BinaryMessiah
Simulator games these days are becoming a serious addiction for me. With Power Wash Simulator becoming one of the best zen-like time sinks I’ve ever played in my life (when it’s out of Early Access I will do a full review) and my past addiction to time management games like Diner Dash I can easily play this game for hours on end with tunes in the background cranking out cars. There’s not really a story here, obviously, but you start out from scratch with the most basic tools and a small garage, but over time you can expand, make repairing faster, and fix up cars from the ground up even.
You start out with just the basics. One lift, slow examination, mounting, and screwing skills. You start with the first of 30 story repairs by doing tire changes, fluid flushes, and basic repairs. The great thing about CMS is slowly getting you familiar with how cars work and break down. I felt like the game was rocket science at first and quickly got frustrated. What’s a rubber bushing?! Where are they all?! Then I realized that all the bushings are tied to the suspension. You eventually learn each section of every car and will start building engines from the ground up and then entire cars. After about three or four hours I was expanding my garage by adding car washes, another lift, spending XP to make my skills faster, and adding things like a welder to get rid of rust on bodies.
Things get easier and faster once you unlock diagnostic tools like an OBD scanner, multimeter, and fuel and engine pressure tests. In the beginning, you basically have to take everything apart and look for the completely rusted parts as those are the ones needing replacement. The beginning cars will tell you what’s wrong so you get the hang of how the gameplay loop works. Later on, every part will be undiscovered and it’s up to you to diagnose, visually examine (it’s an actual diagnostic mode), and know-how to spot fully worn parts. Sometimes you can take a car on a test track to get a wider diagnosis of what’s wrong, then there’s the test path for brakes and suspension. Eventually, you’ll get the hang of what diagnostics work for each condition of a car. If the car won’t start then you should use your examination mode first, then your OBD scanner and multimeter and fix those parts. If the engine fires up but won’t drive then you need to do the other tests. Sometimes non of the tests will tell you what’s wrong and you have to do exploration diagnostics.
There are other elements like a spring puller for shocks, tire separator, and balancer, a brake disc lathe, and you can do a small minigame to repair parts that aren’t completely destroyed, of course, once you unlock all these tools. You can even do headlamp adjustments and alignments. It’s fun changing fluids, screwing in parts, and discovering new engine types with more pieces than before, but after you finish the story all that’s left are random repairs (which are quicker than story missions) and visiting the junkyard and auction to rebuild cars and sell them for more money to turn around and buy more cars, but what’s the appeal in that? Driving the cars on the track is really generic and boring, and the fun part of the game is the mechanic part. I don’t want to collect cars really. Once I upgraded and bought all the expansions there wasn’t anything left to do.
After about 20 hours I could build any car with my eyes closed, and this is my main concern with CMS. The individual car systems are limited in scope. Yes, there are many engine types, but they all go together basically the same just with different parts and varying sizes. It was fun to build an engine on the stand and lower it into the car. I had fun restoring several cars and repainting them or giving the car performance parts to stick on the dyno. However, if it’s not for a repair I didn’t feel any satisfaction. Once you rebuild a few cars you experience the most challenging part of the game. There were a few issues early on in which you can get stuck with no money if you start buying up too much. You need to grind repairs until you get around 30,000 credits and can rebuild and sell a simple car from the junkyard to give you your first serious payment.
The other issue is that everything is canned. All animations and movements and actions. This isn’t Surgeon Simulator or Cooking simulator. There are no hands you control in real-time. When you click apart there’s an outline of where it needs to go. You hold the mouse button down and the part appears and so do the screws. You hold the mouse down on all the screws and you move on to the next part. It’s essentially like building Legos. The overall longevity outside of the story missions will determine how much you get out of these limited systems within the cars and various small mini-games. It becomes redundant and almost boring after so long when the entire reaches its peak early on.
What’s here is a satisfying and fun simulator for at least 20-30 hours. You will want to grind the story missions, unlock everything, and experience everything at least once. Restoring cars from just the frame is fun, but I also would have liked more exterior customization. It’s very limited to just doors, windows, hood, trunk, lights, mirrors, and that’s it. There’s also almost no satisfaction from just buying cars, restoring them, and keeping them to race on a dull track, or selling them for money that isn’t really needed anymore once you unlock everything.
You start out with just the basics. One lift, slow examination, mounting, and screwing skills. You start with the first of 30 story repairs by doing tire changes, fluid flushes, and basic repairs. The great thing about CMS is slowly getting you familiar with how cars work and break down. I felt like the game was rocket science at first and quickly got frustrated. What’s a rubber bushing?! Where are they all?! Then I realized that all the bushings are tied to the suspension. You eventually learn each section of every car and will start building engines from the ground up and then entire cars. After about three or four hours I was expanding my garage by adding car washes, another lift, spending XP to make my skills faster, and adding things like a welder to get rid of rust on bodies.
Things get easier and faster once you unlock diagnostic tools like an OBD scanner, multimeter, and fuel and engine pressure tests. In the beginning, you basically have to take everything apart and look for the completely rusted parts as those are the ones needing replacement. The beginning cars will tell you what’s wrong so you get the hang of how the gameplay loop works. Later on, every part will be undiscovered and it’s up to you to diagnose, visually examine (it’s an actual diagnostic mode), and know-how to spot fully worn parts. Sometimes you can take a car on a test track to get a wider diagnosis of what’s wrong, then there’s the test path for brakes and suspension. Eventually, you’ll get the hang of what diagnostics work for each condition of a car. If the car won’t start then you should use your examination mode first, then your OBD scanner and multimeter and fix those parts. If the engine fires up but won’t drive then you need to do the other tests. Sometimes non of the tests will tell you what’s wrong and you have to do exploration diagnostics.
There are other elements like a spring puller for shocks, tire separator, and balancer, a brake disc lathe, and you can do a small minigame to repair parts that aren’t completely destroyed, of course, once you unlock all these tools. You can even do headlamp adjustments and alignments. It’s fun changing fluids, screwing in parts, and discovering new engine types with more pieces than before, but after you finish the story all that’s left are random repairs (which are quicker than story missions) and visiting the junkyard and auction to rebuild cars and sell them for more money to turn around and buy more cars, but what’s the appeal in that? Driving the cars on the track is really generic and boring, and the fun part of the game is the mechanic part. I don’t want to collect cars really. Once I upgraded and bought all the expansions there wasn’t anything left to do.
After about 20 hours I could build any car with my eyes closed, and this is my main concern with CMS. The individual car systems are limited in scope. Yes, there are many engine types, but they all go together basically the same just with different parts and varying sizes. It was fun to build an engine on the stand and lower it into the car. I had fun restoring several cars and repainting them or giving the car performance parts to stick on the dyno. However, if it’s not for a repair I didn’t feel any satisfaction. Once you rebuild a few cars you experience the most challenging part of the game. There were a few issues early on in which you can get stuck with no money if you start buying up too much. You need to grind repairs until you get around 30,000 credits and can rebuild and sell a simple car from the junkyard to give you your first serious payment.
The other issue is that everything is canned. All animations and movements and actions. This isn’t Surgeon Simulator or Cooking simulator. There are no hands you control in real-time. When you click apart there’s an outline of where it needs to go. You hold the mouse button down and the part appears and so do the screws. You hold the mouse down on all the screws and you move on to the next part. It’s essentially like building Legos. The overall longevity outside of the story missions will determine how much you get out of these limited systems within the cars and various small mini-games. It becomes redundant and almost boring after so long when the entire reaches its peak early on.
What’s here is a satisfying and fun simulator for at least 20-30 hours. You will want to grind the story missions, unlock everything, and experience everything at least once. Restoring cars from just the frame is fun, but I also would have liked more exterior customization. It’s very limited to just doors, windows, hood, trunk, lights, mirrors, and that’s it. There’s also almost no satisfaction from just buying cars, restoring them, and keeping them to race on a dull track, or selling them for money that isn’t really needed anymore once you unlock everything.
Most video games based on movies are notoriously terrible and thankfully the trend has mostly ended. With game development costs through the rough, it’s not feasible or profitable to pump out a game in 6 months based on the next big movie. Weapons of Fate is the rare video game only sequel to a movie because the movie bombed. The story seems interesting at first. The voice acting is great and many of the original cast from the movie return, but the game is over so quick the story doesn’t get time to unfold. It plays out like a typical Hollywood action movie. Lots of cool and interesting words like “The Immortal” and “The Fate of the Loom” but it means nothing in the end. It seems almost like an Assassin’s Creed-type storyline where you play as a child of an assassin and are trying to find the killer of your mother. There are legendary real-world assassins who are buried in special tombs and so on.
It’s just an action sequence and repetitive shooting sequence to the next cut-scene. These are abrupt and frequent, but it’s still not enough to shell out the lore that this type of storyline needs. There’s no backstory to any character. You just get introduced by a few lines and that’s it. Why do I want to kill these people? Who do I care about my two characters? Who cares about any of this? The game at least tries to give you interesting abilities, decent gunplay, and some scripted moments. There are even a few boss fights thrown in for good measure. The game plays like any third-person shooter. You run around the incredibly linear and cramped levels and can take cover behind things and pop out and shoot. This seems standard enough, but I have to give GRIN compliments for good hit feedback when you shoot enemies and they aren’t bullet sponges.
You slowly unlock a couple of abilities. There are adrenaline shots you use for bullet bending and slow-mo dodging between covers. Honestly, the bullet bending is a really neat gameplay idea. You can pull up a line that you move around that locks onto enemies. When it’s white the bullet will get them around cover and corners. The downside is they can’t be moving, but if you hit them you recover that adrenaline shot back. You can chain these together easily, but it kind of falls apart towards the end of the game. Tougher enemies get introduced and can dodge your bullets. Bullet bending no longer becomes one-shot that kills most enemies. Usually, they stagger out of cover and you have to continue the kill. You still get the shot back, but it can get quite annoying because all of these enemies do become bullet sponges in the end or require melee attacks.
Bullet dodging only became useful during a couple of boss fights and that’s it. Each level is filled with cover and enemies use it too. There are moments where you get to use a sniper rifle, mounted machine gun, and cinematic bullet doge sequences in which the game slows down between animations and you have to kill whoever is blocking your way. They’re fun and shake things up a bit, but the repetitive level design and the constant barrage of killing enemies behind cover get tiresome towards the end and the bullet bending loses its charm fast despite how cool it is. There are rare occasions where a shielded enemy will confront you and you can suppress them and sneak around the sides and flank them. This was in the main tutorial like it was a constant thing. I ran across less than five of these guys through the whole game.
