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Weekly Gaming: The Walking Dead Season 2: Episode 2 (PC) SPOILERS!!!

Given how the last episode ended, with Clementine becoming a part of another group, big expectations are sure to come about for this next episode, with more personalities to explore and learn as this episode plays out.

After playing through Episode 1 of The Walking Dead’s new season, It was time to jump straight into episode 2 to ensure I got to know my new group all the more better than our initial encounter. I wouldn’t recommend playing The Walking Dead straight through from start to finish, but playing a day between each episode seems to be the best experience.

The episode starts out from the offset with your decision from the previous episode taking full effect. You’re being chased down with your choice of character that you saved whilst zombies make their way towards you. Clementine and Nick (I saved the guy that hadn’t been bitten), manage to find a shack that they can hold up in, and so starts the next 2 hours of character building, where not much actually happens in the scheme of losing characters or making big decisions, but instead you get a bit more intimacy in this new and weird group you’re now a part of.

Zombies as always are still a part of The Walking Dead, but they’re more of a background prop rather than the core premise behind the game. Where the real terror lies is in the people still alive, and how they interact with one another when the world around them has fallen apart.

Eventually, you and Nick manage to get away from the shelter of this little hut, but are soon thrown into another danger: another group of survivors that are after the group you’re currently with for reasons unknown. So starts your adventure of getting away from the shelter of the house you’ve been staying in, where you now have to go on the run from these maniacs. It was this part of the episode where I most felt that the group, for all its flaws and weaknesses, was annoying in the way in which they both didn’t trust Clementine, but also in the way in which they went about doing everything. It felt like their arguments were contrived, senseless, and made no sense in the grand scheme of the narrative. In Season 1 of the walking dead you’d have Kenny constantly cause tension in the group through his worry for his own son Duck, which was understandable for any father in the apocalypse, but in Season 2, all arguments just seem trivial in comparison.

There will be some moments where things start to look a little rough for the group, but as always you know things will turn out OK in these early episodes so that you can grow accustomed to the characters to ensure the story becomes even more devastating when the game throws them away.

Your group will eventually make their way to a ski resort, a place which seems to have a plethora of food, electricity and safety in an otherwise hellish world. It’s here that you’ll meet an old friend from the original season: Kenny. Kenny has seemingly managed to survive in this world, even after losing his whole family, managing to get a new family in the process. It’s himself that will introduce Clementine to the group at the ski lodge, and in turn bring up reminders of the past by asking about Lee and explaining a little about himself. It was nice to see a familiar face after seeing so much hostility from this new group of people, and was definitely one of the highlights of the episode, ensuring I look forward to seeing Kenny more in the next few episodes.

The rather mundane episode comes to a climatic end when the rival group manages to catch up to the ski resort, saving everyone from a zombie hoard, but in the process taking everyone hostage. It’s in these moments that you’ll see the most death of the episode, with plot pieces being set up to ensure that players have to be put on the spot in their decision making, leading me to regret the choice I had made seconds after making it.

There a few moments in this episode where you’ll need to scout the environment for everyone else to ensure the path ahead is safe, or to ensure the rival group aren’t after you. It’s in these moments that you see how small the area is that this episode takes place in, losing some of the gravitas that the dialogue gives to the groups current predicament.

Overall, The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 2 felt quite contrived in the grand scheme of things, with characters worries feeling mundane compared to past predicaments and their current situation. It’s definitely a far cry from the episode 2 of the previous season, with that one feeling more of a one off than an actual progression of the narrative, something Season 2 Episode 2 ensures not to repeat. In continuing to progress the story rather than have a one off episode, everything ends up coming off very obtuse, with situations lacking in substance and arguments feeling contrived, to the point that characters act outside of their usual selves just to make a plot point to further the narrative at a later time. I’m definitely interested in where this season will go, but so far I haven’t been impressed compared to how ground breaking the original was on so many levels.

