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Category: Weekly Gaming/Media

Weekly Gaming: Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)

Set hundreds of years after the events of a link to the past, A Link Between Worlds gives you the gorgeous world of Hyrule in stunning 3D.

A Link Between Worlds was announced rather unexpectedly last summer, as Nintendo showed of a line up of 3DS title after 3DS title. As much as it was a surprise, it was certainly welcome, with Skyward Sword not getting the same scores or sales numbers of Zelda titles of the past Nintendo needed a hit to ensure that Zelda was still known and remembered for being one of the best action/adventure games of all time.

You start A Link Between Worlds in Links house, just the same as the original A Link To the Past. Having slept in and late for work, a friend comes in and wakes you up, setting you on course to get to the blacksmiths house as you (Link) are his apprentice. From here, you are set with delivering a new sword to a knight at the sanctuary, where your true adventure will start. It’s at the sanctuary that a new villain is found, someone who is imprisoning seemingly ordinary people in the world in paintings, making them 2D and not able to move. It’s here that you are able to use the sword you were tasked with delivering, and its here that the adventure truly starts.

You’re able to explore most of the world of Hyrule from the offset as soon as you get the sword, with only a few areas being locked until you receive the appropriate item to bypass the obstacles in your path. Link doesn’t level up, but you can find rupees and items in the world before progressing through the story and going to hyrule castle to meet Princess Zelda.

The Land of Hyrule is fantastically detailed, with Nintendo easily toying with your nostalgia of the original by making most things the same, but others tweaked for better replayability and interaction. Dungeons are similar, whilst also taking advantage of your new unique abilities and items to give a interesting puzzle to pass. The world feels alive at the start of the game, but as it progresses you’ll start to get the same conversations happening time and time again. It feels fantastic when you find a new secret or person to talk to after accidentally wondering down a new path that you haven’t seen before.

Like the previous Zelda for the Snes, you’re able to travel between two worlds, one which is lovely and normal (Hyrule), and another that is destroyed and the opposite of Hyrule: Lorule. You travel to this new location by using one of Link’s new control mechanics, which turns Link 2D against any flat walls or surfaces as a drawing/painting. This allows you to navigate pass boulders or enemies without getting hurt, or allows or very clever puzzles.

Lorule is like the dark parts of a Link to the Past, and takes all the enemies that were easy to kill, making them stronger and harder to beat. Lorule is also hard to navigate, with huge swaths of land missing so you have to teleport between worlds in order to get the the correct location. It makes navigating a puzzle in itself, which certainly adds extra hours of gameplay to your experience.

One of the biggest talking points of A Link Between Worlds was the way you got your new equipment. Traditionally, you’d have to navigate dungeons and defeat bosses in a set pattern, always giving you new equipment which helps you unlock the next dungeon along your quest. (E.g. in one dungeon you’ll unlock the ability to throw bombs, then the next dungeon will require this to enter the dungeon itself, allowing nintendo to set you down a one way path through completing the game). In a Link Between Worlds though, you have access to almost all of the equipment throughout the whole game from the offset, for a small fee of renting the items. You keep these items until the next time you die or fall, meaning you could potentially never have to buy out the items throughout the whole campaign. It’s certainly a nice feature, and makes the game more accessible to those who haven’t played Zelda games before, but not a feature I’d recommend for hardcore players, as items that are bought can then be upgraded to become more powerful and devastating to enemies. To also buck trends in this long running franchise, Nintendo have also allowed you to upgrade the master sword, something that has never been done before. By the end of the game, I was killing most enemies in one hit, and felt truly over-powered.

A Link Between Worlds is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in recent memory. Nintendo managed to take my nostalgia for the original, put it into a machine, mess around with it, and spit it back out shinier than ever. Everything in the game feels refreshingly original, whilst you know it’s all based on a template so tried and tested. I played the game to completion, collecting every collectible in the game and upgrading everything I possibly could, just to treasure every moment I could. Nintendo has made yet another classic, and you owe it to yourself to play it. I look forward to the next time I start this adventure again.

5/5

04/04/2014
My First Review on GamrReview

My first ever proper writing job. It’s only up from here!

As some of you may have seen from my Twitter account, I not have a job writing for the website GamrReview. GamrReview articles appear on VGChartz.com, meaning my posts now have the possibility of being viewed by over 287,000 people a month, something that I feel will certainly get my name out there in this fickle and tough industry.

So for this Friday, I unfortunately haven’t been able to prepare a review for this site, but instead spent last weekend playing White Paper Sutdios’ fantastic game: Ether One, which I then reviewed on GamrReview.com. If you wish to take a look at this review, head on over to the link below:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/91164/ether-one-pc

Thank you all for your continued support, I hope I can make a positive impact on this industry one day, one little step at a time.

28/03/2014
Weekly Gaming: God of War: Ascension (PS3)

God of War Ascension is Kratos’ second outing on the PS3, with similar graphics and scope to God of War 3, but set before the first game in the series. Is Ascension the crescendo the PS3 needed to finish a generation of consoles?

Having played every other God of War game from the PS2 up, I couldn’t pass on God of War: Ascension. The main story may have ended in God of War 3, but I was more than happy to play Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta to learn more about Kratos’ past, and why he has so much anger and hatred in his heart. Ascension was meant to be a extravagant look into Kratos’ past, before the time he sets out to kill Ares in the first game of the series, instead, I was left wishing this game never existed.

Kratos is back, looking as haggard and detailed as before. God of War games really push the Playstation hardware to the limit, making gorgeous landscapes and stunningly violent gameplay a beauty to behold.

The game starts out with Kratos’ locked up, after a cutscene tells us about the sisters of fate, who uphold any mortals or gods who make oaths that are broken. Kratos manages to escape from his chains, and starts out on taking on one of the sisters that was beating him whilst chained. This all takes place on the back of a titan, so the visuals certainly impress so early in the game. This start piece is one of the only points in the game where you’ll have a straight bit of story telling, as the rest of the game jumps back in the past and future time and time again.

Upgrades will be found throughout the duration of the campaign, with Kratos getting stronger and your arsenal of attacks increasing with each new additional item found. These items and upgrades are also related to the story, so when you learn that Kratos gained the item in the past, he miraculously has it for use in the future. It all felt a bit contrived and not at all natural like I was expecting, but the developers wanted to tell a story, and they stuck by it until the end.

Scenery can be breath taking at times, with landscapes that stretch as far as the eye can see. Santa Monica studios didn’t lose their knack for rending gigantic beasts either, with enemies as tall as skyscrapers trying to crush Kratos, anyone would think you’re nothing but an ant compared to hulking size of the gods.

The game is comprised of the same gameplay and mechanics of all previous titles in the series, with fights taking place on epic set pieces, which then turns into some puzzle sections, and finally climaxes in a big boss fight with gruesome consequences. This can all get repetitive, especially if like me, you’ve played 5 games of this so far, and don’t need to see the same sequences play out over and over. The one mechanic that Santa Monica studios unveiled to keep this game refreshing and new was the time travel object, that allows you to change an objects physical shape by altering it back to a previous state in which it used to be. This means that statues can be rebuilt or destroyed at your whim, but it doesn’t add much to the game other than a bit of spectacle at times.

