The Banner Saga Review

This game started off life as a Kickstarter which was successfully funded and was recommended to me by my sibling, Jason who knew my fondness of turn based strategy games.  After researching it a little more, it seemed like it was worth a shot so off I went to Steam to get it.

Prepare to do battle in a Nordic era

The first thing you will notice about this game is the fantastic hand drawn art style that everything is rendered in.  The art style is influenced by that which was used in very early Disney films, particularly Sleeping Beauty.  Everything has a great amount of detail and nice touches to it and it makes everything very pleasant to look at.

Every detail is lovingly hand drawn

You play from the viewpoints of various members of a Nordic tribe who are travelling across the land to escape a force of mindless automatons referred to only as “The Dredge”.  The tone of the game overall is very bleak with the only real goal most of the time being to stay ahead of The Dredge and stay alive in the hope of finding a safe bastion somewhere.  You are always on the back foot and always feel pressured to keep moving to survive.  As the game progresses, more enemies and problems begin to pile up and it can feel like there is no way out and no escape from the situation.  All you are doing is delaying the inevitable as foes close in on all sides.

You must keep your caravan moving with ample supplies and good morale

The main selling point of the game is the tactical turn based combat and although it is well implemented and satisfying to execute, it is not too frequent.  You are also presented with choices at several points that can reduce the amount of combat you get to do even more meaning if you are not a fan of this combat, you can end up doing very little of it.  But seeing as this is one of the main draws of the game that would be a bit pointless.  The turn based combat itself is mixed up a little by a few different mechanics one of them being that health and strength are linked.  So if your character has taken a lot of damage, his damage output will also be drastically lowered.  This means you must be careful to keep damaged characters off the front line unless you want to use them as bait.  There are also a number of special moves available to each character but these mostly seem very special case use so aren’t often deployed and are wasted for most characters.  The rest of the turn based mechanics are quite normal allowing you to level up the statistics of the character over time and adding new members to your team as the campaign progresses.  But overall, the low difficulty and rareness of these sections made the feeling that it was not actually meant to be the focus of the game and it left me wanting more from the combat aspect.

The turn based combat is enjoyable, but fairly infrequent and unchallenging

The rest of game is spent travelling across the land with your group and the caravan with various events popping up as you travel and you are presented with decisions that must be made about them.  This aspect of the game is quite reminiscent of the classic Oregon Trail.  Like Oregon Trail, it is quite unpredictable and random as well as difficult to know how the different choices you make in the game will play out.  On more than one occasion, I made what I was sure would be the best choice only to have it blow back in my face with severe consequences.  This unpredictability further adds to the atmosphere of desperation and despair when you don’t know what is going to come along and make your life harder next.  Some of the biggest events and largest surprises happen in this travelling mode.

All kinds of surprise events pop up as the caravan rolls on. Some easy to deal with. Some not.

The only real negative point that I had about this game is that when playing with a PC controller, the central dead zone seems quite off even after much repeated calibrations which caused the cursor to move on its own a lot.  I never did get this resolved but it was a minor gripe so I did not research it extensively.

The Banner Saga Review Summary

Overall, I thought The Banner Saga was an enjoyable mix of two usually very separate genres but these are two genres that should probably stay separate.  A pure turn based strategy game like Fire Emblem Awakening is better because of the increased focus on combat and depth of the system.  Likewise a pure travelling simulator like Oregon Trail or Organ Trail would be better because of more emphasis on this aspect.  The Banner Saga felt like it had its attentions divided between the two areas too much so neither is as strong as they could be.  It is part of a planned trilogy but at this point, I am unsure if I enjoyed it enough to carry on with further entries in the series.  If you are looking for something a bit different and enjoy turn based strategy and/or Oregon Trail you can give this one a quick go as it is fairly short clocking in at around 7 hours but it may well leave you wanting to play something else similar that has a bit more depth to it.

Final Score: 3/5

All you can do is keep moving. Hoping you can find somewhere safe.

