The idea of robots taking over humans has been an age-long discussion, but what if they were designed to help us instead, no matter the cost? That’s the idea that The Fall presents to players. You play as a pilot who has crash-landed on a planet, but the AI known as A.R.I.D. (autonomous robotic interface device) activates and uses an advanced smart suit to essentially control the pilot’s body while searching for medical attention. The pilot lands on a derelict planet run by an AI called the Caretaker, who is examining and studying ARID for unknown reasons. Excellent writing and voice acting bring the story to life, despite its short length. There is not a single wasted line of dialogue or moment. This is an incredible premise and idea that I want to see more of. The Fall is a Metroidvania-lite, but with its own identity. The genre has seen little of this type of game today, especially with the explosion of indie games being produced.
Despite its simplicity, the game boasts a surprisingly complex control layout. You can walk around in a 2D plane, but jumping and combat are limited. You must use the flashlight on your pistol or light the path ahead, as the game is very dark and is mostly underground. When you shine your light over objects, a context piece of text will appear describing it or allowing you to interact with it. The majority of the game is puzzle-based, relying on an inventory system to combine and interact with the right object. The Caretaker’s testing center is the longest section of the game. Many puzzles are actually quite fun and clever, but a few can take a weird obtuse angle and make little sense in terms of how they are solved.
Combat in The Fall is crunchy and powerful but very limited. Other androids will attempt to attack you, but their actions are very limited and occur only during scripted events. You can hide behind cover and pop out to deliver a headshot. You must switch to the laser sight for better accuracy. You can sneak up behind enemies to kill them, or you can advance on them while they take cover. The shots are impactful and crunchy. The combat doesn’t overstay its welcome and is used at the right times. Of course, you can’t use your gun for the first third of the game, as abilities need to be unlocked, such as faster fire rates, the gun itself, and other suit abilities.
The game is tedious because it has a lot of backtracking, so you’ll often go from one end of a level to the other. I understand that this is part of a Metroidvania, but you aren’t going back to a level once you are upgraded and can access new parts of a level. You often find yourself running back and forth to collect parts of a puzzle, hoping you have the correct piece, only to discover that you either don’t or that it belongs to another puzzle located elsewhere. It’s not game-breaking, but it does get old pretty quickly. Once you have read all the text and discovered every part of the level, the adventure part of the game kind of disappears, and all that’s left is the tedious process of solving puzzles and running around.
The atmosphere and graphics are fantastic even today. The game has a surreal feeling of almost transporting you to the world thanks to its great sound design and visuals. While there is a lot going on in the foreground, most of the atmospheric stuff comes from what’s happening in the background. A lot of the background stuff can give you a visual cue as to what’s going on just from one glance. You can see a massive cave and the exterior of a spaceship through the windows, among other things. The few occasions where there is spoken dialogue are excellent, and the excellent writing keeps you captivated with every word.
Overall, The Fall is a fantastic atmospheric Metroidvania-lite that features great writing and tense gameplay, including gun sections that do not overstay their welcome. ARID is a wonderful character despite being a programmed robot, and the ending of the game is well worth your time. This game was one of the few indie titles that contributed to the “indie revolution” of the early 2010s and played a significant role in establishing the Wii U eShop as a prominent platform for indie games.
Have you ever regretted your final moments with someone? Most of us don’t know when those final moments are, and when the time comes, it’s too late. The story of Undying Flower takes things a bit further and asks, Would you ever forgive yourself for killing someone you love? That’s the first question asked when starting the game. We are talking to a girl’s head with two flowers on the sides. She asks us questions that we don’t have answers to. In fact, we don’t even know this person. Who are we even? Without spoiling the story, we are a scientist who is experimenting on this little girl. Or at least that’s what it seems. I’ll leave you with this: The story is pretty good, and the ending was great and satisfying. Unlike most short indie games, this one excels in storytelling. The game offers enough twists to keep you captivated for 2-3 hours.
The gameplay isn’t overly extensive, which is typical of most indie adventure titles. Although they are not exactly visual novels, these games feel more like interactive stories than traditional games, which is acceptable; however, creating them successfully can be challenging. The story, setting, atmosphere, and characters must immediately captivate you. While there are only two characters in the story, don’t let this perturb you. This means the short story can laser focus on just these two characters. The protagonists are the girl and her grandfather. What unfolds gameplay-wise is walking around a room and interacting with highlighted objects. We zoom to the two faces. We can hear Her Story or His Story. They are really short. The object’s context is conveyed in just a few sentences. This really helps build this moment in these lives that we are witnessing. The writing is really well done and strays away from the abstract poetry that most indie adventures tend to lean towards. Each face will show different animations of emotion based on how you answer them, but the answers don’t really change the story.