Puzzles are boring and occasionally confusing when the answer cannot be seen after 5 minutes of wondering around. At times, the puzzles would feel more like you were breaking/hacking the game to get past constraints rather than actually coming up with the correct solution for the given circumstance. There were platforming sections that would be spaced out too far to the point that if you did make it you felt like you were glitching through the geometry. The times between fighting weren’t to be enjoyed.

You’ll encounter the three sisters many times throughout the main campaign, with each member carrying a unique trait and personality. These personalities are only skin deep though, as the characters you encounter in Ascension are only there for one reason: the be killed and to further Kratos’ narrative.

Ascension was easily one of the buggiest games I’ve ever played. Period. I would have instances where all sections of levels wouldn’t appear, and throughout the whole campaign I was victim to a terrible audio problem, where sound effects were 1-2 seconds delayed, with my music also skipping and jumping once every few minutes. It made for a terrible experience, with myself getting angrier and more frustrated at each glitch that would occur. There were times that I would do quick time events perfectly, but where Kratos had fallen through a hole to the next level, I had instead died as the game didn’t realise it had to load the next section and instead just killed me. It was so buggy that at the end of the game when cutscenes were happening, all audio and speech was spoken at the same time, with the camera just zooming in and out on a Kratos that I could control, something that clearly wasn’t meant to be happening for a ending.

The bugs and general story of God of War Ascension were abysmal, making for a terribly inconsistent and annoying game. I barely understand what happened with the story, but that may have been more because of the bugs and audio problems than the story telling itself. What I will say about Ascension though is: it makes me ashamed to call myself a God of War fan. Every God of War game up to Ascension was breathtaking; they all had fantastic stories, all delved deeper and deeper into the insanity that made Kratos who he is, and all bought something new to the table. Ascension confuses itself by trying to refine the same things that came before it, and fails spectacularly. If you enjoyed my previous reviews of God of War games, and enjoyed them yourselves at one point, stay away from Ascension. It was a story not worth telling, and will only bring sadness and despair.

2/5

21/03/2014
Weekly Gaming: Rayman Fiesta Run (iOS)

Following on from the success of last years Rayman Jungle Run, Rayman Fiesta Run entails the same gorgeous, short worlds, but with a whole new theme.

I loved Rayman Jungle Run when it was first released on iOS last year. I felt that the mechanics of a platformer translated perfectly to a touchscreen phone/tablet when you made sure the player was always moving on your behalf. Rayman Fiesta Run was released last fall, and along with it came a new urge within me to play this game to completion like I did the original. Does Fiesta Run manage to maintain Raymans recent high surge in production value? or does lightning really not strike twice?

You start Rayman Fiesta run with only the ability to jump, just to ensure newbies are introduced to the game slowly and can get used to it before the levels get harder. Although this is easy, and does get boring, there’s at least something for more hardcore players in the collectibles on each level, with lums hiding in mysterious places out of sight you’ll be jumping and revisiting levels continuously trying to get 100 on each level.

Hell levels are some of the hardest in the game, requiring precision timing to ensure you don’t die.

As the game progresses, you get the ability to hover in the air (by either using your hair if you’re Rayman, hands if you’re globox, and magic if you’re a teensie) and the ability to punch. These mechanics may sound easy and without challenge, but it’ll prove you wrong in a heart beat if you take it so lightly. Controls of each character are tight and well made, with your character automatically moving across the screen with no problems or glaringly obvious bugs to speak of. Althought the movement may not change, it’s the levels that do, and it’ll be your knowledge of these simple moves that’ll keep you going throughout the rest of the campaign.

Levels are follow a traditional progression like they have in previous games, with the easier levels being in green fields with next to no dangers to your health, and later levels being in lava filled pits or hell itself, ensuring you know the difficulty of the stage just by looking at it or the colour scheme used. Each level is unique in their challenge and difficulty, meaning that most of the time you’ll need to retry after your countless deaths to ensure each level is mapped to your muscle memory. (muscle memory is for levels that require so fast reactions that you’ll have to remember what’s around each corner before you get there for fear of not reacting fast enough to avoid the danger). This pre-emptivity and muscle memory is needed to progress through Fiesta Run, as without it levels are just too difficult and impossible. With 72 levels in total, you’ll have quite a lot of time to practice and master the mechanics of Rayman Fiesta Run, as frustrating as they may be.

Going around the map completing levels gives you lums to spend on extra characters and wallpapers. These characters are purely cosmetic, as the size of each character makes no difference on your collider. You will still hit walls or die on the pre-set collider thats around your character, which seems a little unfair at first, but you eventually learn it was done for the mechanics, meaning that no one has the advantage on leader boards across the world.

Speaking of leaderboards and social features, did somebody say social platforms? because my god is Rayman scattered with Facebook likes and posts all over the place. Gone are the days you could play Jungle Run purely for the game itself, this time round Ubisoft wants you to use your own Facebook to advertise their game for you, with the incentive of getting extra lums to spend if you do. This doesn’t rear its ugly head until you perfect a level, asking you to brag to your friends about it by posting to your Facebook for an incentive of 100 extra lums. It may not seem intrusive, but when they are in every single menu and can be seen wherever you go, they are certainly annoying.

The game is constantly asking you whether you want to spend your lums for items to be used on your one run. Lums can of course be purchased for real world money, which is a shame when you pay for the game up-front as well.

At the start of each level you can purchase help throughout the level. You no longer get better items or help for playing the game like normal, with Fiesta run you now have to pay to get power ups. You get to pick from a heart which allows you to get hit once more (it’s normally insta-death), a golden heart which allows you to be invincible, a guide which shows you how to go across the track (and I mean, it literally tells you exactly when to jump and punch to get everything in each level), a glove that allows your punch to travel across the screen once and finally, a golden version of the glove which is unlimited. These items all cost anywhere from 10 to 80 lums (as of writing). It’s literally a fee-to-pay game, where you purchase the game for £1.99 at the start and then have to pay to get through levels.

Rayman Fiesta Run is a fantastic sequel in its own right, and manages to get the same tight platforming feeling of the original so well. What lets Fiesta Run down is its reliance on purchases before levels, and it’s over-zealous use of social networking features, which makes for an otherwise frustrating game. If you enjoyed the original then by all means buy this one, but be warned; the constant social media drove me crazy.

3/5

14/03/2014
Weekly Gaming: Donkey Kong Country Returns (3DS)

Being a 2D platformer, Donkey Kong Country is pretty solid and graphically rich, taking the series back to what I hear were its glory days on the SNES.

N.B. The following review will have no screenshots due to the 3DS’ lack of screenshot capabilities.

I’ve never played a Donkey Kong game before, they’ve always been on my radar, but I’ve never felt inclined to give them a go. I never even played the much revered N64 versions, as my family never bought it when I was young. So having a lovely 3DS XL, I felt it was time to jump straight in to what is known as a timeless classic when it comes to precision platforming.

