Nintendo Consoles

Sumire

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/14/2021
Posted in: Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, Switch. Leave a comment

Publisher: GameTomo

Developer: GameTomo

Release Date: 05/26/2021

Rating: N/A

MSRP: $14.99

Also Available On

Sumire is a beautifully made game with charming visuals and well-written dialog. While you can finish the game in about 3 hours it’s quality content and I was moved and touched by the story. You play as a young girl named Sumire who has recently lost her grandmother. The death split your parents up and made them distant and you feel like your life is falling apart. One night, a magical seed flies through your bedroom windows and you befriend a magical talking flower who only has one day to let you see your grandmother again.

The game is in a 2D sidescrolling style game, but there’s no-platforming here. This is a typical adventure game, but there really aren’t many objectives and there’s no obscurity or cryptic puzzles here. In fact, there are no puzzles and very few characters to interact with. There is a map with a few areas you can fast travel around to, but there is a good and bad deed system set in place that can change the ending of the story. The game really focuses on being good to people, being the mature one in a situation, and realizing that life is finite. It’s pretty heavy stuff.

Early in the game, you come across creatures you can do good things for which aren’t complicated. Give a scarecrow a hat, give a frog a bug to eat, but what bug you chose will determine a good or bad deed. Other larger objectives have you delivering things to people from other people and these are pretty much done as the story progresses. The first half of the game is spent wandering around collecting a few coins to spend and spend them wisely, on yourself or other people. There are a couple of mini-games thrown in for good measure, but the second half of the game picks up the pace quite a bit as the story concludes.

The music is also fantastic and really gets the heartstrings plucking as you really feel for these characters and Sumire’s understanding of death and just that in life you have to let things go, things end, and death is permanent. Her constant reliance on the flower is also sad and it’s just wishful thinking and false hopes. Sumire also sorts out a love relationship and has to solve her bully issue with three girls who constantly pick on her. It’s stuff every teen goes through in life and it really brought me back to mine. Thankfully, I never felt lost or wondered what to do next as you just move left all the time and the story unfolds itself. 

Usually, I frown at games that are this short, but if they have a lot to show in such a short time I’m happy. Sumire has a great story that’s short, but really makes you think back to your teen years and early 20’s of having to face life alone for the first time and realizing every action you do matters and affects you until the day you die. So many life lessons are tossed in here at rapid-fire but dealt with in a touching manner. However, there still isn’t much of a game here. You walk around, collect coins, talk to animals and creatures, do a few small fetch quests, and then move on with the story. It’s satisfying and fun, but I felt the side quests were a bit pointless. It’s not like you have a heavy dialog with these creatures and you come back to them later. It did feel a bit like filler to me.

Overall, Sumire is a beautifully crafted game with great music, heavy dialog that can be really touching and nostalgic, and it just feels like a good wholesome game in the end. It’s relaxing, doesn’t expect too much out of you, and after a few hours, you get a nostalgic trip back to your teens and early 20’s when life just got started. 

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/13/2021
Posted in: Mac, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Sukeban Games

Developer: Ysbryd Games

Release Date: 06/21/2016

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $14.99

Also Available On

I’m not much of a visual novel fan. I love reading books and grew up reading a lot, but visual novels are basically just digital manga, and I prefer traditional manga. I bought VA-11 Hall-A years ago and never got around to it because there’s so much reading. What got me interested was the bartending aspect. It seemed like a fun time-management mini-game mixed in and I was completely wrong. However, the strongest point with this game is the fun characters and how invested in their stories I became.

You play Julianne Stingray, a bartender in a cyberpunk world setting nearly 100 years in the future. The bar is close to getting shut down and you’re just living life day-to-day until that time comes. The game is pretty slow-paced and takes quite a while to pick up and get interesting. There’s a lot of character setup and it takes such a long time so it feels natural and organic rather than rushed. There isn’t really any gameplay. I spent more time clicking through dialog than anything else, but I did like all the characters. They were fun, unique, and had great personalities that I got attached to. If I were to say there was an ultimate goal it would be to make amends with your ex-girlfriend who you got into a fight with years ago and need to apologize to, but honestly, this is a slice-of-life type of game. You really only need to just read through everything.

