So for this week I didn’t get around to completing a game as I’m working on Twixel too much, but I did manage to fit a bit of time in for playing the Evolve Alpha by Turtle Rock Studios and 2K Games. If you want to take a look at my thoughts on the alpha, then please by all means follow the link below:
and to update you all on the progress of Twixel, I’ve just recently sent out a second test copy to testers, so I hope to hear feedback in the near future. I’ve changed the font used in most of the game, and have also made 4 additional levels that will be completely random. It’s all exciting and scary at the same time, so much so that I’m pretty sure I’m going to miss my release date unfortunately, but I’ll hammer on regardless.
So recently I’ve been extremely busy with making my game, as it’s due to be released on the 18th of November. These are scary times for me, but in the interim, I managed to fit in some playtime of Driveclub for the PS4. To read the review, head on over to GamrReview at my link below:
A lot of people don’t like the review and the score I gave it, but I stand by everything I wrote. At the end of the day, Driveclub was not a good game for me, despite how excited I was to play it since it was first announced in 2013.
Regardless, I’ll be posting some updates soon on where to find my game online,
So here we are at the final episode. It’s taken a while (7 hours so far), but its been worth it to see Clementine’s story evolve throughout the course of the Season.
So here we are. After 4 episodes of The Walking Dead Season 2 we’re finally here, the penultimate conclusion of what will happen with the group and Clementine herself. Given the insanity of what happened at the end of the last episode (Rebecca being shot in the head due to turning into a zombie) and all out war happening between the Russians and our group, I was excited and interested of what would come of everyone, expecting the series to conclude with Clementine by herself again.
Anyway, back to the start of the episode, where the consequences of the firefight are starting to play out. Luke gets injured and a few Russians die, with Jane making a return as she heard the guns going off and felt obliged to help. I was thankful of this conclusion as I was expecting the firefight to be a cop-out for the writers to kill off a bunch of characters easily without having to write them away. Regardless, once it’s over we take the Russian gentleman we stole the medicine from as hostage and tell him to direct us to his place with lots of food, and so the group embark on walking for hours to reach his safe, secret location. This all felt a bit strange considering we could all see a city from where we were standing in the last episode, yet no one suggested we go there.
Choices are big and heavy in this final episode, with everyones sanity and lives on the line with every choice that you’re given. It doesn’t help that there’s a separation in the group forming, making every choice all the more important.
During the hike, it’s determined that it’s too far to walk in one day, so the group takes a break in a generator sub station, ensuring they’re fenced in and can sleep easy for the night away from walkers. It’s here we start to see different sides to the characters, with Kenny being an emotional angry wreck like always, but being extremely protective of the baby, Jane being a loner that admits to liking luke and eventually joining the circle, and the others having a laugh and drinking. It was a nice moment, one which allowed everyone to loosen up for one night, joking about sex and things they done when they were younger, with Luke commenting how its his birthday. It was nice, but couldn’t last for long as the writers needed to cause some tension in the group, with Kenny getting annoyed at others for helping the Russian feel welcome to the group.
In the morning the group sets out for the house, upon which they come across some walkers as they’re about to cross a frozen lake. It’s here you come across your first big death of the episode, with Luke falling into the lake after bonnie says for Clementine to help him. His deathly stare underwater was pretty gruesome, and made sense for this death to happen after the warm campfire and stories that were told the night before, so I should have seen it coming in hindsight. This death causes a lot of tension in the group, with Kenny’s temper becoming all the more aggressive towards the Russian, and in turn causing the rest of the group to fear him. It doesn’t look good for everyone, but at least there’s hope: a car.
Emotions are high in this pen-ultimate episode, with everyone questioning everyone else’s decisions. Here we have Jane bereaving the loss of Luke after he died in the lake.
Kenny eventually gets the car working, but not before we see even more tensions in the group, with the group seemingly becoming divided in two. Jane and Kenny with the baby (AJ for Alvin Junior) on one side, with Bonnie, Russian man and Mike on the other. During the night when everyone’s asleep you go outside to see what’s disturbing your sleep, only to find Bonnie, Arvo and Mike trying to escape with all of the supplies. I held them at gunpoint, but gave in and let them go, only to get shot by Arvo. From the looks of it, you were always going to be shot by Arvo, you were just given the illusion of choice. After waking up in the car with Kenny and Jane (plus AJ), you’re told that they didn’t take the car and that the bullet passed straight through Clementine, so she’ll be fine. It’s in here you still see tensions within the group, with Kenny and Jane bickering and shouting at each other over disagreements as to where to go with the car. Eventually, you come across a pile up of cars, and in the chaos of walkers coming over whilst Kenny explored, the group is split up with a crashed car and no where to run. At this point, you’ll take control of Clementine and will be tasked with walking through woods during a blizzard, meaning you can barely see 5 metres ahead, so avoiding zombies is best. This whole part was made to make sure the player felt hopeless, that they’re bound to die here with the snow and zombies both freezing and killing Clementine.
