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Weekly Gaming – The Typing of The Dead: Overkill (PC)

Being the second title in the Typing franchise, The Typing of The Dead Overkill goes all out on being as crazy and sexist as possible, all for the chance to get a little laugh out of the player.

As a Kid, I used to beg my dad to go on his PC and play some of the games I watched him play. I recall loving the look of The Typing of the Dead as it was a game that I remembered from arcades at the seaside, and wanted to revel in this myself. Being only 13/14 at the time, I wasn’t very good at typing, and had to look at my keyboard every time a new word appeared on the screen so I could find the appropriate keys and press them. I was terrible, but it was still fun to play the game that I played in the arcades, albeit with a different control method. Does the new, “improved” Typing of the Dead live up to my expectations from yesteryear? Read on my friends.

Being that the original Typing of the Dead was just a rehash of The House of the Dead 2 with typing elements instead of a light gun, The Typing of the Dead Overkill does the exact same trick as it’s precursor, going so far as to include the original shooter as well. Being that I didn’t own a Wii, I wasn’t able to play the original, so all the gags, humour and characters seem completely original to me. The game starts you out by introducing you to the protagonists of the game: Agent G and Detective Isaac Washington. Its through these two characters eyes (and others along the way) that you’ll see a crazy world where mutants (they make sure to remind you that they aren’t zombies, and are in fact mutants) are roaming free, killing and devouring all that stand in their way. Agent G and Washington’s only hope is to find the serum to cure this outbreak, which it seems is in the hands of Papa Caesar, the crazy old man that started this outbreak.

Levels are varied, and the words you have to type to kill zombies are ludicrously sensitive, with some words being close to the knuckle in respect to your current situation. The screenshot above is a bad example, but you wouldn’t be surprised to find words like “Personal Space” on a zombie whilst it’s in your face.

Levels are played by just shooting the mutants by typing in the text that appears below them. The game is a rail-shooter, which means you don’t control the movement on the player, you merely watch as you’re taken on a tour throughout a level and shoot zombies as fast and as accurate as possible. Being that the whole game centres around this one core mechanic, the developers have managed to push it further than I’d have thought, with each word being sensitive to the surroundings or current predicament occurring. It makes for some witty chuckles as you progress through stages, and allows you to have a laugh whilst doing something that most people would find tiring and boring on a day to day basis. You finish each level with a boss fight, which consist of typing faster than usual, or typing the correct words that are coming at you. Bosses are varied enough to keep the stages entertaining, with fantastic design that makes you appreciate how much effort went into creating detailed, original mutants without being too grotesque.

There are many collectibles to be found throughout each stage, ensuring you keep your eyes on the screen at all times whilst typing the mutants words. The whole game kind of pushes you into learning how to touch type, for the sheer reason that you’ll die if you don’t. There just isn’t enough time between seeing a word or letter on the screen and looking down at your keyboard to type it. This could be seen as a weird attempt to teach children and others how to touch-type whilst having fun, but maybe I’m just stretching the premise a bit too far.

With most of the bosses being gigantic and near impossible to miss, The Typing of the dead makes it so that you don’t have to dodge, so long as you manage to type the words fast enough on the screen.

The typing mechanic isn’t the only point on the spec sheet to keep you playing though, with The whole game featuring a 3 hour campaign that tells the story of Agent G and Isaac Washington hunting down the cure to the mutant outbreak, and putting a stop to the evil Papa Caesar that’s managed to destroy so many lives. The story is brilliantly funny, with the game taking the Mick out of it’s own ridiculousness every two seconds, a sense of irony isn’t amiss here. Certain groups of the gaming community may not like the jokes that are told, as they are used as the butt end of the joke, thankfully these jokes are rare and uncommon. You may at times take control of other protagonists, but these are only side missions, as the main story is all based around the problems Agent G and Washington find themselves in.

Being a rehash of the Wii Overkill game isn’t a detriment to the typings success, as many players like myself have played the original. If you enjoyed the original Typing of the Dead released in 2001, you’ll enjoy whats on offer here. With more touch typing goodies at your finger-tips, Typing of the Dead: Overkill both challenges you and entertains you at the same time. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Overkill, and may go back again in the future to improve my typing skills.

3/5

18/04/2014
Weekly Gaming: Titanfall (PC)

Titanfall has had critical appeal and reception since its reveal at E3 last year, but does this fanfare have merit, or is it a gust in the wind?

Given the amount of hype TitanFall has received since its debut at E3 last year, I had to give the game a go on release day to see what all the fuss was about. Without thinking, I slammed £25 into the Origin edition from CDKeys.com and preloaded it onto my machine days before launch. With a download size of 50GB, and a host of games sites going crazy for its imminent release, I hoped the money was worth it. After 42 hours of game time later, I suppose I can say that I have a few opinions on the game, and whether you should purchase it or not.