You do earn money at the end of every day and this can be spent on items to keep Jill focused at her job. There will be a hint when you get to your apartment as to what she might want. If you don’t buy this item she won’t remember what customers order and you have to remember yourself. There are also major bills that have to be paid so you need to spend wisely. There is also an optional phone you can view with various news apps. Just some insight into the world really and nothing that matters towards the main story. There is an option to customize your apartment a bit, but it seemed superfluous in the end and pointless.

As you talk to patrons you have to make their drinks. This seemed fun at first, but it quickly becomes dull and stale by day three in the game. There is a recipe book full of 24 different drinks you can make and you can filter them by flavor and type. Patrons will give hints as to what they want and you sometimes even have to read the descriptions to get cryptic ones correct. Drinks are made with artificial chemicals in this world and you have five. There are squares that fill up with each measurement and you can mix or blend the drink and age it or add ice. That’s literally it. I thought you could upgrade the bar and add new flavors and devices, but this is it. You end up cycling through all 24 drinks early on and maybe 10 repeats constantly. It ends up no longer being fun to make these drinks and just interrupts the story. There are also no instructions on the difference between mixing and blending. You need to count how many times the shaker wiggles and if it starts going fast…that’s blended. If you mess up a drink you lose a bonus at the end of the day. However, you can’t serve messed-up drinks as the game won’t let you. Some drinks allow you to add synthetic alcohol as much or as little as you want and this is supposed to change the story somehow…by making characters spill things when they’re drunker, but I never saw this happen.

The one game mechanic in an otherwise interactive visual novel is boring and somewhat pointless. If there was a much larger selection of drinks, or if I could add some later, or upgrade equipment, that would be fun, but what’s here feels half-assed and tacked on. I also don’t like how we never get to know what’s going on in the world. The game hints at things happening politically and with various corporations, and even a hacking group, but we get nothing in that regard. It’s mostly just what’s going on inside the bar and the characters you meet; it stays very local and centralized. I also felt the visuals while artistically beautiful were boring to look at. There isn’t any change in scenery and the static anime-style characters just change facial expressions. It’s very hard to stare at the same background for nearly a dozen hours and make dozens upon dozens of repeated drinks just to stay invested in a character’s story. If it weren’t for the great characters this game would be utterly boring nonsense.

With that said, VA-11 Hall-A is only worth getting into if you love anime, visual novels, or just like reading books. The bartending aspect is a poorly throughout afterthought that hinders the progress of the story rather than helps it due to the small recipe size and laughable mechanics. I really liked the characters here, and the story ended on a nice note. I expected some sort of twist ending where the bar would close early, or the hackers would take over all the androids and something interesting would happen, but we just get a slice-of-life anime-style bartending experience.

Beautiful Desolation

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/10/2021
Posted in: Mac, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch. Leave a comment

Publisher: Christopher Bischoff

Developer: Christopher Bischoff

Release Date: 02/26/2020

MSRP: $19.99

Rating: N/A

Also Available On

I love post-apocalyptic anything. Just the curiosity of wondering what would happen when a man is on the brink of extinction is morbid yet fascinating. Beautiful Desolation takes the isometric point and click of yore and brings it to life with over 40 fully voiced and wonderfully designed characters and a time warping story. The game starts out with you, Mark Leslie, arguing with his wife about someone whose emotional mess you have to clean up. Suddenly a giant object slams into the ground from the sky and brings about the apocalypse with machines. You are now trying to find a way to figure out what the Penrose, the giant object, is and how to stop it from changing the world. The only issue is that doesn’t go as planned and you are warped an unknown amount of years into the future and must stop factions from fighting and chose between groups of characters.

Choices mostly matter before the ending of the game. There are several groups of characters, some warring with each other, and some just single characters that don’t offer any rewards, and you must decide what happens to them all. You fly around an overhead map in your Buffalo transport and objectives are obtained by talking to characters. Each area is small and linear and there’s usually only one person to talk to in each area. The characters are really well done and the style of the game feels like a mid-90’s Fallout with pre-rendered animations in a box and the text appears below it. The characters look amazing from robots to weird fleshy things to plants and various lifeforms. There’s tons of imagination in this game and even the environments look amazing. However, there’s not much else when it comes to exploring.

