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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 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
Gaming Week 43: Pressure (PC)

I think this main menu sums up the mindless fun that Pressure ensures.

Looking through my games library for things to play for this weeks review, I stumbled upon a game I have no recollection of purchasing: Pressure. Intrigued, I went online and instantly searched for a gameplay video, to see what the game was about. Needless to say, I enjoyed what I had seen and proceeded to instantly download the title and start playing.

Pressure is a top down driving shooter that doesn’t push any boundaries when it comes to reinventing the genre, but does make itself stand out with its fantastic design and art style. You control a car as you race through 30 different levels and 3 bosses, killing as many enemies as possible whilst also trying to race to the end of the level as fast as possible. You have 2 bars that track your progress through a level, your health and your pressure. Health is pretty self explanatory, where as pressure is what’s needed to get your car going through to the end of the level. Enemies will try and steal it, and will drop tubes of it whenever you kill them. It’s a nice system that rewards a player for doing what the game wants you to do, and if you choose to just race, you’re gonna have a hard time getting to the end.

Graphics are charming and lovely, making for a Pixar-like take on an otherwise familiar genre.

Pressure looks and feels like a Pixar film, something I say with high regard for the art style of the game. It has cute little cutscenes which will be shown to progress the story, which are so high in quality you could indeed mistake it for a pixar film. They have some humour, which is always welcome in games. The art style is so polished and lovely, that every aspect of the game, from menus to upgrading your car, all the way to the gameplay itself is dealt with such charm that it’s impressive. Levels change as you progress through the story, from forest and fields to caves and castles, the levels show enough progression that you don’t get bored of seeing the same scenery for every stage, that is, they progress with the story.

Levels are designed in a way that there’s no way to really go wrong, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Pressure could of come up with more diversity in the way levels are played out. Secret paths or different routes would have done wonders to the games ability to be played multiple times, but what we’re left with is a seemingly linear experience with no diversity.

The controls for moving around is simple enough, with the Right Trigger on my Xbox Controller acting as Accellerator, the A button for firing your primary weapon, X for boosting, and B for your secondary weapon.

The gameplay looks the part, but controlling your car can occasionally feel very “airy”, by which I mean that your car doesn’t feel heavy and can be chucked around the stage when hit by an enemy. It makes controlling your car difficult with many enemies on screen, especially when you’re trying to race to the end of the level as fast as possible. Apart from the airiness of your car when hit, the car feels good to handle, and its rare you’ll hit the sides of the stage, even with the camera changes. As a whole, the controls were enjoyable, if not a bit irritating at times.

Enemies are varied enough to keep a level challenging and engaging, without outstaying their welcome. Killing them is essential for gaining pressure to finish the level.

Your vehicle consists of 4 main parts: the shell, the primary weapon, the secondary weapon, the ram and the buggy upgrades. Depending on how well you do in a level, you get an appropriate amount of coins to spend on upgrades for your car. These can range from a new shell that’ll help you boost longer and increase your health, to a new weapon that fires mortar rounds. These vary up the gameplay, and can be sold as and when you’d like, allowing for some flexibility in how you take on the certain enemies that appear in certain areas. I found that saving up my money and buying the most expensive weapon and secondary weapon was worthwhile, as every enemy died in one hit from then on, allowing me to only worry about aiming, and not enemy management.

Overall, Pressure was a throughly enjoyable game that I had no idea existed. It’s a short ride (3-4 hours max), but that’s just about the right amount of time you’d probably play the campaign before getting bored or annoyed at the mechanics. I’m surprised how much fun I had playing Pressure, and I hugely recommend you play it too.

3/5

P.S. A Quick Look of Pressure can be found below:

25/10/2013
Gaming Week 42: Anna (PC, Mac, Linux)

Anna is made using the Unity engine, something which stuck out to me instantly when I observed the terrain they had used (Grass and mountains.) They’ve done a good job of making this engine their own, but mishaps in controls remind you that they didn’t spend much time polishing certain mechanics.

I’ve always noticed Anna on the Steam store, appearing here and there whenever I boot up my PC, but I never took the time to find out what it was. Eventually, I watched the trailer video and looked through some screenshots, and decided that it was easily worth the couple of quid Steam was asking for, every sale helps to feed a developer right?

Well the first time I booted up the game, I was introduced to a screen that wanted my username and password, something I didn’t have and I had no intention of making. Upon pressing cancel, I couldn’t go any further, the game just closed and wouldn’t let me do anything unless I registered or already had a account. This was extremely frustrating, and goes against the first rule of business/game design: don’t annoy the customer. The customer is doing you a favour by buying your product, giving them easy access to said product is the best way to go about it. Making them make accounts before they can even do anything? That’s just annoying.

Each room is scarily rendered, giving a strange atmosphere that keeps you on edge the whole time. Music is played every few minutes, which is calming, but puts you in a false state of security when things can happen at any moment.