First up: TitanFall is a multiplayer only game, and although it comes with a campaign mode, it’s little, if anything worth mentioning. Upon starting Titanfall, you’re greeted with a main menu which has very few options. Pressing start brings you to another menu asking whether you want to start campaign, or start classic. Whichever option you choose makes little difference; one takes you to a multiplayer game with 30 seconds of audio logs and 15 seconds of pre-scripted animations before a match, the other just takes you straight into the match. The campaign is abysmal, with each stage concluding in a victory or defeat regardless of what you’ve done in the actual match, meaning you play no part in the world at large. Unfortunately, the campaign needs to be played in order to unlock the meagre 3 types of titans you can play as, meaning this is the only necessity in the game. For a full priced game (currently £45 on Xbox One), this is some of the worst value in the industry, but that’s relative to whether you spend time on multiplayer or not.

All maps are of similar size, with plenty of walls to run across and places to hide. Streets are always wide enough for Titans to navigate, with each level offering plenty of opportunities for pilots and Titans alike.

The matches themselves are what you’re here for, with the control scheme and game mechanics working in perfect harmony to create a fun and dynamic multiplayer experience. The matches play out similar each round, with teams starting on opposite ends of the map and meeting in the middle for a firefight. After about a minute or so, Titans start falling from the sky as players have earned the right to manoeuvre them. These hulking machines of metal, tower over enemy players, allowing you free reign of any robots or npc’s you may happen upon. Encountering other titans mixes the typical combat up, with titans taking a bigger beating than any normal solider would, and having special abilities like missiles that lock onto enemies or forcefields that repel enemy fire. The dynamism comes into play around the time a few titans have been killed and most players are back on foot, as it gives a new element to the combat: pilot v titan action. Titans are terribly overpowered, but to make up for this, pilots run and manoeuvre faster than a titan can keep up, ensuring a balance is maintained. Pilots also have the ability to double jump and wall run, giving a parkour feel to an otherwise static shooter. It can be said that you won’t die the same way twice, which certainly speaks volumes to TitanFalls ability to mix up the way a match plays out.

Throughout these matches you’ll meet NPC’s that are generated and controlled by the server, meaning none of the AI is being processed by your local machine. It means you can have hundreds of characters on the screen at any given time, making the stages a lot more epic in scope and scale, with the exception that the AI aren’t intelligent and don’t substitute for real players. They’ll group up together, have lower health, and generally don’t do too much damage to you, making them great cannon fodder for your kill streaks. There are times that I feel the AI were put in the game to fill the gap that the lack of real players couldn’t fill. With it’s small match size (12 players total, 6 V 6) the AI may have been a necessity to overcome the sheer size of the maps with a limited amount of players, ensuring you’re always coming across something to kill. On the other hand, they feel intentionally dumb and satisfying to kill, meaning coming across a drop pod of them brings glea with the amount of kills you’ll now be able to accomplish. Whether the AI were put in to make the maps feel epic, or whether they were put in as a game mechanic is down to you, but regardless on how you feel about the AI drones, they’re here to stay, so you had might as well slaughter them either way.

One new mechanic that has been added to TitanFalls gameplay is its addition of burn cards. Burn cards a temporary buffs to your character throughout one life. These buffs range from the mundane (like being able to hear an enemy near you) to the extraordinary (like summoning a titan when the game first starts). You can hold three of these cards in each match, which both ensures players aren’t too overpowered, and makes you reserve card uses until the opportune moment.

Your pilot and titan class can have a big effect on how you play each match, with each weapon starting off basic until you use it more. Each weapon also has challenges associated with it, meaning you’ll want to alternate between weapons to get the most XP in matches.

After each round, you’ll earn your XP, and level up, unlocking more weapons and titan abilities to progress up to the almighty level 50, a level so famed that you need to trade it in ASAP to get a new badge next to your name. That’s it. That’s everything your playtime has got you: a badge. Your second time through will also earn you more XP in each game (1.1x more for 1st regen, 1.2x more in 2nd etc.), but all this does again is give you another badge that looks slightly different. It’s a shame that the game doesn’t offer anything in terms of extra story or narrative for your achievement, but from the makers of Call of Duty, did you expect more?

Thankfully, I’m a competitive person, so this is all right up my street. I want to be the best of all my friends. I want annihilate them, so I continue to play. But for those of you who aren’t into this and are looking for a game to tackle new subjects or have a deeper meaning and better you as a person, TitanFall isn’t going to do any of this, and is instead a refinement of a old and stagnated genre of games.

So for those of you who never touch the multiplayer part of a game, TitanFall probably holds little to no value for you. But, if you’re the type of person that revels in the multiplayer sections of Call of Duty, and buy it exclusively for that alone, you’ll have the time of your life. The lack of a proper story makes the game feel like half of a game, and even the half that’s included feels devoid of content with only 3 titans and 15 maps, and 6 game modes to choose from. One day this may be resolved, but given numbers alone, TitanFall doesn’t offer much in terms of value. Where the value comes is in the dynamism and replayability, with my time invested already clocking in at 42 hours, it doesn’t look like this is going to end anytime soon.

3/5

11/04/2014
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
Gaming Week 51: Gunpoint (PC)

Giving you the freedom to take on most missions how you’d like is a core strength of Gunpoint, allowing you a sense of strategy in an otherwise typical platforming game.