When you land in an area you will most likely find things that need to be used or find things that need something to be used with. Sometimes a character might need an item, or they might need you to solve a large issue that decides the fate of their race or faction. The issue here is that objectives are so obtuse and cryptic and you can easily miss an option to solve a large problem. For example, you need to ultimately find three items to restart the array to let you back on the Penrose to go home. One item needed is Red Mercury. There are two ways to obtain this and depending on your choices once will always be cut off. There is also one route that lets you fight a few bosses via a weird arcade game. You need tokens to put combatants in this machine. You need at least three tokens to even bother and that’s never explained. To get these tokens you must choose one of three outcomes for a few factions, or the fourth outcome gives you Red Mercury for the array. I wound up missing two of these and only got two tokens in the game so the item I needed from the final boss for the arcade game to get Red Mercury was cut off. 

This long string of outcomes that are hidden is a little unfair. I also accidentally decided a fate without even knowing that option would do that and I wasn’t given a second chance. I decided the fate of two factions early on and wound up doing the opposite because I didn’t realize clicking a certain option would launch that decision and it was too late. There are also some items that need to be bought to progress and you need credits that are exchanged for gold. To acquire gold you need to find them hidden in certain areas by just wandering around. This was also something never explained and for a while, I couldn’t figure out how to get credits. There are also some bogus items that you can waste credits on, so I’m not sure if you can end up not finishing the game because you have found all the gold and don’t have enough credits. There’s only so much gold in the game and there’s not much.

One of my biggest gripes is needing to talk to certain characters before something would advance. Icons on the map flash if there is a new dialog for a character, but that’s if you have already done something to trigger that. It won’t flash for items not discovered or anything like that. I had to use a walkthrough through most of the game because there were times I felt l made progress and the next character would give me zero hints on where to go next. Some objectives I could figure out alone, but 90% needed a walkthrough. Just because the game looks mid-90’s doesn’t mean it needs to play like it. It still didn’t stop me from looking forward to the next area and character to talk to as they are so unique and interesting.

Overall, Beautiful Desolation is a well-written and very stylized post-apocalyptic adventure game with lots of nostalgic feelings of the mid-’90s. However, the insane amount of cryptic and obtuse objectives makes the game very frustrating without a guide. I also didn’t like how often you would start feeling like you’re making progress and then get stopped dead at every turn with the only option is to wander around every area until you notice something you missed, and as the game progresses that can take forever. You end up unlocking over 50 areas towards the end and going back to them all is insane. I love the voice acting, the art style, and the story itself, but it’s so unfair and stops you dead in your tracks at every turn. Progress is incredibly grindy here and not to mention the major decisions in the game can easily be missed or skipped over.

Little Nightmares II

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/27/2021
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S. Leave a comment

Publisher: Bandai Namco Games

Developer: Tarsier Studios

Release Date: 02/10/2021

Rating: Teen

MSRP: $29.99

Also Available On

Little Nightmares was a creepy platformer with a minimal story and narrative. The game was mostly all about atmosphere and puzzle-solving. These games cropped up after Limbo was a smash-hit and games like Inside also followed. The only downside to these games is that they tend to not shape any kind of narrative or world-building. There’s a lot of interesting things to look at, and clearly, the setting you are in is a curious thing to want to know about. Little Nightmares II puts you in the shoes of a paper bag-wearing kid who is running from something, but you never know what. Throughout the entire game, you go from location to location not knowing what your end goal is, and even after finishing the game, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of everything.

The game starts out giving you simple controls such as jumping and picking up objects using the physics engine. You won’t be doing this very often except to use weapons occasionally and throw an object at a button to open a door. The atmosphere sets in right away with your character running through a forest and trying to avoid bear traps and traverse fallen bridges. Once you get to a certain area you meet your first main monster and then you are introduced to combat. I really don’t want to call it that as all you do is pick up an ax and swing it, but it’s completely based on physics. Usually, you will use an ax to break down walls, but you will use it to fight enemies at the school level and it’s all about timing. The ax is very heavy and your character can’t move it very fast, but it works.

The first area is rather short but pretty cinematic, and things will slow down greatly as the game goes on. After a few areas, you will notice the game adds a lot of puzzle-solving, most of which don’t require much thinking, there are a few physics-based puzzles, and halfway through you meet a companion that requires some puzzle solving with two people, but the ease of the puzzles is to keep the pace going. You don’t want to spend too long in any one area. I felt the chase from enemies and puzzle-solving was well balanced. Several screens will go by of just platforming, maybe just empty screens of scene-setting, but I do want to talk about these monsters. The game is very creepy and the main monsters basically chase you throughout the entire area you are in. The school has a teacher that can stretch her neck out and chase you through vents and under tables. The hospital has a doctor that can walk on ceilings. They show up in some scenes, but not every area has you killing this main villain, the most important part for you is escape.

