit down with Starlink: Battle for Atlas over the last week or so. It’s the latest toys-to-life game from Ubisoft. This time we’re avoiding big name characters and franchises (bar Starfox if you’re playing on Switch), the building fun of Lego Dimensions, or the whatever the heck Skylanders was about and going into the one place that was previously thought to remain uncorrupted by capitalism.

Turns out Tim Curry was dead wrong.

I was lucky(?) enough to get to play with the physical release on Switch, which comes with a rather nice Arwing model with detachable wings, a couple of weapons (one fire based, one ice), a Fox McCloud pilot figure, another pilot (who I’ve spent so little time playing as, I have no idea what his name is (ok, I looked it up, he’s called Mason. Happy now?)), and a stand to attach it all to my joycons. There’s a poster in there too, but who cares. Want game now! In addition to this, there’s digital versions of a third weapon (kinetic type) and the standard ship that comes in the other format physical editions.

I’ve probably dumped around 20 hours into this so far. Lots of buzzing over planets claiming every ruin, enjoying the beautiful and varied biomes & wildlife, destroying enemy extractors (think fracking/mining if it made clouds of evil that corrupt local fauna… so, fracking), building up a whole host of mining and observation facility-running friends by completing basic tasks (allowing me to get regular cash deliveries and see more of the planets I visit respectively), and crushing the wonders (world bosses).

I’ve been struck how much Starfox content there is in the game, making me feel kinda bad for people on other systems. There’s cutscenes, and bonus missions to be had. PS4 and XB1 players will miss out on this, but I suppose they can rub themselves down with slightly better graphics to feel better, if that’s their bag.

On the subject of missing out, I come to my main problem with the game. As mentioned earlier, the physical version comes with two physical weapons, covering fire and ice elements, plus a digital weapon that’s kinetic. As far as I’ve seen, kinetic weapons can’t open anything particularly special, they just do non-elemental damage. However, elemental weapons do act as keys for specific doors/chests. At this point, I ask myself: “do I miss whatever this is and move on, or buy more bits to unlock it?” and looking at my cool Arwing model and go, “this is yet more plastic tat that will sit on my shelf after a week and never be looked at again, meanwhile, the actual game I want to play is gating content”. Often, you will find canisters with the required element that you can throw at these elemental locks, but sometimes you have to go well out of your way to find the right one.

See, the thing is, once you’ve got the game going, you don’t actually need the models attached to the controller, as you can just use the menu to change them digitally. This takes unnecessary weight off and makes long term play more comfortable. As such, after the initial hour or so of “hey, this is fun to take the wings off on the fly, or attach them all on one side and make the ship really wonky” turns into “ah, that enemy is resistant to cold damage, I’ll hit the menu and swap that out as I don’t own the third weapon physically anyway”.

“So what about the digital version”, I hear the imagined voices in my head cry, because I imagined them crying that.

I’ll tell you. The digital edition includes the game + 4 ships, 6 pilots, and 12 weapons. Add to that the Switch version includes the exclusive ship, pilot, and missions. All this for slightly less than a physical version. Those weapons cover all elemental options, meaning you can unlock (as far as I can tell) every elemental door/chest and easily find a weakness for every elemental enemy without the need for additional purchases. Furthermore, additional ships will act as extra lives, meaning you can respawn immediately, rather than back at a prospector/observatory.

Throughout the game, there are upgrades you can make to your mothership. These include adding additional mod slots to your ships and weapons, the ability to fuse low level mods into the next level up, extra space in your inventory for collected items, etc. At first progress is nice and steady, but before long you’ll notice the bottom three categories can’t be unlocked with the pilots you have available in the physical edition (and, I understand you need at least two extra pilots with the digital edition). Right now, I can’t tell if these are really important to the game, but I feel it’s important to let you know where you’ll need to spend extra monies.