I’ve had Gunpoint on my radar for a while now, learning about it whilst it was still in development, and going so far as to show my friends and family what little footage I had found as I thought it was a genius concept. After finally getting it around my Birthday a month ago, I jumped in without hesitation, eager to immerse myself in this sublime and wonderful creation.

Gunpoint is a 2D platformer with strategy mechanics, which sounds like a weird combination until you see how flawlessly they’re pulled off. You play as Richard Conway, a private eye investigator who is forced into his line of work after purchasing some Bullfrog trousers which malfunction and put him at the scene of a crime. Through clearing his name, Conway is lead deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, one in which innocent bystanders request Conways assistance to clear their name, whilst others use conway to set these assassinations up. It’s a lovely convoluted story that’ll keep you hooked until the end (unless you don’t enjoy reading).

The screenshot above is the games cross link view, which allows Conway to set up traps and rewire entire buildings. It’s this unique element which makes Gunpoint special, allowing a player to go about getting to the objective however they please, from elaborate traps that require a lot of rewiring, to going in guns blazing, the choice is yours.

Each level of Gunpoint consists of a building (or many buildings) that you must infiltrate to get to your end objective. This can be done as you’d like, with the use of different gadgets you purchase throughout the duration of the campaign. The most useful gadget by far is the Crosslink, a gadget that allows you to see all the wired components in the building, and rewire them to suit your needs. This brings about a new layer of gameplay, one in which you have to think your way through a level instead of jumping on every enemy and punching them to a pulp (as fun as this may be). You can wire light switches to trigger an electrical outlet, meaning when you switch off a light to another room, the guard that tries to switch it back on will be in for a shock. It’s extremely satisfying when a plan like this pays off, and one that may require some replays in order to find the best approach to getting to your end objective and getting out of there without being spotted.

The story of Gunpoint unfolds through scenes like the one above. You get to choose your responses throughout the whole campaign, meaning there are times where you may see different missions depending on who your snuggle up to.

The campaign is charming and witty, making for an enjoyable 2 hours of your time. It’s short, possible too short, meaning you’ll be yearning for more by the end of it, so you’ll probably want to replay missions you didn’t A+ first time, or even play the campaign all over again with different dialogue options keeping you entertained for hours. The replayability is fantastic, with Gunpoints level editor sure to keep many players entranced and being creative for a long time after the campaign is finished.

Gunpoint’s levels are enjoyable and short, each one giving a new challenge and a new insight into how to use the Crosslink successfully. When you first start using the cross link, levels are made up of simple light switch puzzles to open doors for you to then jump on the guards and take them down, but soon evolve into complex traps that’ll test your wits. Each level has some le-way, so you don’t have to be amazing at timing jumps or crosslinking switches, which is a nice change of pacing in an otherwise familiar setting.

The AI isn’t intelligent, and is there just to add another layer to the puzzles, but are enjoyable cannon fodder for the entertaining take downs you can perform. Knocking enemies out is strangely satisfying, with each click repeating the mesmerising sound of punching a guard whilst he’s down, it’s entrancing, and damn right sadistic. The enemies get stronger as the game goes on, with some minor variances between guards making gameplay a little more challenging, but still easy overall. By the end of the game, you’ll have encountered 3 different enemies: Normal Guards, Heavy Guards, and spy ops guards, all of which have their own abilities, and all have to be taken down differently.

Buildings vary in shape and size, with multiple cross link colours to unlock and different ways to approach the same objective. Your freedom to tackle any problem as you please with the tools provided is one of the most satisfying things about Gunpoint.

The soundtrack of Gunpoint is astounding, produced by Ryan Ike, Francisco Cerda and John Robert Matz, it really helps to bring the game alive with a noire feeling. It’s hard to describe how perfectly these men have nailed noire, so follow the link below to hear a sample of their work:

The pixel art graphics may not be to everyones taste, but the general atheistic of the game holds up, with levels detailed enough to portray real office blocks. One thing that may be worth considering for those of you with high res displays is to lower the resolution the games rendered at. I found playing at 1080p far too small, so had to drop the settings down to 1440×900 to get a more comfortable experience.

So in conclusion, if all I’ve said so far hasn’t convinced you to buy Gunpoint so far, I don’t know what will. It controls beautifully, with every jump, punch and smash feeling satisfying. Its strategy/puzzle mechanics are amazing, allowing you to take on any level time and time again with a different outcome. The only thing I can possible say against Gunpoint is how short it is, which speaks volumes to how enjoyable the game is and how much more I’d have loved to play.

4/5

20/12/2013
Gaming Week 50: Batman Arkham City (PC)

Absolutely stunning graphics made the PC version a pleasure to play. I know graphics don’t make a game, but they certainly help you become more engrossed in the world.

I absolutely adored the original Batman Arkham Asylum, going so far as to 100% the game twice on both normal and hard difficulty, doing every online challenge, and playing it to the point I was once 42nd in the world on the leaderboards for one challenge. To say it was going to be a difficult act to follow up would be an understatement, something the gaming press agreed with unanimously.