There is some frustration with the game and that’s a lot of trial and error. Some scenes wanted to get across the screen via a certain path, but I got caught by the villain numerous times before figuring out how to do it. There were also control issues climbing things in which my character got stuck or I didn’t understand that jumping across a ravine to hang on to my character’s hand was going to be an issue. In several areas, I had to restart the screen over and over until I walked across that beam just right, or didn’t get caught. Thankfully you just restart that screen and it helps keep the pace going. I just wish there was more story to be told or something else to hold on to rather than the next creepy monster or setting.

The game looks great visually with a lot of nice art, but technically it’s not super impressive. Textures look muddy up close and some objects aren’t the highest poly count. The animations are great, however, and the controls are good, there’s just that annoyance with the game’s physics. It’s also pretty short as it can be finished in about 5 hours, and I honestly wanted more. The creature designs are so fantastically creepy and unique, and the game skims the line between gory and just plain dark and creepy. It’s never a gorefest, but it feels like it could be. There are animal guts, but not human, there are body parts everywhere, but they’re mannequins. It’s a fun line to walk down and it’s done just right here.

Grim Fandango Remastered

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/16/2021
Posted in: Android, iOS, Mac, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Double Fine Productions

Developer: Double Fine Productions

Release Date: 01/26/2015

Rating: Teen

MSRP: $14.99

Also Available On

Time Schaffer games are always hit or miss. He may be a great story writer or character creator, but he’s not a great game designer. I don’t want to come out swinging with everyone thinking I hate Grim Fandango or all Schaffer-made games. A lot of his work is considered some of the best games ever made on PC, which I get, but they’re remembered for their story, atmosphere, and characters – not so much their gameplay.

You play as Manual Calavera. A Mexican salesman of the dead who gets wrapped up in a huge film noir-style story trying to save a mysterious girl, get back at his evil overlord of a boss, and also an evil co-worker. The game is split up into four years. It takes four years for people to travel by foot to the Ninth Level if they don’t qualify for an express train ticket. For some reason, Manny can’t get any good clients yet his co-worker Domino can. You wind up uncovering a plot of fraud, sabotage, subterfuge, and love. I can’t go too far into story details, but they’re quite entertaining enough to keep you pushing on.

And pushing on you will do. The game’s object hunting obtuseness varies from minimal to I will never figure this out without a walkthrough. The way objects are used is very illogical at times and you wonder how Schaffer thought gamers would think in these ways. It doesn’t help that the areas you explore are massive with dozens of hallways and rooms and you can easily miss something that needs picking up or completely bypass something that needs to be interacted with. LucasArts had a lot on their hands with this game as it was the first 3D game they developed and the most sophisticated to date. There’s no object mixing either. Manny stores everything in his cloak/jacket and you must either try everything on every interactive object or simply think in odd obscure ways.

One example early on requires Manny to gum up a pneumatic tube system and get the maintenance demon to open the door. That was fine and all, but the demon left and I couldn’t get in the door. I then had to re-acquire all the items needed to gum up the system again by running down hallways and do a ton of more backtracking all because I didn’t realize I had to throw the bolt to stop the door from closing. How was I supposed to guess that? You run into these situations every step of the way and it gets exhausting and discouraging. Another scenario requires Manny to take a sign and use it to find a hidden doorway in part of a forest. This forest has doorways that loop back around to the same room and do nothing. How would you know to take that sign from the previous room and use it as a compass to find the hidden doorway in this room? The puzzles are insane and poorly designed and lead to constant frustration. I felt my progress halted every five minutes.

Now with puzzle obscurity out of the way, there’s nothing else to this game. There are pretty environments to look at, great music and voice acting to listen to, and some great characters, albeit none of them very memorable. You can unlock quite a few achievements by talking to certain people at certain points or looking at certain objects. I find this in tune with the puzzle obscurity. I also didn’t like how many areas are reused over and over again, while in new ways, they’re still the same. Things are just spread so far apart and so many sub-plots and hints are given to you that you can’t make heads or tails of any of it. There’s no journal to keep track of what’s said or even what you’re really supposed to be doing next. It can become quite frustrating.

