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Weekly Gaming: The Unfinished Swan (PS4)

Carrying on with my moniker of playing old games I’ve always wanted to, I found the Unfinished Swan had been released on Playstation Vita and PS4. At £5, I couldn’t miss the offer of finally giving the game a go in stunning 1080p 60fps, considering I’ve always heard it’s an artistic game. Having completed the game and collecting majority of the collectibles, I feel I should give some opinions on the quality of the game and how I felt my time with it went.

The story of The Unfinished Swan was unique and lovely, comprising of a little boy who’s mother has recently passed away, and is only able to take one of her many unfinished paintings with him. The painting he chooses is the Unfinished Swan, a painting thats beautiful, but with a missing neck. It’s through these paintings that the story of The Unfinished Swan will unravel, with the whole game feeling like you’re playing through a children’s fairy tale book. It’s charming, and certainly keeps you hooked for the 2-3 hour long campaign it has, and offers enough variety as to make sure you’re never bored by it’s splendid presentation.

The first stage in the game has you painting an entirely white world with black paint. It’s a fantastic mechanic, one which looks rubbish at first as you can’t see detail on items, but takes on the looks of a painting once you stand back and see what you’ve done.

Each level in the game has it’s own mechanic all tied around the capacity to shoot little balls of paint or water wherever you go. The first level for instance compromises entirely around the mechanic of seeing where you’re going by painting the pure white world black. The second stage takes this one step further by giving you blue water balls, by which you can then interact with vines and grow them wherever you’d like to help you with your progress. The third stage has balls which can create “blueprints”, giving you the ability to make cubes of varying sizes depending on where you fire the balls. For a game whose advertising seemed to be based around the painting mechanic, the developers at Santa Monica managed to pull of some unique mechanics.

The Unfinished Swan is stylish in every sense of the word, with detailed and lovely environments brimming with life, it’s no wonder I found so much good coverage for the game around it’s original release. Frogs and animals you encounter look strikingly abstract, but alive, ensuring you’re constantly on your feet as to when you’ll next encounter another living thing. Throughout all of the story you’ll be chasing the swan from your mothers painting, with it’s gawks seemingly coming from nowhere at times, it leads you through the marvellous world the game has to offer.

The vines levels were some of my favourite, with the game giving you freedom on how you wished to proceed across an obstacle. Although there was only one solution, it still gave you the freedom to find the solution on your own.

Most of the game is fairly linear, with most levels just compromising of a series of corridors getting you from point A to point B. Where The Unfinished Swan deviates from this linearity though is in its ability to make each players experience different and unique purely from the fact the mechanics like the paints aren’t constrained so to speak. Granted, the mechanics are constrained within the confines of the stage as a whole, but how players paint the level or obstacles is different with each play-through. This in turn could show some similarities to real painting, with each brush stroke being different from person to person, with the end result always looking different as a result of that work.

Once you’ve finished the main story, there are always reasons to revisit, with collectible balloons hidden throughout the world you’re bound to come back a few more times. Collecting these balloons also counts as currency to use in buying abilities used throughout the story/chapters. Most abilities aren’t available until you’ve completed the game once, but given that they’re fairly game breaking in nature (e.g. you’re able to summon the cube making balls anytime in the game, by-passing massive obstacles on your way) you can understand why. Once completed I bought the ability to travel to any chapter, along with a hose for the water levels and the balloon hunter, which tells you when you’re close to a hidden ballon, making it easier to find the last few.

Environments are gorgeously rendered in The Unfinished Swan, with massive cities just as awe-inspiring as little woods and houses.

So, should you play The Unfinished Swan? I believe so. Given its game length (easily completable within a few hours) and unique story and style, I’d be hard pressed to tell you any reasons why you shouldn’t buy or even play the game. It’s shortness may deter some players who aren’t willing to fork out upwards of £10 for it’s RRP, but if it ever goes on sale again I’d recommend it. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and see what all the fuss is about.

4/5

13/02/2015
Weekly Gaming: The Binding of Isaac Rebirth (PSVita)

This week I take a look at a remake of one of my favourite games ever, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Hi all,

This weeks post (technically last weeks), is a little later than usual as I was in Rome for the whole week for my Birthday, and whilst it was an extremely enjoyable holiday and a much needed rest, I’m back on with all the work that’s needed to be done.

If you’d like to read the review over at GamrReview, click the link below:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/92162/the-binding-of-isaac-rebirth-psv

Over the coming weeks I’ll be reviewing Never Alone, Soul Axiom and The Lost City all within quick succession, allowing me to concentrate on Twixel to reach my 18/12/2014 release date.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to give me a shout!