3/5

26/09/2014
Weekly Gaming: Sniper Elite 3 (PC)

Hi all,

For this week, I managed to get a review copy of Sniper Elite 3 from Rebellion Studios, and so proceeded to review the hell out of it! The review can be found below:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/91805/sniper-elite-3-pc

As for my game, well I’m now working on some posters, and in the next week I’ll be beta testing it with some friends, family and strangers at some events, so here’s to hoping I can get some constructive criticism and expand on it before I decide to take the plunge and release the game.

That’s all for this week though,

Dan

08/08/2014
Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea DLC Part 2 (SPOILERS ALERT!)

With the whole second part of Burial at Sea taking place with Atlas (Frank Fontaine), its nice to occasionally see Andrew Ryan scattered around the city.

Following on from my Burial at Sea review last week, I decided to play through the entirety of the second piece of DLC due to the fact I’ve purchased it all well after their original release date (The advantages of Steams summer sale and late purchases you see). Please be warned, this review will contain spoilers, so if you have yet to play the DLC or are planning on purchasing it and don’t want the plot points spoiled, look away for now and come back next week.

So the game starts off with you playing as Elizabeth, walking around the beautifully created Paris talking and meeting different passers-by as you explore the streets. Eventually, you chase Emily, the main girl Booker was chasing in part 1 of the DLC, and finally wake up to find yourself looking into your dead fathers eyes. Looking up, you find a group of gang members playing Russian roulette with your life just outside of the vent where Booker was trying to pull Emily out. You tell the gang (that turns out to be Atlas’ gang) that you can bring them to the surface, out of their depths to get back to rapture and let atlas have his revenge on Andrew Ryan. In doing so, you also tell the lie that you’re one of the chief scientists assistant, meaning you definitely know how to get the gang out. So hence forth, your mission is to get to the scientists lab to then save the city, getting Emily back from her captors.

Paris is lovingly rendered whilst you play as Elizabeth. I genuinely didn’t want to progress with the campaign and wanted to soak in all Paris had to offer.

The game starts out with a pretty big plot element, as well as gameplay element, with Elizabeth finding her dead body against the wall in the starting area, meaning this is a new Elizabeth who doesn’t have the ability to open tears in time. I say this is a big game play element, as it now means that Elizabeth has to rely on her skills in sneaking around and knocking people out rather than her brawn that Booker relied so heavily on. This is explained quite nicely, but also can be seen as a little annoying considering we’ve seen Elizabeth open tears for 2 games, and this time cannot do it ourselves.

Burial At Sea part 2 is long. Very Long. For a piece of DLC this could have been a game in itself, with myself putting in 7 hours of game time, with barely any proper exploration and missing 2 audio tapes. This is partially due to the fact you play as Elizabeth, a fact the game pushes you to understand every few moments whenever you encounter enemies. This is due to the fact Elizabeth is not a fighter, so cannot take much damage, meaning the gameplay differs from other Bioshock games in the way it is no longer an action game, but stealth. Throughout most of the game, I was crouching the whole way, ensuring no enemies would see or hear me as I traversed Raptures darkest places. This was actually fairly refreshing for a game that relied far too much on its action sequences, something that hasn’t been toned back in part 2, but has been tweaked to make the experience more enjoyable.

Make no mistake, you may be playing as Elizabeth, but Burial at Sea is all about the little sisters and the bid daddies. In this DLC, you’ll learn of their origins, and how they became so inseperable.

The game is split up like a traditional Bioshock game, with the main task at hand on the opposite end of the world, with enemies between, and when you get to your location, you find that you actually then have to go elsewhere before you can continue with your progress. It’s one way to extend the length of the game, but can become quite tedious, as you know nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Each section is broken up into parts where you sneak behind enemies and knock them out (using either your tranquilizer crossbow, or smacking them on the head), then a section where you get to take in your environment, and another to explain a bit more story. It all becomes predictable after a while, meaning you know that when you take out the next few enemies, you’ll be able to continue to explore the environment, looking for coins and audiotapes to find out more about the world of Rapture.

My problem with this DLC and it’s mechanics stems more from the location the DLC takes place rather than the actual playability itself. The game pushes Elizabeth into a setting she didn’t really need to exist in in the first place. Bioshock 1 was beautiful, and amazing, but didn’t need to justify its existence through Elizabeths powers. The whole thing just feels like a prequel to Bioshock 1, something that didn’t need to be done at all.