Thankfully the game isn’t very long, especially if you use a walkthrough. My adventure was over in about 6 hours and I enjoyed it while it lasted, but it’s not something I will be talking about for years to come. The gameplay time isn’t enough to really flesh out the characters more than you wanted, and almost plays out like a Pixar movie. It’s a fun blast while you’re in it, but once the credits roll you quickly move on to something else and probably won’t remember it a year down the road. Something about this whole game just didn’t stick with me and I can’t put my finger on it. If the puzzles weren’t so obscure I might be more inclined. At least there’s fun developer commentary all over the place and the remastered upgrades are nice. Everything looks sharp and clean and rendered in a much higher resolution. However, there are still many collision and animation bugs. 

Overall, Grim Fandango is a fun story with some fun characters while you’re in it, but will quickly move on to other things as something about this game doesn’t quite stick. It feels more like a Pixar cartoon with gameplay bits in between than a full-blown game. It looks good, sounds good, and the voice acting is excellent, but many won’t finish the game just due to how obscure getting through everything really is.

Oxenfree

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/26/2020
Posted in: Android, iOS, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Night School Studio

Developer: Night School Studio

Release Date: 01/14/2016

Rating: Teen

MSRP: $9.99

Also Available On

Oxenfree is all about horror and mystery. It starts out with five students in their early 20’s arriving at a small town in the Pacific Northwest to discover some sort of weird thing that goes on in the caves there when you tune a radio to a certain frequency. After a good amount of dialog and plot and character development, you tune your radio and discover a rift in time and discover the island is actually haunted and you are trying to free the ghosts within. Why, how, and what they are in the mystery that I won’t spoil.

The horror elements are mostly audio-related and are something I have not really heard in a game before. The game uses the eerieness of radio static, and voices. Have you ever gone down a scary YouTube rabbit hole and watched “Top 10 scariest sounds” or something like that? Well, if you ever heard one that is about strange radio call signs that were used in the Cold War then you know what you will hear in this game. It made the hair on my neck stand up and was very chilling to hear. There are various stones you can find throughout the game that give you tidbits of stories about the island and these creepy radio calls are part of this. 

You wander around the island listening to the dialog as there are no puzzles in this game. It’s very much a “walking simulator”, but you walk and talk with the characters and choose from three different dialog options as they pop up in conversation. Some of these are story altering and some are not. These choices determine the ending you get which I found was a little too short and disappointing. I really got to like the characters here and the game is so short you can’t invest a lot of time into them. Every so often the game will bring you into a time loop and these are when a lot of important choices are made. Even for only a 4 hours game the story is done quite well and has a beginning, middle, and clear ending and you wind up exploring most of the island albeit at a snail’s pace. You can wander around further to collect letters and find these frequency stones, but I honestly didn’t find the story of the island as interesting as the characters.

The voice acting is actually really well done and I like that when you answer before someone finishes a sentence Alex, your character, will interrupt with a correct tone and inflection in her voice. The constant bantering between the characters is the most entertaining part of the game and I was always looking forward to hearing what they had to say. The game also looks really good with 2D backgrounds and 3D models. It’s a 2D side-scrolling adventure so it’s hard to get lost here. I found the game’s pacing was all over the place however, there would be sections where I felt I was progressing quickly only to get slowed down by too much backtracking or lots of cut scenes and dialog. You don’t have to really think to finish the game, and I felt collecting everything was too tedious due to the slow pace of the game.

Overall, Oxenfree is a great horror mystery game that while not being very memorable will entertain you for an afternoon and might be something you discuss with friends as the story does have a twist ending. It looks good, has great voice acting, and the characters are interesting, but the constant backtracking, slow pace, and almost zero gameplay may put some off.

Raji: An Ancient Epic

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/23/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Super.com

Developer: Nodding Heads Games

Release Date: 08/18/2020

Rating: N/A

MSRP: $24.99

Also Available On

Small indie games can usually bring some better content than large AAA budget games these days due to the smaller scope and less risk financially. Some of these games, still, rarely stand out and become huge massive success stories. Raji is a game I wish could become a success story that blows up like Journey, Braid, Limbo, or Inside, but it feels like it’s missing something to bring it to that level. For starters, the story is rather dull and uninteresting and mostly focuses on teaching the player about Asian-Indian mythology. You play as Raji who is determined to rescue her brother, Golu, from an evil demon. The story mostly focuses on mythology, but Raji and Golu aren’t very exciting characters. They feel very one-note.