The game starts out with Bruce Wayne at a press conference outside the portion of the city sanctioned off for prison use (hence the name, Arkham City), making the argument that the prison is a disgrace to the citizens of Gotham. He’s arrested by police guards, and chucked straight into the pit with all the inmates he helped arrest breathing down his neck, waiting to pounce. You’re soon introduced to Penguin, and upon escaping and reaching higher ground, don your suit and begin your journey through the streets of Arkham as Batman, trying to get to the bottom of this corrupt and evil place. It’s a good start to the game, one that sets the premise relatively quick, and allows freedom to explore the intricacies as soon as possible.

Playing through a game where your main characters appearance changes constantly is reminiscent of the original Arkham Asylum, but it still impresses here, with suit upgrades and rips/tears making you believe Batman really is fragile and an evolving character, something many game developers could learn a thing or two from.

Intricacies are what Batman: Arkham City has plenty of. The City is brimming with thugs, side objectives and Easter eggs that I’m sure any Batman fan would recognise in a heartbeat, and continues to offer hours of gameplay even after its final moments. It’s not the biggest gaming environment to explore, with Batman able to glide from one side to the other in a few minutes, but it’s filled to the brim with content, so you’re never more than 5 minutes away from discovering something new. It’s a lovely environment, one that allows you to take many different approaches to different situations. For example, if you want to take on a gang of bandits, you could be stealthy, intelligent with gadgets laid as traps, or go all out and brute force your way through. The city itself is more of a hub world, with key story moments happening within the confines of the buildings. It allows for the level designers to make a more unique environment for each villain, but could also annoy fans who would just want to get through the campaign, as the travelling between locations just wastes time.

Combat is a pleasure, becoming a bit tighter since the original, with Batman swinging from foe to foe effortlessly. If it weren’t for you pressing the buttons to make Batman punch and kick, you’d think every fight scene was scripted or an FMV. Enemies offer more variety than the plain orange inmates of the original Arkham Asylum, with designs changing depending on which leader they follow, but most can be put into the category of cannon fodder. They appear around every corner of the game, allowing the player to not go more than 5 minutes without fighting, just in case you’re getting bored of the city. It’s strange considering how beautifully the city is constructed, but is understandable when you consider who this games target market is.

Gliding and exploring Arkham City is a pleasure, with hidden easter eggs for fans of the series at every turn. Riddler Trophies and gangs help to flesh out the city, keeping you hooked for hours, even after the game ends.

Multiple villains make their first appearance in Arkham City, alongside many familiar faces from the first Arkham. From Penguin to Mr Freeze, each villain is lovingly crafted, both in personality and aesthetics. They have a big impact on the main campaign, and the look and feel of the city itself, with Jokers part being themed like a circus and his gang members clowns, to penguin enjoying more sophisticated locations like museums and having his gang members dress up in black and white. Most of the campaign is centred around the Joker, just like the original, but other characters play a big part in the story. Other villains are tossed to the side quests, like Riddler and Bane, whilst others just have a nod, like when you accidentally come across Croc in the sewers.

Each character is modelled fantastically in a modified version of the Unreal engine. The combination of a gorgeous dark art style, with DX11 features and a high resolution monitor really made the game come to life.

Playing as Catwoman was a welcome addition to the game, with all of her actions an exact duplicate of Batmans, except his ability to glide. She plays an essential part in the campaign, but was strangely missing from the original version of the game if you didn’t buy it brand new. This was a pretty douchey thing to do by any standards, and would be like missing out Agent Smith from The Matrix unless you purchased the box set brand new. Saying that, the only way to buy Batman Arkham City these days is digitally, with Warner Brothers giving out game of the year editions left right and centre.

In conclusion, it took me a while to get into Arkham City, having tried to play it for many years. Once I got over the first few hours and the game started to make sense to me, I couldn’t stop playing until 25+ hours had been lost to the streets of Arkham and the campaign finished. Batman isn’t going to be for everyone, especially if you want a more linear experience with less exploration, but for those of you that enjoyed the original and wanted more on a grander scale, Arkham City is just for you.

4/5

13/12/2013
Gaming Week 49: Rock of Ages (PC)

I played Rock of Ages around Halloween, so the pumpkin in the background was a nice touch.

I recently bought Rock of Ages after years of seeing journalists giving it praise for being random, yet successful for such a small studio. I knew it was a physics based game, where you control a ball and destroy levels, but nothing could have prepared me for the craziness that ensued.

Rock of Ages starts out with a cutscene comprised of old portraits from history, and tells the story of Sisyphus snapping after constantly pushing his rock up a hill for it to fail many times. He decides to take on the other gods and notable heroes of history, and so begins your campaign through this weird and wonderful world.

Each level is comprised of a tower defence style set up, with the ability to then control your ball to defeat your enemy. The enemy is doing the same as yourself, which means you have to spend most of your time avoiding his traps and enemy placements to ensure you get to his keep and squash him inside. It’s a brilliant play style, one that mixes up action and strategy in a new and interesting way. The game I would liken this too would be Sanctum, where you build your placements before battling in the next wave of attacks. It’s fun and addictive, but can lead to issues when you’ve been fighting for over 10 minutes and you suddenly lose, it feels like a time waste, and one that could have been avoided with some quick saves throughout matches. The strategy element is key to being successful in a match, meaning you can’t rely on your boulder all the time. I found myself struggling through many levels because I didn’t invest into my defence enough and just concentrated on attacking, a silly mistake that I warn you not to repeat. You will need boulder skills, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not entirely needed to win a match, as long as you have your defences, it’s plain sailing.