The Banner Saga on Steam

Let’s Play footage

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Donkey Kong Country Returns Review

We haven’t heard from the Donkey Kong Country series since the rather disappointing Donkey Kong 64 which was for most people, just a means to acquire the very difficult to find N64 Expansion Pak.  Since Majora’s Mask was the first major game to require this accessory, most people tried to hunt one down after getting the game with little success.  The only reliable way to get them at the time was to buy Donkey Kong 64 which also required the Expansion Pak and came with a free one in the box.  Donkey Kong 64 itself was quite underwhelming so a lot of people just bought it for the Expansion Pak and never played the game.  Unfortunately, I did play the game and was very let down by it overall.  But now, Donkey Kong Country is back on the Wii and has allegedly returned to form.  But is it true?

The Kongs are back!

First of all, let me get one very large gripe out of the way.  I played this game co-op with my co-op buddy Phil Wilson and we had both heard the game was quite difficult, so we hoped having two of us would alleviate said difficulty giving us a backup should one person die and so on.  How wrong we were.  Like the older entries in the series, Donkey Kong Country Returns maintains a lives counter and if you run out of lives, game over.  However, one of your lives is removed every time either player dies and respawns.  But should both of you die, then a further two lives are taken off your total.  This is an extremely harsh and cheap method to artificially enhance the difficulty and on the more difficult levels, you will be chewing your way through lives at a staggering pace leading to many many game overs.  With that main gripe out of the way, let me get to some of the games good points.

Extra lives can be bought in shops, but you’ll still run out. Fast.

The art style in the game is excellently put together.  Levels are well varied having many different themes and are full of colour and life with things going on in both foreground and background.  The soundtrack is also very well suited to the levels remaining pleasant and ambient on the slower more careful levels and increasing the pace for faster more frantic levels.  Many of the old mechanics from previous Donkey Kong Country return here like the blasting barrels, mine cart levels.  Sadly, Rambi is the only animal friend to return and I would have liked to see more like Blinky the frog or Enguarde the swordfish. A number of new mechanics are also introduced like rocket barrels that have limited and difficult controls and grass surfaces that you can grab on to climb across ceilings.  The mixture of new and old help keep a good balance of nostalgia and freshness at the same time and none of them are ever over-used making them tiresome.

Jetting around on a barrel is fun but like most things in the game, quite difficult

The bosses are still the real star of the show though.  Each world’s boss is an extremely formidable character and they are all original, well-thought out and tough as nails.  Sometimes you will instinctively be able to tell what they are going to do, but for the most part, the first time you play each boss, you will probably die many times just because you don’t know what their patterns are.  But having said that, even after you know the patterns, knowing and doing something with them are two separate matters.  They are still very difficult no doubt about it and each boss will most certainly result in many many game overs.

The bosses are both awesome and bone-shatteringly difficult at the same time

Donkey Kong Country Returns Review Summary

Donkey Kong Country Returns is a definite return to form for the Donkey Kong Country series and provides all the fun and variety of the older SNES entries in the series.  If you enjoyed Donkey Kong Country 1-3 but disliked the N64 Entry, Donkey Kong 64, then you will definitely enjoy this Wii version.  But as mentioned before, the difficulty level is quite high especially on co-op where having a second player is actually more of a hindrance than a help.  This game was later ported to the 3DS which includes an easier difficulty level so if that is a major problem, the 3DS version could be the way to go.  It requires two systems and two game cards though.

Final Score: 3/5

Great game, but man is it difficult.

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Not A Hero Review

This game kind of came at me out of the blue.  I had not heard much about it prior to its release but then started to hear more and more about it as its release neared and after checking out some game-play footage, it looked like it would be a lot of frantic fun so I decided to pick it up on Steam and boy am I glad that I did.

Get ready for some early morning murder.

The simplest way to describe this game is a 2D cover based shooter.  You are sent on various inane missions by an anthropomorphic rabbit called Bunnylord who for unknown reasons must become Mayor to prevent the world from being destroyed.  According to him, the largest aspect of winning a political campaign is murdering lots of bad guys in the morning.  So this is what you are sent off to do.  From start to finish, this game is an absolutely and totally utterly insanely fast paced adrenaline rush which has you rolling, ducking, dodging, shooting, exploding and generally causing as much chaos as possible at a break neck pace.  You can take cover behind most objects to avoid bullets, but there is no hiding from the melee enemies that appear later on and you just have to kill these guys before they can get to you.  There is a good range of different enemy types that are introduced over the course of the game and some of them are so unbelievably and instantly lethal they will have you dreading the sight of them.  There are various limited use weapons enhancements you can pick up along the way such as explosive rounds or extra powerful bullets and these become practically essential in the later levels.

