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Tag: Indie

Weekly Gaming: 1010 (iOS)

I’ve been going around my friends house a lot lately and watching Fairy Tail with him and his sister. On one of these days, his sister happened to be playing a game that looked like Tetris on her iPad at the corner of my eye. Seeing her pic this intriguing game up now and then to give it another go piqued my interest, so I asked her what game it was and set about downloading it.

It always starts off well like this, but it’s your own desire to keep everything neat and tidy that’ll be your downfall.

That game in question is 1010!, a puzzle/strategy game where the only obstacle is yourself. The game starts off simple enough: you have a blank grid taking up theist majority of the screen, with three tetriminos at the bottom. It’s your task to put these tertiminos anywhere you would like on the screen, trying to make lines (either horizontally or vertically) to destroy them. Should you not be able to put a tetrimino on the grid its game over.

The first couple of times you play the game, chances are you’ll try and sign everything up so it looks perfect and straight, just like you would in Tetris. Problem is (as you’ll soon find out) making everything look lovely does not mean you’ll have a good game. There were many times where I would make it so that all I needed was a straight piece, then find the next three tetriminos all being shapes other than I needed, ending the game.

Get used to this screen, you’ll be seeing it a lot

You soon start to realise (and master) that in order to do well in 1010! you must get rid of lines as soon as they appear. Yes, in doing so you’ll have a messy board with shapes and remnants of tetriminos sticking out all over the place, but at the end of the day the more space you have to play with, the easier life will be when it comes to sticking the new tetriminos on the grid.

It’s such a simple game, but is both a blast to play, and sticks to the design philosophy I love so much: keep it simple but hard. The only obstacle in this game is yourself; should you start organising everything neatly, you only have yourself to blame when the next random tile comes on screen that you can’t place.

This is getting a little too crowded for my comfort…

Your score goes up for each tetrimino that you place on the grid, with destroying a line netting you more points. It’s your objective to last as long as possible, which is why being neat and tidy is not a good idea for survivability, and why I was finally able to beat my friends sisters high-score after a few hours of constant retrying.

The games addictive, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s simple, but damn well bloody hard, and you only have yourself to blame should anything cock up. You might spend the first couple of tries blaming the game when you have nowhere else to place tetriminos, but you soon start to realise; it’s all you.

1010! is free on iOS and Android, with the option to pay for the in-game ads to disappear. I found I needed to spend that £1.49, as the ads take up 5-10 seconds of your time between games, when all you want to do is jump straight back in after your own idiocy got you killed.

4/5

15/04/2016
Weekly Gaming: Hyper Light Drifter (PC)

Hi all!

So this week I finally got hold of a copy of Hyper Light Drifter that I backed over 2 and a half years ago. Suffice to say, I was excited to play the game after this much anticipation, and it certainly lived up to my expectations.

I can only hope that eventually all the other Kickstarter games I’ve backed are eventually released…. (I WISH).

Anyway, if you wish to give the review a good read, click the link below to see it in all it’s glory on VGChartz.com!

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/263775/hyper-light-drifter-pc/

As always, thank you for your support, and I look forward to seeing you next week for another game I’ll be completing from my ever-growing games collection!

-Dan

08/04/2016
Weekly Gaming: Firewatch (PC)

As weird as it sounds as a games writer, I haven’t purchased and played a game so close to it’s release date in quite a while. Maybe it’s because of my backlog of games (I keep buying them faster than I can play them!), or maybe its because it’s been quiet on the release calendar, but either way, I couldn’t stay away from the enticing adventure game that has everyone deep in conversation: Firewatch.

So what is Firewatch? Another walking simulator if you want to break it down to its very foundation. Just like Gone Home or Dear Esther, the whole game is about a narrative unfolding, with the exploration of the place you’re in (in this case, a national park) being only a sub-task to the games narrative itself. Unlike the aforementioned titles, Firewatch thankfully takes the exploratory narrative game one step further, and tricks the player into thinking there’s actual gameplay mechanics throughout the campaign. I say tricks, as throughout the campaign itself you’re given urgency, and don’t think about how much freedom you actually have to explore the great wilderness the developers at Campo Santo provide to you.