Boss battle’s are dispersed throughout the main campaign, allowing for some variety in an otherwise repetitive story mode. Each Boss is unique, but entails hitting the same weak spots over and over until they fall.

The campaign comprimises of many of these encounters with historical characters, but occasionally you come across something special and unique, a boss battle. These battles are different each time, but have the same end objective: To kill the boss. This is done through hitting the boss figure in weakspots located all over their body, for the dragon: its underbelly, for the greek statue: its groin area. These become repetitive in time, but Rock of Ages ends its campaign at just the right time, when you’re at the point that if you played anymore you’d hate the game, but any less and you’d feel let down.

Your boulder can be changed during a game, allowing you to change your game style on the fly, or counter enemy tactics. In this instance, my boulder is stronger, allowing it to take more damage, whilst also causing more damage to the opposing player.

Cutscenes are plentiful, happening between each level and explaining Sisyphus’ journey across Europe and through history. They’re comical and brilliantly executed, leading to myself laughing out so loud that family members came in to see what all the noise was about. Each cut scene is made using real world art, from historic paintings to photos, each character is lovingly animated to give them a personality that’s likable, or hatable, depending on the scenario.

Graphics is stunning, making for some truly smooth and brilliant looking levels and action. The whole game is based around physics (Nvidia PhysX to be precise), and makes good use of smooth Anti Aliasing with Ambient Occlusion to make a seemingly lovely environment with attention to detail. The levels are crafted in a sensible way, giving the aesthetics of the time they’re taking place in, whilst lovingly adding some charm and humour. With 2D character and crowds shouting your rock onwards, its relatively funny and makes for an enjoyable experience, one that’s refreshing and rather original in todays realistic approach. Thinking about it, the aesthetics reminded me of Monty Python, with 2D characters blended in with realistic environments, I wouldn’t be surprised if I one day find out they were inspired by the same art.

Cutscenes comprise of artistic depictions of characters of history put in strange and funny situations. I was surprised by how much of the campaign I genuinely found funny, and wasn’t laughing out of embarrassment for the developers, like most other humorous games these days.

The music to Rock of Ages is lovely, blending classical music with a modern take, but can get a bit tedious and annoying when you have to repeat levels. It certainly leaves an impression on you, meaning I got excited whenever I booted up the game and listened to it’s main theme at the title screen, but would be filled with contempt if I even began to hear a track from a level I’d had to repeat time and time again.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Rock of Ages. It’s definitely not going to be for everybody, and I certainly had times when I wanted to stop playing due to retrying a 10 minute battle 3 times in a row, but stick with it and the outcome is worth the pain and trouble. It’s rare for me to feel that way about a game, I’m currently playing through Dishonored and cannot for the life of me find the passion to carry on, but with Rock of Ages, with its witty humour and refreshingly original gameplay, I feel the 4-5 hour campaign is worth it. You’ll certainly respect the developers for it, and it may even entice you enough to play its multiplayer.

3/5

06/12/2013
Gaming week 48: The Swapper (PC)

The Swapper starts out with little explanation and a lot of guesswork, Which works to it’s advantage as a narrative choice throughout the whole campaign.

The Swapper was recently on Steams Halloween sale, and having heard a lot of positive buzz about it this past summer, I decided to take the plunge and give it a go. Giantbomb praised it in their podcast, and I felt this indie studio needed all the help they could get, and in hindsight, £3.50 wasn’t a pad price to pay for such a solid game.

The game starts out with some fantastic cut scenes that starts with your character being sent to a planet from a space station. Upon landing, you can take control of your character, and proceed to explore the planet on which you’ve landed. Eventually, you come across a strange looking device, one that allows you to make clones of yourself and switch your “soul” between them. It’s an interesting premise, one that The Swapper makes good use of, with puzzles that’ll push you to your limits and an atmosphere that’ll make you feel like you’re there.

The graphics are lovely for a 2.5D game, reminding me of Deadlight that I played previously in the year. Hyper-realistic and gorgeously rendered, it wouldn’t look strange in a 3D setting. Levels have multiple light sources, and the game was overall bug free, but did have slow downs when dying multiple times in the same level, which I assume is a garbage collection problem with the code not recycling assets fast enough. Overall, the aesthetics are easily one of the best things about The Swapper, with art and style notches above the rest of the games industry at this moment in time.

Using your 4 clones can be difficult at times, but here’s an easy example with how most puzzles play out.