The gameplay of Anna is similar to a old fashioned adventure game, where you must explore an environment, clicking, examining and picking up as much as possible, all to try and progress to the next area. Items that are picked up can be combined, and must be used on real-world objects in order to open to doorways, solve puzzles and progress the narrative that Anna tells. It’s a simple system, but one that is mechanically broken at times, for example I had one occasion where the story wouldn’t progress until a bell went off, something which I had no control over, so was sat exploring and wondering around for 15 minutes before I could progress. Overall, despite its flaws, the play style suits the horror genre perfectly, matching Amnesia: The Dark Descent whilst also adding it’s own twist in the narrative department.

Graphics are lovely on Highest quality setting, with most of the game taking place indoors, you’d be hard pressed to realise its a Unity game. Dreampainters (the developer) have done a great job putting loving care into each environment, making sure it all gets used to it’s maximum potential. Even though you spend 2-4 hours in just 3/4 rooms, you’re always finding something new, prolonging your fear just when you start to feel comfortable in one area.

The story is told at a slow pace through voices that are heard as the player is exploring areas and solving problems. Your character occasionally talks out loud and tries to respond to these voices, but it always falls on deaf ears. It’s a great way to tell a story, as its done at the players own pace, allowing you to absorb as much or as little information as you’d like.

Symbols appear quite often, and are a good way to change the atmosphere of a room. It keeps you on edge, allowing the game to mess with you in interesting and different ways.

So with all the good bits out the way and done with, we now get onto the bad bits. I found that the puzzle solutions to the game were a bit arbitrary, with no clear concise way for a player to solve them unless a guide is consulted or a player manually tries every item with every other item. It made the game annoying at times, meaning I spent about 45 minutes walking around the first area, with no way to know what I was meant to be doing, or how I would even get to the objective. The hints didn’t help either, being so loose that they could apply to anything. For example, at one stage I had a branch, which I thought would be good to use as a fire, or to move rocks. Turns out this branch is fantastic for moving boulders that looked the size of the player, something I would never have guessed until I actually started using each item with each object in the world. This same branch can apparently unwedge a knife out of a table, so whilst playing Anna, get used to unconventional thinking, and a lot of trial and error with items and objects.

Anna starts out promising, with it’s beautiful graphics and scenery, but can quite quickly become frustrating due to the very nature its game mechanics work. Dreampainters would be wise in future to spend a bit more time working on their puzzles, as the rest of their game exceeds the poor mechanics implemented in puzzle solutions.

2/5

18/10/2013
Gaming Week 40: To the Moon (PC)

To the Moon’s art style is a fantastic deviation from the norm. In a world where AAA studios spend months designing just one logo, To the Moon’s fan made art style brings a refreshingly new look to the market. (Image courtesy of Steam Community)

To the Moon is a 4-5 hour game from the creative mind of Kan Gao of Freebird Games, that takes you on a emotional roller coaster through a deep story, rich characters, and seemingly fantastic locations. The fourth game to come from Kan, it’s certainly one of his best, and easily tugs at your heart strings and makes you want to play more and more to conclude the epic story.

You start To the Moon playing as a pair of scientists(/doctors/employees? Who knows, they’re in white doctors jackets so they must be important) that accidentally get into a car accident on their way to a old, drying man. You make your way up the hill where you crashed, to find a huge house on the cliff edge overlooking the sea and a lighthouse. The characters you control acknowledge that this was the place they were meant to be, and proceed inside. From here, the story is explained; the characters you play as are agents that can fulfil a patients dying wish using some kind of device that alters a persons memories. In order to make this wish a reality though, they need as much information as possible about the patients life, be it memories, or physical world possessions, in order to build up a complete picture and change the right memory to make sure the patient believes their wish came true before passing away. It sounds weird, but it is all executed beautifully, allowing you to look back through a persons life and feel proper attachment to the characters Kan Gao makes. I won’t say anything more on the story, as I feel it’s the core of the whole game, and saying anything would spoil the greatness you feel as you explore and learn the story for the first time.

The style of To the Moon is reminiscent of SNES graphics, which may be a strange way to start a epic story, but doesn’tt affect the narration at all. Freebird Studios manages to make likeable, distinct and unique characters that are recognisable despite the graphics. (Image Courtesy of GiantBomb Community)

Gameplay is your standard typical RPG game, but without the fighting. You wonder around, clicking on certain items or people to interact with them, building up your understanding of the world around you. This type of gameplay was flawed at times, meaning I would wonder around for ages without proper understanding of where my end goal was. This could of been implemented better with a objective system, but these occurrences were few and far between. The soundtrack is worth mentioning, being easily one of my favourite parts of the whole game. It ties in so well to the emotion that is being portrayed at any one point, and sticks with you. The second the game was over, I went straight to Bandcamp and bought the whole album. I haven’t stopped listening to it since; I’m listening to it whilst writing this review (and most reviews for that matter, it makes for fantastic background music). Listen to a sample of it below, and be blown away:

The game is made using RPG Maker, a weird little engine that isn’t very flexible, but gets the job done for telling stories in a RPG themed way. It was this choice of engine that started my first hurdle to playing To the Moon: it wasn’t available on Mac. Not a biggie I thought to myself whilst in America, I’ll just play it on my PC when I get home, which couldn’t be further from the truth. On my PC, I couldn’t get the screen to work, meaning the game just sat there, playing the music but without any picture. After checking around online, people suggested pressing ctrl + enter to exit from full screen, which worked, but my god was that window tiny! It barely took up the left corner of my monitor. I tried playing like this for a few hours, but it was just too tiny to truly get immersed in the game. In the end, I used windows magnifier to zoom in on where my cursor was, and for the most part, this sorted my problem. It’s a shame that a game as great as this suffers from little kinks like this that dramatically detract from the core game itself. It’s comparable to when Simcity launched and people couldn’t play it due to the servers being down, which may sound harsh for such a small studio, but we all make choices, and Kan Gao’s choice was to make the game using RPG Maker, which became a detriment to myself and many others experiencing his game. It’s for these very reasons that I wasn’t able to capture screenshots or video.

In conclusion, I hugely recommend To the Moon to anybody out there that has a heart or a keen interest in storytelling in games. The rich characters and depth of story make for a truly unique experience, one which had me shedding a few tears and wanting more, something I haven’t had from AAA games for a while. Whilst RPG Maker wasn’t the best choice in making this game, it certainly didn’t detract from making Kan Gao’s imagination a reality.

4/5

04/10/2013
Gaming Week 36: Trauma (PC)

The main menu of Trauma shows the main 4 stages of the game. Each stage isn’t too long, but has many hidden collectibles to discover, encouraging replay and exploration.

Trauma is a strange and uniquely beautiful game that has you solving problems of a lady who’s been in a car crash and is experiencing trauma. It’s a wonderfully original concept, and one that has you trawling through as much of the game as possible to explore every nook and cranny the games levels have to offer.

Trauma starts with a cutscene of a lady and a man walking down a ordinary street and getting into a car. After some lovely art work, the game makes a crashing noise, indicating that the couple have been in a car crash. The game takes place around the red haired girl recalling her life and moments through puzzles relating to the traumatic experiences in her life whilst she is in hospital undergoing treatment with a psychologist/doctor.

Levels become a bit scarier as the game progresses, this isn’t because of anything you actually see, but the feeling of the surroundings pulls you in to a confusing and weird place.

The gameplay of Trauma is akin to that of a point and click adventure game, one that has you exploring a whole level to click on everything you see that can resemble relevance to the level at hand. You’re given one 2D picture taken in the real world, that you must click around to explore the level. Clicking to the left will bring up a new side of the current scene, and its through this mechanic that you explore the given stage. Occasionally you’ll have to create shapes in order to finish the level, or to navigate around the world further than clicking will allow alone. Shapes like a ? will make things levitate, where as a straight line backwards will make the camera zoom out. It makes for some interesting mechanics, and although each symbol can only be used in certain contexts, its definitely adds to the exploration mechanics of the game.

Collectibles come in the form of photographs that you find throughout the levels. Each photograph either adds to the narrative of the game, or teaches you new ways to control the players perspective throughout the levels.

Collectibles are hidden throughout each stage, enabling a player to continually go back and explore each stage to its fullest, which means Trauma has fantastic replay-ability. On top of collectibles, there are multiple ways to finish levels, leading players to go back to levels already explored trying to figure out how to see all the different ways a level will end. Some solutions to how to finish a level might not be taught until later levels, but this is a good way to get a player to replay the game without feeling that they’re repeating the same things, that is to say, they’re at least seeing something new each time.

As the game goes on, later levels become more abstract leading to more questions about the main narrative. The formula of using high quality camera shots is still used for the levels, but objects/whole scenes start to become weirdly rendered, enabling Trauma to really flex it’s muscles as a mind-bend of a game. The end of each level also shows a cutscene, which in turn gives a little bit of explanation about what the woman (patient) is going through internally.

Cutscenes happen at the end of every level, narrating a story worthy of competing against bigger games.

For all of the praise I’m giving Trauma, it isn’t without its flaws. The game is extremely short, meaning I completed the game and found everything the hour mark. It is also very abstract, requiring the player to piece together the mystery and puzzle of what all the narrating means in the bigger context, which for me is fine, but for many casual players this may come across as pretentious/confusing.

Below is a recording I made of the first level, whilst trying to find all the collectibles:

To conclude, Trauma is a fantastic outing for Krystian Majewski, and I’m looking forward to playing more of her titles in the future. If you find the game on sale, it’s a fantastic purchase, but at base price the value proposition may not be to everyones liking.

3/5

06/09/2013
Gaming Week 34: The Wonderful End of the World (PC)

The main menu that welcomes you when you boot up The Wonderful End of the World. The woman has something to do with the game (I think).

