Fingerschmaus
2018
I don't remember why I even bought this game. I didn't enjoy my time with the first Yo-Kai Watch and don't like RPG's that much, but I'm definitely not disappointed.
The combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 was always more an annoyance for me. Luckily this game doesn't have that combat system but an actually fun one. They didn't do away with three of your Yo-Kai being in battle at one time, but this time they are organized on a 3x3 grid and you can use any combination of Yo-Kai and put them anywhere you want on that grid. Some combinations are considered offensive some defensive making this system already more strategic than the old one. Some of the enemies attacks will also be telegraphed on the bottom screen making it so that you can actually avoid being hit instead of just tanking the hit.
The gameplay outside of the combat system was also really fun. This (for me) is one of those games I can play while doing something else, because this game isn't that hard. I had 2 E-Rank Yo-Kai in my team when I beat it, but I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.
The ost of this game is really good (just listen to the Rongo Swirll theme), the characters are fun and due to most of this game playing out in the USA there are lots of jokes about said country, which are always welcome. There were only a few minor gripes I had with this game.
1: While I don't really have that much of a problem with the key-quest system this game is built around, there were some that just didn't work for me. This could be because I can't update my game (for reasons I will get to later), or because of me having to play the german translation of the game.
2: There were a few occasions where you had to have befriended a certain kind of Yo-Kai to progress. There is a certain point where you are trapped in an enclosed space. The Yo-Kai you need are available there, but they could just not feel like befriending you. It took me around two hours until I could progress. There is an item that makes it so that Yo-Kai always befriend you, but do to the player character being trapped there you can not get that item.
3: You play most of the game as two characters at once. The problem I have with this comes when these characters stories inevitably collide. Until that point you should have two teams and two item bags. So what they do is that they just merge them together. The items being merged together isn't a problem, but you now have to decide between these two teams because the maximum team size isn't increased. Another implication of that is that there isn't really a reason to switch characters. They obviously make up excuses to make you switch characters, but some of them are just not good at all.
But as I said these are only minor gripes and didn't really destroy my enjoyment of the game and I would totally still recommend you to play this game, if you can get it.
The problem with buying this game is that it is one of the most expensive 3Ds games available. I got it digitally for 40€ but that came with it own problems.
This is a 27000 Block (Nintendo 3Ds storage unit) game. My New Nintendo 2Ds XL, with only one other game on it, barely had enough space to download this game, but I don't have enough space to download the update now.
But if you have 40€ worth of eshop gift cards and a basically unused 3Ds system I would totally recommend this game to you.
The combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 was always more an annoyance for me. Luckily this game doesn't have that combat system but an actually fun one. They didn't do away with three of your Yo-Kai being in battle at one time, but this time they are organized on a 3x3 grid and you can use any combination of Yo-Kai and put them anywhere you want on that grid. Some combinations are considered offensive some defensive making this system already more strategic than the old one. Some of the enemies attacks will also be telegraphed on the bottom screen making it so that you can actually avoid being hit instead of just tanking the hit.
The gameplay outside of the combat system was also really fun. This (for me) is one of those games I can play while doing something else, because this game isn't that hard. I had 2 E-Rank Yo-Kai in my team when I beat it, but I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.
The ost of this game is really good (just listen to the Rongo Swirll theme), the characters are fun and due to most of this game playing out in the USA there are lots of jokes about said country, which are always welcome. There were only a few minor gripes I had with this game.
1: While I don't really have that much of a problem with the key-quest system this game is built around, there were some that just didn't work for me. This could be because I can't update my game (for reasons I will get to later), or because of me having to play the german translation of the game.
2: There were a few occasions where you had to have befriended a certain kind of Yo-Kai to progress. There is a certain point where you are trapped in an enclosed space. The Yo-Kai you need are available there, but they could just not feel like befriending you. It took me around two hours until I could progress. There is an item that makes it so that Yo-Kai always befriend you, but do to the player character being trapped there you can not get that item.
3: You play most of the game as two characters at once. The problem I have with this comes when these characters stories inevitably collide. Until that point you should have two teams and two item bags. So what they do is that they just merge them together. The items being merged together isn't a problem, but you now have to decide between these two teams because the maximum team size isn't increased. Another implication of that is that there isn't really a reason to switch characters. They obviously make up excuses to make you switch characters, but some of them are just not good at all.
But as I said these are only minor gripes and didn't really destroy my enjoyment of the game and I would totally still recommend you to play this game, if you can get it.
The problem with buying this game is that it is one of the most expensive 3Ds games available. I got it digitally for 40€ but that came with it own problems.
This is a 27000 Block (Nintendo 3Ds storage unit) game. My New Nintendo 2Ds XL, with only one other game on it, barely had enough space to download this game, but I don't have enough space to download the update now.
But if you have 40€ worth of eshop gift cards and a basically unused 3Ds system I would totally recommend this game to you.
Lego Ninjago Nindroids might just be the weirdest Lego game I've played yet.
It is some kind of blend between the modern TT mainline games and the (at the time) mostly faded out of existence isometric handheld games, which were most prevalent during the GBA era.
While somebody could say this is a consequence of hardware limitations you also have to consider the time of release. Not only have TT games been ported to the 3DS since its release 3 years before this game came out, but the 3DS also got its own original TT Lego game 1 year prior to this games release.
This game is also the sequel of some sort to Hellbents' previous Lego game Lego Battles: Ninjago, while at the same time being a tie-in for Ninjagos 3rd season.
As I have already mentioned the gameplay loop is fairly similar to the TT games, with one significant difference being the combat system.
This should not be a surprise to anyone who has played more than one Lego Ninjago game, which have, for the most part, always had an unconventional combat system, usually based their systems features.
Lego Ninjago Nindroids in particular doesn't completely alter the TT combat system but much rather add to what is already there.
First off enemies tank more hits than the one or two in other Lego games, due to different characters also having different kinds of attacks. As an example Zain might attack quicker than Cole, but Cole will inflict more damage.
Due to the enemies bigger health pool combat is now more centered around putting attacking enemies, which are now marked by a thick red outline, in hit-stun/dodging their attacks using the new roll, while preventing to be hit by of the rest of them.
There are two other kinds of other common enemy types.
Firstly the enemy that can either block incoming attacks or has a shield. These can not be defeated using regular attacks, but much rather have to be picked up using the grab move and in that state either pummeled or thrown. My biggest problem with these enemies is that the pummel does little to no damage, so does the throw, and that there is no obvious indicator as to when they will break out of the grab.
The second kind of new enemy type is the big robot enemy, which can technically be defeated if you hit them for long enough, but a way easier way to defeat them is to get behind them and climbing on to of them. I also have a problem with them, which is kind of already solved within the game, which is that when trying to get behind them they turn around almost the same speed as you.
Now if you defeat enough enemies in the right way you will start to build up a combo meter, which increases your characters base movement speed, increases their attack damage and allows your character to perform a special attack, if they are able to perform one.
I believe this combat system to be pretty good overall, but I also have some gripes with it.
If you are in a group of enemies you can focus on individual enemies and zip to them, kind of like the Batman Arkham games(if I had to compare it to anything), now my problem with this is that this just sometimes doesn't work, I couldn't identify why this happens but it has something to do with too many enemies being on screen.
My only other (bigger) problem with the combat system is that, as I already mentioned, attacking enemies will be indicated by a red outline. You will only be able to counter attack or dodge while this outline is on screen, which in it self is good, but there is a small moment during the outline disappearing where the enemy will glitch out and attack multiple times. Now the span for this to happen isn't particularly big, but it did happen more than once during my only 7hr playthrough.
I also wanted to mention that the boss fights are surprisingly well designed, but I didn't know where to put it.
Hellbent didn't change all to much from the rest of the gameplay loop of the TT Lego games. You will still be able to platform and collect studs in various levels.
During platforming segments you might have problems with the depth perception due to the isometric perspective, but this is mitigated in the 3DS version using the 3D feature, but it might still be a problem for anyone playing on a PSVita or 2DS.
The levels themes are usually very interesting. One of the first levels sees you break into a building using the automated cleaning robots to open doors you aren't able to open otherwise.
Two levels later in the game see you first sneak into the rogue civilians "secret hiding place" and in the second of them play a mini game which takes no longer than a minute in said hiding place.
These two levels are a perfect example for this games biggest flaw, which is that there are too many levels,which is made even worse by the long loading times.
My main problem with this "design decision" is the quest system, now popularized by The Skywalker Saga, which this game actually introduced.
Unfortunately it is inserted quite poorly.