That’s all there is to the game. You just run around shooting, bullet bending, and killing each wave as you push through the levels. Each chapter has an end boss that isn’t all that tough, but they’re there. You can eventually acquire your dad’s sub-machine pistols towards the end of the game and his suit. You go back and forth between the past and current times. The game is over in less than 4 hours and you’re left with 4 hours you won’t get back. There’s literally no reason to play this game at all unless you’re super bored and want a decent afternoon with an HD-era shooter.
It’s just an action sequence and repetitive shooting sequence to the next cut-scene. These are abrupt and frequent, but it’s still not enough to shell out the lore that this type of storyline needs. There’s no backstory to any character. You just get introduced by a few lines and that’s it. Why do I want to kill these people? Who do I care about my two characters? Who cares about any of this? The game at least tries to give you interesting abilities, decent gunplay, and some scripted moments. There are even a few boss fights thrown in for good measure. The game plays like any third-person shooter. You run around the incredibly linear and cramped levels and can take cover behind things and pop out and shoot. This seems standard enough, but I have to give GRIN compliments for good hit feedback when you shoot enemies and they aren’t bullet sponges.
You slowly unlock a couple of abilities. There are adrenaline shots you use for bullet bending and slow-mo dodging between covers. Honestly, the bullet bending is a really neat gameplay idea. You can pull up a line that you move around that locks onto enemies. When it’s white the bullet will get them around cover and corners. The downside is they can’t be moving, but if you hit them you recover that adrenaline shot back. You can chain these together easily, but it kind of falls apart towards the end of the game. Tougher enemies get introduced and can dodge your bullets. Bullet bending no longer becomes one-shot that kills most enemies. Usually, they stagger out of cover and you have to continue the kill. You still get the shot back, but it can get quite annoying because all of these enemies do become bullet sponges in the end or require melee attacks.
Bullet dodging only became useful during a couple of boss fights and that’s it. Each level is filled with cover and enemies use it too. There are moments where you get to use a sniper rifle, mounted machine gun, and cinematic bullet doge sequences in which the game slows down between animations and you have to kill whoever is blocking your way. They’re fun and shake things up a bit, but the repetitive level design and the constant barrage of killing enemies behind cover get tiresome towards the end and the bullet bending loses its charm fast despite how cool it is. There are rare occasions where a shielded enemy will confront you and you can suppress them and sneak around the sides and flank them. This was in the main tutorial like it was a constant thing. I ran across less than five of these guys through the whole game.
That’s all there is to the game. You just run around shooting, bullet bending, and killing each wave as you push through the levels. Each chapter has an end boss that isn’t all that tough, but they’re there. You can eventually acquire your dad’s sub-machine pistols towards the end of the game and his suit. You go back and forth between the past and current times. The game is over in less than 4 hours and you’re left with 4 hours you won’t get back. There’s literally no reason to play this game at all unless you’re super bored and want a decent afternoon with an HD-era shooter.
Being a launch title is tough for some games because people want to know what the system is capable of. Of course, consoles don’t see their full capabilities until 5-10 years down its life cycle. When the PS3 launched everyone wanted to see something that would be worth a $600 purchase, but I don’t think Resistance was it.
You play as an infected soldier named Nathan Hale who is fighting alongside the British to rid of the Chimera infestation and save humanity. The game has a WWII setting that feels familiar yet not enough to be labeled as “Oh, one of those again”.
The main problem with Resistance: The difficulty. Oh my god is this game hard, so hard in fact that I couldn’t even finish the game. There are about 30 levels, but the game is just so damned impossible to beat even on the easy setting. The game uses the ancient art of health packs and the game mechanics just feel dated and stiff.
The only neat thing about the game is the weapons. You have regular fire modes, but interesting alternate fire modes such as the Bullseye’s tag mode. You can tag an enemy and shoot around corners and the bullets will home in on the target. The sniper rifle lets you slow down time, one weapon even shoots up temporary shields. This, however, is not enough to save this frustratingly hard and linear game from getting sent right back to the store.
The story may seem interesting, but it’s slow and doesn’t pick up much. The graphics, compared to games now, are ugly and dated and don’t seem fully HD. Every weapon, no matter how powerful, all feel like they do the same amount of damage. Each Chimera creature takes forever to kill almost two whole clips sometimes, even on the weak ones! The game throws way too many enemies at you at once, and your health goes to zero in about five seconds. There’s not a lean button, so this means the game is poorly balanced and not much playtesting went on.
If you think the multiplayer saves the game it doesn’t. You can have up to 30 players on one map, but no one is playing this online anymore, and the firefights are boring and a huge mess thanks to the dated stiff gameplay. I love the creature designs and the way levels are set up, but this game just feels out of its time frame. One last thing that makes the game almost unplayable is the lack of ammo. This isn’t a survival horror, is it? Then give me more ammo it’s a war! I’m sorry Insomniac, but please stick with Ratchet & Clank because I don’t think shooters are your forte.
You play as an infected soldier named Nathan Hale who is fighting alongside the British to rid of the Chimera infestation and save humanity. The game has a WWII setting that feels familiar yet not enough to be labeled as “Oh, one of those again”.
The main problem with Resistance: The difficulty. Oh my god is this game hard, so hard in fact that I couldn’t even finish the game. There are about 30 levels, but the game is just so damned impossible to beat even on the easy setting. The game uses the ancient art of health packs and the game mechanics just feel dated and stiff.
The only neat thing about the game is the weapons. You have regular fire modes, but interesting alternate fire modes such as the Bullseye’s tag mode. You can tag an enemy and shoot around corners and the bullets will home in on the target. The sniper rifle lets you slow down time, one weapon even shoots up temporary shields. This, however, is not enough to save this frustratingly hard and linear game from getting sent right back to the store.
The story may seem interesting, but it’s slow and doesn’t pick up much. The graphics, compared to games now, are ugly and dated and don’t seem fully HD. Every weapon, no matter how powerful, all feel like they do the same amount of damage. Each Chimera creature takes forever to kill almost two whole clips sometimes, even on the weak ones! The game throws way too many enemies at you at once, and your health goes to zero in about five seconds. There’s not a lean button, so this means the game is poorly balanced and not much playtesting went on.
If you think the multiplayer saves the game it doesn’t. You can have up to 30 players on one map, but no one is playing this online anymore, and the firefights are boring and a huge mess thanks to the dated stiff gameplay. I love the creature designs and the way levels are set up, but this game just feels out of its time frame. One last thing that makes the game almost unplayable is the lack of ammo. This isn’t a survival horror, is it? Then give me more ammo it’s a war! I’m sorry Insomniac, but please stick with Ratchet & Clank because I don’t think shooters are your forte.
2021
Have you ever wanted to play a game where you are a mail delivery woman? The answer is probably, “I have no clue”, but you’re going to find out with this game. You play as Meredith Weiss, a computer programmer who lives in the big city who decides to go back home to the sleepy town of Providence Oaks, Oregon to help out with her dad’s mail route so her parents can go on vacation. You spend two weeks in this town and the bulk of the game is mail delivery, but there are also story choices here that decide your relationships with various townsfolk.
You start the game out with a little back story. Your mail co-worker, Frank, picks you up from the airport and drops you off at your parents’ house. You then start your delivery the next day. This is actually quite fun at first. You drive your mail truck around the small town and drop off mail at mailboxes and packages at doors. You get a map with envelope icons for mail and box icons for packages. It’s not too hard to figure out as there are very few roads and you can’t get lost. There are certain landmarks in which story characters reside such as Mo’s Diner, Kay’s house (childhood best friend that you lost contact with), a lumberjack who is trying to prevent corporate apartments from being built, a potato farmer, a teenage mechanic, a general store owner, a movie rental store owner, and you get to decide what your relationship is with these people. You can fall in love with them, ignore them, or just stay neutral. This is a story about everyday life, and while the characters aren’t very interesting, the overall bigger picture of the small-town life is what can drive you in.
After the first day of mail delivery, the game becomes mundane and dull very fast. While the town looks nice to drive around in you just drive around one big circle along the lake, maybe a few side roads for rural houses, and it’s just stopping the mail truck, getting own, going to the back, picking the correct package, and back in the truck. The same four songs repeat forever on the radio and having to do this for 12 days just gets so tedious. It’s literally filler to create a “game” in between the story choices. The delivery thing doesn’t add anything to the story at all. You could cut all that gameplay out and just have an interactive novel and it would probably be a bit better so the developer could focus more on character development. The characters do stand out and all have a unique personalities, but they don’t have enough screen time to really fill out.
Every choice leads up to an open mic night at the diner and your choices up until this point carry out. You also get to decide whether to stay in the town and keep delivering mail, go run away with someone, or go back to the city life and make money. I do commend the developers for capturing the small Pacific Northwest lifestyle. My mother lives in a small town in Oregon and I also live in the PNW and just love games that capture the feeling up here. Lots of rain, beautiful scenery, and small lifestyles in the rural areas. The game looks pretty too, but not technically speaking. Lots of low-resolution textures and models, but the lighting and detail are really nice, but after the first hour, you just see the same scenery on repeat. You spend maybe 3-4 hours in that mail truck trying to pick the most efficient route to the dozen or so people you deliver to daily. The world is devoid of life outside of mindless NPCs that drive around or walk the streets. The town just feels dead and not alive at all.
Overall, you’re not missing anything by not playing this game. The mail delivery mechanics are unique and new, but they aren’t fleshed out enough to stay interesting. The town is too small for a gameplay loop like this and there needs to be more variety to the 12 days of mundane mail delivery. While the characters do have unique personalities I didn’t care about them enough to really let my choices sink in. There’s just not enough screen time with them. Just as they start to blossom the game ends despite the number of choices available to weave your own path. The game does capture the sleepy rural PNW feeling, but the small area is just devoid of any life.
You start the game out with a little back story. Your mail co-worker, Frank, picks you up from the airport and drops you off at your parents’ house. You then start your delivery the next day. This is actually quite fun at first. You drive your mail truck around the small town and drop off mail at mailboxes and packages at doors. You get a map with envelope icons for mail and box icons for packages. It’s not too hard to figure out as there are very few roads and you can’t get lost. There are certain landmarks in which story characters reside such as Mo’s Diner, Kay’s house (childhood best friend that you lost contact with), a lumberjack who is trying to prevent corporate apartments from being built, a potato farmer, a teenage mechanic, a general store owner, a movie rental store owner, and you get to decide what your relationship is with these people. You can fall in love with them, ignore them, or just stay neutral. This is a story about everyday life, and while the characters aren’t very interesting, the overall bigger picture of the small-town life is what can drive you in.