Right now, ship packs – containing one ship, a pilot and a weapon – will set you back £24.99 for physical editions and £9.99 for digital. Then there’s pilots, which are sold individually for £6.99 physical and £4.99 digital. Lastly, there’s weapons in two packs which go for £9.99 physically and only £3.29 on the eshop. I have no idea where they got these prices, but it feels like they just drew numbers out of a hat.

I get that it’s a toys-to-life game. I get they want to make fat cash off of these toys, but when you’re skint like me, the value from the physical game feels greatly lessened when I start finding bits I just can’t do, because I was wowed by a plastic Arwing.

As far as I can see, someone buying the physical edition of the game will need at least two extra weapons (gravity and levitation based) and 2-3 extra pilots to unlock everything. I’ve tried to work out what the smallest amount of extra stuff I’d need to buy to see what I currently feel is gated, but it’s proving a pain so close to release. Best guess right now is two ship packs 1-2 pilots.

“Enough of the gripes about how much the damn thing costs and tell us about the actual game”, the imagined voices holler. To which I say, “shut your noise hole and try a brownie. While your mouth is full, I’ll tell you.”. The voices agree, and I move on.

The game starts with a grumpy alien vulture kidnapping the team’s peculiarly named leader (just as Starfox and pals arrive in the area). Apparently they’re the Legion and they’re bad, so they’ve decided they need leader guy more than we do. With our ships disabled, we’re helpless to fight back and badly named vulture makes off with our heroic motivation.

Next thing you know, you’re down on a planet, learning to fly around, plucking fruit, scanning fauna, helping out the locals, mining currency, blowing up the Legion forces, looking for plot clues, and planning epic revenge.

Play went something like: do all listed tasks on planet, upgrade some stuff, head to space, attack a few random space pirate bases, head to next planet, start again, go back to space, plot happens, go to next planet, find all my weapons are made of fail against these enemies but do my best (standard enemies taking nearly 3 times longer to beat, not due to their skills, but because they’re bullet-sponges), encounter a jumping puzzle.

A. FUCKING. JUMPING. PUZZLE!

If you think jumping puzzles in FPS games are bad, try it in a hovering ship that will just slide all over the tiny ass platforms. It’s absolute garbage and whoever, thought it should go in needs an Arwing, with the wings on backwards, shoved right up their nose for their crimes. True, it was 1am when I got to this bit, but hovering ship-based jumping puzzles can get in the freaking bin! Worst part was that the first time I made it to the top, I couldn’t finish the puzzle as I hadn’t noticed that I needed to cut free the final platform from the ground first. This really doesn’t help that before this I was already starting to feel that the game was getting a little repetitive. This just made me swear at the screen and go to bed.

I’ve got past it now, only to be rewarded with a well done that implied that it took me ages, it did, but heck you and the modular ship you flew in on.

Overall the game is fun-ish, graphically very pretty, nice to listen to (really digging the Starfox theme when you call for support), good to explore, ship design is interesting, and the plot isn’t too awful.

Pros:

  • The worlds are diverse and pretty
  • Nice Arwing model
  • Solid space and planetside combat

Cons:

  • Switch version requires a huge download before you can play the physical version
  • Physical copies really skimp on content compared to the digital versions
  • FUCKING JUMPING PUZZLE!

Overall Score: 5/10

Do You Want Anything From The Shop?

I went on a bit of a Kickstarter spree in the nine months from September last year. I backed a bunch of boardgames. So far, they’ve all come through and been pretty darn good. Last week I got the latest one delivered. The small but mighty, Tiny Epic Zombies.

The game comes in a box not much bigger than the average novel, but contains a huge amount of stuff. Firstly, there’s the nine mall cards. The eight stores are laid out at random around a central courtyard. Once the board is laid out, you can move on to picking the three objectives for the game from the 9 each available for co-operative or competitive modes. Between the randomised nature of the stores and the variety of objectives, there’s a lot of replayablity with this game.


Each of the objectives will include their own setup instructions with extra tokens being placed out, or markers placed on the objectives themselves, to monitor progress. Objectives could be anything from tracking down the true source of the zombie outbreak to building a weapon and ammo cache by scavenging the mall stores.