I bought The Wonderful End of the World on the Steam Indie sale a few months back as it reminded me of Beautiful Katamari from the Xbox 360. This, coupled with its cheap price made it so appealing that I bought it in a heartbeat, without really reading anything about the game and mainly judging by the screenshots alone. This past week, I managed to play the game from start to finish, and got every achievement, making sure I explored every nook and cranny this game had to offer, so without further ado, here’s what I have to say about The Wonderful End of the World.

You start the game with the main menu screen (see above). From here you can change the settings if you desire, check out your trophies (they’re the same as the steam achievements), or play the game. Once you start the game, you’re presented with all the levels in the game, most are locked, but its up to you to decide how you go about progressing through them and which level you choose next. The first level you choose gives you a quick and brief tutorial, which sets the tone that this game is a carbon copy of Beautiful Katamari. You get dropped into the level, and have to instantly start collecting items to slowly make yourself bigger, trying to pick up everything in the level before the timer runs out. It’s a nice mechanic, and one that certainly makes you replay levels over and over to try and find the best route possible, but in doing so, it makes the whole game rather short. In some instances during play, it’s hard to determine whether you’re big enough to pick up a item, something the arbitrary score in the top right hand corner doesn’t help resolve. Once your timer is finished or you become big enough to finish the level (whichever comes first), you get a score screen with a rank at the bottom. This rank is determined by the final size you grew to, but is a bit vague when it comes to pinpointing exactly what you need to do for each rank.

This is your character you will control throughout The Wonderful End of the World. This mass of random balls slowly absorbs items which it eventually incorporates into its own shape and size. Controls are simple, as can be seen at the left hand side.

Levels are unique, each having its own taste and design aesthetic, which really adds to the charm and personality of the game. You go from a shopping centre, to a café, all the way up to gobbling up a city, getting bigger and more ambitious as each level is finished. One of my favourite levels is of a 2D billboard town using vector graphics; It’s aesthetically very pleasing and unique, (if not a little bit sickening too) and makes it stand out compared to the game it’s imitating: Beautiful Katamari. One major pitfall of the levels is their size. They’re all very tiny, meaning the 3 minutes you’re given to collect as much as possible is trivial and easy to finish. I found that on my second playthrough I was getting A+’s on every level without trying, and finishing a level well within the time limit.

This was easily one of my favourite levels. It’s 2D billboard system was both unique and charming in how it was presented.

Past the fun and simplicity of it all, The Wonderful End of the World isn’t without it’s flaws. The game has no narrative, meaning that if you’ve never played a Beautiful Katamari game, you almost certainly won’t understand the purpose of the game. You keep seeing pictures of a woman with red hair (seen in the pics I’ve posted), but no context is given as to who she is or of what value she plays in the game. The total game time as well is extremely short, meaning I completed the whole game (100% achievements) in a little over 2 hours (This included restarting my progress and playing the whole game a second time).

As with Beautiful Katamari, there are very random items in the world to collect. This gentleman in the corner certainly stands out, and doesn’t belong in a construction site.

In conclusion, I can’t help but say that The Wonderful End of the World feels more like a college students final year project than an actual full retail game. It’s fantastic proof of the concept that they can program this all from scratch, but the game leaves a lot to be desired, coming across as an unfinished mess rather than a brilliant take on an underrated genre it had the potential to be (much like Beautiful Katamari).

2/5

23/08/2013
Gaming Week 33: Torchlight 2 (PC)

This is the screen you’re greeted with every time you start up Torchlight 2. You have to log into Runic’s servers in the bottom right corner to play online with others.

I have fond memories of Torchlight on the 360, but after playing it for 14+ hours and 100% the game, I couldn’t help but feel a little deflated that there wasn’t more. Torchlight 2 came out 6 months after my first review, but due to other games and other things happening in my life, I gave it a pass as I knew I wouldn’t be able to give it the time and attention it deserved. Finally, I got Torchlight 2 for £4.99 when it was on sale in March, but even then I put playing it off until I had someone else to play with. I can safely say, that as of this week, I have played Torchlight 2 from start to finish.

Battles can get quite intense, making it difficult to see your own player amongst all the fireworks and gibs.

You start Torchlight 2 as you did the first game: selecting a class and a pet to go on your adventure with. From here, you get introduced to the main narrative that’ll keep you adventuring throughout the campaign, which consists of a very strong, evil Alchemist (the same one you could play as in the first Torchlight) being overwhelmed by the same evil that corrupted the caves under the original town of Torchlight. You start your epic quest just after Torchlight is destroyed, and you must embark on a adventure trying to put a stop to the alchemist as he makes his way across the world disturbing the peace. Not a bad set up by any means, I just wish the cut scenes were better narrated and higher fidelity to properly portray the story, as it stands, the cut scenes feel disconnected to the main campaign.