KABLAMMO

The difficulty ramps up a lot towards the end of the game.  And I do mean a lot.  It can be quite maddeningly difficult at times because there are no checkpoints whatsoever so if you die, you must do the whole level over again.  This is again especially annoying in the later levels because these are both very difficult and very long so you will have to do the bulk of these levels many times over.  But you want to persevere.  You want to keep going.  Because of the frantic pace, you don’t have a lot of time to get irritated at the game and just want to keep getting back in there blowing fools into pieces.  It’s no Hotline Miami, but it is quite difficult in the final stages.  Seemingly unintentionally at times because there are many sections where you must roll and/or jump between buildings with judge drops below you.  As one would assume, a large fall is instant death and at times, it is difficult to ascertain exactly which way is the correct one so sometimes experimentation in these scenarios can also be very lethal.  The health system is based off a regenerating one that slowly restores your health if you avoid damage, but you do not have a lot of it to begin with, so just a handful of quick shots are usually enough to do you in and all melee attacks are instantly lethal.

Many different enemy types will try to murder you.

There is a great variety of characters unlocked as you progress all of who have different special skills, weapons, speed of movement and such, but I found that only a couple of them are genuinely useful and most of the rest were more hindrances than helpful.  My favourite for most of it was the most basic and very first starting character but he was later replaced with a slightly better one in the endgame.  All of the characters have hilarious cockney, Scottish, Welsh and English accents from various regions.  Their speech during the missions is also extremely vulgar and entertaining so it’s worth trying each character at least once to hear what kind of stuff they come out with in the heat of battle.

Samantha is from Wales

One negative point I found is that the controls can be slightly fiddly at times.  Particularly with the fast-paced frantic game-play sometimes you will end up rolling into a hail of bullets or a sword instead of taking cover like you wanted to.  Also, the dialogue is very funny most of the time but occasionally feels a little forced and is being just a little too wacky for the sake of being wacky.  This is usually when Bunnylord is giving you your briefings and feels like he is just being random in an attempt to be funny which does not always work.

Some of Bunnylords briefings are funny. Some are not.

Not A Hero Review Summary

Not A Hero is an extremely enjoyable new twist on the cover-based shooter genre.  The humour and the breakneck speed add greatly to the overall sensation and atmosphere.  Once you are in the groove, you will be sliding through the levels at blistering speed with a huge smile on your face as you decimate your enemies in the name of Bunnylord.  And then you will be screaming profanities like a sailor with Tourette’s when you die over and over again.  But you will want to keep going back and do it again because it’s just so purely enjoyable.

Final Score: 4/5

No frills. Just death.

Not A Hero on Steam

Not A Hero Let’s Play footage

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Lifeless Planet Review

I picked this game up totally out of the blue after seeing a video of it recommended to me on YouTube and it reminded me of a space walking simulator I had played before.  After I had found out a little more about it, I was intrigued and decided to pick it up and was very glad that I did.  Read on to find out why.

What happened here?

The game takes place on the titular planet which is lifeless.  You play a member of a ISSA team sent to this planet which is hopefully full of life, but the mission crashes and you find out that the planet is actually lifeless.  You also can not seem to find your comrades initially so you set out to find them and a truly fascinating tale of mystery and wonder unravels before you as you explore the world.

The early sections of the game involve you finding your mission comrades

This game gives you a brilliant sense of vastness and isolation in the enormous almost totally empty desert planet.  You feel insignificant and lonely as this tiny person exploring the gigantic planet with no allies and no way to call for help.  I haven’t felt this kind of vibe and atmosphere in a game since the likes of Super Metroid, Ico or Shadow Of The Colossus where you are totally alone against it all.