For a narrative driven game, right out of the gate Firewatch hits all the expected ques. You have a deep back story, one which takes you through the main protagonists history with his wife, along with the struggles that come about because of her onset alzheimer’s disease. As a consequence of this, Julia is taken back to her parents in Australia, meaning our protagonist (Henry) has a lot on his plate when he finds the firewatching job. Throughout the course of the game, this history will matter little compared to the new relationship blooming in his life; between himself and his new supervisor, Delilah.

You’ll be given tasks to do throughout the lush national park of Shoshone National Forest by Delilah, and it’s whilst you’re going about these tasks that the narrative will unfold more and more. During these tasks you’ll get to know Delilah quite well, with each sarcastic insult she and Henry throws at each other becoming more and more familiar to relationships we all know in real-life; a feature I truly enjoyed and made me smile with the witty charm and attention to detail the writing implores so often. The characters of Henry and Delilah feel real; none of the voice acting feels forced, and throughout the campaign I never once felt like I was being deceived; it’s fantastically made, and something the voice actors should feel hugely proud of for the work they have done.

The world of Shoshone National Forest is a treat for the eyes. The way the trees shimmer in the wind, along with the way the lighting changes throughout the day help to make for one of the most aesthetically pleasing indie games in living memory. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no realism here; Campto Santo isn’t going to be competing with Crytek anytime soon, but the world feels so vibrant and alive despite it’s simple textures and lovely object models that it genuinely feels alive. Its a testament to how grand the world looks that the developers gave players the ability to print of the in-game pictures they take as postcards; proof in itself that Firewatch is a marvel to look at.

It’s a shame then that for all the praise I’ve given to Firewatches aesthetics and narrative, the same couldn’t be said for the gameplay itself. Whilst all the trailers and screenshots make the game out to be an open world, this is only a half-truth. Firewatch is in-fact, a linear corridor driven affair, albeit with some freedom as to how you get to the next objective.For example: You’ll get a call from Delilah to investigate some teens for example, so off you go, drudging through the woods to a point on your map. During this time, you chat with Delilah, and make your way to your objective. Once there, you’ll make a few decisions, and then have to head to another location, which is repeated ad infinitum. There’s no reason to ever really explore the world, as the mechanics simply don’t let you; everything exists for the narrative, meaning should you come across something early, you can’t do anything to it (e.g. I came across a fence early on. There was no way to enter the area beyond the fence until later in the campaign; the same happened again for many other things I found on exploring).

Firewatch feels like an empty shell of what it could have been. Whilst the narrative and wilderness is great, you just can’t help but feel let down by the end of the campaign. There has been talk online of some customers wanting a refund after completing the game, admitting that they enjoyed what they played, but felt that the experience wasn’t worth £15. I tend to agree with these customers. Firewatch could have been so much more; the forest is big enough and beautiful enough that players could have gotten lost in it for days hunting for secrets with a set of gameplay mechanics like using an axe acquired to cut down trees to get to new areas. Unfortunately, with Firewatch’s world merely being eye-candy whilst you learn more about the story, the game left a foul taste in my mouth once finished.

By all means buy Firewatch when it comes down in price and is on sale; the story alone would be a fantastic experience when the game’s on sale. I just cannot in good faith recommend spending £15 on the game, as you too would probably come out with the same bad feeling.

So much potential, so little pay off.

3/5

18/03/2016
Weekly Gaming: That Dragon, Cancer (PC)

Hi all,

So for this week I managed to finally play the game I backed over a year ago on Kickstarter: That Dragon, Cancer. It was a fantastic experience, one I’m glad I played, and whilst I wouldn’t necessarily call it a game, it still was worth playing and experiencing.

You can read my full impressions below:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/262877/that-dragon-cancer-pc/

Also, I made a video review of this game too! You can find it below:

Hope you’re all well, and thank you for visiting!