There are a few rooms with objects you interact with. This interactive experience occupies approximately the first half of the game. The second half involves a puzzle in which you select mementos to create a memory based on the statement the girl is telling you. I found the game too abstract and nigh impossible to get the combos right. Thankfully, after one minute the help kicks in, and if you get objects right, they will turn green. You’re not just selecting the memories you went over but creating new ones with them, and then these get added to the pool of choices, making it a convoluted mess. Thankfully, this section is short, but afterwards, most of the gameplay is done, and the final 20–30 minutes are just narrative.
The visuals are impressive, featuring a lot of abstract black and white elements complemented by splashes of color. While the female scientist model may not look great, the rest of the visuals are impressive. The art style is exceptional, featuring stunning orchestral melodies and harmonies that evoke strong emotions at precisely the right moments. What helps is that this story is very relatable. Anyone as a teen can relate to what the girl is going through with her grandpa; we have all been there. We have also all beat ourselves up over something we blamed ourselves for that was out of our control. This episode can really hit home for those that have experienced anything similar to the story.
What’s here is a short narrative piece with relatable subject matter. With fantastic music, outstanding visuals, solid writing, and a laser focus on just two characters, we go through a roller coaster of human emotion. Don’t come in expecting a ton of gameplay, and give the matching puzzle at the end some grace, and you might just wipe away some tears .
There’s been an ever-increasing discourse between the people and corporate America. American Arcadia takes the worst of the present and shows us the ugly side of being slaves to mega corporations. With clear inspiration from The Truman Show and Walt Disney’s vision of “The World of Tomorrow” and his original vision of Disney EPCOT, American Arcadia is a dystopian trip down 70’s lane with fantastic voice acting, a riveting story, and excellent pacing.
You play as two main protagonists. Trevor Hills and Angela Solano. The game has two perspectives. Trevor’s gameplay is a 2D side-scrolling platformer similar to games like Limbo and Inside, and Angela’s more puzzle-heavy first-person sections have inspiration from 70s spy movies, not too dissimilar from No One Lives Forever, but without any shooting. Angela is a stage tech for the corporation Walton Media (clearly a dig at the Walt Disney Company) who ends up being recruited by an activist group called Breakout, and you end up helping Trevor escape where he lives while trying to shut down the corporation. The game’s pacing is fantastic. The game consistently presents fresh scenarios, never growing stale or monotonous. The story continuously moves and evolves as you play, with events unfolding for each character while you control the other. Many times there will be cool split-screen sections in which you need to do tasks with Angela while controlling Trevor on her monitor. I don’t want to give away too much plot to have the explanation make more sense, but it’s really cool and well done.
Trevor and Angela are likeable characters, and while not super original, they leave an impact, including on the villains. There are sections of the game that teach you organically about the world of American Arcadia, including the lives of Angela and Trevor. Trevor’s sections are full of fast-paced platforming and push puzzles. These are not super complicated, but they are fun and help break up the chase scenes. Angela’s sections include quite a few puzzle types, from sliding puzzles and quizzes to some that are completely unique. This includes mostly hacking things to help Trevor get through areas. This was one of my favorite gameplay ideas. You can press a button to enter the camera mode. The feature changes the perspective of Trevor’s sections, and you must manipulate electronics around him to get past guards and obstacles. Every single scene gives you something new. I can’t state that enough. There were a couple of frustrating sections in which I realized I was analyzing the scene wrong. I made mistakes such as jumping onto the incorrect platform and running in the incorrect direction. Nothing was ever so annoying that I wanted to quit playing. I do think the game should have given a couple of hints if you keep doing the same thing over and over and dying, but again, it’s not a big deal.
Visually, the game has a fantastic sense of style. Inside of Arcadia, the world is stuck in the 70s. There are a lot of panning vistas of cool interior designs while Angela is in the present day, and it’s all less captivating to look at. I’m not a fan of the character designs. They are very blocky with no noses. It’s a bit off-putting, but the rest of the game looks excellent. I feel the biggest issue is that the game is too short. Depending on how much you struggle with the larger puzzles, you can finish the game in about 4-5 hours. While the entire game is explained well and feels like nothing is left out, I wanted to know more about Angela’s childhood and backstory, as we get to know mostly about Walton Media and Trevor.