Not only are there 10 per level, but you also can not see which are in said levels unless you are already playing it and open the pause menu, meaning you might have to replay levels with character requirements. Furthermore some of them contradict each other like "don't take more than this amount of damage" and "take more than this amount of damage". These quests are totally optional to complete, but did somewhat decrease the fun I had with the game, as I usually try to 100% Lego games.
Now as I said, I like the levels overall, but there is no reason to not combine some of them other than padding.
I want to end this off by saying that I still after all its flaws really enjoyed my time with this game.
This is still Hellbents' first attempt at making this type of game and it does make for a great proof of concept.
Yes some of the mechanics are flawed, but they are still solid ideas that could be ironed out in a hypothetical sequel.
Unfortunately we will probably never see that sequel as TT-Fusion, a subsidiary of TT Games would go on to work on the next Ninjago game Shadow of Ronin and after the recent change in trajectory after the Skywalker Saga I doubt we will ever see another game in this style.
Hellbent would technically still develop another Ninjago game on IOS called Lego Ninjago Tournament, but I never got to play it and from what I could gather about it, it looks like a port of this games fighting mechanics into a wave based PvE game, so my point still stands.
I did not expect to like this game as much as I eventually did as little to no-one talks about it and its Avg. Rating (currently 2.6/5) is below average. If you are only a little interested in this game after reading this and are able to play it, I would give it a try as it is incredibly cheap to buy second hand; I got my complete in box copy for around 3-4€ (including shipping) which it is definitely worth.
It is some kind of blend between the modern TT mainline games and the (at the time) mostly faded out of existence isometric handheld games, which were most prevalent during the GBA era.
While somebody could say this is a consequence of hardware limitations you also have to consider the time of release. Not only have TT games been ported to the 3DS since its release 3 years before this game came out, but the 3DS also got its own original TT Lego game 1 year prior to this games release.
This game is also the sequel of some sort to Hellbents' previous Lego game Lego Battles: Ninjago, while at the same time being a tie-in for Ninjagos 3rd season.
As I have already mentioned the gameplay loop is fairly similar to the TT games, with one significant difference being the combat system.
This should not be a surprise to anyone who has played more than one Lego Ninjago game, which have, for the most part, always had an unconventional combat system, usually based their systems features.
Lego Ninjago Nindroids in particular doesn't completely alter the TT combat system but much rather add to what is already there.
First off enemies tank more hits than the one or two in other Lego games, due to different characters also having different kinds of attacks. As an example Zain might attack quicker than Cole, but Cole will inflict more damage.
Due to the enemies bigger health pool combat is now more centered around putting attacking enemies, which are now marked by a thick red outline, in hit-stun/dodging their attacks using the new roll, while preventing to be hit by of the rest of them.
There are two other kinds of other common enemy types.
Firstly the enemy that can either block incoming attacks or has a shield. These can not be defeated using regular attacks, but much rather have to be picked up using the grab move and in that state either pummeled or thrown. My biggest problem with these enemies is that the pummel does little to no damage, so does the throw, and that there is no obvious indicator as to when they will break out of the grab.
The second kind of new enemy type is the big robot enemy, which can technically be defeated if you hit them for long enough, but a way easier way to defeat them is to get behind them and climbing on to of them. I also have a problem with them, which is kind of already solved within the game, which is that when trying to get behind them they turn around almost the same speed as you.
Now if you defeat enough enemies in the right way you will start to build up a combo meter, which increases your characters base movement speed, increases their attack damage and allows your character to perform a special attack, if they are able to perform one.
I believe this combat system to be pretty good overall, but I also have some gripes with it.
If you are in a group of enemies you can focus on individual enemies and zip to them, kind of like the Batman Arkham games
My only other (bigger) problem with the combat system is that, as I already mentioned, attacking enemies will be indicated by a red outline. You will only be able to counter attack or dodge while this outline is on screen, which in it self is good, but there is a small moment during the outline disappearing where the enemy will glitch out and attack multiple times. Now the span for this to happen isn't particularly big, but it did happen more than once during my only 7hr playthrough.
I also wanted to mention that the boss fights are surprisingly well designed, but I didn't know where to put it.
Hellbent didn't change all to much from the rest of the gameplay loop of the TT Lego games. You will still be able to platform and collect studs in various levels.
During platforming segments you might have problems with the depth perception due to the isometric perspective, but this is mitigated in the 3DS version using the 3D feature, but it might still be a problem for anyone playing on a PSVita or 2DS.
The levels themes are usually very interesting. One of the first levels sees you break into a building using the automated cleaning robots to open doors you aren't able to open otherwise.
Two levels later in the game see you first sneak into the rogue civilians "secret hiding place" and in the second of them play a mini game which takes no longer than a minute in said hiding place.
These two levels are a perfect example for this games biggest flaw, which is that there are too many levels,which is made even worse by the long loading times.
My main problem with this "design decision" is the quest system, now popularized by The Skywalker Saga, which this game actually introduced.
Unfortunately it is inserted quite poorly.
Not only are there 10 per level, but you also can not see which are in said levels unless you are already playing it and open the pause menu, meaning you might have to replay levels with character requirements. Furthermore some of them contradict each other like "don't take more than this amount of damage" and "take more than this amount of damage". These quests are totally optional to complete, but did somewhat decrease the fun I had with the game, as I usually try to 100% Lego games.
Now as I said, I like the levels overall, but there is no reason to not combine some of them other than padding.
I want to end this off by saying that I still after all its flaws really enjoyed my time with this game.
This is still Hellbents' first attempt at making this type of game and it does make for a great proof of concept.
Yes some of the mechanics are flawed, but they are still solid ideas that could be ironed out in a hypothetical sequel.
Unfortunately we will probably never see that sequel as TT-Fusion, a subsidiary of TT Games would go on to work on the next Ninjago game Shadow of Ronin and after the recent change in trajectory after the Skywalker Saga I doubt we will ever see another game in this style.
Hellbent would technically still develop another Ninjago game on IOS called Lego Ninjago Tournament, but I never got to play it and from what I could gather about it, it looks like a port of this games fighting mechanics into a wave based PvE game, so my point still stands.
I did not expect to like this game as much as I eventually did as little to no-one talks about it and its Avg. Rating (currently 2.6/5) is below average. If you are only a little interested in this game after reading this and are able to play it, I would give it a try as it is incredibly cheap to buy second hand; I got my complete in box copy for around 3-4€ (including shipping) which it is definitely worth.
2017
I had a lot of hope for Tyler Model 005 as the game looks very nice graphically and has an above average soundtrack considering that this is Reversed Interactives first game. This game was published by Maximum Games, which is a name I knew, but didn't really remember from where. If you are currently facing the same situation or haven't heard of them before, Maximum Games have also published a game called Troll and I, which would've been a red flag and turned me away from buying this game, but obviously this didn't happen.
As I already mentioned, I do not have any problems with this games graphics or soundtrack. My real problems lay in the controls and mechanics.
At it's core Tyler Model 005 is a 3D action platformer with RPG elements. Unfortunately none of these elements are implemented in any sensical way.
I'm pretty sure Tylers jumps aren't physics based, meaning that they just move you up and forward by a bit. Tyler also has the ability to move objects with the left bumper. As I already mentioned there isn't really a physics engine, meaning that objects won't fall down whatever is beneath them as long as they touch that other object. I should also mention that this ability is only needed to be used during the tutorial.
Tyler has two abilities when holding the A button. The first one is an auto jump to a ledge, which is fairly well implemented and whose only problem lays in it needing the same input as another ability, leading to a misinput.
The second ability situated on holding the A button is a wall-run. This only works in theory as it sometimes just decides to stop working. Another problem with it is that you can use it against sloped objects. This builds up infinite speed and creates a backwards long jump situation where you are able to clip through floors, which allowed me to skip a whole section of the game.
This game also just happens to be home to one of the worst combat systems I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Tyler has a knife which can be used by first pressing Y to actually equip the thing and then the right trigger to use it. Now you can also not use the knife, but due to doing way less damage without it, this is never practical. Now my problem with this stems from Tyler sometimes just randomly unequipping the knife for no reason. But even when you hit an enemy, there is no indicator, that you have actually hit them. Combat is also, with one exception, entirely optional.
The only reason why you might want to attack an enemy is them dropping experience points, leading to Tyler leveling up.
Most of the abilities you can get by leveling up either make the game even worse or are almost useless, but there is just one ability, that only attempts to make the game a bit less insufferable, which is increasing Tylers battery life, which gets me to talk about the main gimmick of the game.