The game starts out with a simple premise: Donkey Kong and Diddy are sleeping at home, when some Tiki’s come to their island, brainwash all it’s inhabitants, and use these brainwashed slaves to steal all the banana’s. The tiki’s come across DK and Diddy, and try to brainwash them too, but are unsuccessful in doing so. The reason for DK and Diddy not being brainwashed is never explained, but I believe we’re to deduce it’s because of how stupid they are. DK punches the Tiki in question, which then starts your journey across the island to put a stop to these evil creatures and take back what’s naturally theirs (because, you know, they’re monkeys, and all banana’s belong to them, right?).

The game features traditional 2D platforming, meaning you move from left to right, jumping on enemies heads, or rolling into them to kill them. Levels are made more varied for DK as he can bang the floor whilst stationary to smash plant pots, or cactuses, revealing hidden treasure or bananas. Levels start off fairly easy as the game gets you used to it’s mechanics, and the “floatiness” of DK’s jumps, but soon start getting quite difficult in how precise you have to be to land specific sections and come through unscathed.

Enemies are varied, from crabs that require you banging the floor to get them to flip over, to Tiki drums spitting fire and requiring DK to blow them out, every enemy is out to get you and ruin a perfect streak as you traverse through DK Country Returns beautiful landscapes. Boss encounters are some of the most fun sections in the game, taking it to new heights with runaway trains with a badger at the helm, to robot chickens that try to squash you under their feet.

The are 8 main worlds to explore in the campaign, with a bonus 9th world if the player collects 8 special pearls after completing the game. These pearls can be attained by collecting the KONG letters hidden throughout each level, which in turns opens up an additional level in each world. These additional levels are an acclamation of some of the most challenging set pieces DK Country Returns offers, with precision platforming causing many a headache for those that attempt them.

Each world brings with it a unique style and gameplay dynamic, from the lush trees at the start of the game, to a factory level, and even a volcano, everything shouts originality when compared to the previous section that came before it. Some levels will be big set pieces, with one early sea level having a octopus in the background constantly trying to stop DK and Diddy from reaching the end. These set pieces are rare, and few and far between, but when they do happen it’s invigorating to beat. Regions have unique sensibilities about them, for example, he jungle level later on will have nothing but ropes to swing across to make your way through the level, yet the caves have none and it’s mostly carts that will get you across the level. This makes the contrast between each world unique, allowing the developers to truly mess with your pre-sonceptions of what has to be in specific locations.

Items can be purchased to help you on your quest across the island, which are certainly needed later on in the game. These can be purchased with banana coins, which are hidden throughout levels or gained by successfully landing on three enemies or more. Items range from just buying extra lives (trust me, these are needed in later levels), to buying a balloon which prevents you from falling off a stage.

As was previously mentioned, some levels are special and require you to take control of either a flying rocket barrel, or a mine cart. These will take many revisits to successfully beat, as the mine carts are difficult to control compared to what you’ve been used to throughout the entirety of the game. Touch anything and you’re dead, so most of these levels can’t be done first time, and will need memorisation in order to conquer their challenges. The same can be said for the rocket barrel levels, whose control scheme is strange and doesn’t feel right, so most of the time it feels like luck if you manage to successful avoid a missile of rock.

Replayability is a big selling point of Donkey Kong Country Returns, with every level having multiple collectibles and even a time trial mode once a level is beaten once before. This all becomes so much more challenging once the secret 9th world is beaten, and the game receives a mirror mode to try and conquer, giving the player 1 less heart, no chance to use any items they have purchased, and no Diddy kong to help you out. It’s cynically evil of Retro Studios, but DK Country Returns isn’t for the faint of heart, and will push you to your limits in trying to conquer it’s precision platforming.

I enjoyed my time with Donkey Kong Country Returns, putting 14 hours into it before giving up on the mirror mode and collecting every puzzle piece. I feel Nintendo and Retro Studios have done a fantastic job of making a solid platformer, one which pushes players to their limit, something I feel more studios should strive to accomplish these days instead of holding the players hand. This extreme difficulty could be off-putting to some casual players, but Nintendo made this game to appeal to the hardcore fans, and in making it difficult, have succeeded in that regard. Give it a play if it comes down in price, but be warned, it will take a few hours to get into and a lot longer to master (if you ever manage to master it at all).

3/5

07/03/2014
Weekly Gaming: The Room 2 (iOS)

Sticking to what Fireproof Studios are renowned for, The Room Two has some of the most detailed and beautiful objects you’ve ever seen in a game. This may be because of how close you get up to objects, but it’s still amazing, and a delight to behold as you probe deeper into each objects mystery.

The Room One was a fantastic experience from Fireproof Studios, a newly formed company that comes from Guildford and where most staff members have had previous experience working on Little Big Planet’s content. It was a fantastically intrinsic puzzle game which seemingly come out of nowhere and managed to sell by the bucket load for its intuitive controls and mind bending puzzles. The sequel has a lot to live up to, with Fireproof games now having reputation rather than being a upcoming indie team, can they succeed in bringing a second hit?

You start the room two like you did the original: being shown a box in the middle of a room which you must solve. What’s different this time, is your ability to go between two boxes within the same room, meaning that some puzzles are no longer related to the one item you see before you, and some exploration may be in order to find out your surroundings and where items will go to solve puzzles. Whilst the scale and scope of The Room 2 has changed to make everything more epic, the puzzles are still fairly tight, meaning you’ll be scratching your head at times as to where the solution may lay.

It’s pretty marvellous what Fireproof Studios can do when their creativity is allowed to blossom into different environments, but it’s also a shame that we’ve gone away from the simplicity of the first Room, centred and based entirely around one mysterious box.

This new change in scope allows the team at fireproof a more liberal way in making fantastic set pieces. You’re teleported to different scenes multiple times in the game, from an Aztec cave to a Victorian photography studio, its all unique and gives a breath of freshness to an otherwise repetitive game mechanic. New scenes come with a new inherent understanding, which can be difficult for some players if you don’t know the stereotype of the room you are currently in. At one point, I was stuck trying to make a typewriter work as I didn’t know how to press “enter” to finish what I was writing. I suppose that’s some of the charm of The Room 2, it plays on your own knowledge of the world around you, ensuring you feel clever for something you’ve done in game which you know and have seen in real life.

Puzzles follow the same constant rule as was the case with The Room, with puzzles unlocking a new piece of equipment that can then be used in a new location to unlock a new and even harder puzzle. There were more instances of myself getting lost though in this sequel, mainly because of the expanded scope of moving between multiple objects in a room to ensure you’ve done everything you possibly can at that given moment. One of the worse rooms for this was a Aztec level, which allowed you to play with 5 different items in the room. Usually, it’d just be a straightforward case of solving a puzzle on one item, then moving onto the next, but in here, there were so many different items that I ended up going in circles trying to locate the first thing I should solve. It can certainly be confusing, which works against The Room Two considering how straightforward and linear the first game was.

The eyepiece makes a reappearance in The Room 2, allowing you to see things not visible to the naked eye. You’ll need it to overcome some puzzles, but it’s not used as much as it was in the original. It does add new effects, allowing the developers to mess with your perception of space even more.