As it stands, American Arcadia is one of the best games in this category. With constantly evolving gameplay ideas, fantastic voice acting, a riveting story with twists and turns, and a delightful art style, there’s not much you can’t like. Going between Trevor’s 2D sections and Angela’s first-person sections is a lot of fun, and you never know what’s coming next.
I have been longing for a cozy Western RPG. I can immerse myself in the lore, characters, world, and story of these games for weeks at a time. Skyrim, Oblivion, Dragon Age, Fable. These are just a few series that have given me worlds to do this with, and these are harder to come by these days. Avowed looked promising, but after Obsidian’s disappointing The Outer Worlds, I wasn’t so sure about this one. Although it appeared to play similarly to a modernized version of Skyrim, creating a completely new world is a challenging task. It was tried with Kingdoms of Amalur and failed miserably. The game world must captivate players and resemble a distinct character in its own right. For me, gameplay can normally come second to the atmosphere because without something to be invested in, there’s nothing worth playing.
Avowed has a fantastic idea. You are Godlike. You are born in Eora, the same universe set in the Pillars of Eternity series. Specifically, you are in The Living Lands. You assume the role of an Aedyran Envoy for the empire to trek across the land and negotiate ways to have them join the empire. You also need to find a way to stop the Dreamscourge. This is a disease that is turning people into mindless “zombies,” for lack of a better term. You end up gathering four party members along the way while running around four large maps full of side quests, hidden treasures, and new Godlike powers to discover. The flow of the game plays out like most modern Western RPGs. You have a main quest, but you can go to a distant landmark and find a side quest. There are also bounty hunts for extra coin and better gear.
The combat system is similar to that in other first-person Western RPGs like Skyrim. You swing a sword or cast magic, hold down the attack button to do a powerful attack, and can block with a shield or larger weapon. What’s different here are the abilities you can acquire by leveling up and using ability points to unlock them. These can be bound 1-6 or by using a wheel as well as binding your companions’ abilities to order them to do things on the fly. The combat system has weight and can feel useful in the beginning of the game, but it clearly has its flaws and gets old after quite some time. This issue is due to combat happening constantly and enemies being damage sponges. Skyrim and Oblivion worked because combat was over fairly quickly, and it wasn’t too frequent unless you were in a small dungeon. Despite having varied ability upgrades like adding splash damage, poison, or having effects last longer, I never felt powerful enough in this game. The Godlike abilities even feel useless. Even with fully upgraded equipment, I always felt like every enemy was a sponge unless I fought opponents that were at a much lower level than me if I went back to early maps. The situation is worsened by the fact that abilities consume essence, which depletes quickly unless you have potions; however, potions are expensive and cannot be crafted unless you are a Druid. Lame.
This issue is all due to the game using equipment levels instead of player levels, which I absolutely hate in RPGs. This means no matter how many abilities you have, no matter how much you’ve dumped into attribute points, you will never be able to do any damage until your equipment level meets or exceeds the enemies in the area. This means upgrading armor and weapons, and each level has three tiers. Higher tiers and legendary equipment require rare items. The process means hunting these rare materials down either in shops or in drops from enemies or certain chests. This requires looking it up online and constantly halting story progress. You can craft weaker materials or rarer materials, but it’s still a grind. I hate these multi-tiered systems that are there just to add to the grind. You can also use food items to cook food for temporary boosts in battle. Legendary equipment can only be upgraded with specific items . My game was frequently halted because I lacked enough money to purchase a higher-tier weapon needed to progress to the next area. I then had to do things like side quests and bounty hunts and just sell random crap to grind for coins. The economy system in this game is significantly broken, which has led to the creation of many mods that better balance it. Rewards are piddly scraps even for beating large bosses.
On top of that, the equipment system itself is frustrating. Items such as rings and signets provide only minor stat boosts, while armor primarily serves to reduce damage and determine your stamina fatigue rate. You can use the same piece of armor through an entire map as long as you upgrade it. There’s not much fun in that. There are ranged weapons like flintlocks, bows, and rifles, but the reload time is very slow, and I found them useless unless you are specializing in those weapons. There are also elemental “grenades” that can be used to break barriers leading to hidden areas or damage enemies. Sure, it all works, but is this system fun and engaging? No. It felt like schoolwork, trying to balance out my build.