Eventually, you find Kenny at a service station, and after a bit of time Jane returns, without AJ. Throughout the whole episode Jane has always talked of getting rid of the baby, which may seem heartless, but it’s a logical choice considering the group has no food and doesn’t know where to go, so at the moment Kenny doesn’t see a baby, he flips, starting a massive fight between Kenny and Jane. You try to get involved but it’s hopeless, with the two adults fighting to the death it seems. You’re finally given one final choice in the game: To shoot Kenny (who’s about to kill Jane) or to look away. No matter the choice, it seems Kenny will always die, even though I personally chose to shoot him due to how much of a risk he was to everyone’s continued survival. He tells me with his dying breath that I made the right choice, and that I must survive. It was a sad farewell to an otherwise likeable character, but when the game constantly gets you thinking about survival, he wasn’t the best of people to have along for the ride. We find the baby in a car, to which Jane said she done it so we could see Kenny’s true side, to ensure we made the right decision. I forgave her and so we walked on back to the superstore we were in Episode 3, where supplies are found and a new group of people are met. So concludes the season.
Possible one of the hardest (or easiest if you’re cold hearted like me) decisions of the show so far, choosing between a reliable and intelligent character and one you’ve known for a while feels like more of a decision over logic or heart rather than who’s the better character, with Kenny being heart for how long you’ve know him, and Jane being the intelligent survival choice.
Edit: Upon reading up on the possible alternate endings, I’ve found that actually, the game differs hugely in what happens. Unlike the first season of The Walking Dead which would always end the same way with Lee dying and Clementine walking alone, the second season allows either Kenny or Jane to live, and then proceeds to either go back to the store (from Episode 3) with Jane or to proceed on to Wellington with Kenny. This seems insane considering how many different choices players are going to make, and can become a logistical nightmare for the team in the third season.
I enjoyed my time overall for the whole game eventually. What started quite weak quickly turned into a proper decision making game, one where I thought my decisions were irrelevant until they actually started having a lot of weight behind them. Looking around online, it seems that there are so many possibilities for the third season, meaning I can’t believe how open this season was, for the players and the characters in the story. I look forward to The Walking Dead Season 3 now, which surprises me given how much I wasn’t enjoying this season at the start. These final few episodes really turned it around for me. I’d hugely recommend this season to anyone that has played season one, and would recommend they get through the first few episodes before truly making a verdict on whether they liked the game or not, as I was surely turned around by the end.
With Episode 3 leaving on a high point in my books, ensuring I felt a little more for the characters and was genuinely interested in where they would go, I was looking forward to playing episode 4, will it suffice to my expectations?
After enjoying Episode 3 last week, I was looking forward to getting my teeth into episode 4, with the shit storm 3 left us with. For those of you who haven’t played, Episode 3 finished with the group managing to escape from the superstore and start making their way through the hoard of zombies disguised as zombies themselves with Zombie guts all over them. You finally come across radia? who has been bitten by a zombie, and its your choice whether to cut her arm off or to kill the zombie biting her. As I’ve been playing this season through as fairly heartless and logical, I went for her arm, ensuring she wouldn’t get infected and would at least live to see another day.
Episode 4 begins with telling you whether your decision was meaningless and stupid regardless, just to ensure you have fights and tension later on with the rest of the survivors. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, we all knew that radia couldn’t survive amongst the hoard whilst either bitten or bleeding profusely, but it was how they treated and made Kenny act afterwards that truly was annoying. He becomes a mess, blaming it all on yourself (Clementine), and causes tension in the group where there should be none. It felt extremely contrived, which I suppose is a given at this point considering some of the flaws in the plot so far, but it still felt weird to have something so logically correct be reduced to a problem later on purely for story-tellings point.
The opening of episode 4 takes off right where the action got started in episode 3, ensuring players are able to go through one of the most daunting experiences of the season so far. Amongst all of the zombies, people break down, and tensions are high, ensuring the start of the episode has the most action of the series so far.
Once the zombie hoard is done, it’s then a case of reuniting with the group whilst Rebecca struggles with her labour. This is where you’ll get the chance to get to know a fairly unknown character in the series so far: Jane. Jane is a master when it comes to killing zombies and surviving, meaning she’s fantastic for clementine to be hanging around to learn more survival skills. Jane will teach you a few killing techniques, like kicking a zombies leg then stabbing them in the back of the head with a screwdriver to get the job done. You’ll spend 20 minutes going around a trailer park killing zombies with Jane at your side, trying to find the others. Eventually, you’ll come across Luke and Sarah, who are held up by zombies covering a trailer. You manage to rescue them, but its here that you’ll have the option to save or kill Sarah, who seems to have lost her mind and cannot physically move when the zombies are coming. I managed to save her, but it seems like either way, she was going to die, with the player having no ability to change this outcome. You aren’t applauded for saving her, and if anything are actually told you made the wrong decision later on.
Once you’re back at the camp, the Rebecca is definitely in labour, and so the group will have to find a safe place for her to have the baby. I decided to team up with Jane again, given how useful she is and how found of her character I was becoming. Going with her we found a man that we robbed for his drugs, whilst also finding a whole store and gift shop on a second floor, ensuring zombies wouldn’t be able to get to us. It was during this sequence that we started to see some of the flaws in Jane’s character, with her becoming quite angry and a bit unpredictable at the touch of a button. Clementine was then tasked with finding the others and telling them of the store, which gave me a chance to learn a bit more about everyone else in the group. A bit of playing was done, and we found a jacket which would come in handy for Rebecca during the childbirth, but nothing story wise happened, it was all more for character building, something that makes me sceptical as it could only mean these characters are going to be killed so soon after I get to know them.