After the first day of mail delivery, the game becomes mundane and dull very fast. While the town looks nice to drive around in you just drive around one big circle along the lake, maybe a few side roads for rural houses, and it’s just stopping the mail truck, getting own, going to the back, picking the correct package, and back in the truck. The same four songs repeat forever on the radio and having to do this for 12 days just gets so tedious. It’s literally filler to create a “game” in between the story choices. The delivery thing doesn’t add anything to the story at all. You could cut all that gameplay out and just have an interactive novel and it would probably be a bit better so the developer could focus more on character development. The characters do stand out and all have a unique personalities, but they don’t have enough screen time to really fill out.
Every choice leads up to an open mic night at the diner and your choices up until this point carry out. You also get to decide whether to stay in the town and keep delivering mail, go run away with someone, or go back to the city life and make money. I do commend the developers for capturing the small Pacific Northwest lifestyle. My mother lives in a small town in Oregon and I also live in the PNW and just love games that capture the feeling up here. Lots of rain, beautiful scenery, and small lifestyles in the rural areas. The game looks pretty too, but not technically speaking. Lots of low-resolution textures and models, but the lighting and detail are really nice, but after the first hour, you just see the same scenery on repeat. You spend maybe 3-4 hours in that mail truck trying to pick the most efficient route to the dozen or so people you deliver to daily. The world is devoid of life outside of mindless NPCs that drive around or walk the streets. The town just feels dead and not alive at all.
Overall, you’re not missing anything by not playing this game. The mail delivery mechanics are unique and new, but they aren’t fleshed out enough to stay interesting. The town is too small for a gameplay loop like this and there needs to be more variety to the 12 days of mundane mail delivery. While the characters do have unique personalities I didn’t care about them enough to really let my choices sink in. There’s just not enough screen time with them. Just as they start to blossom the game ends despite the number of choices available to weave your own path. The game does capture the sleepy rural PNW feeling, but the small area is just devoid of any life.
2021
I’ve always been fascinated with space and what planets on the surface look like. Weather patterns, mountain formations, various chemicals, and minerals do certain things with the weather and whatnot. This is what Exo One explores. While there’s a paper-thin story here about a spacecraft being discovered on Earth and NASA trying to use it to launch a crew to Jupiter. The vessel gets lost, I think, and you wind up bouncing around a dozen different planets trying to find your way back to Jupiter. It’s barely there, but it gives you a reason to keep going and provides an overall goal.
The controls take getting used to and by the end of the game I never quite cared for them. They seem over-complicated, but you essentially control the ship’s gravity and flight direction. You can roll on the ground to build up power (the orange glow in the center of the ball) and can lift off or smash down to the ground by increasing gravity. You do also have a double jump button which comes in handy for fine-tuning your flight path. You want to stay in the air as much as possible as this is your best form of movement. In the air, you can travel farther as you will be traveling dozens of kilometers on each planet to get to the goal.
Each planet is completely different in the sense that some are covered in oceans, some have no ground, and some have more complicated terrain to get around. Some have little gravity and some give your ship a bigger boost due to the increase in lightning in the area. You can boost your ship with various things like flying into clouds, wind paths, particles, and various other boosters. These boosters are usually visible a few kilometers away and you want to get to those. There are some instances in which navigating became irritating and frustrating. A couple of planets have strong winds or will cut your controls completely. One planet had me just rolling along the ground for over 10 minutes using the wind to guide me. The terrain itself seems almost randomly generated and hills are your enemy. You want to boost downhills and release gravity going up like a giant ramp. This is impossible with areas with strong wind as they slow you down.
There are upgrades for your ship kind of spread around on some planets. These increase your glide and overall power, and they are helpful, but getting to them can mostly be a chore. Fine-tuning and aiming for a small spot is really frustrating. You can constantly turn around and try again trying to gain just the right height to reach an upgrade. The enjoyment is the constant momentum you can create via rolling on the ground, boosters, and using clouds to gain altitude. Once you reach the goal, which will be a giant blue light in the sky, you warp to the next planet and I love the variety. Not a single planet is the same and soaring over large oceans or weird formations is just awesome. The visuals are fantastic with great water effects, rain effects, and an overall amazing sense of speed.
There’s not much else to the game except to enjoy the scenery. There are no high scores, no hidden secrets, or anything of that nature. Think of this as a “walking simulator” but up in the sky. The only gameplay is maintaining your flight and fighting elements on some planets. It’s over in about two hours, but it’s a beautiful two hours. If you love exploring planets on say games like Mass Effect you’re going to enjoy this quite a bit.
The controls take getting used to and by the end of the game I never quite cared for them. They seem over-complicated, but you essentially control the ship’s gravity and flight direction. You can roll on the ground to build up power (the orange glow in the center of the ball) and can lift off or smash down to the ground by increasing gravity. You do also have a double jump button which comes in handy for fine-tuning your flight path. You want to stay in the air as much as possible as this is your best form of movement. In the air, you can travel farther as you will be traveling dozens of kilometers on each planet to get to the goal.
Each planet is completely different in the sense that some are covered in oceans, some have no ground, and some have more complicated terrain to get around. Some have little gravity and some give your ship a bigger boost due to the increase in lightning in the area. You can boost your ship with various things like flying into clouds, wind paths, particles, and various other boosters. These boosters are usually visible a few kilometers away and you want to get to those. There are some instances in which navigating became irritating and frustrating. A couple of planets have strong winds or will cut your controls completely. One planet had me just rolling along the ground for over 10 minutes using the wind to guide me. The terrain itself seems almost randomly generated and hills are your enemy. You want to boost downhills and release gravity going up like a giant ramp. This is impossible with areas with strong wind as they slow you down.
There are upgrades for your ship kind of spread around on some planets. These increase your glide and overall power, and they are helpful, but getting to them can mostly be a chore. Fine-tuning and aiming for a small spot is really frustrating. You can constantly turn around and try again trying to gain just the right height to reach an upgrade. The enjoyment is the constant momentum you can create via rolling on the ground, boosters, and using clouds to gain altitude. Once you reach the goal, which will be a giant blue light in the sky, you warp to the next planet and I love the variety. Not a single planet is the same and soaring over large oceans or weird formations is just awesome. The visuals are fantastic with great water effects, rain effects, and an overall amazing sense of speed.
There’s not much else to the game except to enjoy the scenery. There are no high scores, no hidden secrets, or anything of that nature. Think of this as a “walking simulator” but up in the sky. The only gameplay is maintaining your flight and fighting elements on some planets. It’s over in about two hours, but it’s a beautiful two hours. If you love exploring planets on say games like Mass Effect you’re going to enjoy this quite a bit.
2021
Well, here we are again. Another Halo, another semi-reboot, and after a 12-month delay was the game worth the wait? Well for starters I can say yes, but the biggest change here is the new open-world a la Far Cry style. The campaign opens up with an epic cinematic opening leveling that’s rather typical of Halo. Lots of explosions, exposition on what the hell you need to do on this new halo and the game picks up after the events of Halo 5. This is Cortana’s story, but you don’t realize that until about halfway through the campaign. Speaking of the campaign, it doesn’t really pick up until halfway through as well. Because this is an open-world game the entire game had to be rebalanced and changed a bit, but the core of Halo is here and better than it’s ever been.
After you finish the opening sequence which runs you about 30-45 minutes you are spit out into the open world, or technically a large chunk of the Halo ring. Unlike the finely nuanced corridor shooting that previous games were, campaign missions take place just like those, but you have to get to them in the open world. So, overall the campaign itself doesn’t really take place in this open-world, but instances instead like an MMO. The open world itself is 100% filler due to the fact that it actually worked by luck, not by design.
Think about it. The building blocks for an open-world game were already in place. Halo has excellent balancing already. The weapons, enemies, recharging shield, and the few abilities and vehicles already exist in the franchise. Just take all those and tweak them a bit and throw them into a big open space, which technically Halo also already did, and it just works out of sheer luck. The only, and I repeat the only reason why this open-world exists is for unlockables. Mjolnir armor for multiplayer skins and upgrades for the five abilities you get which are mostly useless by the way. You get your recharging shield which you can upgrade. Again, this is an excuse to use upgrade cores. Then you get the biggest change to the game which is the grapple. This allows you to traverse vertically as well as horizontally and is awesome to use. After this, you get a shield which is useful of course, but the two abilities I never used were a sonar enemy detector and a dash ability. In the heat of battle, I don’t need to dash. I can just use the grapple and get much further away or use the shield to regenerate my own.
You can also unlock superweapons which are higher-powered versions of every weapon in the game and show up red. You unlock these by doing bounties. As the game progresses and you unlock more of the world to explore you of course get more vehicles as well. All are here from the past, but you can also fast travel to FOB that you must liberate to unlock vehicles stations. The last activity is liberating squads spread throughout the area and then there are large installations that house tons of enemies. That’s pretty much it. If you stripped all of that away there would be no reason to have this world to explore. You can just blow through the campaign missions without upgrading or doing any side missions, but I do recommend at least upgrading the shields and the grapple. These are handicapped from the start unlike past games, and the game gets brutally hard later on in the game.
Once you finish the campaign you can go back and unlock more stuff or dive into multiplayer. At this point do we need so many Halo games online at once? The Master Chief Collection is still alive and well and so is Halo 5. Literally, the entire Halo franchise is available to play online so what’s the difference here? Well not much really. There are three different types of weapon classes. Hardlight, regular ammo, and energy ammo also go for the campaign. To me, the entire online experience blends and blurs together. I can’t tell the difference between this suite and Halo 1. Call me an idiot, but my favorite part about Halo has always been the campaigns and the story. The multiplayer is fun. The maps are well done and the modes are all here except we now get a stupid Battle Pass just like Call of Duty does. This just locks away cosmetics for your Spartan, but I also never cared about customizing one anyways.
The visuals are really good. While not groundbreaking the open-world looks great albeit the same throughout. It’s just dirt and trees through the entire game. There are good-looking textures, nice lighting effects, and the game seems well optimized even for lower-end hardware. The Xbox Series X version looks mostly like the PC but with slightly lower graphics settings as you would expect. The game does look dated on Xbox One, pretty horribly actually, and Xbox One X is passable. The best way to play is on Series X or PC for sure. However, no matter which console you are on you will get a smooth experience.
Overall, the campaign’s story is decent, but nothing special. Finding out what happened to Cortana after going rampant is interesting, but the new antagonist is just a typical dumb Brute with nothing special going on with him. I love the Halo universe and story, but it’s better explored in the novels and comics if you want to dive deeper into the lore. The world is a complete filler and just works by luck rather than by design. They took everything that already works in the game and just plopped it into this open world. I will admit I had a lot of fun doing the activities. You only get a few and it keeps it nice and simple, unlike Ubisoft open-world games.