A lot of the open areas have enemy groups, but they never respawn. Once they are dead, that is it for the game, so this requires you to go everywhere in the game and forces you to pretty much complete every quest, which is annoying. There are fast travel points scattered throughout, and the campsites are an isolated instance where you craft and upgrade. Exiting here allows you to change the time of day and choose whether to warp back to the last spot you were in or continue on. Side quests show up as blue exclamation marks on the map, and these are fairly uninteresting. They are just there for enemy fodder and don’t add to the lore like Bethesda games do or even The Witcher. Some games use side quests to expand on lore, such as discovering a folktale in The Witcher or having individual quests explain smaller details of the lore through their missions. These side quests are usually well-crafted and feel significantly different from the main missions; however, in this case, you are merely running around killing enemies and collecting items for others, which results in a tedious dialogue session.
That leads me to the lore, world, and characters themselves. The Living Lands look lovely but aren’t anything special. It’s stuff we have seen numerous times in Western RPGs. The game features a volcanic region, dense forests, enormous mushrooms, medieval settlements, dwarves, and towering trees with intricate roots, among other elements. The game doesn’t have a particularly unique art style and looks like generic European fantasy. It’s not poor at all, just nothing special. The races in the game are the most original part. Outside of dwarves (who don’t look right, by the way), humans, and elves, there are the Orlans, who are a cat-like race, and the Aumaua, who are scaly, amphibian-like creatures. These two races were very intriguing to see, and the NPC companions are really interesting to learn about and talk to. You can get to know them more in camp via a very long dialog tree that you unlock after major story events. Kai is a smart-mouthed Aumaua, Marius is a disgruntled dwarf, Giatta is a proud wizard, and Yatzli is a sassy and frisky Orlan wizard. The other NPCs, including faction leaders, bosses, and various others, are largely forgettable. I never cared to finish out all dialogue options with most characters.
This title is also an Unreal Engine 5 game, so it’s poorly optimized. Despite the impressive visuals and intricate detail, if you don’t have a modern PC, the game will perform poorly and heavily depend on frame generation. Lowering settings won’t give you much room to work with, and like other UE5 games, it is very VRAM dependent, which heavily affects performance. Anything under 8GB is useless. However, if you can use frame generation with AI upscaling or just run at 1080p or lower, the game does smooth out and play fine.
That leads to the overall world and wraps back around to the first question. Does this give me the warm, cozy Western RPG feeling from a game that I can’t wait to get back to? No. I was eager for this game to end, and it felt increasingly prolonged as I played, primarily because I had to constantly upgrade my equipment, which required a lengthy grind for resources. I never looked forward to the next area, as every 50 feet was just another group of damage-sponge enemies. While there are plenty of enemy types, they are forgettable and fall under the same European RPG tropes, such as giant spiders, golems, generic enemies in armor, elementals, bears, etc. None of the enemies really stood out, nor did the bosses. Nothing in this game feels unique. The game simply replicates elements from other games. Even with a more refined first-person combat system, the abilities don’t add much, and you just never feel like you’re getting the edge on enemies. Finding that really cool rare weapon behind a puzzle in the game doesn’t give you an edge. It might just be a weaker unique weapon that you need to upgrade more, which requires grinding for more materials. Occasionally these are worth more in gold than in use. It’s disheartening that the unique story and premise of Avowed were squandered in such an unbalanced and generic game.
Onimusha was a third-party PlayStation 2 exclusive franchise that did very well back in the day. I remember seeing these games on shelves for years at Blockbuster and game stores, and they never caught my interest until the third entry. Onimusha can be described as a Samurai-themed version of Resident Evil, featuring 3D polygonal characters set against pre-rendered backgrounds and utilizing tank controls. In 2019 an HD remaster was released that vastly improved the game and made it more playable thanks to modern enhancements. These include things such as up to 1440p resolution, texture filtering, a 16:9 aspect ratio, re-recorded voice acting and soundtrack, and improved controls. You can now control characters with the left analog stick, which removes the tank controls. You can also switch weapons on the fly rather than through menus, like in Resident Evil. This bumps the score up quite a bit and makes it enjoyable to play.
You assume the role of Samanosuke, a samurai whose clan is engaged in a war with Oda Nobunaga. Oda is killed in battle, and he swears allegiance with demons to come back to life and take over Samanosuke’s clan. Given that a quick run-through of the game takes around 4-5 hours (3.5 hours with a walkthrough), the story is extremely thin and lacks interest. There’s not much time to tell a good story. Unfortunately, the characters lack depth and backstory, making it difficult to care about them. The boss designs are cool, but the enemies feel like generic zombie samurais and monsters. The only really cool design is Guildenstern, who feels like something straight from H.R. Giger. The enemy variety is enough for this type of game, as you need to learn enemy attack patterns, so too many enemies would make the game more unbalanced.