Tylers battery will continuously drain, when he isn't in close proximity to a light source. Not only does this mechanic not add to the game, but it rather gets worse because of it. For example, I died around 5 seconds after starting the game while reading the tutorial, because it starts you off in a dark area. This mechanic frankly is nothing more than an annoyance and has no reason to exist. As I already mentioned, you can upgrade Tylers battery life to last up to 40% longer which does fix this problem for the most part, but leads to a whole new problem, as it lead to me forgetting about the mechanic a few times and then randomly dieing when I put my controller down due to getting bored of this game.
While this game is graphically impressive for such a small game studio, the actual environments look very boring. You basically move around rooms of a run down house during the 1950s and later the 1970s. The rooms themselves look mostly the same. The enemies and other models also tend to look like Unity stock assets and after looking up the developer Reversed Interactive online I found out that they are mostly known for creating and selling said assets, which is not at all surprising.
This games story is unsurprisingly mediocre. To summarize it a bit, Tyler basically wants to find out what happened to his creator. This is an alright basis, but they didn't really do anything with it. After meeting a second robot called Conrad you basically only do what he says and things just happen around you for no reason. About halfway through the story shifts to suddenly be about time travel and I don't have to tell you that they didn't manage to create and subsequently follow a ruleset for this.
The game ends with one last filler mission where you have to find four switches, two of which require to be powered (so you have to find out how to do that too), which are hidden randomly around the house. Finding these switches was anything but fun.
Overall Tyler Model 005 was one of the greatest wastes of money and time I've had to endure in my life. I basically only beat it because it being only about 4 hours long. I would not advice you to ever consume this game in any significant way. Please stay away from it.
I only didn't give this game half a star because of it's small length. The rush of positive emotions I experienced when the credits rolled are yet to be matched by anything else.
As I already mentioned, I do not have any problems with this games graphics or soundtrack. My real problems lay in the controls and mechanics.
At it's core Tyler Model 005 is a 3D action platformer with RPG elements. Unfortunately none of these elements are implemented in any sensical way.
I'm pretty sure Tylers jumps aren't physics based, meaning that they just move you up and forward by a bit. Tyler also has the ability to move objects with the left bumper. As I already mentioned there isn't really a physics engine, meaning that objects won't fall down whatever is beneath them as long as they touch that other object. I should also mention that this ability is only needed to be used during the tutorial.
Tyler has two abilities when holding the A button. The first one is an auto jump to a ledge, which is fairly well implemented and whose only problem lays in it needing the same input as another ability, leading to a misinput.
The second ability situated on holding the A button is a wall-run. This only works in theory as it sometimes just decides to stop working. Another problem with it is that you can use it against sloped objects. This builds up infinite speed and creates a backwards long jump situation where you are able to clip through floors, which allowed me to skip a whole section of the game.
This game also just happens to be home to one of the worst combat systems I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Tyler has a knife which can be used by first pressing Y to actually equip the thing and then the right trigger to use it. Now you can also not use the knife, but due to doing way less damage without it, this is never practical. Now my problem with this stems from Tyler sometimes just randomly unequipping the knife for no reason. But even when you hit an enemy, there is no indicator, that you have actually hit them. Combat is also, with one exception, entirely optional.
The only reason why you might want to attack an enemy is them dropping experience points, leading to Tyler leveling up.
Most of the abilities you can get by leveling up either make the game even worse or are almost useless, but there is just one ability, that only attempts to make the game a bit less insufferable, which is increasing Tylers battery life, which gets me to talk about the main gimmick of the game.
Tylers battery will continuously drain, when he isn't in close proximity to a light source. Not only does this mechanic not add to the game, but it rather gets worse because of it. For example, I died around 5 seconds after starting the game while reading the tutorial, because it starts you off in a dark area. This mechanic frankly is nothing more than an annoyance and has no reason to exist. As I already mentioned, you can upgrade Tylers battery life to last up to 40% longer which does fix this problem for the most part, but leads to a whole new problem, as it lead to me forgetting about the mechanic a few times and then randomly dieing when I put my controller down due to getting bored of this game.
While this game is graphically impressive for such a small game studio, the actual environments look very boring. You basically move around rooms of a run down house during the 1950s and later the 1970s. The rooms themselves look mostly the same. The enemies and other models also tend to look like Unity stock assets and after looking up the developer Reversed Interactive online I found out that they are mostly known for creating and selling said assets, which is not at all surprising.
This games story is unsurprisingly mediocre. To summarize it a bit, Tyler basically wants to find out what happened to his creator. This is an alright basis, but they didn't really do anything with it. After meeting a second robot called Conrad you basically only do what he says and things just happen around you for no reason. About halfway through the story shifts to suddenly be about time travel and I don't have to tell you that they didn't manage to create and subsequently follow a ruleset for this.
The game ends with one last filler mission where you have to find four switches, two of which require to be powered (so you have to find out how to do that too), which are hidden randomly around the house. Finding these switches was anything but fun.
Overall Tyler Model 005 was one of the greatest wastes of money and time I've had to endure in my life. I basically only beat it because it being only about 4 hours long. I would not advice you to ever consume this game in any significant way. Please stay away from it.
I only didn't give this game half a star because of it's small length. The rush of positive emotions I experienced when the credits rolled are yet to be matched by anything else.
Even if it might just be a variation of frequency illusion, I am somehow lucky enough to have been exposed to a lot of movies at the exactly right time in my life, when its themes describe my current situation relatively accurately. While there are examples of this happening to me with a videogames story, they are way fewer and far between, which might just be a consequence of the overall lower writing quality of the medium, as a factor of its still relatively short life.
I have not even been 20 years of age for a month and still feel, like probably most people around my age, lost in the world and unhappy with the situation I’ve currently found myself in. I have started going to university last winter semester, studying something I have little to no desire to pursue professionally, only because I couldn’t have sat around barely doing anything for another year, so you might be able to imagine my reaction after Dreamfall: The Longest Journey made me have this conversation during its opening.
If you’ve ever heard the name Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, you have probably also heard about its overall writing quality, which is for the most part deserved. The storyline Ragnar Tørnquist and his talented team managed to weave here is definitely above average for the medium, stringing together themes of being lost in your 20s and some good old anti-imperialism among others, definitely deserves its high praises, although without going into spoilers it did suffer from pacing irregularities at around the halfway point, Kian’s storyline feeling particularly half-baked, leaving you off with a few more unanswered questions at the end, than it should and (this is a gripe) overusing the trope of a character beginning to say something, just to correct themselves halfway through, as to not give away information they shouldn’t a bit too much. The voice acting was also a mixed bag, with some really great performances amongst some that unfortunately felt like they were just reading directly from the script, but it didn’t ever take away from the moments too much.
The gameplay, while not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, felt fairly unique. You can definitely feel the series beginnings as point-and-click adventure games, but in 3D now, which made it feel like it was made during the fifth generation, rather than the sixth (positive), with how it tries to reinvent the genre with a new camera-perspective, even with it obviously not being the first to do so.
I really liked the ability to, after clicking down the left stick, being able to see every interactable object, which even without said ability still were well telegraphed. Behind the story, the old adventure aspects of the game are probably its biggest strong suit. Using and combining items to solve puzzles kept bringing me great joy over its around 12 hour runtime and can be traced back to the fact that the game sometimes allowed multiple solutions for a given problem, greatly improving the ways a player may express themselves. There was only ever one example of a puzzle I found to be unintuitive in chapter five, although I may have just missed a clue considering how good they went about it otherwise.
The game also pulled a classic from the sixth generation by randomly forcing you into very rudimentary stealth and combat encounters. While I found the stealth segments to serve as a fun break of pace most of the time, it still baffles me to think about why the combat system in particular was kept in. While the stealth scenarios, even with- or maybe because- of their low difficulty, made me think differently about the way I would go about the usual puzzle solving affair in the rooms they were featured in, every single fight would go down the exact same way. More specifically switching from regular to strong attacks in perpetuity for around 5-10 seconds, until the enemy is defeated. It also didn’t help expand the regular gameplay loop, as enemies defeated during combat sections, unlike their stealth counterparts, never dropped any objects, thus their existence was merely for spectacle, which (to come back to the beginning) is not a word I would use to describe it due to their completely rudimentary nature.
Keeping all this in mind Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is still highly recommended to anyone looking for a simpler experience in the gameplay department, packed with some great writing, and I for one am definitely excited to experience the rest of the series.