Rebecca manages to finally have her baby, much to the delight of Kenny, who becomes somewhat weird in his maternal instinct towards this newborn. The baby is certainly going to come with his own challenges for the group.
Finally, the hoard comes, and after some action of holding the zombies back, Rebecca finally manages to have her baby. In doing so, the group seems to relax a little, but they’re not out of the woods yet, with many having not eaten in days, and Rebecca getting weaker all the time. The group decides to move out, at which point they’re greeted by the gentleman we robbed earlier, who’s brought with him a group of russian gangsters that all have guns pointing to our heads. The situation gets a little out of hand, with Rebecca zombifying by the minute, Clementine is given the decision to kill her or shout for help. Yet again I done the logical thing which was to shoot her, which then ended the episode with gunfire going off from all sides. I can’t help but feel that this was only written into the episode to ensure most people died out before the final episode, as the group was fairly large,
The episode overall was alright, I enjoyed the character building moments that allowed clementine to learn more skills but to also think on who she can and can’t trust in the group, and what she should do if worst comes to worse. I don’t feel this one was as strong as the previous one, but it certainly sets the series up for a nice finale. One thing kept bugging me though through my playthrough, was on how I didn’t really care about the character too much and was making more logical decisions than emotional ones. I can’t help but think that in the first season all the group you joined up with were in the same situation, you had been together through the start of the walkers and were a tight knit group, making peoples deaths all the more emotional. In this season Clementine is introduced to a group of strangers that already know each other: they’ve been through their hardships and have trust in one another. The entire season so far has just made me feel like an outsider, not thinking about the group and constantly thinking about myself, something the writers may have realised and worried about in the games development. I dunno, I’m just throwing that out there as it just keeps bugging me that I don’t have the same connections to characters as before. I suppose we’ll see next week how things pan out.
With the previous episode not getting off on the right foot for me due to (in my opinion) not much happening, I was looking forward to Episode 3 to see if Telltale games have managed to better themselves at character building and the circumstances around said characters would make for better story telling and character progression.
With Episode 2 of the second season of Walking Dead not really gripping me, I was looking forward to jumping into episode 3 to see what would become of the group of characters being slaves in a supermarket, considering how angry and psychotic one of the characters behaved at the end of the last episode. This was certainly going to be a better episode if not purely for the fact the season has to make a lot of plot points to tie it all up nicely within the next 2 episodes, so with more characters, more deaths and more decisions, I was hoping for the best.
The episode starts out by introducing you to a few new characters at a new place: a superstore that has been barricaded and held up. We’re told the group currently occupying the place has done such a good job of holding up that they have electricity, guns, water and are even starting to grow their own food to ensure they constantly have a food source once the rations run out. The new characters you meet are just as diverse as the rest of the characters you’ve met so far, with Reggie being a kind and sincere gentleman (who is in charge of ensuring you don’t cause a ruckus and are introduced to others safely), Mike being a harsh but up front kind of guy, and Jane being a loner that seems to have survived by herself quite well before being captured and turned into a slave. (we are told she was found with zombie guts and blood all over her, meaning she knows that this is one way to hide from zombies from our past experience in the first season). The group is told to get an early nights sleep as they’ll be working around the clock tomorrow.
The group are held up and constantly watched by their superiors, ensuring that they don’t do anything out of line. It’s out here in the courtyard that you’ll actually have time to make your plans to escape, with Clementine and her small physique being put to good use in sneaking and gathering resources.
On your first day of working you’re introduced to more characters that work throughout the superstore, and are even made to work for a lot of it, refilling ammo, cutting branches etc. to please Carver, the brains behind this operation. Throughout all of it you’re told this is for the best, to ensure you continue to survive and to ensure that everyone trusts each other after your group escaped once before. Throughout all of this, Carver takes Clementine aside and speaks to her one to one, asking her what it’s like to be raised in a world like this and also saying that him and her are alike, that they’re strong and need to do what has to be done in order to survive, unlike the others. It was a nice moment, one which showed a bit more of Clementines bad side which we rarely see. She may act nice, but she has to be strong in order to continue living in this hellish world.
The “storm” that’s fast approaching is in fact a massive amount of zombies that are invading the superstore. Using this storm to their advantage, the group decide they’ll escape among the chaos, a wise decision but one with many troubles.
After a few days of hard work, the group work on a plan to escape this “prison” by getting a walkie talkie to Luke, who managed to never get captured in the first place, and activating all of the speakers outside the supermarket to attract the hoards, ensuring their escape is masked even more. With Clementine being the smallest character, you’re kind of forced into doing most of this work for the team yourself, a task which is annoying, but allows the rest of the characters quality time to start up arguments on how they should proceed. Nick is definitely quiet in this episode, which may be because many players may have had him killed in the last episode, meaning the writers of this episode couldn’t factor him in through fear of many players not having him to begin with.
Once all is in place, the final day is upon your group, all thats left now is to proceed with the plan. As Clementine you manage to sneak into the managers office, start up the microphone, and set about attracting the hoards of zombies to the building. It’s here that your group will be stopped by Carter at gun point, to which Clementine manages to dissolve the situation by jumping on him and disabling him. What follows next is pretty gruesome, but needed in progressing Clementines story and narrative for future episodes: she watches as Kenny beats Carver with a crowbar. You can choose to walk away from this, but I felt it was best if Clementine saw this, to ensure she was strong for the future episodes.