In your long playthrough of Burial at Sea part 2, you’ll travel back and forth between Columbia and Rapture, ensuring you see as much of the world of Bioshock as possible before its eventual demise.

The aesthetic of rapture hasn’t changed much from part 1 of the DLC, but the opening scene in Paris, and the return to Columbia makes the dark, dreary corridors of Rapture seem even more dreary after visiting bright and lovely places. Graphics, as always, are brilliantly detailed whilst not being too demanding for your computer. It’s crazy how much detail and art irrational manage to squeeze out of the Unreal engine, especially considering how little geometry there is in the world and how its all textures. The art department at irrational deserve a pat on the back to say the least.

Burial at Sea episode 2 was a fantastic piece of DLC to play through, but only for its new mechanics rather than the extra story it introduced to the Bioshock universe. The whole thing felt very much like when everyone complained about the ending of the TV show Lost, with it feeling like nothing had actually ever been accomplished in its own right. By all means, enjoy this second part of the Bioshock DLC, but know this: it won’t feel like you’ve done anything at all or worthwhile in the grand scheme of the narrative.

3/5

01/08/2014
Weekly Gaming: Infinity Runner (PC)

Hi all,

For this weeks review, I managed to get a copy of Wales interactive’s Infinity Runner, a game all about running as fast as possible through a spaceship whilst also transforming into a werewolf and killing guards. If you want to read it, take a look at the link below:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/91789/infinity-runner-pc

My game is also coming along nicely, with a new tutorial level for the first time you boot the game up, along with the 360 controller now working 100% across the whole game. Lots still needs to be done, but it’s getting there, slowly but surely.

Until next week,

Dan

25/07/2014
Weekly Gaming: Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea DLC Part 1

Bioshock Infinite was one of my favourite games of last year, given its fantastic story and fairly unique setting. Ken Levine is a genius when it comes to setting up these lavish cities, where your imagination becomes a reality, and so it was a welcome piece of news that the first true piece of DLC for Infinite would take place in Rapture, a place we all find so dear considering how much Bioshock imprinted on gaming culture forever. The problem is, as much as rapture is so loved, Infinite opened the doors to the Bioshock potentially going anywhere, much like assassins creed 1 opened the door for the series to go to any culture in history and stake its mark, Infinite was full of potential, so its a shame that they decided to squander this potential by returning to an already visited location.

Just to make sure you know where you are, Burial at Sea pushes all the things you knew and loved about Rapture right in your face when you first start it up.

The game starts out with you taking control of Booker Dewitt, a man you’re already accustomed to by now, in your office of investigations, sleeping the night away. A lady decides to wake you up, and upon seeing her face, you realise this is Elizabeth, the girl you spent the entire main game with. She asks you to take up her job of finding a little girl called emily who is supposedly dead, and will show you the way to find her. This start part is similar to the start of infinite in that it introduces you to the world of rapture before all of the chaos and disaster of the first game, meaning you get to see how people once lived in this beautiful metropolis under the sea. This is good for slowly easing you into the world, but you soon start to feel disconnected from the world being shown, as people around you speak once, then never speak again, repeating the same animations over and over. It all feels jarring, and pulls you out of an otherwise great and immerseful world.

Before long, you start getting into some action sequences, with plasmids and gunplay taking centre stage. Gone are the columbians that are out to get you for being the chosen one that takes the lamb, which are all now replaced with splicers. These splicers aren’t like the original splicers of Bioshock, and instead are still human, albeit with some mental difficulties. Plasmids play a role in the combat, but I found the little time you play the DLC meant you couldn’t upgrade the plasmids to their full potential, meaning most of the time I relied on the guns of rapture to get me through, due to their ability to instant kill enemies with a headshot, and the plethora of ammo enemies drop after they meet their demise.

Plasmids make a return to the series, but this time you don’t get as much of a variety than the original Infinite or Bioshock. This could be because of the length of the game, or due to the fact the developers are running out of ideas.