Lifeless Planet Review

The story unfolds in a genuinely intriguing way and is one of the strongest points of the game.  You want to keep going.  You want to push on and explore more of this place.  You want to find out what’s going on.  Even if you are doomed to stay there forever, you want to unravel the mysteries that you keep finding around you.  The exposition and background stories revealed in notes and such that you find around the planet are also for once genuinely interesting.  You find yourself actually reading them in their entirety and wanting to find more of these notes and find out more of what is going on.  This is quite an achievement in itself because avid gamers will know that most notes found in games are usually just collectibles to be skipped through but in Lifeless Planet, they truly are worth reading more to unravel more of the mystery and are a large part of the story.  I want to avoid giving spoilers as much as I can to preserve the strong story so you will just have to trust me when I tell you it is the games best point.

This game has some of the best in game logs ever.

The visual are simultaneously a weak point and a strength.  While most small scale models that you can see up close such as the characters and other smaller items are a little crudely rendered, everything on a larger scale such as the backgrounds and landscapes are masterfully crafted allowing you to see for miles in the distance in detail.  They cause you to cast your eyes out over the horizon and wonder “What’s out there?” further increasing your sense of wonder in the mystery.  However, due to some landscapes which are at times relatively featureless, it can be a difficult to know where exactly it is you’re meant to go in some sections.  This leaves the player to fumble about trying out various routes, but I would argue that it has to be this way some of the time because after all, it is a “Lifeless Planet” and a lot of it is going to be featureless.  Nevertheless, sections like this do pop up from time to time and are irritating.  Particularly so when you reach one that is intended as a puzzle platform section, you can be left bouncing high and low and dying many times trying to find the correct route.  The same thing can happen with other environmental hazards later in the game where the route through is not easy to find as a lot of it all looks very similar.

One of several points where it is quite easy to lose your way.

There are also a number of scripted sections where your oxygen is low and you have a limited amount of time to find a new tank.  While these do add tension to the proceedings, they feel as if they are somewhat forced due to being scripted.  Why can you wander around for hours with no oxygen troubles, but as soon as you hit this section, you run out?

Your oxygen levels have suddenly dropped. I don’t know why. *shrugs*

Lifeless Planet Review Summary

Lifeless Planet is an excellent indie title that provides mystery, exploration and a sense of wonder in a tight package.  There is no combat whatsoever in this game but it never feels lacking.  The story and hunt for answers is more than enough to drive you forward and provides very satisfactory conclusions once you reach the end of the journey.  At just under 4 hours long, it is also a fairly short game that can be completed in a single evening with ease.  For anyone who enjoys a feeling of solitude and a great expedition while searching to uncover the truth, this is definitely worth your while.

Final Score: 4/5

Lifeless Planet on GOG

You have to keep going. You have to.

 

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Final Fantasy Tactics Review

I have been a semi-long term fan of the Final Fantasy series and like many others, Final Fantasy VII was my first proper introduction to the series.  I played all games since and went back into the series past to play the previous entries but despite the amazing reputation it gets, Final Fantasy Tactics was one game that I had never played.  Until now.

Final Fantasy Tactics has long been a gap in my Final Fantasy series coverage

The main difference between Tactics and main entries in the Final Fantasy series is that while the main entries are traditional JRPGs where allies and enemies stay static in an area and automatically move back and forth to attack. Tactics is a turn based strategy game instead.  Wherein you have control of your team’s movement around the map as well as their actions.  This allows for greater control and is a sub-genre of RPG that I have always loved so I was keen to try this one out.

Great control over movement and direction is given in strategy RPGs

The mechanics of this system are quickly explained and becomes intuitive very fast so you will be manoeuvring around and flanking your enemies in no time.  But while the early game is quite easy, once you get into the mid-game, the difficulty does start to ramp up quite a lot so you will need to grind a lot of optional missions in order to level your team up enough to be able to tackle the more difficult main missions.  This came off as a slightly cheap way to force you to space out the story missions and slow your progress down.  Padding, some would refer to it as.  While this is common in classic RPGs, it is not so common in turn based strategy RPGs so I found it a little odd to have such a difficulty wall like this in a game of this genre.  The difficulty does even out and then drop again towards the end of the game due to the acquisition of some new and extremely over-powered characters (who some would even call broken) so I think a little more difficulty balancing throughout would have improved the overall campaign progression.