The combat consists of a single attack button. You can lock on to enemies and do three-hit combos as well as block. It’s punchy and feels excellent and each of the three weapons feels excellent to use. Enryuu is a heavy flame sword, Shippuu is a swift double sword, and Raizen is a medium-speed short sword. Each weapon has an elemental attack attached to it that does massive damage and uses blue magic, so you only get a couple of uses, and each weapon has its own meter; it’s not a shared pool. You can gain more magic only from enemies dropping orbs or magic fountains near save points. Therefore, you should utilize it sparingly against bosses or to overcome challenging situations. You also use these magic powers to unlock doors to progress through the game. You must upgrade your magic first, or you’ll be stuck and have to grind. Enemies do respawn, which is annoying, but it’s needed to gain more red orbs to upgrade magic and weapons.
Armor isn’t upgradeable, but you can find two different sets of better armor in the game, but they are locked behind some puzzles. Some of the best items and jewels, which are used to upgrade max magic and health, are locked behind puzzle boxes. Books provide clues, but they can be hard to interpret. The map system is quite adequate, allowing you to either consult a labeled map online or create one yourself. Like Resident Evil, you need to memorize landmarks to get around the game, as every room has a fixed camera angle. There is a bonus arena mode in which you descend 20 levels of waves of enemies to get a key to unlock the strongest sword in the game, but it’s not until just before the final boss, so this is mostly useful for second playthroughs. The arena is incredibly challenging, so I recommend playing the game on easy first and then doing another playthrough on a harder difficulty.
Overall, Onimusha was a good attempt from Capcom to create another sub-genre of their Resident Evil games, and it was mostly successful. A simple but solid combat system, fun and challenging bosses, and well-designed levels will give you a fun weekend. Just don’t expect a complicated story and captivating characters.
Horror games that are good are really hard to come by these days. The online stores are stuffed to the gills with short indie horror titles, mostly from Asia, that don’t really add much to what we’ve already seen. With the large amount of P.T. clones (Madison) and Asian urban legends (DreadOut, The Bridge Curse), none of it is of the same quality that everyone is trying to chase, such as the peak of horror games from the PS2 era (Silent Hill, Haunting Ground). Sadly, BrokenLore: Don’t Watch is another one to chuck into the bin of trying but failing to execute any kind of staying power in the horror genre.
You play as Shunji, a NEET (in Japan known as not in education, employment, or training) or, anywhere else in the world, a loser. He is living off of his parents’ income, and his lifestyle has clearly caught up with him. He’s behind on rent, his rent-to-own TV is ready for repossession, and he’s a complete slob. Looking around his apartment, you will see it’s pretty stereotypical for this type of person. Shelves of manga, fast food containers everywhere, anime posters of girls in lingerie, anime shirts, and trash piled up at the door. Sadly, we don’t really get to know Shinji or Junko, the only other character in the game. She contacts him via IM on his PC and warns him about not looking at a monster. Their mutual best friend is missing, and she wants him to contact this friend.
As you progress through the first 15 minutes of the game, you will slowly descend into the madness that is the Hayakuma. A monster that seems to come after deadbeats. These first moments of the game are full of progressing scares, and they are pretty cool. I don’t want to get into too much detail to spoil anything, but this is probably the best part of the game, sadly. The first time you need to stab eyes on the wall is really neat, but once you leave the apartment and venture into the hallways, the game quickly becomes tedious. The worst part of the game is when it changes to a 32-bit game a la PlayStation, and you might find 6 TV cords to unplug to get back to your apartment. I found this kind of pointless, and it doesn’t add anything to the game. You need to follow the colored cables to the correct areas and avoid a monster while you’re at it. If you get caught, you can get hit three times, and then you are reset back to the starting area of the large TV and must go back to find the plugs. It’s a good way to warp back to the beginning after you’ve found the plugs through.
Honestly, the game should have stuck with just unfolding a story inside of the apartment. The first part of the game is done really well, and I could see it being even better if they just continued creating some creative, scary moments. I was hooked during these scenes, but once you leave the apartment, I wished I could go back. The voice acting is also really well done, and being in Japanese keeps it from feeling cringy. Overall, Don’t Watch starts out really well but loses the focus and momentum that it built up and leaves you with a character you could care less about.