After you finish the opening sequence which runs you about 30-45 minutes you are spit out into the open world, or technically a large chunk of the Halo ring. Unlike the finely nuanced corridor shooting that previous games were, campaign missions take place just like those, but you have to get to them in the open world. So, overall the campaign itself doesn’t really take place in this open-world, but instances instead like an MMO. The open world itself is 100% filler due to the fact that it actually worked by luck, not by design.
Think about it. The building blocks for an open-world game were already in place. Halo has excellent balancing already. The weapons, enemies, recharging shield, and the few abilities and vehicles already exist in the franchise. Just take all those and tweak them a bit and throw them into a big open space, which technically Halo also already did, and it just works out of sheer luck. The only, and I repeat the only reason why this open-world exists is for unlockables. Mjolnir armor for multiplayer skins and upgrades for the five abilities you get which are mostly useless by the way. You get your recharging shield which you can upgrade. Again, this is an excuse to use upgrade cores. Then you get the biggest change to the game which is the grapple. This allows you to traverse vertically as well as horizontally and is awesome to use. After this, you get a shield which is useful of course, but the two abilities I never used were a sonar enemy detector and a dash ability. In the heat of battle, I don’t need to dash. I can just use the grapple and get much further away or use the shield to regenerate my own.
You can also unlock superweapons which are higher-powered versions of every weapon in the game and show up red. You unlock these by doing bounties. As the game progresses and you unlock more of the world to explore you of course get more vehicles as well. All are here from the past, but you can also fast travel to FOB that you must liberate to unlock vehicles stations. The last activity is liberating squads spread throughout the area and then there are large installations that house tons of enemies. That’s pretty much it. If you stripped all of that away there would be no reason to have this world to explore. You can just blow through the campaign missions without upgrading or doing any side missions, but I do recommend at least upgrading the shields and the grapple. These are handicapped from the start unlike past games, and the game gets brutally hard later on in the game.
Once you finish the campaign you can go back and unlock more stuff or dive into multiplayer. At this point do we need so many Halo games online at once? The Master Chief Collection is still alive and well and so is Halo 5. Literally, the entire Halo franchise is available to play online so what’s the difference here? Well not much really. There are three different types of weapon classes. Hardlight, regular ammo, and energy ammo also go for the campaign. To me, the entire online experience blends and blurs together. I can’t tell the difference between this suite and Halo 1. Call me an idiot, but my favorite part about Halo has always been the campaigns and the story. The multiplayer is fun. The maps are well done and the modes are all here except we now get a stupid Battle Pass just like Call of Duty does. This just locks away cosmetics for your Spartan, but I also never cared about customizing one anyways.
The visuals are really good. While not groundbreaking the open-world looks great albeit the same throughout. It’s just dirt and trees through the entire game. There are good-looking textures, nice lighting effects, and the game seems well optimized even for lower-end hardware. The Xbox Series X version looks mostly like the PC but with slightly lower graphics settings as you would expect. The game does look dated on Xbox One, pretty horribly actually, and Xbox One X is passable. The best way to play is on Series X or PC for sure. However, no matter which console you are on you will get a smooth experience.
Overall, the campaign’s story is decent, but nothing special. Finding out what happened to Cortana after going rampant is interesting, but the new antagonist is just a typical dumb Brute with nothing special going on with him. I love the Halo universe and story, but it’s better explored in the novels and comics if you want to dive deeper into the lore. The world is a complete filler and just works by luck rather than by design. They took everything that already works in the game and just plopped it into this open world. I will admit I had a lot of fun doing the activities. You only get a few and it keeps it nice and simple, unlike Ubisoft open-world games.
Supermassive Games have the ability to tell great stories and present scary atmospheres and settings. Until Dawn is one of the best PS4 games to date and I loved it. It seems that either their budget is lower, or they’re not taking enough time to finely craft these Dark Pictures stories because thus far they are B-grade horror at best that you quickly forget after the credits roll and House of Ashes is no better. There’s so much left open and unexplored in this paper-thin story that chugs at a snail’s pace until the last hour of the game.
I understand that adventure games like this need time to simmer and do a lot of story building. Life is Strange is a great series that does this very well without feeling boring. House of Ashes is mostly boring. The game drags the pointless story on a scenario by scenario without anything happening. You keep expecting something to be explained or some backstory to unfold or characters to grow and expand, but that never happens even once here. You play as a group of stereotypical U.S. Marines who are sent down into an ancient temple in Iraq to find some sort of superweapon. Immediately the characters start off unlikeable. Stereotypical Marines of every flavor here. The hard-ass who is rude and has a foul mouth, the jealous couple, the science nerd, the sensitive nerd with glasses who wears a helmet, and the voice acting that accompanies this is pretty bad as well. The guy who plays Jason sounds like he’s faking a mid-western Texas accent and it just sounds so cringy. Everyone sounds like they’re whispering at a high school play recital and it just feels so off.
It takes forever for the team to actually get down into the temple and start their mission. There are just tons of standing around and lots of backhanded comments to each other. The only plot within the group is that Rachel was married to Eric (the leader) and is now secretly dating Nick. Okay? And why do I care? There’s no backstory here, no history, nothing. The game just throws you into these characters’ lives like we already know them. They don’t have strong enough personalities to make you really become attached during the game and I just didn’t care or route for anyone. The vampires you fight take forever to show themselves and become revealed. There are few action sequences and when you do get into them laughably easy with just simple quick-time events and nothing more. This isn’t really a game, but an interactive movie at best.
Failing these quick-time events (you’d have to not be paying attention to fail them) is how most choices and paths change in the story. Sometimes there are dialog choices and I have to hand it to Supermassive for making these choices mean something every single time. They don’t waste a single one. There are choices I made at the very beginning of the game that affects the team all the way through the end and it makes me think back and regret those choices. This is a good thing as it means their choices and path system isn’t useless like most “choose your own adventure” type adventure games are (looking at you David Cage and your games). There are flashing points when you can control a character for all of 10 seconds that are collectible that’s you can find to unlock interview videos (yawn) and achievements. I tried to make an effort, but despite how little you control characters I still missed stuff. However, the story isn’t interesting enough and takes so long to pick up that I didn’t want to go back ever again. There’s nothing to care about enough here.
The visuals are actually quite good, however, the engine is poorly optimized even for high-end PCs, but again, it looks great. The monster designs are awesome too, it’s just too bad the characters look weird and ugly. I also don’t like that there’s no mystery here. Why are the vampires here? The beginning of the game shows a chapter of ancient people who worship or are trying to stop these vampires, but it’s never explained why or how. There are no explanations here. Even the few collectibles don’t tell of much that’s going on. Just, “Evil scary vampires, and we must stop them”. This game’s story is something you’d see on in the early 2000s on the Sci-Fi channel at 2AM and just watch it out of sheer boredom. Lots of shooting stuff, no one runs out of ammo, their packs hold infinite items, crowbars magically attach to their backs, and so on. It’s so hoaky I couldn’t help but shake my head or laugh at certain scenes.
Overall, House of Ashes is probably a fun entertaining game to look at and play with a partner or friend for an evening, but that’s it. You won’t get anything out of this game, and it’s not even really scary. The vampires look cool and so do some of the human vampires, but that’s it. Military stereotypes, unrealistic events, forgettable and boring characters, and a story that doesn’t go anywhere at all.
I understand that adventure games like this need time to simmer and do a lot of story building. Life is Strange is a great series that does this very well without feeling boring. House of Ashes is mostly boring. The game drags the pointless story on a scenario by scenario without anything happening. You keep expecting something to be explained or some backstory to unfold or characters to grow and expand, but that never happens even once here. You play as a group of stereotypical U.S. Marines who are sent down into an ancient temple in Iraq to find some sort of superweapon. Immediately the characters start off unlikeable. Stereotypical Marines of every flavor here. The hard-ass who is rude and has a foul mouth, the jealous couple, the science nerd, the sensitive nerd with glasses who wears a helmet, and the voice acting that accompanies this is pretty bad as well. The guy who plays Jason sounds like he’s faking a mid-western Texas accent and it just sounds so cringy. Everyone sounds like they’re whispering at a high school play recital and it just feels so off.
It takes forever for the team to actually get down into the temple and start their mission. There are just tons of standing around and lots of backhanded comments to each other. The only plot within the group is that Rachel was married to Eric (the leader) and is now secretly dating Nick. Okay? And why do I care? There’s no backstory here, no history, nothing. The game just throws you into these characters’ lives like we already know them. They don’t have strong enough personalities to make you really become attached during the game and I just didn’t care or route for anyone. The vampires you fight take forever to show themselves and become revealed. There are few action sequences and when you do get into them laughably easy with just simple quick-time events and nothing more. This isn’t really a game, but an interactive movie at best.
Failing these quick-time events (you’d have to not be paying attention to fail them) is how most choices and paths change in the story. Sometimes there are dialog choices and I have to hand it to Supermassive for making these choices mean something every single time. They don’t waste a single one. There are choices I made at the very beginning of the game that affects the team all the way through the end and it makes me think back and regret those choices. This is a good thing as it means their choices and path system isn’t useless like most “choose your own adventure” type adventure games are (looking at you David Cage and your games). There are flashing points when you can control a character for all of 10 seconds that are collectible that’s you can find to unlock interview videos (yawn) and achievements. I tried to make an effort, but despite how little you control characters I still missed stuff. However, the story isn’t interesting enough and takes so long to pick up that I didn’t want to go back ever again. There’s nothing to care about enough here.
The visuals are actually quite good, however, the engine is poorly optimized even for high-end PCs, but again, it looks great. The monster designs are awesome too, it’s just too bad the characters look weird and ugly. I also don’t like that there’s no mystery here. Why are the vampires here? The beginning of the game shows a chapter of ancient people who worship or are trying to stop these vampires, but it’s never explained why or how. There are no explanations here. Even the few collectibles don’t tell of much that’s going on. Just, “Evil scary vampires, and we must stop them”. This game’s story is something you’d see on in the early 2000s on the Sci-Fi channel at 2AM and just watch it out of sheer boredom. Lots of shooting stuff, no one runs out of ammo, their packs hold infinite items, crowbars magically attach to their backs, and so on. It’s so hoaky I couldn’t help but shake my head or laugh at certain scenes.
Overall, House of Ashes is probably a fun entertaining game to look at and play with a partner or friend for an evening, but that’s it. You won’t get anything out of this game, and it’s not even really scary. The vampires look cool and so do some of the human vampires, but that’s it. Military stereotypes, unrealistic events, forgettable and boring characters, and a story that doesn’t go anywhere at all.
The title is very intriguing and unlike most game titles. Another game title based on a crime, Grand Theft Auto, is the single biggest video game franchise in history, so how does a white-collar crime-based game compare? Well, there are no data sheets or graphing in this game, but this is a 2D isometric Zelda clone where you are trying to stop a corrupt onion mayor from pushing his greed onto the vegetable people.