Through some weird coincidence, the sky crane, a staple from Infinite that was unique and not seen in rapture before, is now in rapture, with its use limited and rare. I found myself never using it in combat situations like I did in the main campaign, and it felt like it was there more for window dressing or a way to melee kill enemies than an actual gameplay mechanic.

It’s hard to go into too much detail in regards to the story of the DLC without giving out massive spoilers about not only the main campaign, but also this piece of DLC itself. The story has its usual twists and turns, with booker getting to one location with Elizabeth, only to need a new plasmid or item in order to continue forward. All I can say on the story side without spoiling anything is that I definitely enjoyed it. I found that it had enough plot twists, along with enough audio boxes to find to give proper depth to this new reason for being back in Rapture, something I didn’t feel the DLC would be able to do.

The DLC is beautiful, both graphically and artistically. I was stopping once every few moments in the beginning of the game to take as many screenshots as possible, as the amount of detail in every scene is staggering. Light rays gleam around figures beautifully, objects around the world are fantastically furnished that you wish you could actually reach out and grab them for their authentic 60’s look; the world of rapture has never felt more alive than in this.

Some familiar faces make an appearance upon your return to Rapture. Some of you may recognise this character from the original, others may find this confusing.

The music was catchy, and constantly in the background, meaning you had a permanent reminder as to what decade you were meant to be fighting in. Having no internet at the moment means that I can’t find out whether the music was authentically taken from that error, or whether it was all made originally for this game; either way, it’s all a beauty to behold.
I suppose I could sum up my time in rapture for the first part of DLC as enticing. The DLC gives enough story beats and justification for its own existence, but I still can’t help but think that it wasn’t needed at all. The DLC comes off another timeline from the game we played through in Bioshock Infinite, and although that can be seen as a good thing, I found myself wishing Bioshocks DLC would have gone to another place, with a new sprawling metropolis to discover all over again. Rapture is a place we’ve explored in every game in the series so far, nothing about it is new apart from the people within it, and they just aren’t that interesting when the game tries to justify the DLC’s existence through people you don’t really care about.

3/5

04/07/2014
Weekly Gaming: Tropico 5 (PC)

Hi all!

This week, I take a look at Tropico 5 for PC, a game series I’ve always been interested in, but never taken the plunge into. To read this weeks review, click the link below, where I’ve done it on behalf of GamrReview.com:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/91643/tropico-5-pc

I’ve also been updating my game Twixel more so than usual, with 5 new obstacles, a whole new level, and a collision detection system that now actually works! If you wanna give it a go, click the link below:

Twixel

As always, stay cool peoples, and by all means get in touch!

Dan

20/06/2014
Weekly Gaming: Concursion

Hi all,

Once again, I’ve managed to write a review for gamrReview.com. This week, it’s on the indie game Concursion that I saw back at EGX rezzed back in March. The review can be found below:

http://www.gamrreview.com/review/91558/concursion-pc

I’ve also been putting in more time and effort into my game, so please, clink the link below to give it a go:

Twixel

As always, thank you for reading,

Dan.

10/06/2014
Weekly Gaming: Octodad: Dadliest Catch (PC)

Considering its indie origins, Octodad certainly looks the part, with highly polished graphics and menus looking like they’re straight from a AAA game developer studio.

When Octodad was announced and shown off around the time of the PS4 announcements, I couldn’t have been more excited at the chance to play it. Here was a platform holder like Sony, bowing their head to an indie studio, and making way for a company that wouldn’t have been given the time of day 5 years ago. The Game looked goofy, fun, and all around a brilliantly unique game that I couldn’t wait to play for all of its ideals. Octodad was unfortunately delayed for the PS4, and as I haven’t got around to buying a PS4 just yet (my PC is more powerful than both the PS4 and Xbox One, and there just hasn’t been unique games yet) I decided to get the game on my PC. Did Octodad live up to my huge expectations? or was I just living a dream as to whats possible with indie development?

Octodad is a game based around seemingly ordinary things we do thorughout our lives, as Octodad tries to fool everyone around him into believing he’s another human, just like us.