Decisions are reasonably big in this episode, with their consequences up front and deep. Here, you’re given the choice to kill the zombie, or cut Sarita’s arm off. I made the latter decision myself to ensure she survived (I won’t know if she did or not until the next episode).
Overall the Episode was a lot more interesting than the previous one, with decisions left and right, all making me question what I actually wanted to do. There were many different groups of people making me choose between them, and I never knew the right thing to do. This episode was a perfect example of how The Walking Dead works best, with many different factors making your decisions all the more important, but with little time to make those said decisions. I found myself constantly regretting any decision I made the second I made it, with was a fantastic feeling from any game. If the last two episodes play out in any way like this one, then I’ll be happy and would have had a fulfilling and fantastic experience. The tension is building on Clementines journey north, and I for one and happy to see where this is going.
Given how the last episode ended, with Clementine becoming a part of another group, big expectations are sure to come about for this next episode, with more personalities to explore and learn as this episode plays out.
After playing through Episode 1 of The Walking Dead’s new season, It was time to jump straight into episode 2 to ensure I got to know my new group all the more better than our initial encounter. I wouldn’t recommend playing The Walking Dead straight through from start to finish, but playing a day between each episode seems to be the best experience.
The episode starts out from the offset with your decision from the previous episode taking full effect. You’re being chased down with your choice of character that you saved whilst zombies make their way towards you. Clementine and Nick (I saved the guy that hadn’t been bitten), manage to find a shack that they can hold up in, and so starts the next 2 hours of character building, where not much actually happens in the scheme of losing characters or making big decisions, but instead you get a bit more intimacy in this new and weird group you’re now a part of.
Zombies as always are still a part of The Walking Dead, but they’re more of a background prop rather than the core premise behind the game. Where the real terror lies is in the people still alive, and how they interact with one another when the world around them has fallen apart.
Eventually, you and Nick manage to get away from the shelter of this little hut, but are soon thrown into another danger: another group of survivors that are after the group you’re currently with for reasons unknown. So starts your adventure of getting away from the shelter of the house you’ve been staying in, where you now have to go on the run from these maniacs. It was this part of the episode where I most felt that the group, for all its flaws and weaknesses, was annoying in the way in which they both didn’t trust Clementine, but also in the way in which they went about doing everything. It felt like their arguments were contrived, senseless, and made no sense in the grand scheme of the narrative. In Season 1 of the walking dead you’d have Kenny constantly cause tension in the group through his worry for his own son Duck, which was understandable for any father in the apocalypse, but in Season 2, all arguments just seem trivial in comparison.
There will be some moments where things start to look a little rough for the group, but as always you know things will turn out OK in these early episodes so that you can grow accustomed to the characters to ensure the story becomes even more devastating when the game throws them away.
Your group will eventually make their way to a ski resort, a place which seems to have a plethora of food, electricity and safety in an otherwise hellish world. It’s here that you’ll meet an old friend from the original season: Kenny. Kenny has seemingly managed to survive in this world, even after losing his whole family, managing to get a new family in the process. It’s himself that will introduce Clementine to the group at the ski lodge, and in turn bring up reminders of the past by asking about Lee and explaining a little about himself. It was nice to see a familiar face after seeing so much hostility from this new group of people, and was definitely one of the highlights of the episode, ensuring I look forward to seeing Kenny more in the next few episodes.
The rather mundane episode comes to a climatic end when the rival group manages to catch up to the ski resort, saving everyone from a zombie hoard, but in the process taking everyone hostage. It’s in these moments that you’ll see the most death of the episode, with plot pieces being set up to ensure that players have to be put on the spot in their decision making, leading me to regret the choice I had made seconds after making it.
There a few moments in this episode where you’ll need to scout the environment for everyone else to ensure the path ahead is safe, or to ensure the rival group aren’t after you. It’s in these moments that you see how small the area is that this episode takes place in, losing some of the gravitas that the dialogue gives to the groups current predicament.
Overall, The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 2 felt quite contrived in the grand scheme of things, with characters worries feeling mundane compared to past predicaments and their current situation. It’s definitely a far cry from the episode 2 of the previous season, with that one feeling more of a one off than an actual progression of the narrative, something Season 2 Episode 2 ensures not to repeat. In continuing to progress the story rather than have a one off episode, everything ends up coming off very obtuse, with situations lacking in substance and arguments feeling contrived, to the point that characters act outside of their usual selves just to make a plot point to further the narrative at a later time. I’m definitely interested in where this season will go, but so far I haven’t been impressed compared to how ground breaking the original was on so many levels.
This week I took a look at The Sims 4 by EA, the latest in their long line of Sims sequels. I had mixed feelings about it, and even disliked a lot of the changes that had been made, but read the review to find out my true feelings.
As for Twixel, this week I’ve been working on a new touch method for iOS and Android, and have been implementing a new credits screen. I’m also hoping to have a trailer and poster ready for next weeks Eurogamer, considering it would have been a year since I attended it last. I’ll be writing up quite a few articles for Eurogamer next week, so look out over at GamrReview.com to see everything I write.
Having followed Clementine from Season 1 of The Walking Dead, Season 2 should expand on her story further, allowing us to grow more attached to this character, and the personalities that surround her.