The Longest Journey is one of the best adventure titles ever created and one of my personal favorites. It’s so good that even my own mother fell in love with it, and she’s not a gamer. The world, characters, and lore that were built up in The Longest Journey were fascinating. It was well written, and the visuals, for the time, were fantastic. Gameplay-wise it suffered from the usual tropes of adventure games of the time, but Dreamfall is for a next generation of gaming with 3D visuals. The game stars a new protagonist, Zoe Castillo, who awakens in her home in Casablanca and ends up being entangled in a deep corporate conspiracy and needs to find April Ryan.
The game starts out a bit slow. Everything seems just fine, and the game needs to build up this new branch of the story with Zoe. You wake up in your room and talk to your dad, you go outside, you meet a friend at her phone store, and then you end up building towards a relationship with your ex-fling Reza, who is a secret reporter that is on to a big story to bring down the evil corporation WATIcorp, which is known for making AI and robots. April Ryan and Arcadia get involved; I don’t want to spoil how, but she is the second story branch in this game. You do end up in Arcadia for the second third of the game, running around a small town called Marcuria, going back and forth finding objects and talking to people. The last third of the game starts mixing it up, and you go back and forth between Stark (the real world) and Arcadia quite a bit. Familiar faces appear, and then the third story branch of Kian Alvane, an Apostle for a religious sect of Arcadia, sets in.
Gameplay is very minimal. Puzzles aren’t challenging and are very sparse. They consist of glyph matching against a timer and glyph spinners. They appear to have been tacked on at the last moment, a common occurrence in adventure games from this era. You can combine objects to solve puzzles, but this doesn’t happen very often. Objects are obvious and easy to come by, as there aren’t that many interactive objects in the game. Green brackets will appear over everything you can interact with, and most of them just have the character explain what it is. The first two-thirds of the game is more gameplay-heavy with a couple of stealth areas and combat. Yes, combat. It’s atrocious and shouldn’t have been put in. The animations are stiff and slow, and the controls feel like mud. There is a block button, and you can dodge, but the AI is unintelligent and just wails at you or repeats patterns. There is a light and heavy attack, but honestly you just need to mash the heavy attack and you will win. There are only a couple of fights in the game, and any others you won’t win, and you’ll essentially fail a stealth section.
The last third of the game is clearly rushed, and the game obviously wasn’t completed. This section is mostly just cutscenes and dialogue. Kian’s and April’s sections just end with no conclusion, and Zoe’s section is the only branch that feels complete in a way, with a proper cliffhanger for a sequel. I just found it odd that each chapter took nearly two hours to finish, and around chapter 7 I’m finishing them in a matter of minutes, and there are no more puzzles or gameplay. Even for what’s here, 12 hours is quite long for an adventure title. I feel this needed to be 20 to feel fully complete. Thankfully it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The writing is great, the voice acting is decent, and the world and characters are really interesting.
The visuals hold up surprisingly well even today. The large vistas look beautiful with great lighting effects. There’s a lot of detail put into everything from icicles hanging off of the bottom of bridges to detailed ornamentation in walls and stones that didn’t need to be there for a game of this era. Sadly, the PC version has terrible controller support, but this was pre-Games for Windows, so there was no universal controller standard for PC games back then. This game is still easily one of the best adventure titles ever made thanks to the fantastic lore, world-building, and writing. I couldn’t put the game down. I do recommend playing the first game, as this is a direct continuation, but the game does a good job filling you in on everything as the game goes along.
South Park has had a reputation of having terrible games in its repertoire. In fact, South Park on the N64 is considered one of the worst games ever made. The studio redeemed itself with The Stick of Truth in 2014 and delivered a fun turn-based RPG that kept the look and humor of the shows. Critics praised it for evoking the experience of playing an actual show. The Fractured But Whole carries on this tradition, introducing a fresh narrative and featuring the character of the New Kid, also known as Butthole or Butt Lord. Sadly, the game feels more like an expansion on the first game rather than an entirely new game. We get the same South Park map, nearly the same locales and shops, and the gameplay is mostly unchanged. The studio didn’t do much to address many of the concerns from the original, either.