I have not even been 20 years of age for a month and still feel, like probably most people around my age, lost in the world and unhappy with the situation I’ve currently found myself in. I have started going to university last winter semester, studying something I have little to no desire to pursue professionally, only because I couldn’t have sat around barely doing anything for another year, so you might be able to imagine my reaction after Dreamfall: The Longest Journey made me have this conversation during its opening.
If you’ve ever heard the name Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, you have probably also heard about its overall writing quality, which is for the most part deserved. The storyline Ragnar Tørnquist and his talented team managed to weave here is definitely above average for the medium, stringing together themes of being lost in your 20s and some good old anti-imperialism among others, definitely deserves its high praises, although without going into spoilers it did suffer from pacing irregularities at around the halfway point, Kian’s storyline feeling particularly half-baked, leaving you off with a few more unanswered questions at the end, than it should and (this is a gripe) overusing the trope of a character beginning to say something, just to correct themselves halfway through, as to not give away information they shouldn’t a bit too much. The voice acting was also a mixed bag, with some really great performances amongst some that unfortunately felt like they were just reading directly from the script, but it didn’t ever take away from the moments too much.
The gameplay, while not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, felt fairly unique. You can definitely feel the series beginnings as point-and-click adventure games, but in 3D now, which made it feel like it was made during the fifth generation, rather than the sixth (positive), with how it tries to reinvent the genre with a new camera-perspective, even with it obviously not being the first to do so.
I really liked the ability to, after clicking down the left stick, being able to see every interactable object, which even without said ability still were well telegraphed. Behind the story, the old adventure aspects of the game are probably its biggest strong suit. Using and combining items to solve puzzles kept bringing me great joy over its around 12 hour runtime and can be traced back to the fact that the game sometimes allowed multiple solutions for a given problem, greatly improving the ways a player may express themselves. There was only ever one example of a puzzle I found to be unintuitive in chapter five, although I may have just missed a clue considering how good they went about it otherwise.
The game also pulled a classic from the sixth generation by randomly forcing you into very rudimentary stealth and combat encounters. While I found the stealth segments to serve as a fun break of pace most of the time, it still baffles me to think about why the combat system in particular was kept in. While the stealth scenarios, even with- or maybe because- of their low difficulty, made me think differently about the way I would go about the usual puzzle solving affair in the rooms they were featured in, every single fight would go down the exact same way. More specifically switching from regular to strong attacks in perpetuity for around 5-10 seconds, until the enemy is defeated. It also didn’t help expand the regular gameplay loop, as enemies defeated during combat sections, unlike their stealth counterparts, never dropped any objects, thus their existence was merely for spectacle, which (to come back to the beginning) is not a word I would use to describe it due to their completely rudimentary nature.
Keeping all this in mind Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is still highly recommended to anyone looking for a simpler experience in the gameplay department, packed with some great writing, and I for one am definitely excited to experience the rest of the series.
2008
Soul of Darkness is a 2D metroidvania, although it is way more inspired by the -vania part especially visually where it straight up copies these games.
I’m really conflicted on Soul of Darkness. This game achieves most things it sets out to do with an asterisk, as there is just one big flaw in every facet of this game which just kind of ruin the overall experience.
Moving around the various environments actually feels really good, but the lack of coyote time and not being able to jump out of the first few frames of the turn-around animation led to a few undeserved deaths and made some jumps unreasonably hard.
When defeating an enemy or destroying an object you will collect this games’ main currency called souls. These souls can then be used to upgrade an attribute of one of your two weapons. For some reason you can invest souls into these attributes even if you don’t have enough to upgrade them, which just led to me opening the menu every time I defeated an enemy or broke an object significantly hampering the flow of the game.
Another product of this system, combined with the respawn system, was that there were moments where I just left and reentered rooms to grind upgrades, which isn’t something I thought I would ever have to say about a 2D metroidvania game and made gate flashbacks to my first Super Metroid playthrough where I had to do a similar thing before the Ridley fight, which was also the worst part of that game.
This game also had a lot of boss fights considering its length. These are all well designed and actually fun to fight, but they unfortunately suffer from the same problem the rest of the game does which is, that it is really easy. You one- or two-hit most late game enemies, if you just upgrade your weapons strength by a little bit, which you almost couldn’t even avoid if you tried to.
The best boss of the game is the Giant Worm Enemy, which spans a whole level and was also the most “difficult” section of the game for me.
Everything else is held back by the short length (about 2-3 hrs of game time).
At around the halfway point you will first encounter the mechanic of transforming into specific enemies. While a fun idea, it also only appears 3 times making it feel severely underdeveloped.
During your playthrough you also might find life-/magic-crystals hidden throughout 10 of the 11 levels, which work a lot like heart pieces in Zelda, as in they increase the amount of health- and magic in fours. These would in theory increase the replayability of the game, but (and this is just my experience with them) they are not only hidden all to well, but more importantly there are just not a lot of them in the game. My completion percentage after completing the game was 99% and I did not go out of my way to collect these gems. This means all but two are “hidden” on the main path.
But the story had to suffer the most from the games’ short runtime. The developers obviously wanted to tell a story grander than the playtime would allow as a lot of said runtime came from skipping through text boxes.
Now the story would not have been all to great anyways as the protagonist named Kale is described as (and this is a direct quote from the e-manual):”a mysterious, powerful man.”, but I think it would’ve still helped the pacing a lot if this was a 4 hour game.
My main criticism is over now, but I still want to talk about the two obligatory DSi camera mechanics.
The first can be accessed through soothsayer-huts hidden throughout the levels, which upon interacting with give you a prompt to take a photo.
The predominant RGB color of that photo then determine the quality and quantity of soul you get. This obviously didn’t work (which could be partly related to me playing this on a 3DS), except when I held the camera directly into the sun, which led to the same outcome every time.
The second camera feature might be the best camera, nay the best feature of any game ever.
When first setting up my profile, which also gives you the ability to name it for whatever reason (whatever you type in will not appear ever again), there was an unlabeled option with a camera-icon. Feeling intrigued I quickly clicked it and my 3DS without any warning quickly took a photo of me. Now this wasn’t a normal photo, but much rather the ugliest photo taken of me, ever. Words can not describe how ugly I look in it. But I just ignored it and got on with the game not thinking much about it, up until the first time the main antagonist showed up and started babbling his uninteresting bad guy dialogue.
Lo and behold as the main antagonists’ dialogue icon had been replaced by the ugly photo.
This might just be the funniest thing I have ever come across in any game and definitely made the game worth the 5€ I spent on it.
I’m really conflicted on Soul of Darkness. This game achieves most things it sets out to do with an asterisk, as there is just one big flaw in every facet of this game which just kind of ruin the overall experience.
Moving around the various environments actually feels really good, but the lack of coyote time and not being able to jump out of the first few frames of the turn-around animation led to a few undeserved deaths and made some jumps unreasonably hard.
When defeating an enemy or destroying an object you will collect this games’ main currency called souls. These souls can then be used to upgrade an attribute of one of your two weapons. For some reason you can invest souls into these attributes even if you don’t have enough to upgrade them, which just led to me opening the menu every time I defeated an enemy or broke an object significantly hampering the flow of the game.
Another product of this system, combined with the respawn system, was that there were moments where I just left and reentered rooms to grind upgrades, which isn’t something I thought I would ever have to say about a 2D metroidvania game and made gate flashbacks to my first Super Metroid playthrough where I had to do a similar thing before the Ridley fight, which was also the worst part of that game.
This game also had a lot of boss fights considering its length. These are all well designed and actually fun to fight, but they unfortunately suffer from the same problem the rest of the game does which is, that it is really easy. You one- or two-hit most late game enemies, if you just upgrade your weapons strength by a little bit, which you almost couldn’t even avoid if you tried to.
The best boss of the game is the Giant Worm Enemy, which spans a whole level and was also the most “difficult” section of the game for me.
Everything else is held back by the short length (about 2-3 hrs of game time).
At around the halfway point you will first encounter the mechanic of transforming into specific enemies. While a fun idea, it also only appears 3 times making it feel severely underdeveloped.
During your playthrough you also might find life-/magic-crystals hidden throughout 10 of the 11 levels, which work a lot like heart pieces in Zelda, as in they increase the amount of health- and magic in fours. These would in theory increase the replayability of the game, but (and this is just my experience with them) they are not only hidden all to well, but more importantly there are just not a lot of them in the game. My completion percentage after completing the game was 99% and I did not go out of my way to collect these gems. This means all but two are “hidden” on the main path.