One of the biggest differences you’ll find with Torchlight 1 and 2 is the new addition of multiplayer. You can’t miss it, a runic account being the first thing Torchlight 2 asks you to create when you first get into the game, it ensures that all players are able to connect to multiplayer if they so wish. I’d hugely recommend it if you have a internet connection, as without other people, torchlight 2 feels a bit empty and joyless. Levels are huge and vast, with plenty of enemies to take on and kill for all that sweet XP, but without someone to share this XP and experience with, Torchlight 2 feels like a empty shell of a game that could of been so much more. Multiplayer works by wondering the whole world with each other, players are able to go into separate areas, and play the game as if they were alone, with the addition of trading and XP sharing to add (XP sharing only happens if you’re both in the same area, kill enemies in separate areas, and the other player doesn’t get anything.)

The fantastic method of storing items with your pet has returned, even allowing you to send them back to town with the junk you want to sell, it was innovative back in Torchlight 1, and it continues to be a fantastic idea in Torchlight 2.

Item management is still a pleasure in Torchlight 2; It’s very fast and easy to sort through all the junk you get on an adventure, and certainly helps you turn items into gold as and when you’d like. Most items can be worn by all classes, which means its very rare to get items that you can’t use. This feature was great for trading, as I was a berserker, and my brother was a mage, so we traded back and forth with staff’s and melee weapons. I can imagine playing this alone may make item drops a bit more boring, but as a whole, the item system works fantastic for a loot game like Torchlight 2.

Combat has changed slightly from the old Torchlight 1, with the control system becoming more akin to Diablo than a third person game. This may be in part, due to the fact Torchlight 2 is PC only, requiring a mouse to move your character around, and for every action in the whole game. If needed, you don’t even need to use your keyboard to perform actions; a single click on the bar at the bottom will cast a spell or skill. It’s a small change, and one I’m still not sure I like yet, but is a move in the right direction to becoming less of a action/adventure game and more of a RPG. Combat entails using the mouse to click on anything you want doing: be it clicking on an enemy to continue attacking them, to clicking on loot to pick it all up, its simple, and brings the RPG game back to it’s roots. My berserker character was certainly equipped and ready for what the campaign had in store for him, meaning I only died a handful of times throughout the campaign. Skills were powerful, but not too powerful to break the gameplay, inviting for some creative ways to take on bosses towards the end game. (My favourite ability was to freeze a enemy which would increase my attack on them by 34% for 4 seconds.)

Quests are narrated, giving a nice feel to Torchlight 2. Most of the story and quests are boring, but for most people, that’s not the reason they’re playing Torchlight 2.

In conclusion, Torchlight 2 is more of the same, but with elements that have transformed the feel to appeal to a wider audience. Is it worth the £14.99 asking price? My 20 hours of gametime is certainly a testament to how engaging it can truly be, albeit make sure to experience this with friends, playing alone I could only muster an hour or two before getting quite bored.

3/5

16/08/2013
Gaming Week 32: Reus (PC)

I think the logo of Reus sums the game up perfectly, with the giant in awe at the human whilst simultaneously caring for him.

I started Reus with an open mind; I was never into God sims as a kid, and could never get into Black and White, the absolute king of the genre. But something about the promotional material and friends playtime peeked my interest in Reus, and in turn made me give the God Sim genre another go. I’m glad I did.

You start of Reus with a few tutorials to get you used to the basics of the game. You control giants which all have special, unique abilities, and you must use these abilities to the benefit of the humans inhabiting your world. There are 4 giants in total, which are as follows: The Ocean giant, swamp giant, rock giant and forest giant. Each of the giants have abilites that are quite self explanatory (£100 to anyone that can guess what each giant specialises in) but also have abilities that compliment and help each other. The ocean giant creates oceans, but is also used to make animals, making sure to not get ignored/sidelined compared to the other giants in the later game, I’d class him as the support character for all other giants. The forest giant on the other hand creates forests and fruit, making him good for food production for civilisations, and very good in the early game. Your challenge is to experiment with each giants abilities and find a solution to the needs of the humans that inhabit your land.

The rock giant makes mountains and minerals to increase the wealth and technology of a village. His mines are definitely a harder ability to master than any other.

Each section of land can have one giants ability in its place, and this is how you make resources for the villages/land throughout the game. Get the forest giant to make fruit on a section, and berries will spawn, providing food in that area surrounding the section of land. Make the Ocean giant place animals next to the berries, and food will significantly grow due to the animals eating the berries.

The giants of Reus aren’t just static objects that occasionally make land, far from it. In fact, as the era progresses, you will fulfil more and more human requests, giving you ambassadors to collect and use. A human ambassador helps out a giant by augmenting their powers, enabling a giant have more abilities to help the humans on the land. For example, giving the forest ambassador (achieved by fulfilling a forest villages requests) to the forest giant allows him to transform/upgrade plants with the fruit ability, turning the blueberries bushes into apple trees. This doesn’t sound like much, but apple trees produce more food if animals are around, which in turn could help the animals themselves to produce more food. Its a great cycle that allows for the player to experiment and see what combinations work in each area.

Here we have the rock and ocean giant help each other with their segments of land. Animals in the desert produce more food when put next to a mineral mine.