The game starts out with a short opening of you, Turnip Boy, who hasn’t paid the property tax of his greenhouse and owes a lot of money to the money. He is wanted for tax evasion and must work off the debt by helping the mayor collect four items for an unknown reason. These four items make up the entirety of the game as well as four small dungeons. There is a small world to explore with collectible hats that can be obtained by helping veggies around the area. Each dungeon contains a final boss and an item the mayor needs.
Wandering around the village is easy enough and memorable thanks to landmarks and great level design. There are signposts that guide you to the general areas and the mayor will tell you what area you need to be in. There are plenty of NPCs to talk to that provide fairly funny dialog. Nothing that will make you cry, but some funny tidbits and real-world references from the last 5 years. You start the game out with nothing and eventually acquire a sword and a watering can. The can is used more than the sword, but mostly for puzzle solving. You can make green lilies grow and this activates bombs, melons, and various other items. You also get a portal pot that plants portals (a call back to Portal with the orange and blue colors) and an upgraded shovel sword (maybe a nod to Shovel Knight?) There are a few passive things you acquire like a hazmat suit, boots to kick blocks, and a few others. These are all recovered relatively quickly. Each dungeon takes maybe 30 minutes to complete and that includes getting to the dungeon itself. Boss fights are the hardest thing in the game and that’s not saying much. The combat is really easy and similar to older Zelda games, but there aren’t as many enemy types and their movements don’t vary much. There’s very little challenge in this game.
Bosses usually require you to use the last acquired item to beat it, just like in Zelda games, and then you get a heart and move on. Once you give the mayor his item he sends you onto your next quest. Inside these dungeons, you can help other NPCs and acquire hats or smaller passive items like keys to get further inside. I never really got lost anywhere and I thought exploring the game was rather fun. Sadly, due to the combat being so easy and the game so short, about 2-3 hours run time even if you do side quests, it’s no more than a short afternoon gaming affair. There’s nothing quite memorable about this game either other than the title itself and the art style which is beautiful and well done. It’s a mix of 16-bit visuals and modern cartoon art. The music is fantastic as well, but there’s just not enough of all of this. Turnip Boy’s dungeons are fun and well laid out, but they’re very short and I feel there’s so much more potential here, but it’s all cut short right when you feel the game is getting deeper.
There is a free DLC update that adds a rogue-lite train dungeon with a final boss, but if you aren’t fond of the combat you won’t care here. Unless you really want to spend several hours swinging your sword at stiff baddies then the final game will be enough. There are a few more objectives to complete and more hats to collect, but the main game isn’t long enough to make you love this game enough to want to spend more time in its world. What’s here is a ton of fun and it’s a visual and comical treat, but it feels more like a sample of what a longer game could be. The puzzles are solid, the gameplay mechanics are great, the combat is simple, but works, and there’s tons of humor here. It’s a fun time and worth a purchase, but don’t expect anything groundbreaking.
The game starts out with a short opening of you, Turnip Boy, who hasn’t paid the property tax of his greenhouse and owes a lot of money to the money. He is wanted for tax evasion and must work off the debt by helping the mayor collect four items for an unknown reason. These four items make up the entirety of the game as well as four small dungeons. There is a small world to explore with collectible hats that can be obtained by helping veggies around the area. Each dungeon contains a final boss and an item the mayor needs.
Wandering around the village is easy enough and memorable thanks to landmarks and great level design. There are signposts that guide you to the general areas and the mayor will tell you what area you need to be in. There are plenty of NPCs to talk to that provide fairly funny dialog. Nothing that will make you cry, but some funny tidbits and real-world references from the last 5 years. You start the game out with nothing and eventually acquire a sword and a watering can. The can is used more than the sword, but mostly for puzzle solving. You can make green lilies grow and this activates bombs, melons, and various other items. You also get a portal pot that plants portals (a call back to Portal with the orange and blue colors) and an upgraded shovel sword (maybe a nod to Shovel Knight?) There are a few passive things you acquire like a hazmat suit, boots to kick blocks, and a few others. These are all recovered relatively quickly. Each dungeon takes maybe 30 minutes to complete and that includes getting to the dungeon itself. Boss fights are the hardest thing in the game and that’s not saying much. The combat is really easy and similar to older Zelda games, but there aren’t as many enemy types and their movements don’t vary much. There’s very little challenge in this game.
Bosses usually require you to use the last acquired item to beat it, just like in Zelda games, and then you get a heart and move on. Once you give the mayor his item he sends you onto your next quest. Inside these dungeons, you can help other NPCs and acquire hats or smaller passive items like keys to get further inside. I never really got lost anywhere and I thought exploring the game was rather fun. Sadly, due to the combat being so easy and the game so short, about 2-3 hours run time even if you do side quests, it’s no more than a short afternoon gaming affair. There’s nothing quite memorable about this game either other than the title itself and the art style which is beautiful and well done. It’s a mix of 16-bit visuals and modern cartoon art. The music is fantastic as well, but there’s just not enough of all of this. Turnip Boy’s dungeons are fun and well laid out, but they’re very short and I feel there’s so much more potential here, but it’s all cut short right when you feel the game is getting deeper.
There is a free DLC update that adds a rogue-lite train dungeon with a final boss, but if you aren’t fond of the combat you won’t care here. Unless you really want to spend several hours swinging your sword at stiff baddies then the final game will be enough. There are a few more objectives to complete and more hats to collect, but the main game isn’t long enough to make you love this game enough to want to spend more time in its world. What’s here is a ton of fun and it’s a visual and comical treat, but it feels more like a sample of what a longer game could be. The puzzles are solid, the gameplay mechanics are great, the combat is simple, but works, and there’s tons of humor here. It’s a fun time and worth a purchase, but don’t expect anything groundbreaking.
The Game & Watch series is Nintendo’s first foray into video games and handhelds like the GameBoy Micro, and even the DS drew inspiration from it. It’s also not going to attract the attention of anyone under 25 who isn’t just curious or truly into retro gaming. The original Mario Bros. release was underwhelming as it didn’t have much value for your money. They could have easily added the entire NES Mario library at no extra cost but chose not to. It seems Nintendo listened this time as the entire Zelda NES library is included here in a nice package with extras.
The unboxing experience is quite nice here for such a small proprietary device. The handheld comes out in a display box (more on that later), some of the usual safety pamphlet stuff Nintendo does, and a code to redeem 300 platinum coins on Nintendo.com (which are used to redeem things that actually matter like physical items). The device itself is inside a foam sleeve and that’s your lot. The charger is hidden away inside a “compartment” of the display box and this is a tiny three-inch USB-C cable, but any cable will work. This one just so happens to be Nintendo branded so collectors might want to hold on to it and not lose it. When you power on the device you will be greeted with a splash screen of Link himself and plopped right into the “main” screen which is the clock. If you press the Pause/Set button you can enter the system’s settings that allow you to change the sound and brightness and turn off sleep mode (if plugged in).
Once you have your time set you can go into the game selection screen and can choose between the original Zelda, The Adventure of Link, and Link’s Awakening. You can also play the Game & Watch series Vermin which stars Link himself. You can then use the Timer app as well. So, these sound great on their own right? Well, this entire device is chock-full of Easter eggs and features that you will probably miss or never know about without playing around or reading about them. First, the Timer and Clock screens both have playable games built into them. The Clock features several screens and Link will take 12 hours to complete the “game” or you can control him yourself. There are hidden Easter eggs here such as fairies appearing when the clock says 2:22, and other things happening when all digits are the same number. The game’s lighting will affect the time of day as well which is really neat. There are also several language versions for each game and you can experience their regional differences. This is more of a historical curiosity thing for most, but it’s nice these were all included.
The Timer app has three backgrounds you can cycle through and a time attack mode. Every game has cheats built-in that will give you full hearts if you hold A for five seconds while starting a new game. The Clock screen can switch from the 8-bit ticking sound (which is really freaking annoying by the way) to the game’s music and sound effects. There is also an auto-save feature that resumes right where you left off. You can easily switch between all three games and never lose your spot. There’s also a manual-save mode by holding A+B+Select+Start. Vermin has an extra hard C mode if you press A for five seconds, and the Clock screen will also cycle through 11 different backgrounds before going into sleep mode.
If that isn’t enough to keep you busy for a while (seriously this would be a great stocking stuffer as it’s great value for your money) you get a nice little cardboard display that has a fold-out stand in the back which is made from the tray the device sits in. This isn’t going to hold up over time so I suggest you get a third-party stand or something that someone else made for the long-term. Collectors will probably not want to use this either. And, as a nice little bonus, the rear tri-force logo lights up when it’s on.
So, that’s your lot. Three fantastic and iconic Zelda titles and the Game & Watch title to tie it all in with fun interactive apps. The device itself is what you would expect from Nintendo. It’s lightweight but has sturdy plastic and the screen is gorgeous with sharp colors and a vivid picture. The speaker is great too and spits out 8-bit tunes clearly and doesn’t sound tinny or anything like that. While these games are emulated ROMs they don’t have any issues and work just fine. The D-pad feels amazing and while the two face buttons are a bit rubbery, they’re fine for this device. It just looks gorgeous and is a fantastic piece to display as well. Overall, this is how these need to be done in the future and is well worth the $50.
The unboxing experience is quite nice here for such a small proprietary device. The handheld comes out in a display box (more on that later), some of the usual safety pamphlet stuff Nintendo does, and a code to redeem 300 platinum coins on Nintendo.com (which are used to redeem things that actually matter like physical items). The device itself is inside a foam sleeve and that’s your lot. The charger is hidden away inside a “compartment” of the display box and this is a tiny three-inch USB-C cable, but any cable will work. This one just so happens to be Nintendo branded so collectors might want to hold on to it and not lose it. When you power on the device you will be greeted with a splash screen of Link himself and plopped right into the “main” screen which is the clock. If you press the Pause/Set button you can enter the system’s settings that allow you to change the sound and brightness and turn off sleep mode (if plugged in).
Once you have your time set you can go into the game selection screen and can choose between the original Zelda, The Adventure of Link, and Link’s Awakening. You can also play the Game & Watch series Vermin which stars Link himself. You can then use the Timer app as well. So, these sound great on their own right? Well, this entire device is chock-full of Easter eggs and features that you will probably miss or never know about without playing around or reading about them. First, the Timer and Clock screens both have playable games built into them. The Clock features several screens and Link will take 12 hours to complete the “game” or you can control him yourself. There are hidden Easter eggs here such as fairies appearing when the clock says 2:22, and other things happening when all digits are the same number. The game’s lighting will affect the time of day as well which is really neat. There are also several language versions for each game and you can experience their regional differences. This is more of a historical curiosity thing for most, but it’s nice these were all included.