-Dan

29/01/2016
Weekly Gaming: A Story About My Uncle (PC)

A Story About My Uncle managed to go under my radar for quite a while, having not really heard anything about the game both in reading games websites, and in talking to friends. Eventually, my brother showed me the game whilst I was visiting family one weekend, saying it looked fantastic, and shouting about how much it needs to be played. I bought it on steam, and ignored it for a good long while. Being the start of a new year I decided it was time to actually give the game a go and put it through its paces to see if it deserved as much hype my brother was lauding it with.

So to set up the premise of A Story About My Uncle, you play as a child looking for his estranged uncle, all the while this is being narrated to a little girl as a bedtime story. You start the game off in your uncles laboratory, and happen across a suit made just like your uncles, only smaller, as if it was made for you. Donning it and proceeding upstairs, you come across a “Garbage” pad, which, once activated, sends you to a new and wonderful place.

It’s at this point that the game starts proper, with the suit you have being capable of jumping extremely high, and grappling onto most objects in the environment. You use these abilities to jump from floating island to floating island in pursuit of more of the story. There’s no fall damage or permanent death in ASAMU, but the scarcity of islands to land on certainly makes for a challenging game none-the-less. Despite this simplicity, ASAMU really manages to stand out from the crowd, easily leaving a good impression on me over the course of its 3 hour campaign.

So apart from the jumping mechanic, what makes ASAMU such a good game? Well for one, the story that I spoke of earlier is actually quite enticing, with little snippets of dialogue explaining more of the world around you as and when appropriate being a compliment to an otherwise good plot. The ambition to find your uncle and see what more this world has to offer is as good a reason as any to progress through the story, and it helps that the gameplay really holds up when pushed to it’s limits towards the end of the game.

The puzzle mechanics of ASAMU are also commendable, with every level being huge in scale, it’s hard to know where to jump and which direction to go in order to make sure you land on the correct platform. Retrying certain jumps in different ways can help to progress, and helps in constantly teaching you new things about the physics in use in ASAMU. you get a real feeling the the more that you play and fail, the more you’re learning, which in turn helps you later on. The game didn’t feel at all boring during the short campaign, with each section amping the difficulty perfectly.

There are flaws in the game’s campaign – a section towards the end of the game in some caverns comes to mind – where the 3-grapple limit really starts to grind at your patience rather than actually being a good game mechanic set to challenge you. There are ways around this 3-grapple limit BUT at times they really don’t work as intended, meaning you’ll end up dying far too many times; a huge deterrent that almost got me to walk away from the game in its final moments.

Another flaw is the lack of progress on ideas that are brought in, but quickly discarded whilst on your voyage through the world. Half way through the campaign for example there’s an eye monster that you must avoid by not moving when it’s eye is open. This part of the campaign felt brilliant for what was possible in future encounters; maybe there’ll be one boss I’ll need to kill by jumping between spikes on a ceiling that fall? I thought to myself once this area was done. Unfortunately, nothing ever come of this encounter, with nothing like it appearing again. This isn’t necessarily a scathing brush against the developers; I enjoyed the eye monster encounter, I just wish there were more encounters like it.

Overall, I’m glad I finally got around to playing ASAMU. It’s a genuinely good platformer that has a great deal of replayability, especially in it’s time trial mode and in the amount of collectibles that are hidden throughout the campaign. Did it deserve the amount of hype my brother lauded it with? Maybe not, but its certainly a game that deserved way more attention than it initially received, a shame for such a solid game with a great core premise.

3/5

15/01/2016
Weekly Gaming: Super Toy Cars (Xbox One)

Please note that whilst I know the developers of Super Toys Cars (Eclipse Games) I will try my best to provide a review as unbiased as possible.

Super Toy Cars has been out for a long time, but with its recent release on the Xbox One, Eclipse Games sent me a review copy to have a bash at. Over the course of 6 hours I bumped and bashed my way through all 48 levels, getting 575 gamerscore in the process, so I’m pretty qualified to give my opinion on the game.