You start the game of Octodad out at a church about to attend a wedding ceremony. The game messes with the joke of Octodad being an octopus in disguise from the offset, throwing little quips about people not noticing he’s one straight away before you even control him. From here, its your job to find your suit and embark on an epic quest of controlling Octodads four limbs to pursue getting to your wedding reasonably presentable. The control mechanics are the core of this game, with Octodad being rather hard to manoeuvre reasonably well. You control his right and left arm with the left and right analogue stick respectively, pressing the RB button to pick things up and pressing it again to put things down. To walk, you press and hold one of the triggers on your controller in order to raise a leg, the longer you hold the trigger down, the higher it goes. Whilst you hold the trigger down, you then use the analogue sticks to control in which direction the leg should point or move. Combining all these actions allows you to manoeuvre Octodad around the world, but you have to be careful, everyone is always watching you, meaning if you make too many mistakes or are too clumsy in how you move Octodad around, you’ll suffer for it when people start to notice you’re not human.

Throughout the course of Octodad, you’ll be repeating similar events to the start, with levels designed to push your controls of Octodads limbs to the limits. There will be levels where you have to do household chores, and other levels where you’ll just have to take your family out to the shopping market. The everyday scenarios with this crazy character adds a sense of.. surrealism to the game that I haven’t felt before in others. Who would have thought scanning items through a checkout would be so much fun when it’s considered a chore in everyday life. I suppose you could say that Octodad gets your preconceived notions of boring things in real life and flips them on their head with the introduction of one strange main character.

You’d think making a pot of coffee would be pretty easy in a game all about participating in everyday chores, but you’d be wrong. Ocotodad is a nightmare to control (a seeming fit to an octopus impersonating a human), with this chore alone taking up to 5 minutes just to grab the right objects and put them in the right place.

The games chore stages couldn’t last forever though, with Octodad starting quite blissful, but turning into a fully pledged story before long. To make sure there’s a narrative, Young Horses have made a arch nemesis to Octodad: a chef. The chefs out to expose Octodad to his family and the world, and he won’t give you an easy ride in his mission to do so. This central theme pops up in places, and adds some urgency to an otherwise slow and weirdly paced game. You’ll be shopping in the supermarket with your family, when all of a sudden the chef appears and you have to run for your life, ensuring you’re not caught, otherwise you’ll need to repeat the sequence all over again.

The game starts to change its pace half way through with this introduction of the main antagonist, meaning that the fickle controls are no longer fun and hilarious to use, but are instead annoying and frustrating at times. The final boss encounter for example involved walking across a lot of small beams, which I admit that I spent easily 15 minutes repeating over and over. I understand the developers need for a narrative to ensure that players didn’t feel like they were skimping out, but this narrative with its ups and downs and changes in pace deterred from Octodads core principal: funny controls in mundane situations. Using a badly controlled octopus to sneak past guards or walk across thin obstacles isn’t fun when the mechanics are just not there to support it.

You’ll be surprised to learn that there is at least 1 part in the game where you actually get to play as Octodad’s true self, in a fishing section that doesn’t require much action on your part and is more akin to a quicktime event than an actual playable section. Still, it was a nice scene to watch unfold.

The humour is great to begin with, but will soon become a little dry after a while, with both the narrative becoming a little more serious in tone, and the jokes becoming stale as time goes on. In this sense, its a good thing Octodad doesn’t overstay its welcome. Coming in at almost 2 hours long (I managed to finish it in 109 minutes), it’s easily one of the quickest games I’ve played in recent memory. This may or may not bother you (I know some people take a game time= value decision), but when it’s on sale in the humble store, I still think its great value for a truly original idea for a game.

I’m glad Octodad exists. I feel it shows how far our industry has come, where a random game with very random mechanics and a very strange plot can get the backing of a huge publisher like Sony. It also stands as an accumulation of how creative developers can be, allowing them to come up with an idea, and sticking to it through thick and thin. Whilst the game of Octodad itself didn’t set my world on fire, the fact that this game exists at all still excites me even after completing it and having my fill. I truly commend Young Horses for this game, and look forward to their future endeavours.

3/5

23/05/2014
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: 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: 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
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