There is a story to The Room 2, albeit one that’s only used as a topping, and isn’t why you’re playing the game. It’s similar to how RPG mechanics have found their way into almost every genre, the story is used purely to fill the game out. It’s delivered through notes you find as you traverse the world, so apart from the mini narrative taking place between yourself and someone who has travelled this route before you, you’re making the story up yourself as you go along. This isn’t a bad thing, many stories can be better when you use your own imagination rather than just being told whats happening, but it does leave a lot of questions as to what direction the series is going. I suppose only time will tell.

The puzzles are coherent, but can take a while to get used to. For example, you may have ordinary drawers on a desk, but after a bit more exploration you find a button on the underside which enables a puzzle on the top. These type of puzzles are frequent, meaning you should always give something a once over before jumping to conclusions that there’s nothing to do or the game is glitched.

You’ll happen across notes all the time in The Room 2, most are from a person who has come before you, but some may be from the time period you are currently based in.

I have mixed feelings about The Room 2. On the one hand, Fireproof Studios have managed to increase the scale of the original, whilst keeping the puzzles addictive and coherent. The whole game is much more beautiful because of this variety, but I can’t help but feel something has been lost in this transition. The original had so much charm because of the confinement of playing within one box, one box that twisted the rules of reality mind you, but one box all the same. You uncovered little by little the secrets this box hid, and throughout the few hours you played it you felt you were learning more and more about the world through what you imagined. The Room Two on the other hand rips that feeling apart by plainly showing you the world you inhabit, with no mystery and intrigue left to guide you on. I will say, If you’ve played the original, you owe it to yourself to play The Room 2, but don’t be surprised if you don’t come away from the game with the same sense of awe that you came away from the original with.

3/5

28/02/2014
Weekly Gaming: Castle of Illusion (PS3)

Some of you may remember the original Castle of Illusion from your childhood like myself. It was a fantastic platformer that I used to play with my brothers, so I had to buy this remake in an instant to see it my nostalgia was warranted.

This week, I take a look at Castle of Illusion, a remake of the original Disney game that came out for the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis for those American readers out there!).

I loved Castle of Illusion as a child, huddled around a small CRT TV with my brothers taking in all the games gloriously smooth animations and lovingly crafted graphics was one of my favourite things to do when I was 8. The game was difficult for how young I was, but my determination and countless hours of gaming allowed me to preserver and finish this hard game. The platforming involved a lot of memorisation and pin point accuracy, making it one of my favourite accomplishments of my youth. Has Sega Studios Australia succeeded in reimagining what I hold so dear from my childhood? Or is this a shameless money grab from an ailing company looking to cash in on our naivety?

The hub world is a nice level which allows you to see all your collectibles in gorgeous 3D, building the world up as you progress. The game is still linear, but the freedom to go back to specific levels that you may want to retry is welcomed.

The game starts off 2.5D, showing a 3D Mickey, moving across a 2D forest on his way to the castle where Mizrabel has imprisoned Minnie in the hopes of stealing her youth and beauty. After a little bit of platforming, you finally reach the castle, where you are then taught that the game isn’t 2D at all, and you in fact have to walk into the background to progress the game. Some reviewers have likened this to when the Wizard of Oz was revealed to be in colour rather than black and white, and whilst I like that sentiment, I don’t feel this is as grand a gesture as they’re making out. It’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but when the market has been saturated with 2.5D platformers for years, this doesn’t come as surprising.

Once the game is completed, the castle acts as a hub world, allowing you to replay any level you want in order to find all the collectibles the game has to offer, or to play each level as a time attack trial. Each level has plenty to explore, with secrets and hidden collectibles scattered aplenty. Its enjoyable enough to go back to a level to try and find everything, because you certainly won’t collect everything the first time round.

Unlike most water levels in platformer games, the water levels in Castle of Illusion are fairly enjoyable as you don’t have to worry about Mickeys air intake. It allows you to get on with the level and dodge enemies like normal rather than having a constant worry on your mind.

The landscapes and design quality of each world is staggering, with a sense of polish you don’t often see in platformers. It reminds me of Deadlight that I played last year (without the same realism and dread that came with a zombie apocalypse), and has a lot of things going on in the background, keeping you entertained and entranced throughout your entire play through. Toy Rockets will take off and land in the background on the toy level, whilst the library will show off deep vista’s, awe inspiring for a fantasy platformer.

Gameplay and levels haven’t changed much from the original, with enemies dying as you jump on their head or you can throw an object at them (objects differ per level, from marbles on the toy level to candles in the castle, it sticks to the theme). Most of the game takes place on a 2D plane, allowing you to accurately land on platforms as your progress throughout the campaign. There are a few new features where you’ll jump on platforms in a 3D section, but this is easily where the solid gameplay falls apart, with the shadow showing where Mickey is in relation to platforms frequently disappearing under the different hues of the world around him. These sections are thankfully few and far between, so these frustrations are kept to a minimum, but it’s still a nuisance that Sega Australia managed to make a fairly consistent game so frustrating at times.

The level designs are spectacular, despite being simple to navigate. Things are always happening in the background, from books jumping around, to toys flying, the levels conjure up a backstory of a living world rather than being static levels for Mickey to progress through.

Boses are a hit and miss, being nice set pieces that show off the engines ability to natively render both 2D and 3D gameplay at the same time, but mostly consist of doing the same dodging until you’re able to jump on the enemies opening. The engine changes from 2D to 3D platforming can be a little jarring when you’re trying to avoid an enemy around an entire platform and then all of a sudden the game restricts you to just moving left and right, but as with the annoying 3D platforming sections, these moments are rare, so they shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment too much.

Playing Castle of Illusion took me back to my childhood like I never imagined a game could. It succeeded in keeping my nostalgia in check, whilst also keeping the game entertaining enough to continue on gameplay alone, and not riding my nostalgia. I kept coming back to the game even after completing the main campaign, and although I didn’t get every gem in the game (there’s 800 to collect), I managed to find every collectible before growing bored. I hope Sega Australia get the chance to remake some other beloved games of my childhood, as I feel a co-operative castle of illusion 2 featuring Donald Duck would be amazing and well received, maybe even fixing some of Castle of Illusion’s set backs.

3/5

21/02/2014
Weekly Gaming: Little Inferno (iOS + PC)

A game about settings things on fire ay? To some of you pyros out there, this’ll be the perfect game to make time fly by, with virtualised fire being just as mesmerising as the real thing, but with no pain!

If you’d had given the pitch of a game where you can set things on fire, watch as items burn slowly and give coins after they demise, to a boardroom ten years ago, the executives in there would laugh you out of the room, claiming you were crazy and that it’d never make any money in a million years. Little Inferno is just that, but has been released in a time where it can be truly appreciated with the current indie renaissance. It’s a premise so crazy, you’d be surprised that Tomorrow Corporation could even make a game out of it, yet alone one with an intriguing and cute story.

The Fire physics are something else in Little Inferno. Flames slowly destroy everything in their path, reacting differently depending on the item they’re burning. A picture doesn’t do this core game mechanic justice.

You start off as the game means to go on: in front of a fire place called little inferno, sold to you by the Tomorrow Corporation (an in-game company that makes products of all shapes and sizes). Using coins collected from burning items, you can in turn buy more lavish items, creating different effects every time. It’s a perfect feedback system, which doesn’t require much thinking on the users part: you just spend the money, and watch the new animation/flame dynamic take place.