I loved The Walking Dead Season 1. It was a masterclass in how to narrate a game, and how to build a world to make you feel that your decisions and your progress in the game actually shaped and formed the world you encompassed. Many agreed, with the original winning many awards and having a hand in Telltale games being able to grab franchises such as Borderlands and Game of Thrones, ensuring their dominance of the story telling adventure game genre was theirs and theirs alone. Season 2 is a return to their routes, the series that got them on the map, and is certainly one of the most anticipated games to release for a while.
Christa and Omid are the only survivors you’ll recognise from the first season of The Walking Dead, but be warned, you won’t be with them for long, as Telltale really want to start from scratch again in this Season it seems.
The game starts you out from the offset as clementine, you won’t be controlling anyone else this season, so you best get used to being a small child in this frightening and gruesome world. You’re with two members of the old party from the first season, and things seem to be going fine, until events take a turn for the worse. Suddenly, Clementines alone and having to fend for herself, and its not long until you come across a camp with a lonely dog who seems both cautious of you, but also helpful in trying to get a common goal for the two of you: food. It’s here that I found one of my first annoyances of the game: the lack of choice in your decisions. Once you manage to find food for the pair of you to eat, you get the decision of whether to share your food with the dog or not, to which I chose to, as no one in their right mind would want to anger an animal when they’re alone and hungry. To my surprise, the dog decides to attack Clementine, and so begins a QTE to ensure you manager to survive this ordeal. Now, this emotive sequence of helping a dog for it to suddenly turn on you definitely tugged at the heart strings, especially when you have the choice on whether to put it out of its misery or not, but it was the lack of decisiveness in my decision that annoyed me. It was apparent as soon as I made the decision about feeding the dog or not that I actually never had a decision to begin with, with the game just giving me the illusion of choice rather than actually giving me a decision to make. The Walking Dead Season 2 has a narrative it wishes to fulfil, and player choice will not play a part in it.
Graphics haven’t changed much since the first season, with most of the world looking graphically similar. There are times when the lighting looks better, but that may be myself finding differences where there are none. I suppose you’re not here for the graphics though, and are here for the story right?
The story continues with Clementine being found by a group of survivors who manage to save her from a bunch of walkers, to then find she’s bitten and believe it’s from an infected. It’s here Clementine becomes a true player in the game rather than being mummy-coddled, with her arm infected and no one willing to help her until the morning, she must fend for herself and fix it herself to stop the wound from getting infected and potentially dying as a result. You’ll sneak around the groups house, and find the supplies needed to fix yourself up before heading back to the shed they locked you in in order to fix your wounded arm. The next scene where you have to stitch Clementines wound together was gruesome, but necessary in order for players to realise that Clementine is her own person now and can fend for herself.
Sneaking around a house isn’t the best way to tell a story, but it worked well in allowing players to hear what other characters thought of Clementine if they felt inclined to eavesdrop.
Like previous Walking Dead Episodes in Season 1, you’re given a cliff hanger to finish the episode on, with one big decision on who lives and who dies. I won’t say who I decided on, but it seems like this decision too wasn’t in my hands and was going to be the same regardless of who I chose. It all felt contrived and annoyingly so, like this wasn’t my story anymore and instead I was just a pawn in the writers Chess board.
Clementine will spend a lot of time alone in this episode, but the walking dead thrives on character interaction and reminding players that the walkers aren’t the evil things in this world, but people are. Playing a lonely child moves away from this philosophy, which is refreshing, but not great narratively.
I look forward to getting tucked into the second episode, but am a bit worried as to the direction this season is taking. I’m not a huge fan of the lack of decisions I have (they all feel contrived so far, like I don’t actually have a say, a far cry from the originals ability to make you feel that everything was your fault), but I feel the story may get better with all the new characters that its introduced.
I’ll review each episode individually so we can see how my mood changes as the season goes on.
So last week I reviewed a copy of Back to Bed that I managed to get on iOS. It was a nifty game, one that constantly reminded me of Monument Valley, a game I absolutely adored.
This week I’ve been working on changing the main menu colours of my game to ensure that users on mobile can actually see the text. To say that grey text on a black background doesn’t work on mobiles in an understatement.
Entwined takes simplicity in graphics to a whole new level, with some objects in the world being barely recognisable compared to what you would expect. This doesn’t detract from the games aesthetics in anyway though, with the whole game looking sharp, precise and abstract.
Having recently purchased a PS4, I decided that I needed to see some of the games that were available for it. Looking around on the PSN Store I found Entwined, a game I recall seeing at the E3 press conference just a few months ago. The game has a similar mechanic not unlike my own where players control two characters on screen at once ensuring that they’re pushed to the limits in getting the hang of controlling two independent characters. The game was only £6.49, and cross compatible on PS3, PS Vita and PS4, so I decided to take the plunge, as I recall the game was made by a bunch of University students that I can’t help but feel aren’t too dis-similar to myself, and at the end of the day, £6.49 for me is nothing, but that could make the world of difference to the team over at Pixelopus.
Levels are varied but keep the same gameplay mechanics as well as similar patterns to avoid/collect in the gates. This leads to a game that feels very repetitive after spending only 15 minutes with it, meaning some players may have difficulty seeing Entwined through to the end.