The Timer app has three backgrounds you can cycle through and a time attack mode. Every game has cheats built-in that will give you full hearts if you hold A for five seconds while starting a new game. The Clock screen can switch from the 8-bit ticking sound (which is really freaking annoying by the way) to the game’s music and sound effects. There is also an auto-save feature that resumes right where you left off. You can easily switch between all three games and never lose your spot. There’s also a manual-save mode by holding A+B+Select+Start. Vermin has an extra hard C mode if you press A for five seconds, and the Clock screen will also cycle through 11 different backgrounds before going into sleep mode.
If that isn’t enough to keep you busy for a while (seriously this would be a great stocking stuffer as it’s great value for your money) you get a nice little cardboard display that has a fold-out stand in the back which is made from the tray the device sits in. This isn’t going to hold up over time so I suggest you get a third-party stand or something that someone else made for the long-term. Collectors will probably not want to use this either. And, as a nice little bonus, the rear tri-force logo lights up when it’s on.
So, that’s your lot. Three fantastic and iconic Zelda titles and the Game & Watch title to tie it all in with fun interactive apps. The device itself is what you would expect from Nintendo. It’s lightweight but has sturdy plastic and the screen is gorgeous with sharp colors and a vivid picture. The speaker is great too and spits out 8-bit tunes clearly and doesn’t sound tinny or anything like that. While these games are emulated ROMs they don’t have any issues and work just fine. The D-pad feels amazing and while the two face buttons are a bit rubbery, they’re fine for this device. It just looks gorgeous and is a fantastic piece to display as well. Overall, this is how these need to be done in the future and is well worth the $50.
2021
I personally love short indie games, especially if they can deliver something pretty crazy in at least one department. A great story, fun gameplay, or crazy visuals which Happy Game delivers here. There’s no story really, no dialog, no pretense. You just play as a ball-shaped headed kid who goes to sleep and has nightmares about three of his favorite toys. Each toy needs to be rescued and falls under one of three chapters.
The first nightmare is about the boy’s ball. He gets beat up and it’s taken from him and you use just your mouse to drag the boy around and manipulate objects. Pushing, pulling, twisting, rotating, and anything in between is the name of the game here and the only gameplay element. Every single screen is something completely new and it’s either gory, crazy, scary, weird, or creepy. I never got bored looking at this game and the few puzzles that got thrown in were quite fun as well. The game is never complicated or requires using your cerebral jelly, but manipulating certain objects a certain way is how you solve the few puzzles. The second toy is a stuffed rabbit and the third is a dog.
I can’t describe the game and give a clear vision without you playing the game. It’s just so much fun to look at. The game’s strongest point is the visuals here as every step of the way something new is presented. From pulling apart toys to revealing creepy things inside, murdering various oddly shaped creatures, helping other creatures, pulling eyeballs out of skulls, and the list goes on. There’s so much here in just one hour that I have to applaud the developers for giving us so much content and diversity in such a short period of time.
The game is also full of a lot of atmosphere. Most of the game is in black and white to emphasize blood and gore. There’s really creepy music, the boy grunts a lot and cries and shouts but never speaks. The facial expressions on every object are very detailed. This is a moving piece of horror art or even a hand-drawn haunted house ride if you will. Very rarely did I not know what to do or couldn’t figure something out. Maybe two or three scenes are a little obscure, but eventually, I did move on.
Sadly, there’s zero replay value other than to just experience the visuals again. It’s incredibly short-lasting maybe an hour, but it’s a very entertaining hour. It’s hard for me to score these types of games above an eight even if they are amazing because there’s the issue with the length and there’s almost no gameplay and usually zero stories or character development. These types of short indie games are mostly visual treats or just a quick fast-food type experience that’s rarely as endearing as games like Journey or Monument Valley but are just fun enough to warrant your time. Happy Game is by far one of the most visually striking games of the year and sadly it’s going to get looked past due to these negatives that most indie games get bashed for. I’m not personally bashing Happy Game for its shortcomings as it’s not trying to provide you with some of everything and presenting a mediocre package. Its strong points are worth noting and playing for and that’s just fine.
The first nightmare is about the boy’s ball. He gets beat up and it’s taken from him and you use just your mouse to drag the boy around and manipulate objects. Pushing, pulling, twisting, rotating, and anything in between is the name of the game here and the only gameplay element. Every single screen is something completely new and it’s either gory, crazy, scary, weird, or creepy. I never got bored looking at this game and the few puzzles that got thrown in were quite fun as well. The game is never complicated or requires using your cerebral jelly, but manipulating certain objects a certain way is how you solve the few puzzles. The second toy is a stuffed rabbit and the third is a dog.
I can’t describe the game and give a clear vision without you playing the game. It’s just so much fun to look at. The game’s strongest point is the visuals here as every step of the way something new is presented. From pulling apart toys to revealing creepy things inside, murdering various oddly shaped creatures, helping other creatures, pulling eyeballs out of skulls, and the list goes on. There’s so much here in just one hour that I have to applaud the developers for giving us so much content and diversity in such a short period of time.
The game is also full of a lot of atmosphere. Most of the game is in black and white to emphasize blood and gore. There’s really creepy music, the boy grunts a lot and cries and shouts but never speaks. The facial expressions on every object are very detailed. This is a moving piece of horror art or even a hand-drawn haunted house ride if you will. Very rarely did I not know what to do or couldn’t figure something out. Maybe two or three scenes are a little obscure, but eventually, I did move on.
Sadly, there’s zero replay value other than to just experience the visuals again. It’s incredibly short-lasting maybe an hour, but it’s a very entertaining hour. It’s hard for me to score these types of games above an eight even if they are amazing because there’s the issue with the length and there’s almost no gameplay and usually zero stories or character development. These types of short indie games are mostly visual treats or just a quick fast-food type experience that’s rarely as endearing as games like Journey or Monument Valley but are just fun enough to warrant your time. Happy Game is by far one of the most visually striking games of the year and sadly it’s going to get looked past due to these negatives that most indie games get bashed for. I’m not personally bashing Happy Game for its shortcomings as it’s not trying to provide you with some of everything and presenting a mediocre package. Its strong points are worth noting and playing for and that’s just fine.
2021
I love games like these. Short little indie games that do something AAA games don’t care to notice or even glance at. Unpacking is what you get on the tin. There’s no story here at all, no characters, you just get put into various years from the late ’90s to 2018 unpacking a person’s belongings in various homes. It seems dull on paper, but it’s actually quite satisfying, but the enjoyment solely comes from you wanting to decorate everything correctly and not just put things where they go.
Bedrooms consist of era-appropriate computers, lots of clothing, knick-knacks, plants, posters, frames, shoes, workout equipment, you name it. Bathrooms will have bathroom items, and kitchens will have things like food and utensils. There are also living rooms that have video game consoles, knick-knacks, frames, pillows, blankets, plants, and other items. There are a lot of items in this game, but here lies my biggest complaint about this game. It’s incredibly repetitive. After the second “album” that I completed, I pretty much saw every single item. Sure, unpacking boxes and putting things away satisfies an OCD in most people, but out of the six levels how many dozens of underwear, bras, and clothes do I need to hang? Things only got interesting later on when new objects did pop up or large items. Laundry baskets, trash cans, umbrella stands, and dish racks were far and few between, and it wasn’t until the last level where you get every room and pretty much unpack every item in the game.
As you start off in 1997, you may get a bit of a nostalgia hit, there are a lot of 8-bit style items laying around from the era. CD players, cartridge game systems, old stereos, crazy teen angst posters, and anything else you can think of from your childhood. The game is set in an isometric perspective so you can zoom around and that’s about it. There are numerous boxes in various rooms and when you click on a box it opens and inside you just see packing paper. Clicking the box has an item pop out and most are regular everyday household items, and most of the boxes are to be unpacked in that room with the occasional item being misplaced. You can rotate items and even activate some items for achievements, and the snapping feature works rather well. A book can lay flat or if you push it up against a shelf it will stand up and stack.
There are a few challenges when it comes to space. Some rooms will be very minimal with a lot of items and you have to be clever and organized to get everything to fit. Once you unpack every box items that are in the wrong place will flash red and most of this made sense, but some didn’t. Why do I have to put a backpack on a shelf when on the bed makes sense? There were a few cases in which I couldn’t make out what the items were at all and had me clicking and placing it on everything until I found the right spot. I also wish I could unpack the furniture and literally unpack an entirely empty home. Maybe some outdoor areas would have been nice like backyards, sheds, garages, or other settings like offices would have added variety.
What’s here is still rather charming with some nice music, that seems to stop for long periods of time which I hated, and there’s a seemingly pointless photo mode in which you can add borders and stickers. This feature just felt like filler content to me, but this is a very unique game and there’s nothing else out there like it. The game is so short that you can finish it in less than two hours, so it won’t offend anyone despite the repetition. What’s here is fun, charming, and satisfying.
Bedrooms consist of era-appropriate computers, lots of clothing, knick-knacks, plants, posters, frames, shoes, workout equipment, you name it. Bathrooms will have bathroom items, and kitchens will have things like food and utensils. There are also living rooms that have video game consoles, knick-knacks, frames, pillows, blankets, plants, and other items. There are a lot of items in this game, but here lies my biggest complaint about this game. It’s incredibly repetitive. After the second “album” that I completed, I pretty much saw every single item. Sure, unpacking boxes and putting things away satisfies an OCD in most people, but out of the six levels how many dozens of underwear, bras, and clothes do I need to hang? Things only got interesting later on when new objects did pop up or large items. Laundry baskets, trash cans, umbrella stands, and dish racks were far and few between, and it wasn’t until the last level where you get every room and pretty much unpack every item in the game.
As you start off in 1997, you may get a bit of a nostalgia hit, there are a lot of 8-bit style items laying around from the era. CD players, cartridge game systems, old stereos, crazy teen angst posters, and anything else you can think of from your childhood. The game is set in an isometric perspective so you can zoom around and that’s about it. There are numerous boxes in various rooms and when you click on a box it opens and inside you just see packing paper. Clicking the box has an item pop out and most are regular everyday household items, and most of the boxes are to be unpacked in that room with the occasional item being misplaced. You can rotate items and even activate some items for achievements, and the snapping feature works rather well. A book can lay flat or if you push it up against a shelf it will stand up and stack.
There are a few challenges when it comes to space. Some rooms will be very minimal with a lot of items and you have to be clever and organized to get everything to fit. Once you unpack every box items that are in the wrong place will flash red and most of this made sense, but some didn’t. Why do I have to put a backpack on a shelf when on the bed makes sense? There were a few cases in which I couldn’t make out what the items were at all and had me clicking and placing it on everything until I found the right spot. I also wish I could unpack the furniture and literally unpack an entirely empty home. Maybe some outdoor areas would have been nice like backyards, sheds, garages, or other settings like offices would have added variety.