But the story had to suffer the most from the games’ short runtime. The developers obviously wanted to tell a story grander than the playtime would allow as a lot of said runtime came from skipping through text boxes.
Now the story would not have been all to great anyways as the protagonist named Kale is described as (and this is a direct quote from the e-manual):”a mysterious, powerful man.”, but I think it would’ve still helped the pacing a lot if this was a 4 hour game.
My main criticism is over now, but I still want to talk about the two obligatory DSi camera mechanics.
The first can be accessed through soothsayer-huts hidden throughout the levels, which upon interacting with give you a prompt to take a photo.
The predominant RGB color of that photo then determine the quality and quantity of soul you get. This obviously didn’t work (which could be partly related to me playing this on a 3DS), except when I held the camera directly into the sun, which led to the same outcome every time.
The second camera feature might be the best camera, nay the best feature of any game ever.
When first setting up my profile, which also gives you the ability to name it for whatever reason (whatever you type in will not appear ever again), there was an unlabeled option with a camera-icon. Feeling intrigued I quickly clicked it and my 3DS without any warning quickly took a photo of me. Now this wasn’t a normal photo, but much rather the ugliest photo taken of me, ever. Words can not describe how ugly I look in it. But I just ignored it and got on with the game not thinking much about it, up until the first time the main antagonist showed up and started babbling his uninteresting bad guy dialogue.
Lo and behold as the main antagonists’ dialogue icon had been replaced by the ugly photo.
This might just be the funniest thing I have ever come across in any game and definitely made the game worth the 5€ I spent on it.
2021
It is definitely weird to play a new Wii U game now in 2022. The Wii U itself was incredibly overhated (at least partly) because of the Gamepads features being misused and the developers of Captain U set out to change the public perception of the console and failed miserably.
Captain U at its core is a NES style 2d platformer. Unfortunately it feels incredibly bad to control. If I had to compare the controls to anything, it would be the first Metroid game. You can shoot a projectile, but you can only shoot it forwards or up; not down, but I will go into why when I talk about how badly it uses the Gamepad. I don't know how to describe this, but I will try. The character model is two units big, if you duck its 1 unit big. Now if you shoot a projectile over an obstacle that is one unit big, what do you do? Well you would probably answer just shoot out the projectile while not ducking, because you have common sense. But for some reason the devs made it so that the projectile would have been send out at 1.5 units and therefore collide with the obstacle. If you want to hit an enemy behind that 1 unit high obstacle you will have to press the jump-button for what can't be higher than 3 frames. If you don't press it for long enough it will still collide, if you press it for just a little too long you will overshoot the enemy. Amazingly this is not the only problem I have with the projectile. Shooting the projectile upwards will also send it forwards. I won't have to tell you why this is bad game-design.
But there are also problems with basic movement.
Captain Us jumps feel weird, but the basic ground movement is way worse.
Your horizontal velocity overall is painfully slow. This isn't a problem at first due to there only being 9 levels which are also not long, but remember this is a platformer in the style of a NES game.
There are random difficulty spikes, insta-kills etc. and if you die you will be send back to the beginning of the level. The game uses a life system. You start out with 100 health and there are random drops that will refill your healthbar. My problems with this system exist solely because of how the Gamepads features are implemented.
To activate the Gamepad you will have to come to a full stop and press the a button, but wait there is more. Usually things like the level timer, healthbar etc. are shown on the bottom screen, but they obviously had to implement the bottom screen somehow, so they gave it like 30 different things to do. If you want, or rather have to use the bottom screen, you will have to also have to press the R-button hiding all the useful information. They couldn't have just put this information on the top screen, because that would have meant the Gamepad is useless. Don't get me wrong, I like the Wii U way more than the Switch and there are games that used the Wii U Gamepad productively, but this just play into the hands of the people saying the Gamepad is useless. But let's take a look at the "great features" that are being enabled.
First you can break blocks (which I called obstacles previously). This is the reason you can't shoot down by the way; is it a good reason? No, but it sure is one. You can also move some, but not all, platforms, which is ok I guess. Unfortunate that you have to not move to do this because it could have been a really fun feature.
You can also place blocks, which can be used to block platforms or to jump on. The latter probably being a last minute decision, because it breaks some of the levels. Some level elements use the gyro. For example platforms or other platforms that one hit you. But the worst offender is the second auto scroller, which uses the gyro for movement and controls so bad that the devs implemented a text blurb saying that they are sorry.
But by far the worst time I had with the game was the level 5 boss. He can teleport to 4 platforms and shoot out poorly telegraphed projectiles. You can either damage him by moving one of these one hit platforms using the gyro or use your own bad projectiles, both of which are not fun to use. But every time the Boss does anything it will change the screen meaning that you won't see the projectiles, because you basically have to look at a different screen every 5 seconds. The boss also two hits you. If you die you will have to redo the level, which isn't the easiest itself and if you lose every life, which you won't see how many you have left, you will be send back to the beginning of the game and replay the entire game. I haven't mentioned this before but if you only ever had to replay the level you are in this would be 1.5/5, but sending you back to the beginning of the game is just outright annoying and believe me when I say that the rest of the game isn't that much better.
This isn't helped by you having to both move fast while using the Gamepad, which if you remember doesn't really work and of course later enemies just plain out one hitting you to artificially increase the difficulty.
All in all Captain U wasn't the swan song I was hoping for, but rather just a bad NES game using what would be waggle on the Wii to try to worsen the public perception of the Wii U.
Captain U at its core is a NES style 2d platformer. Unfortunately it feels incredibly bad to control. If I had to compare the controls to anything, it would be the first Metroid game. You can shoot a projectile, but you can only shoot it forwards or up; not down, but I will go into why when I talk about how badly it uses the Gamepad. I don't know how to describe this, but I will try. The character model is two units big, if you duck its 1 unit big. Now if you shoot a projectile over an obstacle that is one unit big, what do you do? Well you would probably answer just shoot out the projectile while not ducking, because you have common sense. But for some reason the devs made it so that the projectile would have been send out at 1.5 units and therefore collide with the obstacle. If you want to hit an enemy behind that 1 unit high obstacle you will have to press the jump-button for what can't be higher than 3 frames. If you don't press it for long enough it will still collide, if you press it for just a little too long you will overshoot the enemy. Amazingly this is not the only problem I have with the projectile. Shooting the projectile upwards will also send it forwards. I won't have to tell you why this is bad game-design.
But there are also problems with basic movement.
Captain Us jumps feel weird, but the basic ground movement is way worse.
Your horizontal velocity overall is painfully slow. This isn't a problem at first due to there only being 9 levels which are also not long, but remember this is a platformer in the style of a NES game.
There are random difficulty spikes, insta-kills etc. and if you die you will be send back to the beginning of the level. The game uses a life system. You start out with 100 health and there are random drops that will refill your healthbar. My problems with this system exist solely because of how the Gamepads features are implemented.
To activate the Gamepad you will have to come to a full stop and press the a button, but wait there is more. Usually things like the level timer, healthbar etc. are shown on the bottom screen, but they obviously had to implement the bottom screen somehow, so they gave it like 30 different things to do. If you want, or rather have to use the bottom screen, you will have to also have to press the R-button hiding all the useful information. They couldn't have just put this information on the top screen, because that would have meant the Gamepad is useless. Don't get me wrong, I like the Wii U way more than the Switch and there are games that used the Wii U Gamepad productively, but this just play into the hands of the people saying the Gamepad is useless. But let's take a look at the "great features" that are being enabled.
First you can break blocks (which I called obstacles previously). This is the reason you can't shoot down by the way; is it a good reason? No, but it sure is one. You can also move some, but not all, platforms, which is ok I guess. Unfortunate that you have to not move to do this because it could have been a really fun feature.
You can also place blocks, which can be used to block platforms or to jump on. The latter probably being a last minute decision, because it breaks some of the levels. Some level elements use the gyro. For example platforms or other platforms that one hit you. But the worst offender is the second auto scroller, which uses the gyro for movement and controls so bad that the devs implemented a text blurb saying that they are sorry.
But by far the worst time I had with the game was the level 5 boss. He can teleport to 4 platforms and shoot out poorly telegraphed projectiles. You can either damage him by moving one of these one hit platforms using the gyro or use your own bad projectiles, both of which are not fun to use. But every time the Boss does anything it will change the screen meaning that you won't see the projectiles, because you basically have to look at a different screen every 5 seconds. The boss also two hits you. If you die you will have to redo the level, which isn't the easiest itself and if you lose every life, which you won't see how many you have left, you will be send back to the beginning of the game and replay the entire game. I haven't mentioned this before but if you only ever had to replay the level you are in this would be 1.5/5, but sending you back to the beginning of the game is just outright annoying and believe me when I say that the rest of the game isn't that much better.
