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:
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!
The pixel graphics make OlliOlli stand out, with each kick flip or olli rendered in glorious detail. The game emits a retro feel, but with modern frame rates and stability, making for a truly unique feel.
I’ve been reading up on OlliOlli since I first saw an announcement a while back on engadget. It seemed like an interesting concept, one which I even toyed with whilst at university (my idea was to play the game on a touch screen and use one finger swiping down the screen and the other up to mimic the motion of an ollie). My game however, never came to fruition, and here we have OlliOlli on the market as a fantastically intricate skateboarding platformer.
The game centres around controlling your character as he makes his way across each small level, trying to amass as many points as possible along the way. You control the character by pressing the X button to push, and olli/do a trick by moving the analogue stick in a specific direction. The hard part comes in landing your trick, by which I mean you have to press the X button again at the precise moment that you touch the floor, ensuring you score the maximum points possible for the set of tricks you just performed.
Eventually, rails start making there way into levels, testing your ability to grind to accumulate points as well. You land a grind by pressing a direction on your analogue stick just before you touch the rail. The grinding can then be combined with air tricks like Kickflips or Heelflips to increase your score significantly. The whole mechanic of performing tricks pushes you to try and try again until you finally press all the key presses at the perfect times, ensuring your score gets onto the scoreboard or finishes one of the other addictive parts of the game: Challenges.
The change in scenery is a welcome feature, with each new level bringing with it a new set of unique obstacles to avoid. Russia, for example, has a lot of snow that you cannot land on and much Olli over in order to continue the level, which can make for some very annoying and hard moments.
Yep, each level has its own set of challenges, with some being as small as getting a specific score in a combo, or others entailing landing specific tricks in certain areas. Regardless of what challenge you attempt, you’re sure to bail many times before you finally manage to achieve the specific goal you’re working towards. Once you’ve completed the 5 challenges on one level, a “Pro” level will open up, based on the same act you just completed. This Pro level encompasses harder and more varied gameplay, meaning that players will be tested in order to succeed.
On the main menu of OlliOlli you’ll find a daily grind button. Pressing this allows you to compete with other OlliOlli players across the world by competing on one new stage daily. This option is certainly interesting for those of you who are competitive at games, but may not sit well with others looking for more variety in the game.
The soundtrack of OlliOlli is absolutely sublime. I genuinely would put the game on just to listen to its chilled out beats whilst I went about my day doing other, non-gaming activities. There’s some mellow club music in the mix, along with some dubstep tunes, which makes the task of repeating levels over and over all the more enjoyable. Each music track is repeatable for around 10 minutes, so you could sink hours into OlliOlli without realising.
Pressing the X button at different times will result in less score, with not pressing it at all causing you to bail and restart the level. The game pushes you to become as accurate and as timely as possible, without compromising your enjoyment of the game.
The one thing I’ll say against OlliOlli is the lack of variety in its gameplay. For example, each level usually just consists of grinding from one surface to another, without ruining your run. A new game mode where players could just roll whilst practicing tricks wouldn’t have gone amiss, but as it stands, if you’re not good a fan of the campaign/main challenges, you might as well stop, as there isn’t too much more to see.
I’ve enjoyed my time with OlliOlli, and it looks set to become a game that I keep coming back to time and time again due to its addictive and short nature. For those of you looking for a challenge, you’ll love what OlliOlli has to offer, but for those of you who dislike repetitive gameplay and are looking for variety in your games (Read: FPS’s with a story), you won’t find much value in OlliOlli. It’s currently on sale for £2.55 from Sony, so grab it while you can at such a fantastic price for a lot of value, I know I’m glad I did.
Gravity Rush started off as a somewhat interest of mine. I’ve always been into Anime, and the style of Gravity Rush certainly helped in my decision to play it. What I didn’t know was how attached I would become to the quirky little world and it’s inhabitants, and most importantly, the clever mechanic of controlling gravity itself.
You begin the game as with a lot of games in this generation: you awake not knowing who you are or where you came from. You’re definitely a blonde girl called Kat, and you’re definitely in a strange city. Walking around you discover a cat, which allows you to manipulate gravity. For a start it was pretty straightforward and not too interesting. Where the charm and strengths are shown though is in the city, and the imagining of the whole world.
The city is fantastic, in fact, the whole world of Gravity Rush is fantastic. Landscapes and vistas are gorgeously rendered on the PS Vita’s hardware, allowing each section of this floating city to have it’s own personality. The game is split up into these sections, and as you progress through the story you unlock each new area, and a slight new direction of Kats past.
Floating around the city is a fantastic time waster
I say a slight new direction, as that’s all it is, even by the end of the game you haven’t learnt much more about Kat, you merely get a few “nudges” as to what/who she could be. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it means there could be potential sequels, I just feel they could have dived into Kat’s character a bit more, rather than Kat being the typical hero.
Gravity Mechanics are what make this game extremely enjoyable. I spent hours just gliding around cities trying to find hidden gems. They have a certain charm, ensuring you’re not bored of a location despite how long you may have to spend there. Each location has challenge side quests, along with many characters to talk to. It all helps to make you a master at the gravity physics, and allows you to get a better feeling of the world and it’s inhabitants.
Inhabitants go about their daily life, occasionally you can talk to them
Pros:
Very unique and ambitious ideas
Fantastic graphics
Engaging gameplay
Good story with twists and turns
Cons:
No definitive “end”
So all in all, I’d hugely recommend people play this game if you have a Vita. It started development as a PS3 title, which shines through when taking into consideration how long and engaging the game actually is. Considering it’s free and included in the Playstation Plus at the moment, you really have no reason not to play it.
Before buying Modnation racers on sale for £11.99 from the PSN store, I had low expectations, to say it’s another Mario Kart clone is an understatement. So far my expectations have been met, making Modnation Racers one of the most underwhelming purchases of my year so far.
One of my biggest gripes has to be the way the menu is navigated. It’s all so inconsistent. Some menu buttons have to be pressed with the X button, whilst being navigated using the D-Pad, whilst over menu items HAVE to be touched. It makes for an annoying experience, and one I hope never gets repeated on any other game.
The graphics certainly look more polished than some other racers out there.
The game started up with no help or indication of what to do. You could navigate the menu screen, scrolling left and right to choose a specific option, (make a car, make a modnation racer, spend tokens, championship race etc.) but there was no help, nothing to say “welcome, lets do a few things to get you started. Over here we have the car garage where you can store all your vehicles…..” It made for an annoying start from the offset.
Gameplay is clunky at the best of times, and that really isn’t an understatement. Framerate often drops way below the smooth 60fps in usually gets, meaning choppiness is to be expected throughout each and every race. Load times are also horrendous, my PC boots up faster than this game. It all makes for a bad experience. This all deters from the fact Sony have actually made a nice Mario Kart clone, albeit no where near as good, but hey things need time right?
I shall write a full review soon, but so far I wouldn’t recommend buying Modnation Racers unless you really want something to play on your lonely Vita. I’m so far half way through the championship, and will write up a full review once I’ve played each of the game modes and finished the championship.