The game entails taking control of both a orange fish and a blue bird, both of which could be considered opposites in the sense of one is underwater, the other is in the sky, one is orange, with its opposing colour being blue. You control both the fish and the bird by moving the analogue sticks on the controller around the screen, each analogue stick corresponds to a character, the left is the fish, the right in the bird. Both characters have their own portion of the screen by which they’re meant to collect orbs and go through “gates” in the correct order to get their own meters up (found at the top of the screen). Once both characters have their respective meters up, they’ll then be able to attempt to combine into one being. I say attempt, as you’ll need to fly through a few more gates in order to successfully combine the character, failure to do so will result in continuing to replay the level until you get the meters full again.
The Fish and Bird are all that is used in Entwined, which is fantastic given that it constantly hammers on the subject of opposites coming together to make a truly unique and fantastic combination.
There are two game modes to play in Entwined: Story and Challenge. Story encompasses playing through many different themed levels, without much story to actually go on. Every stage starts and finishes in exactly the same way, with no narration or any cinematics to actually point you in a direction by which to then make the story up for yourself. This isn’t a bad thing per-se, but means that the story isn’t actually a story at all, and is more of a campaign than an actual narrative. The challenge mode is more akin to something you’d find on a mobile phone, with the same levels that you played on story coming back, but this time endless and score based rather than the amount you fill your meter up by. I found this mode extremely hard, with your characters only being allowed 3 mistakes before its game over and you have to start the challenge again. It’s good for a challenge (I suppose the mode does what it says on the tin), but isn’t so great that I’d spend hours trying to do the same level over and over again.
Each level is never ending, so Entwined could be likened to a mobile game, but where its mechanics may be simple, its graphics and art are certainly a step beyond what mobile can do at the moment. The art style has a vision, and as much as the geometry of characters and the environment look abstract in its uses of squares and circles to create objects, it all looks so polished and so post-processing heavy that you know this couldn’t be done on anything weaker than a dedicated games console.
The Dragon is what your fish and bird will become at the end of every levels, allowing you to fly around collecting both orange and bus orbs until you’ve filled your meter at the top of the screen. Once this is done you’ll be able to draw a pattern with your wings, which then finishes the level. It’s creative, I’ll give the game that, but feels a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things.
The music and sound track were absolutely fantastic, with notes carefully being played as you progress through gates. Missing gates or orbs will result in the soundtrack glitching for a second, which is brilliant for portraying the mistake you just made. Each environment had it’s own sound and aesthetic, meaning that you never really got bored as you explored these new environments, something which sounds crazy considering how basic some of the geometry looks.
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Entwined. I’m not sure if it’s completely great value for £6.49 considering how little gameplay there is and how often levels/assets are reused, but I can’t help but support my fellow indie developers, especially ones that managed to get up on the E3 stage last year and show off their creation to the world with such confidence it made me jealous and more motivated to pursue my own games design. By all means purchase Entwined when it’s on sale for £3 or below, but be warned if you spend more, it feels like a mobile game through and through.
The font choice here is fantastic for portraying the weirdness and unique setting Year Walk evokes.
Having had Year Walk on my iPad for over a year, I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about with this adventure/puzzle game many were saying was both revolutionary for the iPad/iPhone, but also scary as fuck.
You start the game out like most indie titles and games nowadays – without no context on where you are, what you’re doing, and what you should be doing. This turns out (as I’ve said many times before) to be an extremely successful method in getting users entranced and involved with your game, with players touching the screen and experimenting with the game, causing them to in turn become more hooked as they play on. Year Walk is no different, and since it’s also a puzzle game you’ll be needing your notepad ready, as anything you come across in the game could be classed as a clue to use in the future, or an ordinary object.
Get used to the snow, you’ll be seeing a lot of it throughout your time in Year Walk
You navigate the land of Sweden (where this game is based) by swiping the screen left and right to move on one “plane”, coming across entrances to places every now and then allowing you to swipe backwards or forwards to progress. It doesn’t take long until you’ve fully explored the land Year Walk has to offer, but its in all the little details and narration that you’ll find along the way which’ll make this world slowly become more filled out.
Year Walking is the practice some people used to partake in, the game tells you at the start, where they would wonder through woods and forests eating and surviving on nothing to eventually come to the conclusion they could see into the past or future. Year Walk certainly makes you do a lot of exploring, and lives up to its name by making you find every single nook and cranny this forest has to offer. You could explore for 15 minutes and come across nothing, but suddenly, you take a different turn at a path and find yourself in a different area that has a different puzzle for you to solve, or even just a riddle that cannot be solved at that moment in time and instead is used as a clue for how to solve a future puzzle. It’s all a little bit mind bending, and its fantastic.
Puzzles are both disturbing and essential in progressing throughout the world of Year Walk. Here, the game tries to jump scare you whilst you’re observing the riddle unfold.
The game is pretty spooky, and definitely has an atmosphere about it. At first, you’re just lonely, and explore this wilderness until your hearts content, but eventually you’ll happen across huts or bunkers, upon which you’ll enter (cause, why the hell not, you’ve been seeing nothing but white snowy fields constantly) and get just a little more spooked out from a new puzzle you’ve encountered. I don’t want to spoil too much of the game, but take for example the first clue/puzzle you come across. Its a doll hanging from a noose; spinning its head enough makes it do a sequence of arm movements, and just before it finishes its little dance, it turns around to reveal a bloody face, with the games camera and sound effects coming to great use to scare you at an otherwise benign/normal stage.