If you wanted an example of what Super Toy Cars resembles it’s Micro Machines grown up. You play as a tiny car racing against 7 other cars (of varying makes and models) and proceed to race around tracks that are made of all the small things a child would have access to (cereal boxes, sweets, games etc). There’s many modes to differentiate the gameplay, with an elimination round easily being my favourite (every 20 seconds whoever’s in last place is thrown out of the game). The graphics is fairly cool for a small team working across continents (seriously, they don’t work together and instead work over skype), and the music is repetitive, but awesome at times (cannot stop singing two of the songs to myself all the time). Whilst on paper that all sounds awesome and dandy, Super Toy Cars just can’t help but feel…. clunky.

Cars are varied, but clunky in the way they feel across tracks. At least there’s plenty of variety when it comes to the look of them.

It’s not a word I use very often to describe things, but clunky is exactly the word I’m going to use to perfectly summarise Eclipse Games’ Super Toy Cars. It has plenty of cars, and plenty of stages, but the whole thing comes across as unpolished. I found myself being driven insane far too often at clunky controls, clunky physics, and damn right annoying AI.

The drift mechanic for example is used in most games to encourage more skilled players to use it more often, helping them build up boosts to then beat a level faster. In Super Toy Cars it only serves to impede you, annoyingly slowing you down to the point it was never worth my time drifting around corners, and simply braking instead. Not great for a competitive game when the best way to win is to have the fastest car and to simply brake around corners.

Stages are nice in variety, but have weird collision glitches all over the place, with walls colliding strangely (sometimes you’ll just drive through cereal boxes and other times you’ll flip hundreds of times), and floors causing slow downs at random times. This doesn’t play nicely with the game’s automatic restart feature, which respawns your car should it detect you’ve collided pretty badly with the scenery or you’re driving the wrong way (being in first for a lot of the race then losing because you respawned whilst driving on a straight road is never a nice feeling).

For an indie game from a small studios, Super Toy Cars really does a good job of looking fantastic.

For all of it’s faults I did find that Super Toy Cars became a lot more enjoyable towards the end when I had the fastest car available, allowing me to bypass most bugs and “clunkiness” through sheer speed alone. Not a great way to explain how I eventually enjoyed a game, but a fitting sentence all the same. If only the rest of the game was like the final 2 hours…

So, for all its faults, should you own Super Toy Cars? If you fancy helping out an indie developer and having a semi-enjoyable few hours on the game (with awesome, quick achievements), then by all means pay the price for admission. If on the other hand you’re quick to anger and don’t like bugs in your games (who does), then it might be worth skipping Super Toy Cars for now. For a first game, Eclipse Studios should be happy with themselves, but that doesn’t stop Super Toy Cars from being Clunky with a capital C.

2/5

25/12/2015
Weekly Gaming: Shadow Puppeteer (PC)

Hi all,

For this week I’ve decided to put up my review/article on a game I completed in October called Shadow Puppeteer. The game was fantastic, and I wish the developers all the luck in the world when it releases soon on Wii U.

If you want to read my opinions on the game, click the link below:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/261362/underrated-hidden-gems-1-shadow-puppeteer/

Hope you’re all well, and thanks for visiting.

-Dan

04/12/2015
Weekly Gaming: Desert Golf (iOS)

I never imagined, in my wildest dreams, that I would be writing about an endless procedurally generated golf game. Even writing that last sentence feels weird. And yet, here I am, writing about a game I’ve become obsessed with.

Like my first sentence alluded to, Desert Golf revolves around plain, 2D course, where holding your finger on the screen, moving it in a direction and releasing whacks the golf ball in a specific direction. The course is procedural, so you’ll get random geometry sticking out here and there, and once you’ve potted you ball, you’ll then proceed to the next stage, which simply encompasses the viewable screen moving to the right a certain distance and pushing your ball out of the hole to try again on the next course.

That’s the entire game.

I’m not even joking. The entire game encompasses what I described above ad nauseam.

There’s no music to speak of, no change of scenery (albeit the colour of the ground slowly changes hue over the 250 holes I’ve so far played), and no change of mechanics.

And yet, despite how little this game has to offer, I’m absolutely hooked.