Dan

26/11/2014
Weekly Gaming: Driveclub (PS4)

Hi all,

So recently I’ve been extremely busy with making my game, as it’s due to be released on the 18th of November. These are scary times for me, but in the interim, I managed to fit in some playtime of Driveclub for the PS4. To read the review, head on over to GamrReview at my link below:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/92041/driveclub-ps4

A lot of people don’t like the review and the score I gave it, but I stand by everything I wrote. At the end of the day, Driveclub was not a good game for me, despite how excited I was to play it since it was first announced in 2013.

Regardless, I’ll be posting some updates soon on where to find my game online,

Til next time guys and gals!

Dan

24/10/2014
Weekly Gaming: Entwined (PS4)

Entwined takes simplicity in graphics to a whole new level, with some objects in the world being barely recognisable compared to what you would expect. This doesn’t detract from the games aesthetics in anyway though, with the whole game looking sharp, precise and abstract.

Having recently purchased a PS4, I decided that I needed to see some of the games that were available for it. Looking around on the PSN Store I found Entwined, a game I recall seeing at the E3 press conference just a few months ago. The game has a similar mechanic not unlike my own where players control two characters on screen at once ensuring that they’re pushed to the limits in getting the hang of controlling two independent characters. The game was only £6.49, and cross compatible on PS3, PS Vita and PS4, so I decided to take the plunge, as I recall the game was made by a bunch of University students that I can’t help but feel aren’t too dis-similar to myself, and at the end of the day, £6.49 for me is nothing, but that could make the world of difference to the team over at Pixelopus.

Levels are varied but keep the same gameplay mechanics as well as similar patterns to avoid/collect in the gates. This leads to a game that feels very repetitive after spending only 15 minutes with it, meaning some players may have difficulty seeing Entwined through to the end.

The game entails taking control of both a orange fish and a blue bird, both of which could be considered opposites in the sense of one is underwater, the other is in the sky, one is orange, with its opposing colour being blue. You control both the fish and the bird by moving the analogue sticks on the controller around the screen, each analogue stick corresponds to a character, the left is the fish, the right in the bird. Both characters have their own portion of the screen by which they’re meant to collect orbs and go through “gates” in the correct order to get their own meters up (found at the top of the screen). Once both characters have their respective meters up, they’ll then be able to attempt to combine into one being. I say attempt, as you’ll need to fly through a few more gates in order to successfully combine the character, failure to do so will result in continuing to replay the level until you get the meters full again.

The Fish and Bird are all that is used in Entwined, which is fantastic given that it constantly hammers on the subject of opposites coming together to make a truly unique and fantastic combination.

There are two game modes to play in Entwined: Story and Challenge. Story encompasses playing through many different themed levels, without much story to actually go on. Every stage starts and finishes in exactly the same way, with no narration or any cinematics to actually point you in a direction by which to then make the story up for yourself. This isn’t a bad thing per-se, but means that the story isn’t actually a story at all, and is more of a campaign than an actual narrative. The challenge mode is more akin to something you’d find on a mobile phone, with the same levels that you played on story coming back, but this time endless and score based rather than the amount you fill your meter up by. I found this mode extremely hard, with your characters only being allowed 3 mistakes before its game over and you have to start the challenge again. It’s good for a challenge (I suppose the mode does what it says on the tin), but isn’t so great that I’d spend hours trying to do the same level over and over again.

Each level is never ending, so Entwined could be likened to a mobile game, but where its mechanics may be simple, its graphics and art are certainly a step beyond what mobile can do at the moment. The art style has a vision, and as much as the geometry of characters and the environment look abstract in its uses of squares and circles to create objects, it all looks so polished and so post-processing heavy that you know this couldn’t be done on anything weaker than a dedicated games console.

The Dragon is what your fish and bird will become at the end of every levels, allowing you to fly around collecting both orange and bus orbs until you’ve filled your meter at the top of the screen. Once this is done you’ll be able to draw a pattern with your wings, which then finishes the level. It’s creative, I’ll give the game that, but feels a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things.

The music and sound track were absolutely fantastic, with notes carefully being played as you progress through gates. Missing gates or orbs will result in the soundtrack glitching for a second, which is brilliant for portraying the mistake you just made. Each environment had it’s own sound and aesthetic, meaning that you never really got bored as you explored these new environments, something which sounds crazy considering how basic some of the geometry looks.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Entwined. I’m not sure if it’s completely great value for £6.49 considering how little gameplay there is and how often levels/assets are reused, but I can’t help but support my fellow indie developers, especially ones that managed to get up on the E3 stage last year and show off their creation to the world with such confidence it made me jealous and more motivated to pursue my own games design. By all means purchase Entwined when it’s on sale for £3 or below, but be warned if you spend more, it feels like a mobile game through and through.

3/5

29/08/2014