“Wait!” I hear you ask, “is there a main narrative or challenge to this game to give you a purpose for helping the humans?”, and there is indeed. Before starting a game, you get to choose what era you would like to participate in. A normal era is a 30 minute game, a bigger era is 60 minutes, and finally you can make a single game last 2 hours. Before you start your game, Reus will remind you of the developments/objectives you can work towards in this era. Some of these objectives are simple, e.g. completing 3 village requests, but others are challenging, and may be so specific that you end up only making one village for an entire 30 minutes and catering to their every command. These developments make sure you work towards a common goal, and help to add to the longevity of Reus.

Here, the swamp giant is trying to experiment with different herbs, making as much tech as possible for the village that occupies this land.

In conclusion, Reus is a fantastic game that tests your knowledge and multitasking skills to their limits. In the later game it becomes a lot harder when trying to make your land as efficient as possible, but the outcome is worth it when you see all the developments popping up to show how well you’ve done. I admit, this isn’t going to be everyones cup of tea, especially with a lack of direction in the game, but for those that like pushing their multitasking skills to the limits, this is for you.

3/5

09/08/2013
Gaming Week 31: Organ Trail (PC/Mac)

Organ Trails retro graphics perfectly fit with the inventory management sim this game portrays. It ensures you’re not dazzled by the graphics and instead focus on the gameplay itself.

Organ Trail is a fantastic inventory management sim, one that scales back all graphics and polish to be as raw as possible. It’s a strategy game at it’s best, making sure you’re not distracted by anything else but the task of keeping your party alive.

You start Organ Trail shooting down zombies from the safety of a sandbag wall, mowing them down one by one until you run out of ammo. This triggers for a man to come out of the shadows and help you run down the last of the danger. You’re told that he can help you get to Washington DC, a place where your friends probably are. (A lovely side note here, you get to name your friends, which is hilarious further down the road when things start happening.) Once there, you’re tasked with scavenging items that will try and last you the rest of the game, travelling from east coast to west. This is not a easy task, as you’re told from the gentleman’s journal that everything is pretty essential, for example, food is consumed at a regular rate to keep the party alive over the rest of the game. allowed your party only 1oz of food an hour will make your supplies last longer, but causes your party to lose more health by the hour. Once you’ve decided on your resources, you set out without the gentleman who helps you, killing him due to being bitten and infected. He has served his purpose and has helped you start your journey.

This is what the town screens look like when you reach a new area. From here you can decide what you’re going to need for the next leg of your journey, and equip yourself appropriately. The town screen also gives you the chance to earn more money through jobs, or upgrade your car to ensure it survives longer.

From here, the rest of the game is relatively similar. You travel along in your station wagon from town to town, having random encounters along the way. These encounters can be nice, giving you a new upgrade part for example, or very, very annoying (I once lost all my spare tyres and mufflers in one trip, whilst also having a team mate incapacitated). This is where the inventory management comes into action; you’re constantly having to manage healing squad mates, with ammo, and spare parts for the car to ensure you get to the next town in one piece. I must say one thing, for a post-apocolyptic society, a lot of people want cash, to the point I found myself far too short on the resource too many times to count, so keep that in mind when you start this game yourself.

This is what happens along the road. I assure you, this is the start of the game as I certainly didn’t do this good a few minutes in.

For as much fun Organ Trail is, it’s not without its flaws. The aiming for example during stand offs isn’t fantastic, but this could jus be a conscience decision for the developers to ensure the game stays hard. Another problem is the games simple mechanics; past the inventory management and player management, there isn’t much originality to the towns and encounters. It means you get into a routine and generally do the same thing over and over.

Tim was incapacitated, and I didn’t want to feed him anymore, so I done this. (I was very tempted to tweet about it)

In conclusion, I would compare Organ Trail to FTL: Faster Than Light. Its game mechanics make sure you’re constantly managing a set crew and vehicle down to the nitty gritty, and events make sure it adds some randomness into the mix. Add this to the fact that like FTL, Organ Trail is a hard but addictive game, and it becomes impossible not to recommend Organ Trail. Its graphics and play style might not be to everyones taste, but if you’re a fan of strategy and hard games, Organ Trails right up your street.

4/5

02/08/2013
Gaming Week 30: The Walking Dead: 400 Days (PC/Mac)
These are the characters you get to chose from, each one with their own unique story.

I was blown away by the Walking Dead back when I played it in January, as I’m sure many of you have heard from many publications, its a landmark game for story telling, and certainly has a uniqueness to it that’s hard to find elsewhere. 400 days is a piece of DLC to go on top of the walking dead, and is seen as a separate chapter on the chapter select screen. Each story is about 20 minutes in length, with a Epilogue that follows after completing each characters story. So for £3.99, its a nifty price for an adequate amount of content.

As with the previous Walking Dead chapters, zombies are still a part of the story, but it’s the characters and relationships which really makes the game come to life.