There’s options to play cooperatively with 1-4 players against an AI zombie force, or else 2-4 players can go up against a human controlled enemy.

Each player is dealt 3 characters and picks one to represent them in the world. Different characters having their own unique skills which offer an advantage against the horde.

A zombie is selected or chooses who they’ll play as. These zombies can be found on the back of the character cards and are the decomposing versions of those heroes. For the AI versions, only the passive skills are used. However, for a human controlled horde, there are a range of increasingly powerful skills available.


Gameplay consists of players moving three spaces through the mall and carrying out any number of actions as they do so. This could involve performing melee attacks on zombies in the same room, ranged attacks on zombies in adjacent rooms, collecting items from stores – once they’ve been cleared out, etc.

At the end of each turn, players perform a search by turning over their scavenge card. If the icon on the card matches the store, this will give the zombies an advantage. Once revealed, these scavenged items can be collected by the next player to visit the store, after it’s clear.

For the zombie player, they’re trying to attack the central court of the mall, break down the barricades and kill any survivors they find there. They can also kill the player characters, which will deplete the survivor count from the central courtyard.

The health and ammo mechanic in this game is unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Basically you start in good health and with 9 bullets for your ranged weapon. Ranged attacks (and some of the player character abilities) will deplete ammo. Zombie player abilities and poor melee attacks by the players can cause them to receive wounds. However, the health and ammo meter are on the same track. Should the two meet, or overtake each other, that player is dead. Either due to their wounds or because they were too badly equipped to survive. If there are survivors left in the courtyard, that player can take another player card and start again. Their old character dropping all their weapons and items in the store they’re standing for anyone else to collect.

One of the first things that really drew me to the game on Kickstarter was the ITEMeeple. These are fairly standard shaped meeple – maybe a little larger than average – but with little holes at their hands. One of the unique things about this game is that the weapons you scavenge around the mall can be equipped to your meeple. Adorable knives, swords, Uzis, mp5s, etc can be attached to your avatar as you wander around the mall. There’s also the vehicles that can be used. Either a motorcycle or a police car. You really haven’t lived until you’re riding a cute little motorcycle through a mall while brandishing a dinky chainsaw and rocket launcher.

Pros:

  • Lots of replayablity
  • Great artwork
  • Adorable game pieces

Cons:

  • Can be a lot to take in the first time
  • Good chance you may lose a zombie or two due to size
  • If you’ve got the Deluxe Edition, you may have to deal with the dog dying.

Overall: 8/10

Hurling Poop

Windjammers has been around as long as Super Metroid. Sadly, it hasn’t stood the test of time nearly as well. First released on the Neo Geo in 1994, and then again in 2010 on the WiiU Virtual Console, this Flying Disc Game (because I guess frisbee is a brand name) sees you picking one of six characters and to play a suped up pong-like.

Characters each have different power and speed, meaning they can throw the disc harder or move around faster. As rallies go on, the pace gets more swift and you find yourself sliding around at high speed to avoid letting your opponent score.

The angle you throw at can be changed by moving the stick diagonally forward before throwing. Alternatively, throwing while holding diagonally backwards will make the disc bounce up and down across the court, making it more tricky to catch. You can also perform a half circle before throwing to do a powered up special move.

Each match takes place in a different arena and each has a unique layout of scoring areas and centre obstacles. Score in a yellow zone for 3 points or red for 5 points. The center obstacles provide additional bounce points in around the net, meaning that you can bamboozle your opponent by hitting them just right.

Between some matches, you’ll get to play one of the two minigames: Dog Distance – throw your disc and have your doggo friend chase after it, while avoiding beach users; and Flying Power Disc Bowling – Knock down pins with your definitely-not-a-frisbee (I found playing as the Spanish character and holding forward and throw got a strike every time,so that’s fun /s). These are very short and simplistic and can also be accessed through the local game menu.