The game’s main focus is combat and platforming. Combat is surprisingly deep with acrobatics and various moves that made it feel like Prince of Persia. Raji can do backflips off walls, pole spins, and each of the three weapons you acquire has a special attack, light, and heavy attack. You start out with a staff and this weapon is great for reach, the second weapon is a bow, and the third is a sword whip, and shield. You will end up switching weapons based on what enemies you are fighting. The enemy designs represent Asian-Indian mythology and look cool and are a challenge to fight. The game might seem easy at first, but there were sections where I did numerous times and the boss fights are a great deal difficult as well. However, there are difficulty spikes throughout the game. You will breeze through a few fights and then keep dying on just one that either has an unfair amount of enemies or multiple waves. You can heal by doing finishing moves, but that’s the only way in combat.

You can acquire skill points to add various elements that can damage enemies passively. These are mostly hidden in the game and require venturing off on different paths, but I didn’t make too much of an effort as the game is so short with only three large levels. Platforming is actually the most enjoyable part of the game, but the game focuses more on combat. While combat looks good and controls well, it just doesn’t have that oomph that other games like this have like Prince of Persia or even God of War. It feels like there’s no response from enemies when you hit them, there’s no weight to her movements. There’s momentum, but no feeling behind her which I feel would have taken the already detailed combat one step further. Platforming works well with wall runs, double jumps, shimmying and hopping across poles.

The game adds puzzles if you can call them that, as they aren’t really puzzles. You have to spin things to match them up, but it’s not like a typical puzzle. You can just rotate the rings until everything matches up. No puzzles here really. This is probably the weakest part about the game including the areas in level two where you have to throw out lilypads in the water to hop across. What’s the point? This doesn’t add a challenge to the game but just feels like a useless element that took focus away from something else. At least the game looks amazing with epic vistas, good lighting effects, and lots of detail. It’s clear a lot of care went into the game, but it needed more time for some polishing. I even ran into some game-breaking bugs with enemies disappearing or not appearing, and getting stuck on ledges.

Overall, Raji is a great action platformer that has some faults. It focuses too much on mythology and less on our heroine, combat controls well and looks fancy, but has no weight or feel behind it, and platforming is the best part is focused on less over combat. The puzzles aren’t even puzzles and the overall experience is only a few hours long. I haven’t played an indie game quite this fun in ages, and even with huge difficulty spikes, the game has a lot to offer.

Pumpkin Jack

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/22/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Headup Games

Developer: Nicolas Meyssonnier

Release Date: 10/23/2020

Rating: N/A

MSRP: $29.99

Also Available On

Small indie platformers are something I like paying attention to. Pumpkin Jack caught my eye as it looks and feels like a PS2 era platformer that would have fit in at that time, but has more polished gameplay than most did in that same time period. You play as a demon named Jack who is sent by the Devil to stop an evil wizard from taking over the world. It’s a very paper-thin story, but the game is so short that anything else couldn’t really flourish. This is also akin to PS2 era platformers as most of their stories were pretty basic and uninteresting due to the length and budgets. You have a crow companion that spews hints and dialog at you, but that’s it story-wise. The cinematics are nice and the presentation for the story is fantastic, but the content is really lacking.

This goes for most of the game honestly. While what is here is really solid it’s very elementary and basic. Combat consists of one button mashing over and over with an aerial attack. You can send your crow out for a quick hit from afar, but the main attraction is the various weapons you acquire at the end of each level. Ranging from shovels, scythes, magic orbs, and a shotgun. The arsenal is quite fun and keeps things mixed up, and so do the enemies. The enemies are well designed and one of the strongest points in the game. While you can button mash you must also dodge as dying is quick if you aren’t on top of your moves. Some enemies require being stunned first, some will spawn until you destroy their spawn point, some are strong, some are weak, and each enemy needs a certain approach to them.

The main focus outside of combat is platforming. You will be pressing the jump button at least once every 2-3 seconds without a break. Tons of platforming that can get a bit tricky, but the momentum and physics of Jack feel just right and the double jump helps quite a bit too. This would be a pretty monotonous game if there were just platforming and one button combat. To break this up there are some mini-games you can play with some using only Jack’s head that have you doing Simon Says, guiding bombs, memory games, etc. There are also on-rails sections in each level that require dodging and shooting down enemies. It’s quite fun, but you realize there is a formula in each level and while these are different such as riding in a minecart versus being carried by a giant bird they are essentially the same mini-games with different skins. At least the amount you do these is varied with some levels having a lot and some having only a couple.