Each story feels like a fully realised game in itself, with characters feeling extremely rich and deep. It makes you wonder what other game studios are doing with their writing staff, or whether Telltale Games have stole all the good writers of our time. When you select a character from the billboard, you play as that character, and undergo the traumatic experience they did on a certain day within the 400 days after the initial outbreak. Having the characters’ stories broken up into different days really helps to tell completely different stories, and helps to make you face different scenarios as time goes on. For example, a whose story begins a few weeks after the outbreak may be fine for food, but may have relationship or bandit problems, where as a character at 300 days may have food problems, therefore tensions would break out about rations. It makes for some very different scenarios, allowing characters to flourish under these intense situations.

Multiple choice is back in this DLC, with decisions seeming to have a greater impact on the story than in the original game.

Graphics and gameplay haven’t changed, with the game turning to multiple choice and conversation options to tell a story rather than action sequences. That isn’t to say that the original game had a lot of action pieces, but this DLC certainly has a lot less, making it a lot more laid back than previous chapters. Decisions you make seem to have a lot more impact than previous chapters, now this may be because you aren’t as attached to the characters (how attached can you become in 20 minutes?), but things are definitely a lot more drastic than before.

Dialogue is fantastically written, as it was in the original, there’s just not as much to do this time round.

Pros:
- Amazing stories make the Telltale writing staff some of the best in the business
- Plays to the engines strengths by making sure there’s next to no action involved
Cons:
- If you’re looking for action, it’s not here
So in conclusion, The Walking Dead: 400 Days gives you more of what you want, and less of what you didn’t want from the original 5 chapters. Its shortness does stop you from getting as emotionally involved as the original game, but each story has enough depth to make sure you’re satisfied.

4/5
26/07/2013
Gaming Week 29: McPixel (PC/Mac)
Each level starts like this, I only realised after 4 hours of play time that you could right click to skip it.

McPixel was raved about years ago due to the developers choice to help and support people who had pirated the game through the Pirate Bay, and after it being on the Steam Summer Sale for only £0.59, I really couldn’t miss the chance to give it a go.

McPixel starts as it means to go on: by making you click all over the screen in order to progress through the game. It’s the same as how you’d play a classic adventure game, so it’s pretty simple to grasp. McPixel is a bomb expert that needs to save the day in many different circumstances. Sometimes the bomb is in plain sight, other times it’s hidden, at the end of the day your job is to find the bomb and defuse it within 20 seconds.

This is all you’re given at the start of this level, so not knowing where the bomb is, what do you do?

I didn’t mention that McPixel is hilarious and damn right random. Some solutions require you doing things that you’d think have nothing to do with the bomb, others are just down right rude or silly. The example above with the acid, poo and woman at the end, is solved by picking up the acid, and throwing it on the woman. It may sound random, but the bomb is inside her, and by doing what I just said makes sure that the explosion stays just within her belly, saving the supermarket. It’s all very silly and random, and makes for some very funny results.

This is what happens if you fail a level (which will happen a lot). It’s fine though, as you get to keep on trying until you figure it out.

The game takes around 4 hours to complete to 100% on every level and round, which is a decent amount of time for a game this cheap. This can be extended with free DLC, which can be accessed by the main menu. I haven’t had a chance to try any of this DLC out yet, but I can imagine it’d be just as good as the rest of the game. There is also a mode for making and designing your own levels, which seems pretty intense and just as flexible as the main game.

Pros:
- Easy control system
- Hilarious levels
- Very catchy music which I’ll be humming for ages
Cons:
- A bit too simple for some peoples taste
Overall, McPixel is a fantastic game from developer SOS, and I recommend it to everyone, especially right now whilst it’s on sale on Steam. For it’s price, I believe a lot of people will enjoy themselves, and if they don’t, well it’s the price of a Mars bar, so get over it.

4/5
19/07/2013
Gaming Week 27: Poker Night 2 (PC)
I don’t know who this bloke is, but he seems pretty cool, and giggles every now and then, so I’m happy.

For this week I wanted to review Poker Night At The Inventory, the first Telltale Games poker game, but I found that everytime I went to start a new tournament, the game would crash on my Mac, and since I have no access to a PC at this moment in time, I had to make do and play the second game in the series. This isn’t a bad thing at all, in fact I’ve heard the second game is definitely a lot better than the first, it’s just that I wanted to see the evolution of the series for myself, not take other peoples word on it. So without further adue, here are my impressions of Poker Night 2 by Telltale Games.

So this is the whole crew of Poker Night 2, with GLaDOS being the dealer. It’s a nifty team, with personalities mixing to make a great atmosphere for Poker. From left to right: Brock Samson from Venture Brothers, Claptrap from Borderlands 2, Ash Williams from The Evil Dead and Sam from Sam and Max.

So as you can tell from the title of the game, Poker Night 2 is a game about poker, with a sprinkling of recognisable characters as your rivals.This adds a nice spin to the traditional poker game as you enjoy listening to characters converse about a range of subjects, from what it’s like to be a Dog (Sam has some good answers) to what it’s like having your face plastered all over signs across Pandora. (Claptrap is pretty witty in his response).