There is a story and a point to all of this burning though, which will become apparent the more you progress through the game. The world is freezing, with a Winter that hasn’t ended for years, and with no sight of it ending, everyone stays at home burning precious items to keep themselves warm. Notes will be delivered every now and then, giving context to whats happening in the outside world at that given time to ensure you remember there is a world beyond the fireplace. The notes are only a one way dialogue though, as you never get a chance to respond or reply, with your only feedback being to burn the letter itself, so expect quite a few jokes and childishness throughout this pleasant story.

Shopping for products is as easy as clicking the item you want, spending gold, then waiting for a given period of time for the item to be delivered. There are plenty of items to choose from, with each item giving more cash than it costs to purchase after being burned to the ground.

For a game based around burning house hold items, oh boy do they make the burning a joy to behold. The game could have been sold as a virtual screensaver years ago, with flames dynamically dancing across items in realtime, giving a different effect every time, leaving you with nothing but charred remains of what used to be a usable item.

The real beauty is in how Little Inferno manages to keep the game engaging after 4 hours of a main story. The answer is Items. Yes, all the items you can buy are all unique in their ability to burn. Some will statically burn, causing your flames to increase in size, whilst others will grasp for your attention, screaming dolls or coffee will always make me chuckle, but items that make your flames change colour or extinguish them altogether are certainly noteworthy.

The story is told through letters given to you from friends and business newsletters (like the one above from the owner of the company). It’s a simple but effective way of giving you a sense of whats outside of your viewpoint, pushing you to wonder beyond the confines of your fireplace.

The game gives variety in how you play it by challenging you to find different combinations of objects to burn together, with hilarious consequences in most cases. Burn someone else’s credit card along with someone else’s family portrait and you’ll get the someone else’s combo. Get more of these combos to unlock more books and in turn, more items to burn. It’s a never ending cycle, one that could have been easily monetised like most games these days with a simple game mechanic, but I’m thankful Tomorrow Corporation haven’t. Burning combos also gives you stamps, which you can use to get instant delivery of the items you’ve just bought. This gives you an incentive to continue with your hunt for the combo’s, as it helps the speed at which you can progress in the main campaign.

Little inferno kept me hooked for hours, pushing me to ignore everyone and everything around me, instead focussing on burning as much as possible. In that sense, it made me a pyromaniac in the short time I invested into it. I wanted more, and even when I had burnt everything in the game, I would still go back in just to burn some more marshmallows or coffee (seriously, it’s hilarious to see them scream). I showed friends and family how cool I thought Little Inferno was, but unfortunately, it hasn’t caught on. This may be because it has a price tag, and although the gameplay accommodates and mimics free to play stereotypes, the price tag puts off a lot of potential customers. I respect Tomorrow Corporation for sticking to their guns and keeping the game focused with a traditional piecing model, but at the same time they may have shot themselves in the foot in doing so.

I applaud anyone who goes out of their way to purchase little inferno. It’s pitch sounds ridiculous, and insane, and would have been laughed at by anyone in any business. But in todays market of casual and indie games with laser tight focus, Little Inferno strives with it’s hilarious and witty humour, along with addictive gameplay.

4/5

14/02/2014
Weekly Gaming: Shelter (PC)

The aesthetics of Shelter are certainly unique and abstract, making it both lovely and strange at the same time. Animals, and the world itself are easily recognisable, but there were times when I felt that a different art direction may have been more of a benefit of Shelter than a detriment.

Shelter has been on my radar for a while. I mean, a game where you play as a mother badger caring for its young in this harsh reality that is life is certainly a unique experience that doesn’t come around often, if at all in todays fast paced, adrenaline-fuelled industry. It’s a new game from the indie studio Might and Delight which brought us Pid, and is certainly ambitious for this young studio. The very premise is emotional in nature, but does the game deliver on that emotion, or is it just a selling point in this crowded and hard market to break?

Looking after your little cubs is essential to progressing through Shelter, with hunger and threats trying to snatch them from you at every opportunity.

You start the game in a cave, with you (the mother badger) and 4 cubs huddled around a grey cub on the floor, moaning and crying. The game gives no prompts, no instructions, but you just know that you somehow have to help this cub out. It’s helpless, crying, and needs attention. You walk around the corner, with your other healthy cubs following you, to find a carrot. Taking this carrot to the sick cub helps him up and ensures he is now a healthy colour, and can follow you on your journey through this evil land. This simple introduction to one of the core mechanics of the game is extremely primitive, yet effective in communicating how to care for your young, and what will happen if you don’t.

For the first moments of the game, you’ll be slowly walked through this world. It doesn’t take long getting used to scrummaging for food, since your badgers are happy to eat anything from vegetables to frogs or even foxes. Giving food to individual cubs can be a hassle, especially when one is starving and grey, with each cub trying to grab food regardless of whether they’re full or not, but this at times only adds to the cub’s dynamism. Eventually, you’ll start coming across the real threats of the forest: birds of prey. These hulking beasts try to snatch your cubs if you stay in the open long enough. It’s fairly simple to avoid them at the start, but its worrying when one swoops in only to barely miss a cub. You genuinely care for them and don’t want to see one go.

Each environment brings with it a new danger, with night time scaring your cubs to run away everytime they hear a noise. Keeping them close to your safety helps to keep the family on track, allowing you to progress through the scary world.

As the game progresses, it’s the environments that bring new threats to your family rather than predators, meaning you have a lot more to fear. Each new area is unique in the way it highlights simple weather conditions that we may find sublime, but in turn become a new dangerous threat to this young family. Night time may not too frightening as we walk around with street lamps and paths, but for your cubs, even the slightest nose will startle them, making them run in any direction possible. One of the most emotive levels was when it started raining, which may seem like a trivial thing in our world, but for the badgers it brings threats around every corner, from the rivers and the hills. Everything in this world is a fight for survival, and you certainly don’t want to let a single cub down and let them die, because if they do, it’s not their fault, it’s yours, with the emotional guilt I can imagine being too much to handle for some players.

For all it’s emotion, Shelter isn’t without its faults. Some levels are frustrating, with some being so open you’re not sure where to go in order to continue across this scary world. My biggest gripe was probably trying to feed individual cubs, with the action button to put down food not working when in close vicinity to a cub, it was pot luck as to whether you could get your food to a hungry cub or not. Some may argue that this builds a family, with each cub having a personality; some being greedy and fat, with others being left out and weak. As much as I like this answer, and wanted to believe it myself, I can’t help but think it’s making excuses for a buggy game.

The rain level is easily one of the most emotive, bringing on emotions you didn’t think possible in a casually rainy day. The rain brings on a certain worrying feeling you would never expect when it comes to something as trivial as rain, but in the world of the small, everything’s a danger.