This isn't helped by you having to both move fast while using the Gamepad, which if you remember doesn't really work and of course later enemies just plain out one hitting you to artificially increase the difficulty.
All in all Captain U wasn't the swan song I was hoping for, but rather just a bad NES game using what would be waggle on the Wii to try to worsen the public perception of the Wii U.
"Benjamin Blümchen" is one of those german kids TV characters hardly anyone outside of the german speaking countries knows. As you might have noticed by my broken english, my lack of sense of humor or even my username, I am one of these so called germans. Despite this I have only watched Benjamin Blümchen like once or twice in my life during my childhood and therefore do not feel nostalgic for it.
I found out about the existence of this game around two days ago when I wanted to log another german game and was weirdly intrigued for some reason, so I bought a complete in box copy of it.
This was not one of my best decisions. I think I should start talking about the game now.
The game is comprised of 6 levels wildly varying in quality.
The first level is a 2d platformer. It isn't the only 2d platforming level and these are the best in my opinion. The controls aren't the worst, but they have made it so you can only jump with the B button while the A button does nothing. I don't really get why but it works I guess. Benjamins jumps are really slow which can mess up your timing, but it is definitely not at all bad for a 2d platformer on the Game Boy.
The sprite work is also not bad at all and the soundtrack is actually better than expected.
The first level itself plays out in two sections, the first one being inside a house with a lot of health pickups and just a few enemies. The only reason why I mentioned that last part was because of the second section. It plays out in an ice cavern with ice physics almost no health pickups and not only more enemies, but also random ice spikes hanging from the ceiling which are really hard to avoid or even differentiate from those who don't deal damage.
another thing is the inclusion of platforms which you have to time jumping on because if you don't you will be send way back to the beginning of the level.
The second level is underwater which might sound bad at first but isn't actually that much worse. There isn't a lot to talk about other than some plant life being hard to differentiate from other plant life that damages you and that this level is a bit too long for my liking.
But the third level was one of the worst things I have ever experienced. It is an isometric platformer which in itself is not that fun for someone like me who doesn't really enjoy isometric platformers that much, but it gets even worse than that. This levels controls are absolutely atrocious. You can both move and jump in 8 directions, but the jump itself needs some time to charge up. There are three types of jumps.
If you only charge it up for a short or even no time you will get a short jump, which wont't be useful in any situation because you couldn't even jump too far with the second type of jump. The normal jump is the type of jump you will probably want to use the most out of the three. It basically outclasses the short jump in any category. The third and last type of jump is the long jump. This is incredibly niche and is only used around five times, but can be used for short cuts.
Now on to the problems I have with the third level.
1: The depth perception is really bad. This is in part because of this being a Game Boy Color game, but is in part a problem with the sometimes janky hitboxes of the lily pads. which also bring their own problems like.
2: Due to the hitboxes not at all matching with the actual sprite of the lily pads you sometimes don't make jumps you used the right jumps for. This will make it so that you will obviously use the long jump next time because the normal jump "obviously is the wrong one". But surprise you actually used the right jump but now you are at the beginning of the level again, which bring me to the last problem I will talk about. (there are way more)
3: This level is way too long. It took me around 30 minutes to beat, which might not sound that bad, but that is around half the game and means that you have to put up with the worst ever created for half an hour.
This is definitely the worst level in the game.
The fourth level isn't that great either. I can't really describe it but if I had too, it feels like if you played Mario Kart, but only with the map and only a small part of the map and if you run into a wall which you couldn't react to because of the small screen size you will loose one of your three lives but the invincibility lasts such a small amount of time that you might loose all your lives. This is exasperated by Benjamin Blümchen being a fat elephant and that you are being chased by a mouse because "haha funny big elephant running from small mouse" and you therefore not being able to stop running. You also can't change direction directly and will have to input another direction for around half a second if you actually want to change it. I should maybe also point out that you can use a boost with the help of the A button, incredible.
The only saving grace of this level is that it' incredibly short.
But the developers at KIDDINX thought the control scheme of the fourth level was so incredible that they reused it for the fifth level "the race".
The differences of the fourth and fifth level are very minor. 1: You are now not longer able to take damage, already making this the better level of the two.
And 2: you have to chose between 3 characters: the kangaroo, emu and the trollface Zebra. You can guess which one I used for my first playthrough. The characters themselves have minor differences like the emu being the fastest but not being the easiest to control. But as far as I know you don't need to win any of the three races to play the next level and this is therefore the easiest level by technicality.
The sixth level is another 2d platformer which as I already pointed out at the beginning of this review is the best play-style of the game. This time it's a bit worse as there are ladders you have to climb on, but actually climbing them is really finicky. The sixth level is still way better than the last few. After this the game just end abruptly and boots you back to the title screen.
Well all in all it isn't the best game I have ever played; I think I made that really obvious, but there is still fun to be had here. As already mentioned the ost is surprisingly not bad and I have blown some of the problems of the non-level-3-levels out of proportion to be fair and for something that could be categorized as german early 2000s TV show tie for the Game Boy Color this was a surprisingly fun short game.
ps. This games title, at the moment of me writing this, does not include the Umlaute (äöü) and sounds incredibly funny for german speakers.
I found out about the existence of this game around two days ago when I wanted to log another german game and was weirdly intrigued for some reason, so I bought a complete in box copy of it.
This was not one of my best decisions. I think I should start talking about the game now.
The game is comprised of 6 levels wildly varying in quality.
The first level is a 2d platformer. It isn't the only 2d platforming level and these are the best in my opinion. The controls aren't the worst, but they have made it so you can only jump with the B button while the A button does nothing. I don't really get why but it works I guess. Benjamins jumps are really slow which can mess up your timing, but it is definitely not at all bad for a 2d platformer on the Game Boy.
The sprite work is also not bad at all and the soundtrack is actually better than expected.
The first level itself plays out in two sections, the first one being inside a house with a lot of health pickups and just a few enemies. The only reason why I mentioned that last part was because of the second section. It plays out in an ice cavern with ice physics almost no health pickups and not only more enemies, but also random ice spikes hanging from the ceiling which are really hard to avoid or even differentiate from those who don't deal damage.
another thing is the inclusion of platforms which you have to time jumping on because if you don't you will be send way back to the beginning of the level.
The second level is underwater which might sound bad at first but isn't actually that much worse. There isn't a lot to talk about other than some plant life being hard to differentiate from other plant life that damages you and that this level is a bit too long for my liking.
But the third level was one of the worst things I have ever experienced. It is an isometric platformer which in itself is not that fun for someone like me who doesn't really enjoy isometric platformers that much, but it gets even worse than that. This levels controls are absolutely atrocious. You can both move and jump in 8 directions, but the jump itself needs some time to charge up. There are three types of jumps.
If you only charge it up for a short or even no time you will get a short jump, which wont't be useful in any situation because you couldn't even jump too far with the second type of jump. The normal jump is the type of jump you will probably want to use the most out of the three. It basically outclasses the short jump in any category. The third and last type of jump is the long jump. This is incredibly niche and is only used around five times, but can be used for short cuts.
Now on to the problems I have with the third level.
1: The depth perception is really bad. This is in part because of this being a Game Boy Color game, but is in part a problem with the sometimes janky hitboxes of the lily pads. which also bring their own problems like.
2: Due to the hitboxes not at all matching with the actual sprite of the lily pads you sometimes don't make jumps you used the right jumps for. This will make it so that you will obviously use the long jump next time because the normal jump "obviously is the wrong one". But surprise you actually used the right jump but now you are at the beginning of the level again, which bring me to the last problem I will talk about. (there are way more)
3: This level is way too long. It took me around 30 minutes to beat, which might not sound that bad, but that is around half the game and means that you have to put up with the worst ever created for half an hour.
This is definitely the worst level in the game.
The fourth level isn't that great either. I can't really describe it but if I had too, it feels like if you played Mario Kart, but only with the map and only a small part of the map and if you run into a wall which you couldn't react to because of the small screen size you will loose one of your three lives but the invincibility lasts such a small amount of time that you might loose all your lives. This is exasperated by Benjamin Blümchen being a fat elephant and that you are being chased by a mouse because "haha funny big elephant running from small mouse" and you therefore not being able to stop running. You also can't change direction directly and will have to input another direction for around half a second if you actually want to change it. I should maybe also point out that you can use a boost with the help of the A button, incredible.