Puzzles start off fairly easy, with the first few involving pressure pads to open doors. Relatively straight forward but enjoyable to solve, these puzzles start becoming a lot harder with the introduction of red and blue lights that stop some of your abilities of your gun. Red lights still allow you to produce clones, but don’t allow you to swap into them, where as blue lights do the opposite, allowing for swapping into clones but not producing them. It plays with your mind in weird and wonderful ways, ensuring you’re constantly thinking of new ways to use your gun; not a simple task by any means for a game that has a simple game mechanic/premise. Eventually you’ll come across purple lights (that will stop both replicating and swapping), and wind turbines that will invert gravity, leading to harder puzzles that were pushing me to my limit. The ending can only be accessed once you’ve completed each and every puzzle, so be prepared to spend hours and countless live’s trying to solve some rooms puzzles, as they certainly get hard.

Terminals are your main source of information in the world of The Swapper, with tidbits of story being fed to the player as they explore more and more. Lights, on the other hand, are your enemy, changing the way your device works to hamper your progress at times.

There are several main characters throughout the story of The Swapper, with the player being a blank slate to explore and learn about this wonderful world. There’s no aliens per-say, but rocks discovered on the planet and brought up to the space station talk to you as you pass them, adding a nice piece of depth to the world. The story of the Swapper takes place through logs you find in terminals, a trope of a story telling mechanic if there ever was one, but an effective one none the less. Each log can be accessed at any time, with each one giving the perspective of a female on board the space station, and the rocks that you pass, allowing the player to read/invest into the story as much or as little as they’d like. It’s an overall unique and creepy tale, with life and one’s soul being questioned, especially when sentient rocks are involved, making the player question life and philosophy.

The Swapper is fairly linear, with the player being able to explore the space station as they please, but with little to no result for doing so. Rooms become boring and stale once the puzzle has been solved, with the only extras available to the player being the secret rooms and terminals that have extra logs on them after a certain point in the story. It results in the game taking roughly 4-5 hours to complete, but with the game not being very re-playable. This is understandable with every puzzle game due to the very nature of once a puzzle is solved, it can easily be done again and again. The story, though intriguing, is fairly simple, which didn’t have me coming back for more. The only thing that may change on your second playthrough would be the ending, which allows you a choice, which once chosen, cannot be done again due to your save file being deleted. Going to Youtube and searching for the alternate ending may be the best method of seeing all that The Swapper has to offer.

Time slows down when you make a clone, allowing you to scale huge distances quickly by generating a clone and swapping with them. It’s a fantastic gameplay mechanic that makes The Swapper a nice and unique puzzle game, whilst also incorporating platforming techniques.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with The Swapper, its unique puzzle elements were certainly entertaining for the duration of the campaign, and didn’t outstay their welcome. A second game with slightly improved mechanics might be fantastic, but wouldn’t be needed, as The Swapper is fantastic as a stand alone game. Given how much I enjoyed the game, I’d easily recommend it to friends and family for it’s full price, and if it ever goes on sale again you’d be grabbing yourself a bargain.

4/5

29/11/2013
Gaming Week 47: Crysis 2 (PC)

Graphics are easily one of the standout features of Crysis 2, with characters and lighting taking the centre stage for a otherwise unoriginal First Person Shooter.

Crysis was the brilliant successor to Far Cry, a game that was original and ground breaking for its time. Giving you the ability to approach any mission how you liked, Fay Cry set a trend that the games industry would follow for quite some time, Crysis took the torch and continued this trend to new heights. Crysis 2 was only the natural successor that took this torch to a new audience: the console gamer.

In order to cater to this new gamer, the Crytek team had to dramatically change a lot of what made Crysis, Crysis. It was a shame, but a necessary evil to cater to this new market of customers, so the nano suit was revised to make for quick and easy allocation of powers, and the graphics were scaled down to compensate for the console’s lack of power. Don’t get me wrong, Crysis 2 is still a pretty game, but for such a generational shift in engine, there’s not much to show for it.

Although Tessalation and High Textures were added at a later date, they were a welcome addition for PC Gamers, with scenes lie this being a common occurrence whilst progressing through Crysis’ world of New York.

The level design is easily one of the biggest changes the series has seen. In Crysis and Far Cry, the island was so wide and open that you could approach any objective as you saw fit. I would occassionally hide in the bushes a mile away from the danger, slowly throwing rocks or nearby animals (chickens, turtles etc.) to get guards attention to slowly make their way over to me. It was fun, exciting, and allowed me to play the game at my own pace, doing what I wanted to do. Crysis 2 on the other hands feels like a linear experience, no different to a game like Doom. Your huge, free roaming island has been traded for a small, dense urban environment, with the game directing you where you should go and where you shouldn’t with arbitrary dead ends similar to what’s found in a Naughty Dog game. Cars will conveniently be destroyed and piled up blocking one way down a street, or an alien tentacle will be conveniently protruding from a wall blocking access to a door. It’s all very frustrating if you’ve played the original games, and even more irritating when the developers shouted about the game being all about choices. You are indeed allowed to choose how you approach a combat situation, but only within the confines of a small space between buildings, something that feels very contrived and not very open.

Landscape does change from boring old buildings eventually, with alien technology everywhere. It makes for a dynamic environment, something that evolves and changes the further you progress.