Some sections are far too easy. Some are far too tough.

The game retains the class mechanics of earlier Final Fantasy games like Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V where each character does not have a set role, but can be switched as desired to a number of various different classes such who specialise in particular fields like healing magic, offensive magic, sword attacks, defence, ranged attacks and so on.  There are a limited number of classes available at the start but more are unlocked as the campaign progresses and you can unlock even more specialist classes by levelling up existing classes enough.  This allows you to tailor your team any way you see fit.  As is my tradition, I went for all out bone-shattering offence with ninjas who can wield dual weapons for double the damage and it worked out very nicely for me.

Your team can be built and kitted out as per any tactics you want to deploy

Being a late PlayStation 1 era game, the graphics are as expected, not great by today’s standards, but they are quite impressive for the hardware at the time and are done in a simple cartoon character manner which has made them age well even by today’s standards so it is by no means hard to look at.

It even had some pretty snazzy visual effects for special attacks like summoned monsters.

Sadly, one weak point of this game is its story.  While being a huge and epic tale about the fallout following an enormous war which involves upper class royalty looking down on lower class peasants and said peasants fighting back to gain equality and some control, it is very difficult to follow the nuances of the plot.  It is presented in a very unclear and confusing manner with multiple sub-plots going on at once which makes it difficult to see an overall picture of everyone’s current status.  This game was remade in later years for the PlayStation Portable in the form of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War Of The Lions, and the plot was re-worked slightly in this to make it easier to follow.  Sadly, choosing to play the PlayStation original, I was lumbered with the original interpretation of the plot which as mentioned is difficult to follow at times.  This took away some of the immersion and at times felt I was just fighting for the sake of fighting, not know what the real goal behind it was.

What’s going on here? I have no idea…

Final Fantasy Tactics Review Summary

Final Fantasy Tactics provides rock solid turn based strategy game-play with a very deep and customisable battle system that can be tailored to the exact way you want to play.  This is both deeply satisfying to set up and a lot of fun to implement.  If you are a fan of turn based strategy games, there is plenty to like here and the game is well deserving of its stellar reputation.  The only small issues along the way are the sometimes obscure story and uneven difficulty levels.  If these are an issue, there is always the option of playing the later remake on PlayStation Portable or mobile devices which it was also ported to.

Final Score: 4/5

Final Fantasy Tactics is a no brainer for anyone who enjoys strategy games

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Batman Arkham Knight Review

I will start my Batman Arkham Knight Review by first disclosing that I played the PC version.  I know, Shock horror.  But I seem to have been one of the lucky few that experienced little to no problems despite the PC version of this game being so horribly broken.  My gaming PC was fairly high end when built, but that was over 3 years ago now so it is pretty much middle of the road now being kitted out with an i7 3700K and a EVGA GeForce 670 SC 4GB which is only one card model above this game’s minimum requirement of a 660.  So the auto hardware detection suggested settings for my machine was to have almost every visual setting set to off entirely or low. Despite this low bar and the fact that the PC version is missing quite a few of the nice visual effects that the consoles got, it still managed to look very pleasing to the eyes anyway and maintained a steady frame rate throughout after what seemed like a few choppy patches early in the game.  It’s remarkable to see how far Rocksteady have pushed the aging Unreal 3 engine to deliver these visuals.

Even on low PC settings, it’s hardly an ugly game

Now onto the game itself.  The main focus of this game is the Batmobile.  And the Batmobile is amazing.  It does everything you want it do just the way you want to.  In this battle for Gotham, you have to engage enemies larger than an oversized thug, namely automated tanks, so you need larger means to tackle these threats as they will cut you to ribbons if you try it on foot.  Enter the Batmobile.