The only saving grace of this level is that it' incredibly short.
But the developers at KIDDINX thought the control scheme of the fourth level was so incredible that they reused it for the fifth level "the race".
The differences of the fourth and fifth level are very minor. 1: You are now not longer able to take damage, already making this the better level of the two.
And 2: you have to chose between 3 characters: the kangaroo, emu and the trollface Zebra. You can guess which one I used for my first playthrough. The characters themselves have minor differences like the emu being the fastest but not being the easiest to control. But as far as I know you don't need to win any of the three races to play the next level and this is therefore the easiest level by technicality.
The sixth level is another 2d platformer which as I already pointed out at the beginning of this review is the best play-style of the game. This time it's a bit worse as there are ladders you have to climb on, but actually climbing them is really finicky. The sixth level is still way better than the last few. After this the game just end abruptly and boots you back to the title screen.
Well all in all it isn't the best game I have ever played; I think I made that really obvious, but there is still fun to be had here. As already mentioned the ost is surprisingly not bad and I have blown some of the problems of the non-level-3-levels out of proportion to be fair and for something that could be categorized as german early 2000s TV show tie for the Game Boy Color this was a surprisingly fun short game.
ps. This games title, at the moment of me writing this, does not include the Umlaute (äöü) and sounds incredibly funny for german speakers.
A little known time in Lego game history is the early 2010s, where Lego created mobile games for their new themes. Most of the time these mobile games where some sort of highscore based endless runner, but some of their bigger successes, like NInjago, got complete games.
Flash-forward to me a few months ago remembering that this game existed. Surprisingly this game is actually a (more or less) complete game especially because while Lego Hero Factory is a spiritual successor to the Bionicle line of Lego sets, it never really struck me as to successful or known.
The game itself is a wave based top down shooter. Due to the limitations of a phone being the primary platform this game is very simplistic in nature. This actually helps the controls of the game. A lot of mobile games control schemes are either to overblown or way to simplistic. Lego Hero Factory: Brain Attack strikes a nice mid ground between these two extremes.
The most important actions, being moving and shooting, are located on the left and right side of the screen respectively, meaning that they are accessible in any situation. The only other actions you can perform are switching between primary and secondary weapon and using an item, which are both located in the bottom middle of the screen, in theory creating a sort of risk reward when using them.
Unfortunately the controls are the only redeeming quality of this game.
The content of the game is divided into seven levels, which themselves are segmented into 20 waves each.
The level design is okay I guess. My only problem is that there isn't much differentiating them from each other. Of course there are some level gimmicks like the city level being split into two parts divided by a train station going through them, but there is also no reason to ever go from one to another side as the object of the game isn't to defend something from the enemies, but just to not get defeated and the enemies spawn inside a radius from the player and always move towards them.
I am also positive that 4/7 stages being the sewerage, the spaceport, the power plant and the obligatory mall level don't even have a gimmick.
I also don't get why these stages are segmented into waves, because there isn't any difficulty curve to talk of.
The number of enemies in a stage is, as far as I know, random. The first wave could have 37 enemies while the 18th might have 12.
The game (only) boasts a whole ten different enemies (not the actual number of enemies, just a guess, could be even less to be honest). These enemies, with one exception, don't even have different variations.
Most of these enemies aren't even a threat due to them only being able to damage the player in close combat, but even if they could damage the player using a projectile, they probably would even be able to do that, because of their AI not noticing the player until it is to late or them taking way to long to actually be able to attack the player.
There are only two types of damage that might pose a threat to the player, being some enemies sending out projectiles when they are defeated. These projectiles do way to much damage when compared to other ones and are practically not able to be reacted to, because of either the enemies being defeated before you even notice them, or because of the enemies all looking the same. The only other threat can only be found in ever 20th wave of a stage.
These waves only end after defeating around 200-500 enemies called "Brains" (you are able to see one in the cover art).
These Brains themselves aren't too threatening, even with some of their stronger variations, but being attacked by 200 of them at once poses a threat. Especially the red colored ones. These not only take away a bit more than half your health, when hitting you once, but also leaving the burn effect on the player, meaning that they take around 90% of your health with just one hit; around 80% using the strongest character. They also take around a minute to be defeated themselves, meaning that the most effective strategy in every 20th wave is finding a big circle to run around in them beforehand and shooting constantly. While meaning that you are basically able to cheese the enemy AI this way, this also means that these waves alone take around 20-60 minutes each. This isn't what I would call fun gameplay.
Did I already mention that this game costs 4€. This is about as much as Castlevania Symphony of the Night on mobile.
Now the game doesn't technically cost that much. Unlocking all stages, weapons and characters to be able to then be purchased using in game currency is more like 2€ each. But if you remember about what I said around two sentences ago about the red colored brains, you definitely want to get the so called "advantage pack" saving you 1/3 of the price, because while you could definitely technically beat this Lego game not using the best character, weapon and sub-weapon, you could also technically run against a refrigerator at max velocity, while the floor is made out of Lego and would derive around as much fun from both options.
Even with all that much going against this game; and I didn't even mention how you there is no difference in weapon and sub-weapon, the speed power-up basically outclassing every other and there being only three different pieces of music in this entire game (one of which {the wave 20 one} literally being a 6 second loop), this game was still fun for around 1-2 hours. Like not incredibly fun, but at least a 2.5, it just dragged on for far too long. Especially with the final boss only spawning after you defeat 500 Brains, around 300 of which are red ones and subsequently one hitting you making you do all that again and stealing 40 minutes of your time.
But I would lie if I would say this game didn't have to be at least a bit better.
Flash-forward to me a few months ago remembering that this game existed. Surprisingly this game is actually a (more or less) complete game especially because while Lego Hero Factory is a spiritual successor to the Bionicle line of Lego sets, it never really struck me as to successful or known.
The game itself is a wave based top down shooter. Due to the limitations of a phone being the primary platform this game is very simplistic in nature. This actually helps the controls of the game. A lot of mobile games control schemes are either to overblown or way to simplistic. Lego Hero Factory: Brain Attack strikes a nice mid ground between these two extremes.
The most important actions, being moving and shooting, are located on the left and right side of the screen respectively, meaning that they are accessible in any situation. The only other actions you can perform are switching between primary and secondary weapon and using an item, which are both located in the bottom middle of the screen, in theory creating a sort of risk reward when using them.
Unfortunately the controls are the only redeeming quality of this game.
The content of the game is divided into seven levels, which themselves are segmented into 20 waves each.
The level design is okay I guess. My only problem is that there isn't much differentiating them from each other. Of course there are some level gimmicks like the city level being split into two parts divided by a train station going through them, but there is also no reason to ever go from one to another side as the object of the game isn't to defend something from the enemies, but just to not get defeated and the enemies spawn inside a radius from the player and always move towards them.
I am also positive that 4/7 stages being the sewerage, the spaceport, the power plant and the obligatory mall level don't even have a gimmick.
I also don't get why these stages are segmented into waves, because there isn't any difficulty curve to talk of.
The number of enemies in a stage is, as far as I know, random. The first wave could have 37 enemies while the 18th might have 12.
The game (only) boasts a whole ten different enemies (not the actual number of enemies, just a guess, could be even less to be honest). These enemies, with one exception, don't even have different variations.
Most of these enemies aren't even a threat due to them only being able to damage the player in close combat, but even if they could damage the player using a projectile, they probably would even be able to do that, because of their AI not noticing the player until it is to late or them taking way to long to actually be able to attack the player.
There are only two types of damage that might pose a threat to the player, being some enemies sending out projectiles when they are defeated. These projectiles do way to much damage when compared to other ones and are practically not able to be reacted to, because of either the enemies being defeated before you even notice them, or because of the enemies all looking the same. The only other threat can only be found in ever 20th wave of a stage.
These waves only end after defeating around 200-500 enemies called "Brains" (you are able to see one in the cover art).
These Brains themselves aren't too threatening, even with some of their stronger variations, but being attacked by 200 of them at once poses a threat. Especially the red colored ones. These not only take away a bit more than half your health, when hitting you once, but also leaving the burn effect on the player, meaning that they take around 90% of your health with just one hit; around 80% using the strongest character. They also take around a minute to be defeated themselves, meaning that the most effective strategy in every 20th wave is finding a big circle to run around in them beforehand and shooting constantly. While meaning that you are basically able to cheese the enemy AI this way, this also means that these waves alone take around 20-60 minutes each. This isn't what I would call fun gameplay.