Theres not much to be said about the game of poker itself unfortunately. Poker Night 2 gives players the choice of Texas hold ’em, or Ohama rules, which is all fine and good for a poker game, although more rule sets could have been chosen. You’re always given $20,000 to start a tournament, and this money is completely imaginary, none of your own money (bar the purchase of the game itself) is used. It would have also been hilarious to have a strip poker version, as the money has no value, and it would have been fantastic to hear Brock or Sam get annoyed at losing a hand.

You can buy characters drinks using tokens you earn by winning tournaments. The drunker a character gets, the more tells they have for when they’re bluffing. Also shown is the Borderlands deck of cards.

What really differentiates Poker Night 2 to other poker games is it’s unlock system, in which there are 2 different types of unlocks. The first is when you win a normal tournament , which gives you tokens to spend as you please. These tokens can go towards buying new decks of cards, new chip designs, new boards to play on, and finally, drinks for characters whilst you’re playing a tournament (in-game unlocks). The second type of unlocks are rare and happen when a character bets a valuable object of theirs for the winner of the tournament. These unique objects allow the player to unlock content in other games, for example costumes in Borderlands 2 and Team fortress 2. From my point of view, the latter unlocks seem to be a purely commercial part of the game, an incentive if you will, of players who are huge fans of other games getting as much content as they can for the games they love. The £3.99 price tag then is really a piece of DLC for Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2.

Pros:
- Great atmosphere and charm from the characters you are pitched against
- A solid poker game for those who like poker
Cons:
- Fairly short
- Character conversations can become repetitive, I’ve heard Claptrap ask Sam what it’s like to be a dog 3 times in 6 tournaments
By itself, the game is OK, it doesn’t break any new ground when it comes to Poker, and definitely has charm, but I can’t help but feel the only players who are going to find the best value in the game are those who own both Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2 in steam and want more content for them. Otherwise I don’t think the characters alone are enough to detract hardcore poker players away from the hundreds of free online poker games, and with a £3.99 price point, I think Telltale Games know this too.

3/5
05/07/2013
Gaming Week 26: Evoland (PC)
From the get go Evoland looks like a RPG.

Evoland has peeked my interest ever since I first laid my eyes on it. Similar to DLC quest, you travel through the world of a RPG, constantly upgrading the gameplay/graphics as you progress. This was enticing as DLC Quest was a very short game taking the mick out of the DLC culture, so I wanted to see what Shiro games brought to the table with Evoland, as their marketing approach was definitely different to say the least.

You start the game as a 2D RPG, reminiscent of Final Fantasy games of yester-year. Only able to move in certain directions, you plod along opening chest after chest. Each chest gives the game a new look or feel, one chest gives the game colour, the other, the ability to move in all directions. It all quickly adds up, and soon you’re walking around the world like you’re in a Zelda game.

I kid you not, this is definitely Evoland you’re looking at, and not Zelda.

The game doesn’t end there, making sure to keep evolving the graphics and gameplay to the point you’re using different systems for different locations. In dungeons you’ll fight like Zelda, pushing blocks to open doors, killing enemies to unlock levers, it all is very familiar, where as in the main world map, you’ll fight creatures like in a Final Fantasy game; a turned based system where you also level up and acquire gold.

Attention to detail is pretty cool here, Evoland loves to flaunt so many recognisable franchises with a little twist.

All of this alone wouldn’t be enough to keep a player enticed for 3-4 hours, so Evoland does have a plot, but I use that word loosely. The plot is only introduced after 20 minutes of playing the game, and even then it’s a sentence or two. This means players will spend the first 20 minutes walking around for the sole purpose of seeing the world around them evolve, which isn’t bad, its just schizophrenic that the game seems to take both the world and the plot seriously, without ever intertwining the two. The plot feels separated from the game itself, so you end up not knowing whether the story is a joke or a serious tale.

The Final Fantasy rendered town is pretty cool, and definitely gave me nostalgia for FFVII.

Gameplay was fine and enjoyable for the most part, but there were times when the dungeons would become frustrating and dubious to finish. Such times relied too heavily on the Zelda mechanics of the game, which was a fairly flawed fighting system, and after dying meant you’d have to start the dungeon again and again. It became annoying, but persistance prevails is the only advice I can give to those wanting to give this game a go.

Loved this shout out to the FFVIII card mini game. Cards can be collected through the main campaign and used to verse the AI in one town.

Pros:
- Great little history lesson in RPG’s
- Great graphics for each style
Cons:
- Plot doesn’t live up to the standards set by the gameplay
- Certain dungeons/levels aren’t well thought out, resulting in numerous retries
Overall, Evoland is a good game for a first time studio, and certainly lives up to its trailers and hype for showing the world the Evolution of RPG’s. Where the game falls short though is in its ability to become more than DLC quest’s mick take of the DLC phenomenon, and become a real game in its own right.

Evoland is on sale at the moment on Gog.com for only $5, so I’d say its worth a play for its price.

3/5
28/06/2013