The only thing you collect in the game is crow skulls used to unlock costumes, which feels pointless as the game is about 4 hours long and there’s no replay value. You see everything the game has in the first playthrough and due to its repetition and overall basic gameplay I have no desire to go back through. It’s fun while it lasts, and can offer a decent challenge, but it’s very formulaic when you step back and look at the game as a whole. The level design is great with various spooky themes like mines, graveyards, swamps, forests, and a neat Christmas level, but again, this is a PS2 era designed game with 2020 flair. The boss fights are probably the most unique things in the game, but I can say if this game came out 15 years ago it would have been a smash hit.

The visuals are also very dated looking a couple of generations old despite using DirectX 12 and even having ray-tracing and DLSS support. The textures are just muddy and low-resolution and they’re meant to look like an older platformer, and the game had a low budget, but it still needs mentioning. However, with the tight controls, great platforming, decent challenge, and unique enemies and bosses, the game is just good enough to recommend for a one-time playthrough. The story is paper-thin and uninteresting, the combat is simple, but there are five different weapons to use, interesting level design, and there’s an actual challenge.

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/18/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Developer: id Software

Release Date: 10/20/2020

MSRP: $19.99

Rating: Mature

Also Available On

At the end of Doom Eternal, I was left with a bit of disappointment. Too many things were forced into the game and it got tiresome towards the end. New enemies were uninteresting and slowed the pace down some, too much platforming, and the difficulty was all over the place no matter what difficulty setting you were on. The Ancient Gods, sadly, exacerbates this by adding a new enemy that, once again, slows the pace down and is just an excuse to use a certain weapon mod. There are no new weapons, just three newish levels. I say newish as the third level – The Holt – is a recycled Urdak level. It’s boring and uninteresting, yet the first level, UAC Atlantic, is just a giant science center in the ocean. The Swamps, the second level, was the most interesting of the three, but they aren’t amazing overall. 

The story takes place right after the ending of Eternal with Doomguy trying to kill the one true Seraphim God to end all demons. It’s mostly just dialog over intercom here and there and just barely advances the already silly Doom Eternal story. Outside of a few codex pages, there’s not much else to the story here. In fact, there are even fewer secrets to find. Just 1ups, BFG ammo, codex pages, and there are six Gore Nests and three Slayer Gates. The Gates will give you an extra perk that has been added, which aren’t very useful, and the Gore Nests reward new Slayer Skins. That’s pretty much it for secrets, but the levels are very long and incredibly difficult. Combat arenas are tougher and longer and I died numerous times in each level even on the lowest difficulty. This is my biggest issue with Doom Eternal. Doom 2016’s areas felt hand-tailored, but Eternal’s feel randomized. Even the final boss is insanely difficult with too much jumping and worrying about obstacles rather than just shooting. 

The Ancient Gods feels mostly like stuff from the cutting room floor rather than an actual expansion. There’s almost nothing new here outside of 2.5 new levels and a few perks and two irritating enemies. Yes, like Maurader and Maykyr Drone, these enemies just slow the pace down. We get another Maykr Drone that has a shield and is only vulnerable when it’s down, and then there are the Spirits. These possess demons and make them stronger and the only way to kill them is to use the Microwave Beam or kill all the enemies in the area so it disappears. Super annoying, not any fun at all, and just slows things down. I would have liked to see a new weapon or a new actual demon.

Overall, The Ancient Gods are still fast-paced and fun Eternal combat, but it’s just not enough new to be considered anything more than some lost levels. Fewer secrets, new annoying enemies, insanely pumped up the difficulty, longer and less interesting levels, and only three new perks. It’s still plenty of fun and if you finished Eternal early on then this will give you a few hours of mayhem to get another taste, but it’s nothing to write home about.

Doom Eternal

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/27/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Developer: id Software

Release Date: 03/19/2020

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $59.99

Also Available On

Doom (2016) helped resurrect the aging and dying franchise. Doom 3 was scary and atmospheric but lost the fast-paced action of the original games. Doom bought this back in 2016 with a rocking soundtrack, fantastic visuals, fast-paced shooting, and what felt like Doom brought into the future, it was nearly perfect. Eternal follows in the footsteps of Doom 2016 by trying to expand the lore, story, and combat altogether. It does a great job doing this, but it does bring about some problems that didn’t exist in the first game. 