What’s here is still rather charming with some nice music, that seems to stop for long periods of time which I hated, and there’s a seemingly pointless photo mode in which you can add borders and stickers. This feature just felt like filler content to me, but this is a very unique game and there’s nothing else out there like it. The game is so short that you can finish it in less than two hours, so it won’t offend anyone despite the repetition. What’s here is fun, charming, and satisfying.
I’m not a huge Banjo fan. I never was as a kid either. I felt the game was really tedious and easy. The only interesting parts of the game were the platforming and collecting everything, and even that got dull after a while. I personally feel it’s a very much overrated game and is one of the most nostalgia blind games in existence. I tried out Grunty’s Revenge for GBA, and it’s exactly what I expected. An over simplified version of an already pretty simple game.
The story is mostly nonsense, but Gruntilda has created a robot form of herself and you need to stop her. The end. Yeah, Banjo was never much for story. I do have the say the yapping voice samples are incredibly annoying and repeat themselves over and over again. It’s some of the most annoying voices I’ve heard in any game. It’s just irritating noises, they don’t even sound like voices. Never mind that though, your goal is to run around collecting Jiggies, musical notes, honeycombs, and various other odds and ends to acquire abilities to gain access to new areas. The levels in this game are fairly small but well designed. I have to say the level design overall here is great and I never got lost thanks to memorable landmarks which are key to a game with no map. You talk to a mole fellow who will grant you a new ability once you have enough notes. I never ran into an issue with this as exploring alone will give you more than enough notes. Abilities range from smacking enemies with your pack to a roll. Once you acquire Kazooie you can get the ability to fire eggs, batteries, a jump glide, and an aerial attack.
I do like how the abilities keep coming and in quick succession. It was satisfying to get back to the hub world and gain access to new abilities such as ladder climbing and diving. Thankfully just exploring on its own saw me collecting and completing 100% of each level with ease. There are boss fights and these are painfully easy and never change. The boss has an electric field around it and you just run around dodging attacks. Once the field is down you can attack. The life counter will go down with each attack and you are rewarded afterward. Enemy encounters are pretty much the same and enemies constantly respawn. Some enemies require more than one hit, but I found it annoying that they would get in the way of a platforming segment after I’ve killed them and only got knocked down to come back around have to kill them again. It was hard to judge depth with some platforms and it would lead to cheap falls.
I do have to say that while the game looks decent the pseudo-3D look makes everything look quite bland. While it’s by no means ugly I never cared for the art style of Banjo. Everything is just green and yellow in this game is it gets old after a while. There are only four large levels and the game can be finished in less than four hours. Thankfully you can save anywhere, and dying doesn’t even reset the area. You just start off at the next closest spot or platform so I didn’t see the point in having a life bar if there were no consequences to dying. The only thing that kept me going was the completionist in me wanting to 100% every level and acquiring the next ability was fun.
Overall, Grunty’s Revenge is a decent isometric platformer, but other games did it better such as Spyro. The visuals are kind of muddy and blurry and a bit hard to see when it comes to platforming, but the levels are designed well. The story is nonsense and there’s zero challenge outside of just the platforming. If you want a short and light-hearted pseudo-3D platformer for your GBA then you can’t go wrong here.
The story is mostly nonsense, but Gruntilda has created a robot form of herself and you need to stop her. The end. Yeah, Banjo was never much for story. I do have the say the yapping voice samples are incredibly annoying and repeat themselves over and over again. It’s some of the most annoying voices I’ve heard in any game. It’s just irritating noises, they don’t even sound like voices. Never mind that though, your goal is to run around collecting Jiggies, musical notes, honeycombs, and various other odds and ends to acquire abilities to gain access to new areas. The levels in this game are fairly small but well designed. I have to say the level design overall here is great and I never got lost thanks to memorable landmarks which are key to a game with no map. You talk to a mole fellow who will grant you a new ability once you have enough notes. I never ran into an issue with this as exploring alone will give you more than enough notes. Abilities range from smacking enemies with your pack to a roll. Once you acquire Kazooie you can get the ability to fire eggs, batteries, a jump glide, and an aerial attack.
I do like how the abilities keep coming and in quick succession. It was satisfying to get back to the hub world and gain access to new abilities such as ladder climbing and diving. Thankfully just exploring on its own saw me collecting and completing 100% of each level with ease. There are boss fights and these are painfully easy and never change. The boss has an electric field around it and you just run around dodging attacks. Once the field is down you can attack. The life counter will go down with each attack and you are rewarded afterward. Enemy encounters are pretty much the same and enemies constantly respawn. Some enemies require more than one hit, but I found it annoying that they would get in the way of a platforming segment after I’ve killed them and only got knocked down to come back around have to kill them again. It was hard to judge depth with some platforms and it would lead to cheap falls.
I do have to say that while the game looks decent the pseudo-3D look makes everything look quite bland. While it’s by no means ugly I never cared for the art style of Banjo. Everything is just green and yellow in this game is it gets old after a while. There are only four large levels and the game can be finished in less than four hours. Thankfully you can save anywhere, and dying doesn’t even reset the area. You just start off at the next closest spot or platform so I didn’t see the point in having a life bar if there were no consequences to dying. The only thing that kept me going was the completionist in me wanting to 100% every level and acquiring the next ability was fun.
Overall, Grunty’s Revenge is a decent isometric platformer, but other games did it better such as Spyro. The visuals are kind of muddy and blurry and a bit hard to see when it comes to platforming, but the levels are designed well. The story is nonsense and there’s zero challenge outside of just the platforming. If you want a short and light-hearted pseudo-3D platformer for your GBA then you can’t go wrong here.
2020
I’m really glad people are bringing back games that look and feel like original PlayStation games. There was something about the games on that system that just have a great feeling and the limited tech was perfect for horror games. It’s why that genre is so coveted on that platform and why every PS1 survival horror game garners high prices. Sure, they’re flawed, a little clunky, some might say ugly, but if you grew up with that system you would know what I’m talking about. The hardware limitations helped add to the mystery and creep factor.
Fatum Betula is one such game made like it was on the system. There’s no story, no characters, no goals, you just wander around the limited areas and try to get all 10 “endings”. There is a singular goal if you can call it that. You might put liquid in the water where a tree grows inside of a church of some kind. Each liquid gives you a different ending. The way you acquire these liquids is very abstract, confusing, and honestly, you need to play this game with a guide or you will never understand what to do. It’s almost a piece of art rather than a game.
When I first started out, I climbed the stairs inside the main “hub” and couldn’t figure out what to do. The controls are purposefully annoying with just a menu, save, and action button. The inventory menu looks like a PS1 one game, and I love it. The graphics are pixelated, blocky, and do the shifty thing that PS1 games did when moving the camera. It turns out that you’re supposed to stand still and stare into the void by the tree and a weird creature will come up and drop off the vials you need for the liquids. Then I had no idea what to do without addressing a guide. There’s one section where you are walking over a lake and must sleep inside an ancient Japanese hut. When you wake up the entire game is glitched out, on purpose, with just a red Japanese symbol texture as the skybox and it’s very disorienting. You then have to get a knife, cut a rope, and the character will give you the liquid you need to give to the tree.
Once you do drop the liquid off to the tree you get a weird ending of stock footage that’s pixelated and low-res with some sort of message. It’s bizarre but also so cool to see. This is where the guide is needed because technically you can beat the game in about 10 minutes. It took me an hour with a guide to get all 10 endings, and for a sale price of a couple of dollars, this was a weird and interesting ride that I quite enjoyed. Part of what the guides have you do is get a certain amount of items and then save them because you need to reload to do something different. There’s a cat you can kill, feed, poison, etc., and each time that gives you a new liquid. It’s better to save before doing each action.
Fatum has eerie sound effects, creepy music, random noises, and it’s just a super weird experience. If you ever played LSD Simulator on PS1 you may have an idea of what this is about. Don’t go into this expecting a linear adventure, horror story, or anything like that. It plops you in and you must figure out what to do by thinking very abstractly and outside normal video game conventions. The final ending would most likely be impossible to figure out as you must put immortality liquid in the autumn river, then enter the church, exit, and at random the moon will appear behind the church, but you must reload and try again if that didn’t work. Things like this would make 99% of curious players just delete the game and get a refund, but use a guide and just enjoy the visual treat.
Fatum Betula is one such game made like it was on the system. There’s no story, no characters, no goals, you just wander around the limited areas and try to get all 10 “endings”. There is a singular goal if you can call it that. You might put liquid in the water where a tree grows inside of a church of some kind. Each liquid gives you a different ending. The way you acquire these liquids is very abstract, confusing, and honestly, you need to play this game with a guide or you will never understand what to do. It’s almost a piece of art rather than a game.
When I first started out, I climbed the stairs inside the main “hub” and couldn’t figure out what to do. The controls are purposefully annoying with just a menu, save, and action button. The inventory menu looks like a PS1 one game, and I love it. The graphics are pixelated, blocky, and do the shifty thing that PS1 games did when moving the camera. It turns out that you’re supposed to stand still and stare into the void by the tree and a weird creature will come up and drop off the vials you need for the liquids. Then I had no idea what to do without addressing a guide. There’s one section where you are walking over a lake and must sleep inside an ancient Japanese hut. When you wake up the entire game is glitched out, on purpose, with just a red Japanese symbol texture as the skybox and it’s very disorienting. You then have to get a knife, cut a rope, and the character will give you the liquid you need to give to the tree.
Once you do drop the liquid off to the tree you get a weird ending of stock footage that’s pixelated and low-res with some sort of message. It’s bizarre but also so cool to see. This is where the guide is needed because technically you can beat the game in about 10 minutes. It took me an hour with a guide to get all 10 endings, and for a sale price of a couple of dollars, this was a weird and interesting ride that I quite enjoyed. Part of what the guides have you do is get a certain amount of items and then save them because you need to reload to do something different. There’s a cat you can kill, feed, poison, etc., and each time that gives you a new liquid. It’s better to save before doing each action.
Fatum has eerie sound effects, creepy music, random noises, and it’s just a super weird experience. If you ever played LSD Simulator on PS1 you may have an idea of what this is about. Don’t go into this expecting a linear adventure, horror story, or anything like that. It plops you in and you must figure out what to do by thinking very abstractly and outside normal video game conventions. The final ending would most likely be impossible to figure out as you must put immortality liquid in the autumn river, then enter the church, exit, and at random the moon will appear behind the church, but you must reload and try again if that didn’t work. Things like this would make 99% of curious players just delete the game and get a refund, but use a guide and just enjoy the visual treat.