Windjammers, features online multiplayer, local single and multiplayer, and a wireless mode. So plenty of opportunities to bore the crap out of your friends playing this.

Like a lot of old games being ported to modern systems, and new games that want to look like they were, there’s options to play with or without scanlines, or even a CRT mode. Furthermore you can play in the original 4:3 (with or without your choice of borders to fill in the blank spaces at the edges) or a stretched out 16:9 screen ratio.

According to Wikipedia, there’s talk of a sequel coming to Switch next year. So if you really must throw digital discs at your rapidly diminishing circle of friends, you may want to hang on for that and hope for the best (I don’t really see how it could be much worse), or else invest in something like Mario Tennis Aces.

Pros:

  • Er
  • Um
  • Oh, the controls function

Cons:

  • Bland
  • Short
  • End screen is a picture of you holding a trophy and a three line congratulations message. Fucking woo!

Overall: 4/10

 

Windjammers is available now on Switch.

Legendarily Fiendish

Every now and then, a hero comes along. One hero, born to fight the hordes of evil. You probably know the drill by now. Mighty, smitey, probably not bitey human comes to wreck evil’s shit. And you, you are not that hero. You’re Bill. Say hi to Bill. Look at his evil little goatee. Marvel at that despicable widow’s peak. Stare in awe at his angry eyebrows. Yeah, you know he means business. He’s a go-getting type, ready to wipe out humanity like a baws.

The Legend of Evil as a 2D, side scrolling, tower defence game, with a pleasant pixel-art style, and a chiptune soundtrack from Springloaded Games (a fact, I only know because it’s written on the Steam page, not because I found it mentioned anywhere on their website. Still, I suppose making games is more important than rabbiting about them. Perhaps Peter Molyneux could learn a thing or two).

The wiley Bill begins his conquest of the human world with limited powers. Movement is controlled by left stick, there’s a dash on B, you can interact with towers with A, view the whole area with L, and dig with R. Later on, in certain circumstances, you get to use a summon move, with Y.

Your first task is to get a demon tower built by moving next to the glowing rune on the ground and hitting A. This brings up your a menu showing all the available demons you’ve unlocked. At first, you’ll only have access to a very basic melee unit, but as you progress you can unlock all kinds of creatures – the slow and sturdy, rock-like Lapis; the mighty, flying Sky Spear, the kind of like, but legally distinct from a beholder Coral Lights, and many more..

Over time, your towers will generate demons to fight for you. Demons will be opposed by the pitiful human forces. These wielders of sticks and stones will pose you little threat and once there bodies are broken, you can harvest their souls. Souls are the currency needed to upgrade your towers. Have them generate more souls over time, churn out demons more quickly, or create area of effect fields such as healing, slowing enemies, or protecting your horde. With your army made strong, you make progress across the map to destroy the human gate and claim victory, before moving on to the next area.

During play, you may find yourself waiting for souls to generate for your next upgrade, It’s times like this you should be searching for small, lit areas. These can be dug up to reveal coins (used for winning bonus medals in the campaign and permanent upgrades in rogue conquest mode) or yet more of those tasty tasty souls.

Gameplay is fast paced for the most part, and the difficulty curve is steep, bordering on vertical at times. With the first six or so levels of the campaign being simple affairs, to introduce mechanics, you’re suddenly thrust into levels where you’re forced to make decisions about where you will build your first tower within seconds. Choosing incorrectly can lead to very quick death. However, with practice, you can pick up what the level wants from you. Be it a quick start from a particular position, followed by demolishing an old tower and replacing with something stronger and then working on upgrades, or building ranged and melee units to support each other against a more diverse enemy.

Ultimately, I haven’t found the campaign all that fun. It often feels like there is one specific way that the game wants you to play an area, and it’s up to you to figure out exactly what the designers had in mind.

Significantly more enjoyable was the rogue conquest mode. Here you play through eight, randomly generated stages. You use a random generator to create an avatar you’re happy with (I got a little green-haired person in a witch hat, who suits me just perfectly) and head into the world. Initially, you are awarded a low-level demon, who is adapted to the biome you start in, be it forest, cliff, snow, or swamp.