Characters you encounter throughout the game don’t help in making the game inviting, with an eerily silent woods occasionally giving way to intrinsic characters that are both spooky to look at, and scary to consider. Each mystical being you encounter will have their own sound effects and uniqueness about them, some may appear safe and nice to look at, but will soon make you question their presence in the game. Others are damn right freaky to look at in the first place, making you want to get away from them as soon as possible. They are there for a narrative reason though (not only to hamper your progress and give you more puzzles to solve), so its with these fantastically unique characters that you start to build a story for the game, ensuring you’re building your own narrative based on the limited amount of detail you’re given.
The characters you meet throughout the game are all unique, but all don’t make their intentions obvious, making them all the more mysterious.
The soundtrack is creepy, and the graphics definitely help in evoking a desolate forest which is ripe for exploring. You may get freaked out at times because of the games ability to make you feel lonely, especially if you’re a fool like me and played the game in a pitch black room with headphones in. As much as I say I’m a fool for doing this, I’d hugely recommend that this is possibly the best way to play Year Walk, if not only to get just as immersed as you possible could do on a small portable display. And talking of small portable display, Year Walk pulls out all of the stops in being a mobile game like The Room by making you use all of the unique features the iPad has to offer. You’ll come across some puzzles or objects that require a novel way of thinking to solve, with these puzzles being some of the most interesting in the game by making you scratch your head for ages just to realise the simple solution.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Year Walk, and I feel that if anyone can get it cheap enough they should definitely give it a go. It’s a surreal and weird experience to be played on your iPad or iPhone, and one that I feel a lot of people would enjoy. The adventure.puzzle elements work to the games advantage in pushing its narrative across to the player, and as much as lots of puzzles may seem random or annoyingly hard, they are perfectly integrated into the story and world, and will make players feel intelligent for solving them. I came away pleasantly surprised at the game, and now want to download the developers latest game, Device 6, to see how far Simogo can push the concept of lack of narration and puzzle adventure games.
Surge Deluxe doesn’t require much artwork as its an entirely puzzle driven game.
With Twixel in full charge wanting to be released relatively soon, I haven’t had much time to play games, other than the occasional half an hour here and there on Titanfall after a programming and game design session. This week, I really didn’t want to stop my 80+ week streak, so decided to quickly grab ahold of the game Surge Deluxe for the PS Vita and play it whenever I got a spare minute at work and at home.
Surge Deluxe is a puzzle game, one in which you must get rid of as many cubes of the screen as possible by linking them together using the touchscreen to create combos and clear the stage. Whilst you’re doing this, you have two “pressure” meters which must be relieved by clearing blocks at the sides of the stage and releasing valves, whilst also trying to clear the whole level before the timer runs out. A lot is happening at all times, which makes Surge Deluxe both a pleasure to play and a nightmare to master.
The Electric you see in the background is made whenever you touch the screen, which has a nice effect to it as your trial your fingers across the screen. Let me tell you though, its bloody hard to take screenshots whilst doing this on the Vita.
Surge Deluxe certainly amps up the difficulty as the game goes on, with press gauges going up faster with each level, whilst random tiles on the screen start to immerse, changing the gameplay dramatically. You have the colour block, which will change the colour of every tile on the screen to the one you match up, the multiplier, which multiplies your score depending on how many tiles you’ve linked before touching it, the bomb, which will destroy everything on the screen resembling the colour you link to it, and the ? block, which will increase in multiples the more that you link in one chain. These items all help to get the game interesting and dynamic as the endless strategy goes on. You’re constantly having to choose between getting a high score and clearing the level, which certainly caught me off guard many times as I’d die by being too greedy.
Whilst the mode I was describing goes on forever and will introduce you to the game, Surge Deluxe also comes with a puzzle mode, where you’ll be presented with a set number of tiles on the screen, and will not only have to complete the level in a set amount of time, but also with a certain score, meaning you could be stuck looking at the same level for a while before coming up with the solution. I know one thing: It’s bloody hard. The scores to achieve are just ludicrous, with myself not being able to accomplish one in the half an hour I had a go at it. Maybe I just don’t understand the mechanics on how to get high scores well enough, or maybe the scores are just too hard. Regardless I think other people will have to let me know before I make a firm decision on whether its the former or latter.
Tiles not in the open area cannot be accessed until you start to destroy the tiles in front of them, causing you to constantly calculate whether it’s worth going for the higher score or just removing them as soon as possible so you don’t lose the game.
I found my time with Surge Deluxe both short, and extremely satisfying. I wanted it short due to the relatively short amount of time I get for leisure these days, but I feel I could have quite as easily become hooked on the game, investing hundreds of hours into it, maybe once every night before I go to bed. Regardless, the game is satisfying for an itch in the same way that Tetris needs to be played once every few years; it’s fantastic to use your analytical skills to succeed at many small puzzles every now and then to keep your brain exercised in the same way you would your muscles. By all means get the game, it’s relatively cheap, and can be found on Playstation Plus quite often (that’s how I got my copy). I certainly enjoyed my time with the game, and I hope others would too.
For this week, I managed to get a review copy of Sniper Elite 3 from Rebellion Studios, and so proceeded to review the hell out of it! The review can be found below:
As for my game, well I’m now working on some posters, and in the next week I’ll be beta testing it with some friends, family and strangers at some events, so here’s to hoping I can get some constructive criticism and expand on it before I decide to take the plunge and release the game.