I may be saying this a lot lately, but Shelter is truly a game that could not have been any other medium. Films, Books and TV’s are all passive experiences that require you to have lived through the events they portray in order for you to feel empathy. Shelter on the other hand requires you to take care of these defenceless creatures, bidding to their every whim in the hope you can ensure their survival. Old passive media wouldn’t have made me feel empathy for these creatures, I’d see them on screen and wouldn’t relate as I am not a badger, so I couldn’t possible understand how a rainy hill could be threatening. But in playing Shelter, you are immersed in a world where all you can think about is your cubs, ensuring you grow attached to them like they are your own. It manages to tap into your own human nature, with every failure not only making me feel regret at a loss like a normal game would, but for failing as a parent, and as a provider. For Shelter to make me feel this way is truly a landmark experience, one that won’t gain mass market appeal, but for those of you who do decide to play it, you’ll be left with an experience others may never feel.

4/5

07/02/2014
Weekly Gaming: The Stanley Parable (PC)

The Stanley Parable is a game about Stanley, or is it? The whole game constantly messes with your perception of what you should actually be doing, strange for the world we live in where games hold your hand every step of the way.

You think you know what the Stanley Parable is, but do you really? That’s the question the developers at Galactic Cafe will keep asking you throughout the course of the Stanley Parable, including before you even buy it. The whole game centre’s around the premise of getting your pre-conceived notions of what a game is and messing with them to the point you’re not even sure whats happening anymore. It’s something that interested me profusely, to the point I had to pick up a copy of the game and play it as soon as possible to ensure that I heard no spoilers whilst listening to the Giant Bombcasts Game of the Year deliberations.

The Stanley Parable is all about choices, or lack of them at times. Do you choose the left door, or the right? Or if the room is devoid of doors, do you start exploring, or do you listen to your narrator with instructions on what to do next? It all boils down to the choices you make throughout each playthrough of the game.

You start the Stanley Parable in an ordinary office, taking control of Stanley, who’s job is supposedly different today as there seems to be no one around. From here, it’s all down to you as the player, to decide whether to play along like the narrator tells you to, or whether you want to plot your own course of action throughout this seemingly ordinary but strange world.

I suppose you could say The Stanley Parable is all about feedback. You choose to do an action, or lack of an action, and you receive feedback from either the narrator, or the world around you. It’s this feedback loop that keeps you playing the game, enticing you to play with the world in different ways to see the feedback you receive, which is mostly comical in nature, but also philosophical in tone. This type of interactivity could only be possible in a game, you couldn’t get this kind of feedback loop from a movie or book.

The Stanley Parable will take you to many different locations, all office themed, but definitely unique in their own way. Galactic Cafe knew the style they wanted to portray, and certainly stuck to it, with some interesting and curious results.

One of the main attractions of the Stanely Parable is the narrator; a posh, well-mannered individual which is there to guide Stanley, and in turn, you the player, through this seemingly weird day. He talks directly to you, edging you on to go one specific way through this seemingly linear world, and even interacts with you when you break it, walking down hallways you weren’t mean to. It’s refreshing and original, something that’s unique in todays world of contrived experiences.

It’s hard to go into too much depth with the Stanley Parable without spoiling any of it. Most of the game consists of experimentation, similar to how Gone Home’s story was intrinsically linked to it’s game mechanics, The Stanley Parable too, makes its story and narration a direct association of what you do. All I can say is: the Stanley Parable has to be experienced first hand to truly know what it’s trying to say.

Stanley is a blank slate of a character to which you can easily project yourself in his place. As you continue to play the game, you start to realise how much like Stanley you really are whilst playing any type of game.

The Stanley Parable is fantastic in giving you the kind of interactivity you can find no where else. I enjoyed my time in Stanley’s world, poking and prodding every nook and cranny to see what I could break, or what new piece of dialogue I could receive from the narrator. It truly makes you think about games in a broader context, from the fact most games are linear in nature to give you a tried and tested story, or in the sense that games can be open, and we are always looking for ways to break the ruleset, or to find the limits of what we can and can’t do within these new worlds.

4/5

31/01/2014
Weekly Gaming: Papo & Yo (PC)

Papo & Yo tells the emotional story of Quico, as he travels around the towns of Brazil with his monster. From beginning to end, its fascinating to see the pairs relationship evolve.

I recall reading a edge article about how Papo & Yo was a landmark game for the Brazilian games industry, and how it showed they were starting to mature, becoming a part of our inclusive and unique industry. Whilst all of this is true, Papo & Yo isn’t just a great game because it’s Brazilian, it’s a good game because it’s unique and charming, and tells a story like no other medium can.

The graphical fidelity of Papo & Yo is astounding, leading to breathtaking scenes like the one above. It’s highly polished, making it feel spectacular that a small indie team made all of this.

You start the game off as a little child named Quico, who’s stuck in a cupboard as a monster is stomping around outside the doors trying to get him. Out of nowhere, a teleport appears next to Quico, inviting him in to get out of this current nightmarish situation. Going through the teleport, Quico is transported to a warm, tranquil, sunny town; a far cry from the nightmare he just got out of. It’s here that you take control of Quico and start to explore your surroundings, jumping off roofs and climbing ladders to find anything relating to the progression of the story. Eventually, a girl with white body paint will start talking to Quico, telling him he is cursed and that he should stay away, to which you proceed to chase her around this strange and enticing environment. Following this mysterious girl around is what brings you to one of the core mechanics of the game: Gears.

Gears, and in turn anything that is made using chalk can be used to manipulate the world to Quico’s advantage. Putting a chalk gear in the right place will cause a whole house to sprout legs and move to the correct location, or rotating a chalk lever will create stairs to get to higher places. These challenges and puzzles will soon start becoming harder as the game progresses, but are relatively simple and used more for aesthetics at the beginning of the game. The animations that are played when the chalk is touched is unique and quirky everytime, from buildings that bend, to manipulating bridges made out of houses you’ve made yourself, every touch of the chalk brings with it a new, wonderful surprise.

Being able to manipulate the world is a fantastic feeling. Unique each and every time, every new lever is exciting to activate, with stairs appearing from walls and houses coming to life, the world itself feels alive and genuine.

Sooner or later, you’ll stumble across a big hulking monster, one which you’ll need to utilise in order to progress through this strange and weird world. The monster has his own agenda, meaning Quico has to grab it’s attention using items in the environment. The monster is slow, but most of the world revolves around him standing on certain platforms, so it’s your responsibility to get him to the correct places in order to advance. You can’t help but feel you’re caring for the monster in some weird way, with it doing nothing but sleeping and eating unless you go out of your way to distract it into helping you.

The story of Papo & Yo is what takes the centre stage in this strange and beautiful puzzle game. The relationship between Quico and the monster really draws you in, constantly trying to make out the intricacies of their relationship, and why they go through times of hardship, but also times of love. The game mechanics play into this, with Quico literally helping the monster in becoming angry, or calming him down with the use of items around the world. This relationship will evolve throughout the duration of the campaign, and many visual metaphors to real world objects will be seen before you come to the games true conclusion, explaining the core pillars of Quico and the monsters relationship.

Some puzzles will require manipulating the world to suit your needs. Here, the path needs to rotate for you to get onto a roof before manipulating it again to get on another roof. It’s simple, but fascinating every time.

The world Quico explores is lovely and vacant, giving you the sense of what it feels like to be in the slums of Brazil, but without the busy, bustling streets. It gives an eery feel to the game, but also implores a sense of exploration. You want to find out more about this world, as much as it may be a dream world for Quico to run away too in times of need. The strange chalk girl also entices you to carry on with the campaign, ensuring you constantly have a hook, pushing you ever closer to the conclusion.