As you play through each level, it’s important to keep an eye out for the glowing dig points, as getting money is vital to unlocking new demons, additional towers, power-up orbs for your troops, and abilities like additional starting souls.

Aside from the shop, you can also visit the forge between battles. Here you can attach orbs to your minions to boost their stats or give them new abilities, such as explode on death, knock-back resistance, or the ability to survive in biomes that they are not naturally adapted to. Want to take your best melee, ground fighter out on the cliffs? Give them the ability to jump, and they’ll be able to navigate safely in these battles.

Rogue conquest mode is a great way to see more of the demon types and upgrades that you’d have to play further through the campaign to get a look at otherwise. It’s a fun and interesting challenge that avoids the steep difficulty curve of the main campaign.

The Steam page makes note that the developer is planning to release more content for the game, including PVP, a map editor, a hundreds of levels long conquest mode, and more. I’ll certainly be interested to see what comes of all that.

Pros:

  • Nice graphics.
  • Pretty soundtrack
  • Very replayable rogue conquest mode

Cons:

  • Steep difficulty curve
  • Not a huge amount of content
  • Those lumberjacks can get in the sea (of fire)

Overall: 6/10

The Legend of Evil is available now on Steam and Switch

A Steaming Pile

In a recent post, Valve announced their grand plan to convert the bleeding, wounded, scabrous beast that is Steam, into a feculent puddle of decaying filth.

The post begins, ‘Recently there’s been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we’re allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we could be doing it better’. From the looks of things, the discussion took place between a parent who’s given up on parenting and would rather just be hoovering coke and an exhausted teenager.

Parent Valve: Tidy your room, there’s all this active shooter stuff everywhere and even the rats are starting to complain about the quality of trash in here. Good gravy, gay world?! This is despicable, clean it up.

Teen Valve: I don’t wanna. Cleaning up is haaaaaaaaarrrrrd.

PV: Fine, well when you drown in trash and raw sewage, don’t come crying to me.

PV: [heads off to their den to shovel charlie up their slowly collapsing nose]

‘Decision making in this space is particularly challenging’ so why decide, just shrug and watch the fees roll in from any rando with a first edition copy of Klik & Play, willing to put in the bare minimum effort, in the hopes of getting on the service.

Those games perhaps shouldn’t be being sold. Maybe they should be the demos you put together on the road to becoming a better creator, because Steam shouldn’t be your Google Docs, full of early drafts that could do with polish. Steam could, and indeed has been, a great marketplace for vetted games.

In the last few years, I’ve had to accept that bad, unfinished, asset flippy crap will be on there. That I can cope with and will willingly block/ignore them, using the new Steam functions. It’s the hate I can’t be dealing with. It’s the hate that will make me want to demand refunds on all 703 of the games I own on the service. They can undulate out of the Unity asset store, looking like a 1998 Net Yaroze release, leaking slime and pus, shimmy up my new release list, and vomit in my face all they want, because making a bad game is far more noble than putting effort, style and polish into pixelated hate speech.

‘[W]e’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling’. And there it is. Steam saw its house on fire, made a coffee, pulled up a chair, said ‘This is fine’, and just sat there, watching its world burn.

‘[T]he games we allow onto the Store will not be a reflection of Valve’s values’. Oh, come now, that’s not true. They represent money. Money has value, and that value will roll into their coffers. Money they can use for truck-loads more ethically dubious, uncut, relevance powder.

‘We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you’re not interested in’. Isn’t that a simple solution? Isn’t that the best way? Don’t fancy that game about killing the gays or the essjaydubyas or the school kids? Just flick that off. You won’t have to see it. You can hide in your little bubble (ya snowflake). Let these settings help you make a safe space.

Sure, why bother setting an example. Who cares about having any kind of morals or principles. Those things are for whiney babbies who can’t handle real life, where there are no safe spaces.