The simplicity of the levels can be a random mix of difficult shots (where you’ll need to use the curvature of the land to bounce the ball correctly) all the way to the mundane where a simple tap will suffice. It’s addictive to sink one hole after another, all the while your score at the top of the screen is increasing. the score is used as an indicator for how well (or bad) you’re doing, with a twitter icon appearing occasionally to share your progress with friends. I (thankfully) found I was 200 shots below a friend at the 200 mark, a massive achievement for myself, and one that helped in keeping me hooked to the game.

So when will the madness end? Well I recall the Giantbomb crew talking about Desert Golf, and from what I remember, it really does never end, with many giving up after a few thousand holes.

Is Desert Golf worth your time? Yes yes and hell yes. Looks can be deceiving, and for Desert Golf, that works in its favour, with a simple but challenging mechanic taking it far further than I could ever imagine. Time will only tell how far I actually get, but for now, I’m hooked.

4/5

27/11/2015
Weekly Gaming: Rocket League (PS4)

It’s a strange thing to be addicted to a game you never thought was your type or genre. I genuinely can’t explain how it makes me feel. I genuinely do not enjoy sports games, so to get hooked off a game I was sceptical of in the first place is weird, and not something that happens often.

So, how did I come by Rocket League? Well luckily, it was free for Playstation Plus in September, a fantastic offer for a game only just released. For weeks I’ve been listening to the Giant Bombcast talk about how they’re all hooked to the game, so one afternoon, in my downtime, I decided to give the game a go. Booting the game up, I was greeted to a stunningly brilliant rendering of a car on a field, a weird sentence I wouldn’t ever have imagined I’d ever write! (first time for everything today it would seem). Jumping head first into an online match, I soon discovered what all the hype was about when I scored my very first goal.

You see, Rocket League is equal parts luck, and equal parts skill, but when you score a goal or save one from happening, you genuinely feel like the most skillful player there ever was. Having your best (and worst) moments replayed straight after they happened really keeps you interested in the match a hand, even if you’re doing bad. I constantly wanted to better myself, or show off, depending on how I was doing.

Sorry, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. To begin with, an explanation of Rocket League:

Rocket League lets you play a typical game of football as a car. Sounds crazy, but it’s genuinely genius; to the point fans are now campaigning to make it an e-sport. You can choose from 4 different types of match: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, proceeding to try and outscore the opposing teams. It’s that simple.

Each match lasts a maximum of 5 minutes, so the game really is a “pick up and play” type of game, with myself constantly thinking “ah, I have half an hour free before I go to bed, I’ll play a few games of Rocket League before sleep”. Whilst this mentality is certainly awesome, it can cause problems in regards to being just too damn addictive, with every match’s score screen prompting you to instantly press the “find new match” button without thinking.

So how are the controls? Well to put it simply; Delightful. You literally control the car like you would any normal racing game, just this time the mechanics necessitate you controlling it in weird and wonderful ways, with the addition of a jump and nitro boost helping to push your driving skills to the extreme. With traditional racing games you’re trying to stick to a track, constantly making tiny adjustments in order to stay within the course and get the best time. Not so with Rocket League, where you’re constantly trying to change direction within seconds to counter wherever the ball is at that moment. Rocket jumping is hard, but soon you get used to it and are flying just as much as you’re driving, whacking the ball out of the air before over players can get to it.

There isn’t really anything in the sense of music (bar the main menu screen, which, due to the quality of Rocket Leagues servers, you’ll rarely ever spend time on the menu), which isn’t a bad thing considering this is a sports game. Sound effects are as you’d expect (fans cheering, explosions happen when you score a goal etc.) and help to keep the immersion in the match.

So should you get Rocket League for the grand total of £15 if you missed it on playstation plus? HELLS YES. I have easily put in hours and hours of time into the game, getting hooked well past the point of when I should be in bed before work the next morning. The game is addictive, and certainly something I wasn’t expecting to be hooked to considering it’s a genre I don’t generally like.

5/5

20/11/2015
Weekly Gaming: Grow Home (PS4) Review

I’ve been meaning to play Grow Home for a while now. Considering one of my school mates has their own name in the game, I really needed to download it and give it a go, especially after the guys at Giant Bomb gave it high praise. Alas, months passed with constant reviews and programming to be done, until it finally become apparent the game was getting a new release on the PS4 as a part of it’s Playstation Plus free games promotion. Well this was a massive delight, especially since it meant I’d finally get to play the game, but also, I would’t have to pay anything for it!