You start out by creating your hero to look like a South Park character. You are a voiceless protagonist again, but I wish I could actually play as one of the main characters here. Once the plot is dished out, you can go explore South Park. Unfortunately, the map remains largely unchanged. Until you acquire different fart powers, various areas remain blocked. Your primary superpower is the ability to produce potent farts that have the capacity to alter the course of time and space. You eventually acquire various abilities that allow you to reach higher places by using small fans. You can use Captain Diabetes to knock over objects with green bases. You can unlock the electric door by having Butters…shove a hamster up your butt and then fart it out, which will short out the circuit. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. You also have the power to have Toolshed shove a hose up your butt to act as an air compressor to blow debris away. Usually this is in the form of the lava Lego bricks that block paths early in the game. Exploration is mostly for finding crafting parts, which are hidden in various objects with gold handles or lids. You can also go around collecting Yaoi posters or find Big Gay Al’s hidden cats with pink scarves.
Exploration can be fun early on, as there are many areas to unlock, and you will always wonder how to get to certain spots. Once you get towards the end of the game, the entire town will be accessible. There are various vending machines that allow you to buy costume parts, artifacts, consumables, and crafting parts. You also have a social media presence on Coonstagram, so you can walk around and take photos with South Park characters to increase your following. This mainly just allows you to complete your character sheet. Mastery in various areas will unlock some rewards. Certain characters won’t take photos with you until you meet certain criteria, like finishing a side quest or main mission. There are also toilets you can poop in to play a mini-game. Honestly, all of these things are superficial and don’t really add substance to the exploration, but it’s better than nothing.
This game primarily focuses on combat, dividing each area into squares. Each character has different attacks that can reach certain grids based on what kind of attack it is. Some attacks move in specific lines, such as Toolshed’s drill attack, which is diagonal in both directions. Certain attacks have the ability to knock enemies back, which can result in additional damage if an enemy is standing behind them. Certain attacks have the ability to penetrate through enemies, while others require you to be in close proximity to them. To be honest, I don’t think the attacks are well balanced. There are three different power attributes: brain, brawn, and spunk. There are several superhero classes, including assassins, brawlers, plantmancers, and psychics. These are generic classes, and you can pick and choose abilities after selecting your class. Each class also possesses an ultimate ability. This ability is a yellow bar that builds up when hit, and when you are hit, you can press a button in time to give yourself a small health boost and advance the ultimate meter further. The ultimate meter is essential to winning longer and tougher battles.
Like in the previous game, there are positive and negative status effects. Bleeding, gross out (poison), attack and defense up or down, but positive status effects take a back seat over negative. There aren’t many abilities that give you positive effects. This illustrates my point about the powers being poorly balanced. There are very few healing abilities, and most of them feel useless. It is rare to find abilities that can heal your entire team, as healing individual characters becomes challenging when there are four or more characters on screen. There are consumables you can use for this, but items that give you more health as you go on are pricier and harder to come by, just like any RPG. You at least fully heal after each battle, and effects don’t carry forward. I found the attack patterns to be mostly annoying and attributed them to the balance issue. A lot of damaging attacks require you to be in front of or in line with the enemy. I wish there were more abilities that allowed you to attack from a longer distance. Some abilities feel useless when the grid layout just doesn’t work in your favor. I feel the grid needs to be wider so more characters can get in direct contact with the enemies. It’s not always a problem, but if you balance your abilities and party, you can avoid this, mostly. You can complete side quests to unlock summons, which are craftable items that can heal or do damage to the entire grid.
I also discovered that the story mode primarily focuses on boss rushes in the last half. You will run into various groups in the show, such as the Raisins, Rednecks, Ninjas, Sixth Graders, and so on. Each group has certain abilities you need to remember, and you need to pick the right party members to counter them. Some enemies will have attacks that require a countdown before they can be executed and cause splash damage. Some enemies are incredibly powerful and can swarm you. I appreciated the variety of bosses with different win conditions, such as escaping or pushing enemies toward the boss, as that is the only way to deplete its health. The biggest gripe I have about the combat is how slow it is. There are many funny quips and one-liners from every character, but the turn won’t start until they finish their line. You can’t speed up battle in any way, and ultimate animations aren’t skippable. Thankfully, a lot of the smaller battles that are around town don’t respawn, but you need to do side quests and fight everyone you can to get a high enough rank.
This game is equipment and rank-based, and you don’t acquire levels. Each rank unlocks an artifact slot, and your artifact rank determines how powerful you are. By the end of the game, you will need to be ranked at 800 or higher to fight anything. Each mission has a rank level next to it that must be met, or you will quickly die. You can obtain artifacts by fighting bosses, scrounging around, or crafting them once you find the recipes. You must fight as much as you can to increase your rank to unlock new slots. It’s really annoying how restrictive the game is, but thankfully I didn’t run into not being ranked up enough, as I did do most of the side quests and fought everyone I could see. Different artifacts will increase their stats based on the build you have. Costumes are cosmetic only.