*growling sound*

It’s a car, it’s a tank, it’s a main character, it’s essentially your pet with the way it whines in delight as you call it and growls as you jump in and engage battle mode.  It shifts between driving like a car normally and strafing around as a tank with one button allowing you to dodge incoming fire as easily as you would on foot.  It can be called with a button as long as you’re somewhere near a road and you will never tire of calling it from a rooftop, jumping off the roof and landing in the Batmobile as it skids to a halt underneath you.

This is never not awesome

It’s also very cleverly involved in a lot of the environmental puzzles and with a little bit of work, environment manipulation, and the Batmobiles special abilities such as boost and grapple hook, you can get this vehicle almost anywhere you need to.  It’s a refreshing change from other games with vehicles where you just drive it somewhere, get out and leave it there.  You involve the Batmobile a lot more than just a means of conveyance in your fight for Gotham and it’s very satisfying.

The Batmobile is used in all kinds of clever ways

There is also a great variety of different activities in crime solving on your quest to save Gotham.  Reconstructing crime scenes from previous games re-appears as well as a lot of clever uses of new Bat-gadgets.  Speaking of which, as usual, you are regularly given new Bat-toys and add-ons for your suit and car so the action never has time to get repetitive or boring as it is being constantly refreshed and mixed up with new additions and skills.  The same goes with both regular foot enemies and automated tanks that the Batmobile tackles.  Newer and stronger types with new abilities and tactics are regularly introduced keeping you on your toes in combat too both in and out of the Batmobile.  One downside to the on-foot combat however is that it is generally quite a lot easier than previous games and Arkham veterans will find most of the thug battles very easy.

Only the really really big thug battles will prove a challenge. Veterans will sail through most with ease.

The over-arching plot is sadly one of the games weak points with the main villains for the most part feeling like tired over-worked cardboard cut-out enemies.  There is some intrigue in finding out the identity of the mysterious Arkham Knight, but it never feels terribly urgent and at the end of the day, he is just another goon to be foiled.  What is a lot more interesting and humorous as well as insightful is the banter that is supplied by another character that accompanies you throughout the game.  This characters presence is much more welcome and his role in the endgame is far more pleasing than anyone else’s.

Most of the villains kind of suck.

Speaking of the endgame, in what could be felt as a radical step, in order to get the true ending to this game, you must 100% everything possible.  What you get for completing the main story leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  That includes dozens of quite lengthy side-quests and hundreds of the traditional Riddler trophies.  I did not feel the urge to go through this 60+ hour long journey so I merely looked up the ending online and while it does answer some questions, it ends up just raising more and leaves you wanting to know what really happened.  But it is likely the developers Rocksteady left this ending deliberately ambiguous as they knew it would be their last game in the series.

What will become of the Batman?

Batman Arkham Knight Review Summary

Batman Arkham Knight continues the solid legacy of the Rocksteady Batman Arkham series after the underwhelming Arkham Origins which was developed by a different software house.  This is a true return to form of the excellence of Arkham City and Arkham Asylum but still adds enough new material, mainly the Batmobile, to keep it fresh and stop you from getting Bat-fatigue with the series.  Some dislike the addition of the Batmobile but I thought it was an excellent and extremely well implemented addition to the game that complements the existing material very well.

Final Score: 4/5

How could you not love the Batmobile?

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Guacamelee! Review

Being a long-time fan of old-school 2D brawler beat-em-ups, I was excited to hear about the release of Guacamalee! But it remained exclusive to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita for a while after its release with hints of a PC release later.  PC being my preferred platform, I patiently waited and in time it did come to PC so I dove in to it with my regular gaming co-op buddy Eugene.

Pretty much every game is better with co-op

The entire game is Mexican themed and you start off as a lowly farmer who’s love is stolen you by an undead villain.  Said villain wastes no time in killing you after the kidnapping, but while wandering around in the land of the dead, you come across a powerful spirit that bestows upon you a magical lucha libre mask turning you into a powerful luchador wrestler and returning you to the land of the living so you can go save the girl.

Carlos and his goons are a perpetual thorn in your side.

The first striking thing about this game is the art style which is very angular and cartoonesque.  It works well with the humour of the game which is extremely well written often making references to popular memes and cultural icons and many quirky characters that talk a lot of sass to you.