The enemies of Crysis 2 are very unoriginal, varying from human soldiers that patrol around and shoot you, to aliens that patrol around and shoot you. It’s a shame considering the first game had aliens as these weird hovering mammoths that could kill you quite fast, and running was usually your best option. Instead, we now have aliens that act and behave like the human AI in the game, which makes for some boring combat scenarios instead of the potentially exciting ones they could have been. The only variance you do get is in a giant hulking tank of a alien, which requires a lot of firepower to take down, but even that isn’t original in today’s market. I found that you could never take it head on, so your best tactic was to turn invisible, run to cover, and wait until it patrols again before bombarding it with rocket launcher ammo.

As mentioned earlier, the Nano suit has had a overhaul. In the past, you’d have to click your mouse’ scroll wheel in to bring up a radial menu which you then pointed in the direction of the type of power you wanted your suit to use. There were 4 options to choose from: Armor, Strength, Speed or Cloak. Activating speed for example would allow you to walk faster, crawl faster, and sprint extreme distances in a short amount of time. Crysis 2 does away with these powers up front, and instead only activates them when you go to perform a certain action. The Speed example I just gave is only activated when you sprint, and cannot be activated normally. This new way of working takes the control away from the player, meaning you’re left with an experience where more likely than not you’re only activating your armor ability due to the amount of enemies shooting at you all at once.

This is the only enemy in the game that changes gameplay in any meaningful way. He’s so huge and bulky that you really have to change up your tactics, as you really can’t take him head on.

A lot of spectacle was made of Cryteks employment of famous comic book novelists, saying that the story of Crysis 2 would be the next generation of story telling, and a new way to experience plot within a game. I can’t help but feel these were all marketing lies told to get people to buy the game, because the stories undergoes the same arcs as any other FPS out there. Nothing amazing leaps out of you in terms of the plot, with the only plot piece worth mentioning being the fact humans are contracting a disease that turns them to goo for the aliens to use, I can’t help but think Crytek have failed on the story aspect as well.

In the end, Crysis 2 turned out to follow the pack of generic FPS’s, when it could have been so much more and diverged. If you don’t think whilst playing games and just want some action on your screen with pretty visuals, Crysis 2 is right up your street. But if you’re looking for something different in the games industry, something that truly lets you feel emotion and gives you choice, then Crysis 2 isn’t for you.

2/5

22/11/2013
Gaming Week 46: Superfrog HD (PC/PSN)

As can be seen from the main menu above, the HD version of Superfrog comes with a level editor; a fairly simple to use level creator that allows you to make levels from brushes you unlock in the game.

I have extremely fond memories of Superfrog as a child, my dad would get his amiga out and let us play it for hours back in 1993. At the age of 6, I found it far too difficult for my young age, but everything about it fascinated me, from the Lucozade (Americans read: Energy drink), to the slot machine, all the colours and charm rubbed off on me as if it was a genuine product for a kid. Nostalgia has a weird way of changing ones perspective of pervious events, so I decided to take the plunge with Superfrog HD and see if it lives up to my high expectations from my youth.

Superfrog starts out like most 90’s and 80’s platformers: with a small intro to show how your hero begins his adventure and his motivation for doing so. Apart from the HD drawings, nothings changed in this respect from the original, with the only glaringly obvious difference being the lack of advertising from Lucozade, which has now been replaced with a generic bottle of potion which makes Superfrog, super. These potions can still be found within levels to get your health back up, but it takes some charm away from the game that I don’t get to see that lucozade logo whilst trawling through levels.

Each world ends with a boss battle with the witch, a simple affair which just entails Superfrog firing “spud” (his companion) at her whilst occasionally jumping. You’ll be hard pressed to lose a life.

Maps are slightly different this time round, with Team 17 making 4 new maps per world for this remake. Original levels are still here for you hardcore players, but they need to be unlocked through playing the slot machine which appears at the end of each level. It’s certainly not great to hold original levels behind a wall, but it encourages the player to play through all the new levels first, which are certainly easier than the originals. Levels are laid out fairly simply, and any player with average gaming ability should be able to complete the game with no problems. Original levels on the other hand are extremely difficult, which reminded me how far we’ve come in both dumbing down games, and making them user friendly.

Levels are designed to make you collect as much as possible, meaning you are constantly collecting fruit or items for high score, or coins for ranking at the end of the stage. Brushing up against certain walls will unlock secret spots, something that has been lost to this current generation of games. One new item that has been added to each level is the golden lily-pad, something which was absent from the original game, and a item that is hard to find on some levels. It’s always hidden in secret passageways, so you have to make sure you go out of your way to find it. Finding all the lily-pads gives you a trophy for all your hard work, something some players may not give a damn about so can be overlooked.

Levels are jam packed with fruit and items to collect, meaning you don’t go more than 5 seconds without a sound effect going off and your score going up.