Jane, all this sounds like loony lefty cerrrrserrrsrrrrrrrp. That’s because it is. As a member of the trans community, who have been attacked repeatedly and with more bile, by bigots of every flavour, and with increasing frequency in the last few years, it’s become clear that sometimes you just have to say no to hateful bullshit. No platform for you you far-right arsehead. No hosting your talk, you hateful exclusionist, wearing the mask of radical feminism. No show for you, you racist fuck. And so on. And so on.

But that makes you just as much a fascist as them! Short answer, you’re wrong. Long answer, so what. If censorship of this kind means that hatred of people of colour, disabled, neuro-diverse, queer, bi, pan, lesbian, gay, trans, non-binary, aces, aeros, demis, etc aren’t exposed to hate in gaming, art, or in their day-to-day lives, because some rando took their principles from wrong-headed games or hate groups, or miscellaneous bigots, then I’m glad. It really doesn’t hurt to put more love and support into the world, but what we’ve seen each time Valve takes a step back on Steam is blatant homophobia, racism, and edgy dickhead simulators (I’m looking at you Active Shooter and Gay World).

If Valve ran a supermarket, you could take a shit, put it in a sandwich bag and sell it in their store. Don’t like seeing bags of Bristol type 6 human waste on the shelves? You can put these blinkers on. All our cereal has glass in it. Don’t worry kids, it turns the milk bloody when you bite into it. How about some of that early access bacon? The dev paid their money and they assure us that it’s still coming out. The trotters you tried out a few months back showed a lot of potential. Meanwhile, in a forgotten shed somewhere in Dorset, racist, homophobic flies are the only devs left on the stinking, green paste that was Baconator Reckoning Revengence. They’ve added new maggots, a rape scene and streamlined the overall pig, but it’s still a rotting corpse.

In any other market place, the buyers check the quality of the product, see if it’s something they actually want to sell, that doesn’t make their business look like it supports hate groups, and make arrangements to bring it to market. What Valve are proposing at the moment is not a shop, it’s a cesspit. Anyone can dump a load in there, and if people want to dive in to and have a swim around in, they’re welcome. Grab a net, hope for something shiny and enjoyable, try not to drown in the burning piss and diarrhoea milkshake.

If anything, this news has made me more grateful for GOG Connect. I’ve been slowly reclaiming games I own on Steam over at GOG since the service launched. I’m very grateful I won’t have to pay for some of those games again and it makes me much more inclined to make future purchases there than fishing them out of the steaming poo puddle.

itch.io creator, Leaf shared the following on twitter:

See, it’s possible to take a stance against hate and intolerance and still be a successful platform. I hope that all this Steam chaos will make consumers sit up and question whether it’s a storefront that they feel comfortable aligning themselves with, or supporting.

It’s Valve’s business, they can do what they want, they’re free to speak, but if that’s the kind of place it wants to be, I’m not going to spend my money there anymore and I’m not going to listen to them.

E3 2018 Hype Train

Choo choo. All aboard the hype train.

It’s nearly time for E3. So let’s have a look at all the awesome things that we can get overly excited about, and start getting our pre-orders in for this stuff.

Ringo Starr [narrating]: “Oh no, there’s been a terrible accident. The hype train’s derailed and smashed into the Sodor nuclear power plant.”

Janeiac: That doesn’t seem good Ringo. Should we call someone?

RS: It’s too late Janey. Look there.

Kevan Brighting [narrating]: Ringo was right. As Janeiac looked, she saw Sir Topam Hatt’s face start to blister and melt off as he screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. And then his eyes melted too.

KB: It was absolutely horrific. Probably most horrifying thing she’d ever seen, and she’d once walked in on her mother having sex with a hairy pot dealer when she was 12. Sometimes she still had a memory of that monumentally hairy set of bouncing buttocks. It was not a visual memory, but was still scarred into her mind.