So where to begin? Well to start off, Grow Home is an indie game by Ubisoft Reflections in Newcastle, a studio renowned for Watch Dogs and The Crew. Strange, I know, but at least some of the team up there were given free time to work on Grow Home. The game has a simple premise; you play a red robot named BUD (Botanical Utility Droid), who travels with his mother ship (M.O.M) from planet to planet finding Star Plants, huge plants which can create Star Fruit for people back on earth. The plants are gigantic, easily able to reach over 2000 metres in size, so it’s up to BUD (and you, the player) to grow the plant and retrieve it’s fruit. It’s a fantastically simple premise, but one that I found extremely enjoyable; as of writing this review I played the game for over 7 hours and managed to get every trophy in the game.

Whilst the graphics are simple, they’re certainly great in portraying a lovely environment.

Whilst the premise is simple, the controls and gameplay are far from it, with BUD being a wobbly mess that is difficult to control. At the start you’ll walk more than anything else using the analogue sticks, but occasionally you’ll need to pick things up using the R1 and L1 buttons (which both control BUDS arms). It’s these buttons you’ll also need to use for climbing, which, considering this is a vertical game all about growing a plant upwards, you’ll be doing a lot of. Alternating between L1 and R1 enables BUD to grab hold of walls in front of him, and whilst this works for the most part, the fiddliness of BUD himself will make it difficult to keep ahold of walls sometimes. For the most part, the controls are fine. BUD feels like a real tangible thing, with gravity and weight, and whilst this form of control is annoying at times (try falling 600-700 metres after climbing for tens of minutes), it adds a sense of challenge to anything you may want to do in the game.

The world BUD explores is open, meaning you’re free to explore til your hearts content. Upon exploring, you’ll find new wildlife to pick up and inspect, as well as power crystals, which power BUD up and give him more abilities. The first (and possibly most useful ability), was to zoom the camera out, meaning you could see whether crystals were hiding in unexplored places. This was a nifty addition, and later additions usually involved the rocket pack on BUDS back, which was a way of flying around the world temporarily (and increasing length as you gather more crystals). The hunting for new flowers, fauna and crystals really pushed me to explore every nook and cranny of the world, a somewhat enjoyable but also challenging prospective considering BUDS control mechanics.

A final word about the world: the way in which you grow the star plant is a fantastic mechanic where you hold a flower/bloom, and then direct it to wherever you like. The stem of your new sprout will then have more flowers to bloom to do the same with. Should you direct your stem into a floating island with green underneath, you’ll grow the main star plant higher, furthering your progress. It’s all a fantastic mechanic that kept me entranced until the end.

At the start of the game there’s endless possibilities, with the whole land before you, and with a plant which hasn’t grown yet.

Controls aside, it’s onto the graphics, which is simplistic throughout the whole game. Just take a look at the screenshots attached to this review, and you’ll see how everything is stylised polygonal, with no textures, and everything simply coloured. Whilst some may be critical of this simplistic approach, I, for one, enjoyed it, with the massive shadows from the single light source adding a nice feeling to an otherwise simplistic decor. Just to add: there’s not really anything in the way of music, and what little sound effects are in the game suit it admirably.

So, was Grow Home worth the wait? I’d say so. For a free Playstation Plus game, you really can’t go wrong. I ended up spending 7 hours getting 100% of the trophies before stopping, even though the main game can be completed within 3 hours; I was just that hooked. Some may find it boring after a while, but for the most part, Ubisoft Reflections first foray into indie gaming is a fantastic success. Go get it for free if you have Playstation Plus, otherwise, it’s certainly worth the £7 they’re asking.

4/5

13/11/2015
Weekly Gaming: Catlateral Damage (PC)

The following review was done at the beginning of the year when I received a early access review copy of Catlateral Damage from it’s developer. Due to problems at the time, as well as my awful writing, I never got around to publishing it. Read it now before I decide to take it down:

Love cats? Then you’re going to love Catlateral Damage, the game which’ll have you exploring a procedurally generated house whilst making an absolute mess of it. Your reason for doing so? Cause you’re a cat, you don’t need any further reasoning.