Very meme

The basic game-play is quite normal side-scrolling brawler action for the most part.  You unlock new moves over time, but there is not much shockingly new or innovative here.  Despite having said that, it is still very tightly put together and satisfying combat with the controls being sharp and fast rarely leaving you in the lurch or feeling like they’re letting you down which they often can in this genre.

Combat is sharp and satisfying

The main highlights are the boss fights which vary from enormous enemies who must have specialised tactics deployed against them to even larger enemies who cannot be defeated by conventional means, but become elaborate chase scenes where you must defeat them with the environment.  There are also a number of auto-scrolling platforming sections where you must use your special abilities to manoeuvre your way through and/or evade death.  There were some of the most annoying sections and I would happily have done with less of these and more combat.

The platforming sections are some of the games weakest

While playing through this on PC in co-op, we did find it a lot more difficult than we expected it to be.  The platform sections in particular where precise timing was required to not die were especially difficult.  Nevertheless, we persevered about 80% of the way through the game until we arrived at a boss that we just could not defeat.  He was too fast for us.  So we went to the internet to see if this irrational speed and difficulty was intentional and if there was a way to adjust it.  Lo and behold, we discovered there was a bug in the PC version where if VSync was disabled, the game would run at nearly 3 times its usual speed.  We re-enabled VSync and the game returned to normal speed which now seemed ludicrously easy in comparison to the earlier speed so we sailed through the rest of the game with ease.

But the boss sections are some of the best

Guacamelee! Review Summary

Guacamelee! provides lots of reliable 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up action so if you are a fan of this genre and old classics like Streets Of Rage or Golden Axe, you really can’t go far wrong with Guacamalee!  Team up with a co-op buddy for even more fun and enjoy the hilarious pollo filled ride.  But if you play the PC version, be sure to turn VSync on!

Final Score: 3/5

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Editorial: The Tipping Point

It happens sometimes, you hit a certain point in a game and suddenly your whole aim in that game is drastically changed. It might be the moment you decide “screw it, I’m never gonna get 1000/1000 on this game” when you notice one irritatingly difficult/time consuming achievement. Or it might be the moment you’ve been stuck on the same puzzle in Zelda for 2 hours and decide the time has come for a quick trip to Gamefaqs.

Whatever it is, whenever it happens your self imposed rules are torn up. Once you succumb to a game guide for one puzzle, you’ll be quicker to do it again when you hit another brick wall. Once you’ve given up on getting all the achievements, those daft little pointless collectables you’ve been hunting out so painstakingly for the last 8 hours suddenly don’t matter at all (think Alan Wake and his Coffee Flasks)

I most recently experienced this while blasting through Trials Evolution, right around the time I started onto the “Extreme” tracks. My aim up to then had been getting a Gold medal on each track, and I’d been doing pretty well with only a handful of tracks so far still sitting on Silver medal status. The fact that some of those Golds took me an hour of effort to get didn’t bother me at all, I enjoyed the challenge. It took about five minutes of the first Extreme track for that to change though. I knew I had absolutely no mission of ever getting Golds on all the 8 Extreme tracks. Suddenly the goal I had been striving for was seemingly unattainable, and in the blink of an eye my goal was now just to finish all the tracks and forget the Gold medals. And I was fine with that.

So, yeah, I pussied out and gave up on my challenge. I was a quitter. So why don’t I care? Because in my opinion I’m not admitting defeat. I probably *could* get all the golds if I spent enough time, I just don’t want to any more. It’s reached that point where it just wouldn’t be fun to me – it would be more of a chore. Above all else, gaming is meant to be fun. It’s a hobby, it’s something that you pay money to do in your spare time and it shouldn’t feel like a chore. If it ever does, maybe you should remind yourself of that and change the rules, or change the game completely.

The completionist in me makes me want to beat every game I start, but there’s so many amazing games out there nowadays that if I’ve completely lost enjoyment in a game I’m not gonna keep playing for the sake of it. Towards the end of Disc 2 of L.A. Noire I grew tired of the seemingly random nature of the interrogations and the old Rockstar trademark of dragging out a story with too much filler so I haven’t played it in about a year. The beauty of it is you can go back to it any time you want should you fancy another crack at the challenge. In my case I’ve spent long enough away from the fantastic atmosphere and change of pace gameplay of L.A. Noire that when I go back to finish it off in the next few months I’ll enjoy it a lot more than I would have if I had just ploughed through it back when I started it.