You are still Doomguy or the Doomslayer trying to stop Hell from invading Earth. id Software did a great job expanding the lore via a codex that has some interesting reads on the backstory of the Doomslayer and his origins and what the world is that he’s trying to save and destroy. The locations are more varied this time around with more back and forth between Hell and a mix thereof. Combat is basically the same as well as the demons you encounter minus a few additions. A new shoulder blaster has been added that can shoot fire or ice bombs as well as a flame. I feel this was probably the most useless addition as it’s one more thing to remember while you’re furiously trying to kill enemies. The ice bomb can freeze a group of enemies if you’re backed into a corner and the firebomb does a decent amount of splash damage. The flamethrower though…what was the point? On the other hand, you have a new super punch ability which can be used to knock out some demons’ armor and open walls for secrets. You also get a new dash ability as well which is used for platforming.

That’s another thing that’s been added is more platforming. You can wall climb on some surfaces and jumping from platform to platform works well enough but feels wholly unnecessary. Secrets consist of numerous items from songs to unlock to play in the Fortress of Doom, codex pages, toys, and an all-new upgrade system for the Praetor Suit and weapons. Weapons get two mods each and can then be upgraded with weapon runes. There is also a mastery upgrade that requires certain requirements to be met or you can skip the challenge with a mastery token. You can also upgrade your health, armor, and ammo with certain passive benefits. There’s a lot of upgrading and acquiring and I feel this is an excuse to make the game feel artificially expanded. I preferred the simpler game of Doom 2016 with regular upgrades found. I feel Eternal is doing too much for a game that’s supposed to be very simple. I also feel the new reboot series has run its course at this point. There’s not much else the game can do really.

The combat itself feels fine and is incredibly challenging and mostly unbalanced towards the last few levels. There are 14 missions so it’s much longer than the last game running about 10-15 hours if you explore every nook and cranny. I found exploring for secrets quite enjoyable and fun as everything is on the map and you just need to figure out how to get there. There are also combat challenges such as timed gore nests, and crucible challenges that give you keys to unlock a hidden weapon. You can find sentinel batteries to unlock rooms in the Fortress of Doom which is the new hub area that also has upgrade items locked away. It’s fine enough, a pain to navigate, but an interesting idea. I again feel that Eternal strays a little too far from the traditional Doom path in favor of more modern methods to make the game feel bigger and expanded when in essence most people come to Doom for the visuals, gore, fast-paced shooting, and interesting levels.

Speaking of levels, the game does overstay its welcome around mission 10 and feels like it just drags as you chase the final boss around. Not only are they incredibly difficult and almost unfair, the levels end up being repeats of previous levels, and the Urdak level is boring to look at. I do like the first 8-10 areas as they are interesting to look at with demonic imagery, gore, and just overall interesting atmospheres. The demons are great to look at and fun to shoot and tear apart. The quick-time event animations are much faster this time around and more varied. Each demon has it’s own set of front, aerial, and rear animations. Blue for health and orange for more ammo. You also have your chainsaw with three fuel cans to get yourself a large number of orbs, but this also is one of my gripes with the game. You have to rely on using the chainsaw to acquire ammo and health from enemies more than you do picking them up around you. Instead of giving us larger ammo capacities, you have to constantly scrounge for ammo and it drives me insane. I understand you run out of ammo sometimes in Doom, but every 5 minutes? I would die sometimes because I ran out of ammo and chainsaw fuel so what do you do then? Use your super punch and hopefully have a weaker demon around for a scrap of ammo. This focus on ammo scrounging really needs to shift in the next game.

The multiplayer in Eternal is much better than Doom 2016 as PvP is out the window this time in favor of demons vs the Slayer. Two demons and AI bots versus one Slayer is kind of fun at first, but after about 3-4 hours in these modes, I was over it. It just doesn’t hold my interest like Unreal Tournament or Quake’s Deathmatches did. Doom was never really well known for multiplayer and while it’s much better here, I wish id would just focus on the single-player only. Overall, what we get is a great sequel to Doom 2016 with fantastic visuals, a rocking soundtrack, great weapons to shoot and demons to kill, and just amazing fast-paced shooting. The last few levels are boring and overly difficult and the added stuff to combat feels like filler and fluff to pad a game that was already great.