Did I already mention that this game costs 4€. This is about as much as Castlevania Symphony of the Night on mobile.
Now the game doesn't technically cost that much. Unlocking all stages, weapons and characters to be able to then be purchased using in game currency is more like 2€ each. But if you remember about what I said around two sentences ago about the red colored brains, you definitely want to get the so called "advantage pack" saving you 1/3 of the price, because while you could definitely technically beat this Lego game not using the best character, weapon and sub-weapon, you could also technically run against a refrigerator at max velocity, while the floor is made out of Lego and would derive around as much fun from both options.
Even with all that much going against this game; and I didn't even mention how you there is no difference in weapon and sub-weapon, the speed power-up basically outclassing every other and there being only three different pieces of music in this entire game (one of which {the wave 20 one} literally being a 6 second loop), this game was still fun for around 1-2 hours. Like not incredibly fun, but at least a 2.5, it just dragged on for far too long. Especially with the final boss only spawning after you defeat 500 Brains, around 300 of which are red ones and subsequently one hitting you making you do all that again and stealing 40 minutes of your time.
But I would lie if I would say this game didn't have to be at least a bit better.
Krabat: The Secret of the Sorbian King might just be the most obscure game I have ever played and remember that I have played this, this and (of course) this.
But when I say this game is obscure I don't only mean that it isn't popular, but also its content.
This is the first Sorbian game, it is entirely voice acted in said language tells a story about/is based around Krabat, an old Sorbian tale, which I was vaguely familiar with (more so with Otfried Preußlers adaptation)).
This is a point & click game inspired by the likes of Monkey Island and other classic point & clicks, but before I get into talking the gameplay I would like to mention the overall presentation of the game, which really hit a soft spot of mine.
Visually this really looks like german early to mid 2000s like Little Amadeus, which I personally grew up with and the soundtrack is surprisingly good. I have uploaded a short clip to YouTube to show this, because it is really hard to find anything about this game.
So as I said this is a point & click puzzle game and this could be considered my first foray into said genre and from what I have learned this genre doesn't mesh well with obscurity. There were multiple puzzles which I found to be too hard to complete, but not in the way of me missing something obvious in hindsight, but rather something being obscured by something in front of it, or including an unintuitive to retrieve item.
I know I didn't do the best job describing these scenarios, but I'm going to give a few examples to make my problem more understandable.
Now these might be a bit spoiler-ish (which I will also mention when I get there), so if that is a problem you can skip to the next paragraph, but I'm not the only one who had problems with these parts of the game. So my first and least problematic example of this is a part where you need to de-rust something. Problem is that at this point you have probably already interacted with each thing near you, nothing of which could help you with rust. The solution to this is that there is some sort of lubrication you can find behind a lot of letters, which visually blends in with the background. I came to the solution by asking the nice devs at Rapaki on Twitter. Now the problem here wound up being more about not knowing what to search for, than the blending in with the background thing, because I could figure out were this lubrication was through context clues. Now the second example is way more offensive in my eyes and it is a big part of the end of the game and this is where I might get a bit into the spoiler territory. So the last part begins with you having to bring back two bulls to a farmer. One of them involves a really nice puzzle, but the other one is just way to hard to solve. I had to work with these posts in a German only forum, to solve it. I won't spoil the whole solution here, but one part of it was literally finding a needle in a hay stack, which only spawns there after a certain trigger and another part of it is stealing a crown from a group of snakes, which was way harder to execute than it should've been. I have uploaded a clip of the latter to YouTube, but I did watch a stream in the background, because of it just taking way to long to do and me eventually growing bored of skipping through the same dialogue over and over again, but if you still want to watch it here it is.
Now overall Krabat: The Secret of the Sorbian King is still a pretty solid game, with good puzzles (for the most part), nice visuals and a good soundtrack and for the low asking price of around 5€ and the first chapter being completely free I can only suggest you to give it a shot. Now this being the game that it is, it's of course not that easy to get a hold of, but it is available to download on Rapaki's website.
But when I say this game is obscure I don't only mean that it isn't popular, but also its content.
This is the first Sorbian game, it is entirely voice acted in said language tells a story about/is based around Krabat, an old Sorbian tale, which I was vaguely familiar with (more so with Otfried Preußlers adaptation)).
This is a point & click game inspired by the likes of Monkey Island and other classic point & clicks, but before I get into talking the gameplay I would like to mention the overall presentation of the game, which really hit a soft spot of mine.
Visually this really looks like german early to mid 2000s like Little Amadeus, which I personally grew up with and the soundtrack is surprisingly good. I have uploaded a short clip to YouTube to show this, because it is really hard to find anything about this game.
So as I said this is a point & click puzzle game and this could be considered my first foray into said genre and from what I have learned this genre doesn't mesh well with obscurity. There were multiple puzzles which I found to be too hard to complete, but not in the way of me missing something obvious in hindsight, but rather something being obscured by something in front of it, or including an unintuitive to retrieve item.
I know I didn't do the best job describing these scenarios, but I'm going to give a few examples to make my problem more understandable.
Now these might be a bit spoiler-ish (which I will also mention when I get there), so if that is a problem you can skip to the next paragraph, but I'm not the only one who had problems with these parts of the game. So my first and least problematic example of this is a part where you need to de-rust something. Problem is that at this point you have probably already interacted with each thing near you, nothing of which could help you with rust. The solution to this is that there is some sort of lubrication you can find behind a lot of letters, which visually blends in with the background. I came to the solution by asking the nice devs at Rapaki on Twitter. Now the problem here wound up being more about not knowing what to search for, than the blending in with the background thing, because I could figure out were this lubrication was through context clues. Now the second example is way more offensive in my eyes and it is a big part of the end of the game and this is where I might get a bit into the spoiler territory. So the last part begins with you having to bring back two bulls to a farmer. One of them involves a really nice puzzle, but the other one is just way to hard to solve. I had to work with these posts in a German only forum, to solve it. I won't spoil the whole solution here, but one part of it was literally finding a needle in a hay stack, which only spawns there after a certain trigger and another part of it is stealing a crown from a group of snakes, which was way harder to execute than it should've been. I have uploaded a clip of the latter to YouTube, but I did watch a stream in the background, because of it just taking way to long to do and me eventually growing bored of skipping through the same dialogue over and over again, but if you still want to watch it here it is.
Now overall Krabat: The Secret of the Sorbian King is still a pretty solid game, with good puzzles (for the most part), nice visuals and a good soundtrack and for the low asking price of around 5€ and the first chapter being completely free I can only suggest you to give it a shot. Now this being the game that it is, it's of course not that easy to get a hold of, but it is available to download on Rapaki's website.
2021
Niantic seems to really like rereleasing their old games
2021
They got rid of everything that made Angry Birds fun.
This is the best game to ever grace our mortal plain.
Does anyone remember the "its a pig" seed? No, just me? ok
"Batman: The Dark Knight" the video game deniers might want you to believe that this game was cancelled, but not only wasn't it, but they actually created a console just for it to compete with the Atari Lynx. Unfortunately this is another Metroid Prime Pinball clone.
2014
Lets take a look at the game description.
"Croc´s World is a really nice jump'n'run with 60 incredible levels and many challenging enemies!" well no, the physics are really bad and it is really repetitive, due to not trying anything new or innovative (also calm down there buddy, even if you liked Croc's world "incredible levels" is kind of pushing it.) The enemy patterns are also archaic. Most of them run in one direction, which is a problem due to a lack of diversity and why do like 99% of Mario clones just put snails as their Koopa, it just becomes very repetitive and snails have feelings too. If you have ever played a mobile or maybe even any bad Mario clone before you have played this game before. The Xbox One version doesn't have any achievements either if you are into that. So lets rephrase the description.
"Croc´s World is a really bad jump'n'run with 60 repetitive levels and no challenging enemies!"
... perfect
"Croc´s World is a really nice jump'n'run with 60 incredible levels and many challenging enemies!" well no, the physics are really bad and it is really repetitive, due to not trying anything new or innovative (also calm down there buddy, even if you liked Croc's world "incredible levels" is kind of pushing it.) The enemy patterns are also archaic. Most of them run in one direction, which is a problem due to a lack of diversity and why do like 99% of Mario clones just put snails as their Koopa, it just becomes very repetitive and snails have feelings too. If you have ever played a mobile or maybe even any bad Mario clone before you have played this game before. The Xbox One version doesn't have any achievements either if you are into that. So lets rephrase the description.
"Croc´s World is a really bad jump'n'run with 60 repetitive levels and no challenging enemies!"
... perfect