Every game comes with its own set of rules and gameplay constructs, but don’t forget who’s really in charge of your gaming experience.

Hint: It isn’t Bill Gates and his achievement points.

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D4 Dark Dreams Don’t Die Review

After playing Deadly Premonition last year and loving it ,despite the PC version being probably the single worst PC port I have ever seen, I was very excited to hear that the next game from designer Swery was being ported from XBox One to PC.  I was a little apprehensive at first because on it’s original XBox One platform, D4 was a very Kinect heavy game so was unsure how well this would transfer to a mouse or controller alone.  Read on to find out how well pleased I was with the entire package in my D4 Dark Dreams Don’t Die Review!

Things start off weird and only get weirder

The best way to describe this game is simply as total and utter madness all the time.  Everything and everybody is ridiculously over the top, quirky and wacky to the extreme.  And while some may this this would make it tiresome, it really does not.  It just makes the different characters, locations and events stand out when they are all very memorable and original with their own mannerisms and quirks so you are unlikely to forget anyone or have difficulty differentiating between people.

You’re unlikely to forget or mix up any of these larger than life characters

Most of the gameplay consists of walking around areas and interacting with objects and people to extract and piece together information in your hunt for the infamous D who you have vowed to hunt down on someone else’s behalf.  The sheer amount of interactivity is staggering and almost every object and person you come across can be interacted with in some way.  You can use your “vision” (kind of like a sixth sense) to easily figure out what the key objects and people you need to interact with are but pretty much everything has some beneficial outcome for you examining it and half the fun is to just explore and investigate everything so you can find more comedy gold and weirdness.  Almost all objects and people can be interacted with and many of them will give you side-quests to perform to rewards you with items or boosts to your health and other statistics.  As expected, these quests are also ridiculous and can range from racing around checking creaky doors or answering air-plane trivia.

Examine every little thing. You never know what benefits you may reap.

The other part of the gameplay which is much less frequent is a series of quick-time events which usually take the form of extremely over the top fight scenes where everyone involved pulls off nigh on impossible acts of co-ordination, gymnastics and grace.  Again, these are totally ridiculous and will have you in stitches as you struggle to make sense of the telemetry of it all.

The fight scenes don’t happen to often but when they do, they’re great

There are many dialogue options ranging from purely provocatory to straight-laced straight man and you are given extra rewards to “stay in character” as a serious cop.  But this can be quite hard to do at times as it’s not always clear what kind of tone you should be taking as it switches regularly between flippant and serious.

What would you say to this guy if you were a Boston detective?

Your main goal throughout the game is to find important objects filled with memories called “Mementos” and use these to dive into the past to search for clues to help you find the mysterious “D”.  Doing this, you spend a lot of the game in the past searching for clues and the parts that take place in the present day are centred around finding more of these mementos to investigate the past more.

Find mementos in the present and dive into the past to investigate!

One minor complaint is that the controls can be a little awkward with the right stick being used to both look around and move forwards and backwards which is done in an “on rails” fashion only allowing you to move between designated spots rather than totally free roaming.  This is most likely done to have more artistic control over the set pieces and how you get to see them.

Movement is not free and is guided along set waypoints on paths

You never get to stop completely because even during cut-scenes there are small quick-time events that will give you more bonus points and money for examining things during cut-scenes so if you want to get as much as possible, you have to stay on the ball at all times!

Apparently cats operate shops on airplanes in the past

D4 Dark Dreams Don’t Die Review Summary

Dark Dreams Don’t Die is a total riot and is enormously entertaining start to finish with little to no let up at all.  The only problem is that this is going to be an episodic series and only season 1 is available so far.  It is also not a terribly long season at maybe 3-4 hours going quickly and about 10 if you want to do and see absolutely everything so you will be left begging for more by the time you have finished it!  Can’t recommend this one enough.

Final Score: 5/5

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