Not content with just remaking the original in brand new lovely graphics, Team 17 added a plethora of new features, from cross play saves (play on your PS Vita whilst you’re out and play it again when you’re back home on your PS3) to level editors, and even frog trials. Cross play saves is a nifty little feature that allowed me to play Superfrog when I was out and about with my Vita, but synced up with my PS3 when I got home, meaning I could continue the same game I was playing on my TV and on my portable console. I really hope game developers continue to do this in future, it was a fantastic feature that would do many games justice. The level editor is pretty basic, but does what it says on the tin, whether you want to make difficult as hell levels or a simple, clever level is completely up to you. Frog trials are distinct challenges that aim to push your Superfrog skills as far as they’ll go, which sounds simple but they’re never-ending, so best of luck with it. All these next features were nifty, but not essential to the core game of what made Superfrog so great and memorable in the first place.

In conclusion, Superfrog does a good job of replicating the original as best it can. It’s a bit jarring at first, especially with the new levels being similar to the original, and does’t live up to the nostalgia the original brought on. Superfrog HD isn’t a bad game in it’s own right, but in my opinion, it doesn’t live up to the original.

3/5

15/11/2013
Gaming Week 45: The Binding of Isaac (PC/Mac)

The main menu of The Binding of Isaac conjures up exactly what the gameplay entails: a poor boy running away from frightening things.

Like most of my steam collection, I’ve owned The Binding of Isaac (which will henceforth be shortened to Isaac to save my sanity) for a while now, but have never actually gotten around to playing it properly. That was the whole point of my one game a week idea, but in this time I’ve collected more and it’s becoming a impossible task to finish my game collection. I’d played Isaac before, for about an hour, and just couldn’t understand why people found it so addictive and enjoyable. That’s how it’s been left for years, until these last few weeks that is, I’ve been hooked, playing dozens of hours of the game to try and beat the game over and over again.

The game starts out with a little intro to let you know the plot of Isaac before giving you the main menu. The general gist of the story is that Isaacs mum is a religious nut, which starts hearing voices telling her to stop Isaac from doing things. Eventually, this voice escalates and tells Isaacs mum that she must sacrifice Isaac in order to show her love and dedication to God. With Isaacs mum at Isaacs door, Isaac manages to escape through a hidden door in his room which leads to a underground basement full of monsters that he must fight off. In the main menu you get to see your collection of all the items you’ve collected so far, and eventually you get to pick your character (which is just Isaac at the start) and then you set on your way. Items are randomly dropped throughout the levels, with each one being unique and giving Isaac a different ability, you could literally spend hundreds of hours trying to collect them all.

This is all the information you’ll need to survive through the treacherous basement. It may seem simple, but it’s difficult to master.

Isaac kills enemies with his tears that are thrown as projectiles. You control Isaac’s movement through the WASD keys, and control the direction he shoots either by mouse, or by the arrow keys. Its a simple system that’s hard to master, especially when your tears have physics that change direction depending on how your character is moving. You collect items as you sprawl the dungeons, each one being a mystery until you pick it up or use it. Some items affect Isaac himself, increasing his combat strength or amount of tears he fires, or others may be objects that protect Isaac like a fly that circles him, attacking enemies that get near enough. With more playthroughs of the game under your belt, you’ll start to recognise what each item does, and eventually, you’ll start hoping and wishing for some to appear after defeating a boss as you know they’re good items to have.

The whole game is randomly generated, meaning rooms, items, bosses and secret rooms are never a certainty. You may start a game and die within a few minutes due to one room after another having the hardest enemies, or sometimes you’ll make it to the end no problem. The Randomness of the game is what keeps you coming back for more; It’s like a gambler, who needs to just try one more time as this time may be the one. Isaac may seem hard at first, but keep on playing and you’ll begin to master it’s intricacies, you’ll be able to take on the random enemy generation in each room, no matter what items you have on you. It’s the randomness that makes this game in the end, and it’s the randomness that keeps me coming back for more.

Bosses come in many different shapes and sizes. This one above (Monstro) is one of the easiest, occasionally jumping around and spitting blood at you. Keep your distance and you’ll be fine.

The art style is fantastic, coming from Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy Fame, it really is unique but at the same time familiar if you’ve ever played any of his previous games. The game can be quite dark and twisted, but in a humourus way. There are times where you’ll have to take on demon fetus’, or pick up your dead dogs head as an item, it’s all lovingly drawn, but sinister at the same time.

Each map/level is random, so you’re never sure which way will be correct until you’ve explored til your hearts content. It can be difficult negotiating which way to go when you’re low on health and need to find your way to a treasure room, but that’s part of the fun. At the end of each map is a boss room, where you must defeat one of the many bosses in order to progress deeper into the basement. Defeating a boss gives a random item, to help in your adventure to survive as long as possible. This progression continues until you finally reach the depths, where you’ll have to take on your mum, defeating her and winning Isaacs freedom. Once this is over, the game has a lot of replayability, with the true ending reserved for after you defeat mum once, which grants two extra stages at the end that take place inside mum’s womb.

Whenever you die(which will happen many a time), you’re presented with the following screen, which shows all of the items you collected throughout the game and what ended up killing you.

So, I finally got around to playing The Binding of Isaac, and I have to say, I’m madly in love. It’s core mechanics are perfect for what the game sets out to accomplish, and those who have the patience to master it’s mechanics will have plenty of hours worth of entertainment and joy to behold.

5/5

08/11/2013