KB: Janeiac wondered if this was perhaps more tasteless advertising from the people that brought you the dismembered corpse that came with Dead Island. She felt deep in the very core of her being that somehow, all of this must have something to do with the E3 article that she’d planned to write.

Richard Ridings [narrating]: It is pay day!

J: What are you doing here?

RR: There are unspeakable horrors unfurling. It seemed appropriate. Also, I had to get out of that dungeon, the yoghurt was starting to go off and it smelled worse than a bile demon’s foreskin after a week of humping a handful of its own faeces.

RS: I think we’re losing track of this whole E3 thing.

Morgan Freeman [narrating]: They were, in fact, losing track of the whole E3 thing. People were supposed to be getting excited about the latest electrical wizardry, but sadly, everyone was too distracted by the fact that, Thomas was on fire, nuclear waste was turning biological matter to cancerous soup, and Richard Ridings had forced me to think about a bile demon’s foreskin.

RS: At that moment, Spencer pulled up and expressed his disappointment in the assembled narrators.

RR: A tory has entered your dungeon!

Spencer: I’m very disappointed in all of you assembled narrators.

J: Oh, do fornicate off, you David Cameron looking twunt.

RS: Spencer had to admit that he did rather look like David Cameron. Right up until the meteor fell from the sky and turned him into sheet metal.

All: [4.27 minutes of riotous laughing]

MF: Such laughter in the face of a world falling to pieces was a much needed tonic. Everything had gotten rather dark of late in the world and laughter was really all anyone had left in the face of utter unpleasantness.

Edward Norton [narrating]: I never felt so alive as when the earth began to spew boiling lava that pushed up the train tracks, causing Gordon and Percy to go flying at high speed into the air. The whole world was tearing itself apart and I couldn’t help but notice Reggie Fils-Aimé, sitting on his horde of ill-gotten Amiibo and wrapping gaffer tape around his head like a discount balaclava, while laugh-crying and bleeding from a small graze on his knee, which he got while running too fast with an untied shoe lace.

J: Wait a minute!

RS: Said Janeiac.

J: Shush you.

KB: Ringo had been suitably chastised by Jane…

J: and you

RR: [laughs evilly]

J: [glares at the assembled narrators]

Narrators: [uncomfortable silence and awkward shuffling]

Does anyone have any information about E3?

Andrea Libman [Pinkie Pie voice]: I don’t!

J: Oh, hey Pinkie.

AL: Actually, I’m Andrea Libman.

J: Sorry, it was because you did the voice.

AL: I suppose that’s fair. I do do other voices though, you know.

J: I did know that. You’re a very talented voice actor.

AL: Thanks.

KB: Somewhere in the distance, Annie and Clarabel exploded into a billion splinters, which flew through the air and fell around the duck pond like a rain of needles.

J: So, let’s get this straight. None of us have any information about E3, or any idea about what’s coming.

[silence… apart from the sound of all the fires and screaming and exploding and general awfulness]

J: Right, well, thank you everyone. This has been fascinating but I’m heading home.

AL: Wait, I have a thing!

J: You do?

AL: Pretty sure we’re going to see more of that Yoshi game from Nintendo.

J: That’s a fair guess.

RB: Jane felt an amazing sense of relief at hearing at least one thought on what might be appearing at E3. This was because she kind of liked the idea of writing about games but didn’t really have time to do proper research. Or rather she did, but she seemed to prefer oddly written improvisational pieces to actual journalism.

J: Hey, I’m not against journalism. I just prefer to get hands on before I write about games and stuff.

[distorted voice of Jigsaw]: Hello narrators. I want to play a game.

J: Not right now Jigsaw.

[Billy the puppet dejectedly rides his tricycle away, a single tear running down his cheek]

[Fade to black.]

[closing title card, overlaid with some visual scratches and picture jumping, to imply old timey black and white film]: fine

[Fade out]

[Fade in]

[Title card is on fire]: …this is fine.

So there you have it folks, all the good good E3 news you could want ahead of next week’s big event.