For all the good Papo & Yo gives the player, it isn’t without it’s niggles. The camera can certainly take some getting used too, pushing into geometry, and generally getting in the way of you controlling Quico at times. The platforming moments can also be a hassle, with Quico not equipped deal with the preciseness you occasionally need when jumping across floating bricks or brooms.

I enjoyed my time with Papo & Yo: it took me on a journey you don’t usually experience, with south American culture rarely being seen in todays media, usually keeping to itself. The story is certainly moving, and will keep you hooked until the end, but once all is said and done, there isn’t much left to see, meaning Papo & Yo isn’t very replayable. I bought Papo & Yo over christmas, paying just £4, which I felt was a good deal for the 3-4 hours of entertainment it gave me, if you can find it for cheaper, grab it! It’s a bargain. If not, then value is in the eye of the beholder, and if you truly value artistic expression in video game form, then you’ll love every minute Papo & Yo have to offer.

3/5

24/01/2014
Weekly Gaming: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PC)

Whilst short, Brothers tells a better story in 3 hours than many other games do in 12.

I’ve read about Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in the past, with articles usually talking about how its producer is a movie director by the name of Josef Fares, and how his background has shaped and influenced the design of the game. It’s certainly been on my radar, and I wanted it the day it was released, but being stripped for cash last year, I had to hold off. Over Christmas, Brothers was reduced to £3.59 on Steam; without hesitation, Brothers instantly became a part of my game library, ready to be explored until I was satisfied I had seen every nook and cranny.

The world of Brothers reminds me of Lord of the Rings; beautiful and constantly portraying fantasy. Each environment portrays a different emotion, which had me on a roller coaster ride from start to finish.

You start Brothers with your story explained within 5 minutes: your father is sick and needs a special ingredient from a tree to survive. With this little bit of information, the Brothers embark on an epic journey to find this tree, taking on all the elements of nature, monsters and anything else silly enough to cross their path. The story has it’s highs and lows, with the start of the game being an adventure, before the surrealism of how giant the task is before them starts to unveil. It’s the highs and lows that make Brothers such a memorable trip, with the environment around the pair being an extension of their feelings at any given time: Stormy weather showing fear and dread, and bright vista’s showing hope and glea at the challenges already overcome.

Controls will take some getting used to, with the brothers controlled by one analogue stick each, the left analogue stick controlling the older brother, whilst the right analogue stick controls the younger, along with the corresponding triggers to activate events. It makes for a weird experience at the start of the game, but soon becomes second nature. Without even thinking you’ll automatically place the correct brother in the correct place, something that doesn’t become any less enjoyable as the story progresses. Certain puzzles and challenges will test your ability with the dual controls, but any player should be able to get by eventually. The unique control system allows Brothers to mess with your perception of how puzzles are solved, and presents brand new ways to play. Anyone observing Brothers would think you’re playing in online co-op, with one brother moving to grab a lever whilst another fights off a troll, it really feels like both brothers are independent in nature, yet tied together by you, one player.

The unique control scheme really adds to the story of Brothers, with each analogue stick controlling one brother. It takes some getting used to, but by the end of the game you’ll be competent enough to know how to navigate every obstacle in your way.

The story of Brothers is rather simple in nature (you’re rescuing your father from certain death), but becomes epic in scale as the journey progresses. You take on side challenges which in turn help you on your way to the magical tree that will help your father. These side pieces don’t junction too far from the main narrative, and serve to enhance it, building a world of likeable creatures which have their own purpose and focus. Near the beginning of the game you’ll come across a troll that is just sat on a stool looking very sad and crying. The game doesn’t intrinsically tell you he has a partner, but subtle hints (like the two troll beds in the background) allow you to surmise his partners existence, and that she is either missing or has passed away. These mini stories/side quests help to flesh out the world as you progress, bringing new lore and promise with each new character and environment you are introduced too.

The amount of polish put into both the environment and the quality of the controls is astounding. Creatures feel alive, and have a genuine personality even though you only meet them for a few seconds. Josef Fares has helped to create a world which you feel is being lived, and isn’t there only for your enjoyment. Early in the game, you come across a dog in a field, barking and chasing down anything it finds. It feels natural, something you’d see daily with children teasing a dog, and not just placed to give the player a simple puzzle. The fact that the controls tie into the story, with each brother not able to progress without the other is another fantastic development for our industry, and one that must have taken a lot of time and pressure convincing publishers the benefits of such a system.

Massive set pieces are a commonality in Brothers. I’m not complaining though, these pieces are some of the most astounding scenes in the gaming industry, rivalling even other media in the world like Lord Of The Rings’ epic landscapes.

To surmise, Brothers, like last week’s Gone Home, completely blew me away when I played both in one night. This highly polished game tells the story it needs, whilst going one step further in linking the story with the game controls. Like Journey that came a few years ago, it’s a game I would easily point out to people who put their noses up whenever the slightest whisp of games are mentioned. It’s a game that every person should play in their life at least once, even if they aren’t into games, similar to how everyone needs to experience Alien or Godfather, it needs to be played to show the accumulation of how far we’ve come, and how much of a landmark of a game it is.

5/5

17/01/2014
Weekly Gaming: Gone Home (PC)

Gone Homes story telling is genuinely unique and unprecedented in todays gaming climate. You’d be hard pressed to realise that only 3 people worked on the game.

The gaming media have salivated over Gone Home since its initial release in August, with critical acclaim coming from every news outlet I read. Being tight on money, and having the game never come down in price until the Christmas sales meant that I didn’t get to play this until recently. I’m glad I did get around to buying and playing it, as I feel this is a landmark game for our industry, and one that changed my GOTY list instantly.

Each room is lovingly crafted to not only give intentional story, but also indirect characterisation of each family member. The way an office is arranged or the litter around says a lot about each member of the Greenbriar household.

You play the role of Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 21 year old who has just returned home after a year of travelling abroad across Europe. In the hallway of your house, you notice that no ones home, which is surprising considering how long you’ve been away. A note is found on the side in the porch explaining to Kaitlin that whoever wrote the note is sorry that they’re not there to see Kaitlin on her return, and that Kaitlin shouldn’t try to find him/her. This is your premise: an empty house with a warning not to find out what happened. Fantastically short and to the point, but enough mystery and intrigue to keep you hooked for the duration of the story.

Most of the story is given to you in the form of notes or tapes that you find throughout your journey in the house. They’re effective at doing their intended job, and as you can read them at your own pace, there’s no need to worry about missing any information.

You are free to explore Greenbriars home as and how you’d like, from switching on lights to enter a new room, or picking up and examining a box of tissues, the house gives you free reign (within reason) to take every room in your own time. Each room is uniquely original, allowing for both indirect (the way books are organised or what occupies each space), and direct (notes which literally explain what happened at a given time) story telling and characterisation. This really adds to the atmosphere of the house, giving you the sense that this house is used and lived in like your own home now.