The game’s easy to understand and play; you’ll explore randomly generated houses and will need to push as much of your owners stuff onto the floor as possible. You achieve this through two means; either using your paws to whack things off, or walk into them, ensuring they smash onto the floor from whatever height they’re at.

It’s a simple premise, but certainly has some repetitiveness to it, with the two game modes available merely deviating in how much time it gives you to push things off the shelves. Objective mode gives you one level after another, making you push off a certain amount of objects before you can progress to the next level. Litterbox mode on the other hand gives you free reign of the levels, and allows you to spend as much or as little time as you’d like before moving on. Regardless which mode you select, you’ll be getting the same game here, with levels being the same albeit with more urgency in the objective mode.

There are side objectives in the game, regardless of which mode you choose. The first time a buzzer went off to tell me that there was a mouse on the loose I abandoned everything I was doing and went about trying to locate it. Upon catching it I managed to get one of the power ups

Whilst going about your business and whacking things off sides, you’ll be given power ups to improve your 3 main abilities: jump, speed and swatting power. Your way of attaining these powers will change from house to house, with some randomly spawned just by doing a level, and others appearing because you’ve played with a cat toys for so many times. Occasionally you

In playing Catlateral Damage I couldn’t help but feel a truly Katamari Damacy vibe emanating from the game. The objects around the scenery are basic, but they’re at least different, with the game being intelligent enough to differentiate between different books or DVD’s, so will push you into getting so many of a certain object. Every different object you find and push off in the world will contribute to your collection of items you’ve happened across.

Whilst there is a core mechanic at play here, I couldn’t help but feel that the game was a hollow shell of what it could become one day should the developers add more items, more objectives, and overall more of everything into the game. Once you’ve seen few deviations of the formula at the start of the game, you soon start to feel bored, and have to make your own objectives. I found myself purely going for the achievements within steam rather than doing anything else in the game. This isn’t to say Catlateral Damage is bad at all, just that it feels like it’s missing its potential in what an addictive game it could be, rather than the shell of one we have right now.

3/5

11/11/2015
Weekly Gaming: Life is Strange Episode 5: Polarised (PC)

Hi all!

So this week I finally finished Life is Strange’s final episode. It was a fantastic series, and one that I’m sure will live on in gamers memories as a true testament of what adventure games can accomplish when they take on better subject matters and have a brilliant writing staff. Telltale game’s last few entries into the adventure game market really have left me stumped with how hollow I’ve felt from them, so here’s to hoping they learn from DontNod studios’ fantastic writing.

The review in question can be found below:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/261900/life-is-strange-episode-5-polarized-pc/

As always, thanks for visiting, and I hope you all have a brilliant week!

-Dan

06/11/2015
Weekly Gaming: Catherine (PS3) Review

Catherine’s been on my to do list for years now. The game has always fascinated me: taking control of a man who needs to decide between his girlfriend of many years and a new girl on the scene. It always appealed to me, as it’s exactly where I am in life at the moment, with me reaching my 30’s soon and not settled down (whilst everyone else around me is having kids and getting married). After I had heard good things for years, I finally started looking into buying it, only to find that it was already on my PS3 as it was free on PS+ many years ago.

Trying to find a perfect time to play the game was a challenge though. Thankfully, my friend and I was looking for a new game to complete together, and decided on Catherine, since we could see the story whilst taking it in turns to solve the puzzles. To say I’m glad we played Catherine is an understatement.

The game of Catherine takes place in a little Japanese city, with you playing and watching the life of Vincent as he unexpectedly gets dragged into a world of drama between two girls, all whilst men are dying from strange dreams. Upon night time, Vincent himself has these strange dreams, where he needs to climb a weird puzzle game in order to live another day. By day, he speaks with friends to try and get to the bottom of what to do in his current predicament. Half puzzle game, half dating simulator. It’s a weird combination of gameplay, but one that really speaks volumes to the games core underpinnings: it’s ability to use gameplay as a metaphor and tell a fantastic story.