With the whole second part of Burial at Sea taking place with Atlas (Frank Fontaine), its nice to occasionally see Andrew Ryan scattered around the city.
Following on from my Burial at Sea review last week, I decided to play through the entirety of the second piece of DLC due to the fact I’ve purchased it all well after their original release date (The advantages of Steams summer sale and late purchases you see). Please be warned, this review will contain spoilers, so if you have yet to play the DLC or are planning on purchasing it and don’t want the plot points spoiled, look away for now and come back next week.
So the game starts off with you playing as Elizabeth, walking around the beautifully created Paris talking and meeting different passers-by as you explore the streets. Eventually, you chase Emily, the main girl Booker was chasing in part 1 of the DLC, and finally wake up to find yourself looking into your dead fathers eyes. Looking up, you find a group of gang members playing Russian roulette with your life just outside of the vent where Booker was trying to pull Emily out. You tell the gang (that turns out to be Atlas’ gang) that you can bring them to the surface, out of their depths to get back to rapture and let atlas have his revenge on Andrew Ryan. In doing so, you also tell the lie that you’re one of the chief scientists assistant, meaning you definitely know how to get the gang out. So hence forth, your mission is to get to the scientists lab to then save the city, getting Emily back from her captors.
Paris is lovingly rendered whilst you play as Elizabeth. I genuinely didn’t want to progress with the campaign and wanted to soak in all Paris had to offer.
The game starts out with a pretty big plot element, as well as gameplay element, with Elizabeth finding her dead body against the wall in the starting area, meaning this is a new Elizabeth who doesn’t have the ability to open tears in time. I say this is a big game play element, as it now means that Elizabeth has to rely on her skills in sneaking around and knocking people out rather than her brawn that Booker relied so heavily on. This is explained quite nicely, but also can be seen as a little annoying considering we’ve seen Elizabeth open tears for 2 games, and this time cannot do it ourselves.
Burial At Sea part 2 is long. Very Long. For a piece of DLC this could have been a game in itself, with myself putting in 7 hours of game time, with barely any proper exploration and missing 2 audio tapes. This is partially due to the fact you play as Elizabeth, a fact the game pushes you to understand every few moments whenever you encounter enemies. This is due to the fact Elizabeth is not a fighter, so cannot take much damage, meaning the gameplay differs from other Bioshock games in the way it is no longer an action game, but stealth. Throughout most of the game, I was crouching the whole way, ensuring no enemies would see or hear me as I traversed Raptures darkest places. This was actually fairly refreshing for a game that relied far too much on its action sequences, something that hasn’t been toned back in part 2, but has been tweaked to make the experience more enjoyable.
Make no mistake, you may be playing as Elizabeth, but Burial at Sea is all about the little sisters and the bid daddies. In this DLC, you’ll learn of their origins, and how they became so inseperable.
The game is split up like a traditional Bioshock game, with the main task at hand on the opposite end of the world, with enemies between, and when you get to your location, you find that you actually then have to go elsewhere before you can continue with your progress. It’s one way to extend the length of the game, but can become quite tedious, as you know nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Each section is broken up into parts where you sneak behind enemies and knock them out (using either your tranquilizer crossbow, or smacking them on the head), then a section where you get to take in your environment, and another to explain a bit more story. It all becomes predictable after a while, meaning you know that when you take out the next few enemies, you’ll be able to continue to explore the environment, looking for coins and audiotapes to find out more about the world of Rapture.
My problem with this DLC and it’s mechanics stems more from the location the DLC takes place rather than the actual playability itself. The game pushes Elizabeth into a setting she didn’t really need to exist in in the first place. Bioshock 1 was beautiful, and amazing, but didn’t need to justify its existence through Elizabeths powers. The whole thing just feels like a prequel to Bioshock 1, something that didn’t need to be done at all.
In your long playthrough of Burial at Sea part 2, you’ll travel back and forth between Columbia and Rapture, ensuring you see as much of the world of Bioshock as possible before its eventual demise.
The aesthetic of rapture hasn’t changed much from part 1 of the DLC, but the opening scene in Paris, and the return to Columbia makes the dark, dreary corridors of Rapture seem even more dreary after visiting bright and lovely places. Graphics, as always, are brilliantly detailed whilst not being too demanding for your computer. It’s crazy how much detail and art irrational manage to squeeze out of the Unreal engine, especially considering how little geometry there is in the world and how its all textures. The art department at irrational deserve a pat on the back to say the least.
Burial at Sea episode 2 was a fantastic piece of DLC to play through, but only for its new mechanics rather than the extra story it introduced to the Bioshock universe. The whole thing felt very much like when everyone complained about the ending of the TV show Lost, with it feeling like nothing had actually ever been accomplished in its own right. By all means, enjoy this second part of the Bioshock DLC, but know this: it won’t feel like you’ve done anything at all or worthwhile in the grand scheme of the narrative.
For this weeks review, I managed to get a copy of Wales interactive’s Infinity Runner, a game all about running as fast as possible through a spaceship whilst also transforming into a werewolf and killing guards. If you want to read it, take a look at the link below:
My game is also coming along nicely, with a new tutorial level for the first time you boot the game up, along with the 360 controller now working 100% across the whole game. Lots still needs to be done, but it’s getting there, slowly but surely.