As you pick up items that relate to the main story/narrative, Sam, your younger sister, talks to you through speech logs, explaining her journey and what has happened in her life whilst you’ve been away. Each log gives enough information to give you an idea of whats happened in the house, whilst also withholding enough to keep you pressing on for more.

The story is short, and the whole game can be completed within 2 hours. There was a lot of backlash around the time it was released that reviewers weren’t mentioning the length of the campaign tied to it’s £15 price tag (due to the vast majority of them getting a free press copy). I can understand why some people would be annoyed, they may only buy so many games a year and £15 is a lot of money to spend on 2 hours of entertainment (that’s almost twice the price of a film). But this game is art, it’s pushing the boundaries of how a game and story can be so intricately connected, and you can’t put a price on forwarding the medium we so love and cherish.

Sams room is easily the most descriptive of any, perfectly showing the room of any teenager in the 90’s. Although I was only 3-13 when the 90’s were here, I had fond memories of a lot of the items in here.

It’s hard to go too much further into Gone Home without spoiling things for the players. It’s an explorative game where there’s no re-playability due to there being no more mystery in the story. The confines of the house are small enough that you manage to explore every nook and cranny within the 2 hours you play the game.

The only thing I can say is, I enjoyed every minute that I was immersed within Kaitlins world, and wanted to know everything there was to know. The story was the game mechanics, with the two being so intertwined that it’s hard to have imagine Gone Home in any other capacity. It’s taken storytelling in video games a whole new direction, one which Movies or Books can’t even begin to compete with since they’re passive mediums. I’d hugely recommend everyone to give Gone Home a play to see the direction the games industry is heading, and what fabulous and amazing things developers can do with story telling in an interactive way.

4/5

10/01/2014
Weekly Gaming: State of Decay (PC)

State of Decay came out in the summer of 2013 on Xbox Live Arcade, but has recently been released on Steam under their Early Access program. There’s quite a few bugs, which is terrible considering the new DLC has just been released.

Having seen brilliant reviews on State of Decay over the summer whilst travelling, I was curious as to how another zombie game had managed to entice journalists. Thanks to a friend, when my Birthday came around in Novmeber, I was given the gift of accessing State of Decay during its Early Access program, something I am extremely thankful for, and put to good use.

Sneaking to avoid zombies is worth while and needed at the beginning of the game, but before long you become so overpowered from all of your scavenging that taking on a hoard is easier than avoiding it.

The game starts you off in a camp site next to a lake, making you fight off a hoard of zombies that are attacking your friend. It doesn’t give you much context as to where these zombies came from, and just explains it away by saying that because you were camping, you haven’t heard anything from the outside world. Once you make your way to the ranger station, you meet your first group of survivors, who set about tasking you with gathering resources and scouting the area for hot spots. It’s a nice introduction that gets you used to the main mechanics of the campaign, without giving you too much information, so you have to learn how to play the game through trial and error (Akin to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series of games).

Once you get out of the initial camping area, the world really opens up, with villages and attractions making this a truly realised world. Every house can be explored and scavenged for survivors or resources, making this a game that runs at your own pace. The world centres around your base, your safe place to keep coming back to after trips out into the zombie infested wild. It contains your stockpile, which starts off relatively small, as well as fellow survivors and essential equipment.

Most of the core mechanics are centred around realism/simulation, so weapons will break, cars will take damage or eventually run out of fuel, and your survivors can get tired or get sick, meaning you’ll have to swap control of several people throughout your playthrough. Each survivor that you control has their own stats which increase the more you use them. A fantastic idea in theory, but it lead to me using the same few survivors throughout the entirety of the game, neglecting others in the base. This then becomes a hassle when your main characters are sick or tired, and you’re stuck with a character you’ve never used before, meaning taking on zombies becomes frustrating chore rather than an enjoyable smash up.

Get used to driving in State of Decay, because you’ll be doing a lot of it. The map is huge and vast, making exploration the main objective in this thoroughly detailed world.

The world continues to go on whilst you’re away from the game, meaning you can leave your base happy and satisfied one night, and come back to a shit storm the day after. This constant feeling that I had to get back to the world in order to maintain and defend my base became an addiction, one which kept me coming back every night for at least an hour as a maintenance session. I felt like if I didn’t play the game everyday, I’d be letting the survivors down.

Combat is fluid, albeit simple and repetitive. You hit zombies with the same animation until they crouch in pain or fall over, then cave their head in with a devastating finisher move. It makes individual encounters simple, but can lead to difficulties when taking on a group of the undead (try placing your character in the right place over a downed zombie when there’s 5 trying to hit and bite you). Zombies become a bit more varied towards the latter parts of the game, with unique zombies that explode into gas, tanks that take a million bullets and armoured zombies becoming a common sight. They add variance to a game that’s fairly repetitive in nature, which is never a bad thing.

Cutscenes happen regularly throughout the campaign, giving characters a chance to talk to each other and state your next course of action. Using the game engine wasn’t a wise choice. Characters come off as robotic, with no fluid animation and no awareness of other characters in the screen. I even had some instances of characters glitching through each other, which was funny but at the same time worrying for a game of this production value.

As I said in my GOTY discussion, State of Decay could have easily of been my game of the year. It resonated with me like no game has since I first played S.T.A.L.K.E.R, a game so convoluted and unique that you truly have to invest yourself into the mechanics to get the most out of the story and atmosphere of the world. State of Decay felt like a homage to what S.T.A.L.K.E.R conveyed all those years ago, making the player go out of there way to learn the intricacies of the game rather than being walked through them step by step. I loved it, that is, until I came across game breaking bugs that stopped me from progressing.

Yep, in a game that has been out for over 6 months now, there are still bugs found that stop the campaign missions from appearing, and zombie outbreaks appear in areas of the map that shouldn’t. After 16 hours of play time, I decided to research why the end of the game wasn’t in sight, yet the whole world was almost out of resources from my gathering. Turns out, after a further 3 more hours of gameplay, those final few missions never did turn up, which turned my feelings for the game from enjoyment, to anger, to despair, as I ran around a world that had no end in sight, with no more resources to gather, and nothing left to explore.

It’s a shame, as in it’s current state, I cannot recommend State of Decay to anyone. I genuinely wish I could, but having game breaking bugs that stop anyone from finishing it is always bad in my book, something that shouldn’t be overlooked in this industry. Until State of Decay is fixed and gives players a consistent experience from start to finish, I’ll have to suggest friends and family to avoid it at all costs.

2/5

03/01/2014
My New Years Resolutions.
In 2013, I managed to keep to my new years resolution, and completed 1 game a week for 52 weeks, writing a review every week on what I thought of it.

This coming year, I’m going to continue to write a new review every week, but I feel I also need to push myself one step further. So this year, I want to do the following:
- Write a game review once a week.
- Produce a Video Quick look once every 2 weeks.
- Make 2 full games that will be pushed to every platform (iOS, Android, PC, Ouya), documenting and pushing builds to this site. (Project stargazer and Project Timeshift).
- Migrate my server from wordpress.com to wordpress.org to allow people to run unity games within my site rather than Dropbox.
There are a lot more things I want to do, BUT I don’t think they should be posted on my blog for now, as they may be impossible, and I’d rather not let myself down.

Look out for all this new content during 2014!
01/01/2014