2004
I’m not the biggest Metal Gear fan. I’ve played most of them all the way through, but it takes a certain kind of patience to finish an MGS game. Whether it’s the stealth trial and error or the sometimes nearly hour-long cut scenes and convoluted story, MGS is an acquired taste. I hesitated on Acid for years and years because it was a slower-paced strategy game set in the MGS universe. Normally this would be okay as plenty of action games adopted strategy gameplay and it worked. Acid also uses a card-based system that determines what moves you can make and this is the bullet in the foot for the game.
The story is pretty basic MGS stuff. Nothing really interesting, but you do play as Snake who is trying to rescue a US Senator who is aboard a plane that has been taken over by a terrorist. A typical weird MGS villain. It’s nothing as deep as the console games but it’s there. Once you get based on the first cut scene (there is no voice acting here) you are introduced to the game’s tutorial. You move on a tile-based system and you will be dealt a random set of cards. These cards have actions like healing, guns, grenades, melee attacks, camo, a box, etc. However, the first major flaw is you must sacrifice a card for a move turn. Each card has a move option and once the move is complete the card is gone. Why? This makes no sense. Why can’t I keep my cards for strategic actions, but now I have to throw away cards I could be using later on and this happens all the time. You get a deck refresh after all your Cost points are depleted.
Once you move you can pick a direction to face and whether to stay in the current position, crawl, or flatten against a wall so you can knock on it and distract a guard. The second biggest issue is not being able to tell what the guard patterns are or being able to move around the map and see what’s ahead so you can plan. The whole point of a strategy game is to plan, but Kojima wants you to do things on the fly with a turned-based card system What? Most of the time I restarted levels over and over because I got stuck in a situation in which I was spotted, the alarm sounded, and I had too many enemies on me and not enough fighting cards. The alarm runs down three phases at 15 seconds each and it takes around three turns to get to the next phase. You’re in alarm mode for about nine turns! What?!
A lot of times you can’t see an enemy make a move on their turn unless they are in view which is so dumb. I will just walk into a hallway or around a corner and there’s a guard there. I either have to kill him or run away before his turn. You usually get two moves per turn and that’s it. The same goes for cameras. I walked down hallways just to get spotted by a camera I didn’t see or couldn’t do anything about because I ran out of moves. Not being able to see what’s ahead is a serious detriment to this game. I wish I could at least bank cards I want to keep until the next turn and not sacrifice them for moves. The enemies also seem to have random times when they turn around and move. Sometimes they would take three whole turns before moving, then the next guard would do it every other turn, then some guards alert the whole area right away and some don’t. You either have to go full strategy with this or don’t bother.
The game looks good. The game is sharp and looks like MGS2 and that’s about it. There’s nothing special here, and while finishing missions gives you new cards for your 30 card deck, I just set the thing to auto. The game is also very long-winded and can take you 20 hours or more to finish if you end up restarting a lot, and that’s just too damn long for a handheld game. As a launch title it was fine, but not the strongest. We didn’t get much of a choice and it was the only strategy title for the longest time until Field Commander blew it out of the water. Acid just doesn’t mesh MGS action with card strategy. It’s a dull, dry, and downright boring game that only the most diehard MGS fans will want to play. Even strategy fans won’t want to bother at all here. Clearly, Kojima didn’t want to part with conventional MGS gameplay elements like knocking on walls as an actual move, being able to see ahead, shortening the alarm stages, etc. These all could have just been cards dealt by the enemy. Real-time actions don’t mesh well with a pure strategy like this and it shows.
The story is pretty basic MGS stuff. Nothing really interesting, but you do play as Snake who is trying to rescue a US Senator who is aboard a plane that has been taken over by a terrorist. A typical weird MGS villain. It’s nothing as deep as the console games but it’s there. Once you get based on the first cut scene (there is no voice acting here) you are introduced to the game’s tutorial. You move on a tile-based system and you will be dealt a random set of cards. These cards have actions like healing, guns, grenades, melee attacks, camo, a box, etc. However, the first major flaw is you must sacrifice a card for a move turn. Each card has a move option and once the move is complete the card is gone. Why? This makes no sense. Why can’t I keep my cards for strategic actions, but now I have to throw away cards I could be using later on and this happens all the time. You get a deck refresh after all your Cost points are depleted.
Once you move you can pick a direction to face and whether to stay in the current position, crawl, or flatten against a wall so you can knock on it and distract a guard. The second biggest issue is not being able to tell what the guard patterns are or being able to move around the map and see what’s ahead so you can plan. The whole point of a strategy game is to plan, but Kojima wants you to do things on the fly with a turned-based card system What? Most of the time I restarted levels over and over because I got stuck in a situation in which I was spotted, the alarm sounded, and I had too many enemies on me and not enough fighting cards. The alarm runs down three phases at 15 seconds each and it takes around three turns to get to the next phase. You’re in alarm mode for about nine turns! What?!
A lot of times you can’t see an enemy make a move on their turn unless they are in view which is so dumb. I will just walk into a hallway or around a corner and there’s a guard there. I either have to kill him or run away before his turn. You usually get two moves per turn and that’s it. The same goes for cameras. I walked down hallways just to get spotted by a camera I didn’t see or couldn’t do anything about because I ran out of moves. Not being able to see what’s ahead is a serious detriment to this game. I wish I could at least bank cards I want to keep until the next turn and not sacrifice them for moves. The enemies also seem to have random times when they turn around and move. Sometimes they would take three whole turns before moving, then the next guard would do it every other turn, then some guards alert the whole area right away and some don’t. You either have to go full strategy with this or don’t bother.
The game looks good. The game is sharp and looks like MGS2 and that’s about it. There’s nothing special here, and while finishing missions gives you new cards for your 30 card deck, I just set the thing to auto. The game is also very long-winded and can take you 20 hours or more to finish if you end up restarting a lot, and that’s just too damn long for a handheld game. As a launch title it was fine, but not the strongest. We didn’t get much of a choice and it was the only strategy title for the longest time until Field Commander blew it out of the water. Acid just doesn’t mesh MGS action with card strategy. It’s a dull, dry, and downright boring game that only the most diehard MGS fans will want to play. Even strategy fans won’t want to bother at all here. Clearly, Kojima didn’t want to part with conventional MGS gameplay elements like knocking on walls as an actual move, being able to see ahead, shortening the alarm stages, etc. These all could have just been cards dealt by the enemy. Real-time actions don’t mesh well with a pure strategy like this and it shows.
I’m not up to date on the After Burner series, but I do know Sega has put it on the back burner for a long time. They brought it out for the PSP and boy is this a bland and boring game. A stupid story, repetitive level design, and just insanely boring gameplay are peppered throughout the game with almost zero redeeming qualities.
I will give the game the token for a sense of speed. You do feel like you’re flying incredibly fast over oceans, jungles, deserts, or cities. I just wish the gameplay reflected this. You start out with a comic book-style story based on one of the three generic pilots you pick that literally has no difference in the actual gameplay. This was clearly filler to try and convince you it’s worth playing through this long laborious campaign three separate times. You then pick your jet which most are locked behind cash. You can then pick your paint and buy any weapon upgrades and go. There’s no tutorial here so the manual would help some, but it’s fairly simple. Green circles are for ground missiles and blue circles are jets for air missiles. You also have a gun to fight off any planes that come up from behind you.
An arcade game like this needs simple gameplay like this. Just three buttons and you can boost and barrel roll as well. The first issue I can across is that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t dodge missiles. They homed in on me no matter what unless I barrel-rolled, but you can’t shoot while doing this. Your field of movement is restricted and I could only move around and boost through missiles, but no matter what I always took damage. You have bonus objectives you can complete to earn more cash such as reaching a certain score, shooting down certain enemy types, etc. Every single mission is exactly the same with no differences say maybe a boss. You can shoot down ground units or the same five jets over and over. Even the attack patterns start repeating. It got a little fun when I had tons of enemies coming up and I had to alternate between ground and air missiles, and if you do this you get combo awards in form of health or lame power-ups like slowing down time which is useless.
The levels drag on for 10+ minutes as well. The checkpoints are unfairly placed and if you run out of lives you start the entire level over again. Just on the first mission, I had to play it five times in order to beat it and that was probably out of luck. You can’t change the difficulty without starting a new profile which is really lame. Outside of that, the graphics are bland as hell and the game slows down when there are lots of explosions. Everything just looks flat and lifeless. It’s not ugly just tiring and boring to look at. It’s honestly one of the dullest games I have played on PSP And this was a high-profile well-covered game as well. I can’t recommend this to anyone unless you are a fan of the arcade game. I would have liked to have seen the series brought to modern standards. This works in an arcade cabinet and not a home console.
I will give the game the token for a sense of speed. You do feel like you’re flying incredibly fast over oceans, jungles, deserts, or cities. I just wish the gameplay reflected this. You start out with a comic book-style story based on one of the three generic pilots you pick that literally has no difference in the actual gameplay. This was clearly filler to try and convince you it’s worth playing through this long laborious campaign three separate times. You then pick your jet which most are locked behind cash. You can then pick your paint and buy any weapon upgrades and go. There’s no tutorial here so the manual would help some, but it’s fairly simple. Green circles are for ground missiles and blue circles are jets for air missiles. You also have a gun to fight off any planes that come up from behind you.
An arcade game like this needs simple gameplay like this. Just three buttons and you can boost and barrel roll as well. The first issue I can across is that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t dodge missiles. They homed in on me no matter what unless I barrel-rolled, but you can’t shoot while doing this. Your field of movement is restricted and I could only move around and boost through missiles, but no matter what I always took damage. You have bonus objectives you can complete to earn more cash such as reaching a certain score, shooting down certain enemy types, etc. Every single mission is exactly the same with no differences say maybe a boss. You can shoot down ground units or the same five jets over and over. Even the attack patterns start repeating. It got a little fun when I had tons of enemies coming up and I had to alternate between ground and air missiles, and if you do this you get combo awards in form of health or lame power-ups like slowing down time which is useless.
The levels drag on for 10+ minutes as well. The checkpoints are unfairly placed and if you run out of lives you start the entire level over again. Just on the first mission, I had to play it five times in order to beat it and that was probably out of luck. You can’t change the difficulty without starting a new profile which is really lame. Outside of that, the graphics are bland as hell and the game slows down when there are lots of explosions. Everything just looks flat and lifeless. It’s not ugly just tiring and boring to look at. It’s honestly one of the dullest games I have played on PSP And this was a high-profile well-covered game as well. I can’t recommend this to anyone unless you are a fan of the arcade game. I would have liked to have seen the series brought to modern standards. This works in an arcade cabinet and not a home console.