Moral choices are insane when you’re constantly reminded that there’s a person on the receiving end of your choices.

You see, whilst you have some control over Vincent and his decisions (do you drink more at night to have an advantage in your dream, but will most likely mean that Vincent sleeps with the wrong Catherine again?) the game still wants to tell a story of it’s own, with some of your reactions/replies to moments being not what you’d want to say. I’d find many instances where Vincent would need to reply to a text he had gotten, only to find that none of the replies suited what me and my friend wanted to actually say, meaning we’d need to do the lesser of two evils. This is all fine and good though, as you still have some control over Vincent, it’s just annoying when a situation presents itself that you wish you could actually have some control over.

The nightmare sequences are cool, but nothing special. Catherine’s puzzle mechanics are simple, but solid, with Vincent being able to move blocks to progress up a tower, and climb them. What starts off simple enough soon becomes harder, with ice blocks, explosive blocks, and many others soon forcing you to constantly rethink your strategy of how to make your way up the tower. The stages are big enough that you have plenty of freedom to come up with your own solution, meaning Catherine is still giving your freedom to choose in both it’s main story and it’s gameplay.

The true brilliance of the game is during the day, when you control Vincent in deciding what he does around a bar. It’s here that you get to learn more details about the world around you (more men dying, details about special drinks being poured for you etc), but it’s also here where you’ll make new friendships and answer questions which will change your characters morality. It’s this “morality” system which will have an effect on the ending, with multiple anime scenes playing out depending on how you answered the questions, or responded to Catherine (and Katherine)’s demands.

Choices like these (albeit not as straightforward) are constantly asked throughout the story, like “do you see kids as life’s greatest gift, or annoying for your freedom?”. These questions had me and my friend in great debate, with us rarely picking the same answer.

I was hooked on these day scenes, with me shouting at Craig telling him what to reply in a text back to Catherine. The characters felt real, and were certainly enticing enough for me to have an opinion on what should be done with them. I wanted to have an impact on the world, and wanted so much for Vincent to get with Catherine, the new girl on the block who enticed Vincent to cheat on his girlfriend of many years: Katherine. Lo and behold, the developers actually made the two Catherine’s out to be a visual metaphor; Catherine (the young, blonde free spirit) was freedom manifested, with Katherine (the dull, safe girlfriend) being commitment. It was a good contrast, and was interesting to see that I went with freedom each and every time, whilst my good friend (who’s about to get married and already has a kid), chose the latter. It was these decisions and constant scenarios which made me truly love the game, with their being no “right” or “wrong” answer, merely decisions to be made like what would happen in real life.

I genuinely loved Catherine, and may actually be tempted to play it again in the near future (when I’ve got less games to play). The decisions, atmosphere, and everything about it enticed me to a point I was shouting my friend down on what decisions to make all the time. It was also fascinating on the breadth of different choices people would make in the exact same situation given the same questions. If you’re the kind of person who likes a fantastic story (one that’ll make you look at your own life and the decisions you make), then look no further, as Catherine is sure to get you thinking about your life decisions so far. Just be warned: don’t play the game with a loved one around. They may affect your decision making, or would be annoyed at the answers you give.

4/5

02/10/2015
Weekly Gaming: Volume (PS4)

Hi all!

So this week I managed to get a review copy of Volume, and set about reviewing it over the course of an entire night. It’s a fantastic stealth game that really brings the genre down to its core essentials, emitting things we take for granted like graphics and sound. Overall, a great game, but with some nuisances, like the voice acting and music.

As always, if you wanna give my review a read, click the link below:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/260707/volume-ps4/

Thanks for visiting!

-Dan

04/09/2015
Weekly Gaming: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Hi all,

This week I look at The Chinese Room’s latest “walking simulator”; Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Whilst I enjoyed the story, the game was literally a walking simulator, and had nothing else worth mentioning apart from the lush graphics.

If you wanna give the review a read, you can check it out below:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/260562/everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture-ps4/

As always, thanks for your support, and see you next week!

-Dan

21/08/2015