As the story progresses, the game feels dragged out. I feel there are many battles that are just there for fan service and don’t actually add to anything. The story is also similar to The Stick of Truth in that it’s nothing special and just feels like a typical South Park episode. That’s fine and all, but for a game, I wanted something a bit grander and more original. The game’s story relies too much on fan service and rehashing old story arcs from the TV show. Overall, The Fractured But Whole is a delightful superhero take on the formula but doesn’t do enough to advance the series or change much. If you didn’t like the last game, then this one won’t change your mind at all.
Retro-style games are booming right now, especially those with PS1-style graphics. Their limited capabilities are excellent for giving a certain vibe and atmosphere and are especially popular with horror games. While We Wait Here isn’t exactly a horror title, it does have a dark tone and theme. This is a story that begins near the conclusion and works its way backwards to tell everyone’s story. You are a couple who owns a diner in a small town in the middle of nowhere out in the Heartland of America. There’s no specific location given, and the entire area is generic, but it feels like somewhere out in the Midwest near Tornado Alley.
You are a couple who are about to move out of town and sell their diner. Lisa’s father owned this diner, and she assisted him in running it as a child. You meet Alex, your husband, while working at the diner as an adult. The game is a strange mix of horror, adventure, walking simulator elements, and restaurant sim similar to Diner Dash. However, the integration of the simulation elements with the rest of the story and game is so compelling that I found it impossible to stop playing. I played the entire game in one sitting. The writing is tight and well done, and the characters are very intriguing. Each character ends up at the diner, and you hear their conversations while cooking and play a 10-15 minute segment about their lives before arrival. The characters include two punk rock best friends who are constantly shushing each other about a secret, a couple with a newborn baby, a workaholic old man, and a peculiar and paranoid local.
Your story with Alex is eventually told, and I can’t really give any other details about the story, as it could spoil it. There is a mystery between the two and the diner itself. There are many first-person interactions with the people, but mostly on the sim side. Each person can order something off of the menu. The menu is accessible with a button that gives instructions on what items go with each order. Once you place a ticket down on the table, you can go about your business. It’s not very complicated, but the animations are detailed, and overhearing the chatter in the back as the story goes on is great. You can grab milk and ice cream to make a milkshake. Put everything in a blender, grab a glass, and prepare it for the customer. Some food dishes require placing a plate in the prepping area, such as hamburgers. Make sure you look at the ticket icon and see whether they want cheese or not. You can grill, make pancakes, give whiskey shots and coffee, and clean and put away the dishes. That includes putting back ingredients like milk and frozen french fries. This isn’t very deep, and only during a few moments will you have many orders, but there’s no rush. There is no time limit on the game.
You will eventually prepare every type of item by the end of the game, but that’s okay. There’s just enough here for the 2- to 3-hour story, and by then I felt like if I had to prepare more, it would become tedious. There are a few other mini-games such as shooting with a gun during a couple of segments and painting a room, but they don’t overstay their welcome and are relevant to the story. I did find one particular area in the game that really drove me nuts. You need to navigate a labyrinthine cave at a snail’s pace, and it took me nearly 30 minutes to find my way out. The story could have greatly benefited from reducing or eliminating this part of the game.
The visuals are great. Despite the PS1 style, the character models surpass the system’s capabilities in detail. The game is always dark, and you always wonder what’s just outside the window. The bizarre storm that’s the centerpiece of the story made me curious. The entire game made me curious, and I wanted it to go on further. The writing is so well done, as is the voice acting and characters. I was eager to delve deeper into these characters’ lives, yet what’s presented here fulfills its intended purpose and accomplishes the task. Both the resolution and each character’s conclusions are satisfying. It is very difficult to have such a good story for this short of a game.
No matter your Warhammer fandom, you’ve probably played or heard of one of the games. The games garnered a stellar reputation with the Dawn of War strategy games in the early 2000s for PC. These games established Relic’s reputation and were regarded as some of the top Real-Time Strategy games of their era. Over two decades later, the franchise is now open to any developer willing to produce a game. One of the few genres the series has touched is action, let alone a third-person shooter. Despite receiving positive reviews, the first Space Marine struggled with its marketing strategy. Some saw it as a Gears of War clone, while the game also had issues with repetition and being somewhat forgettable. Sadly, not much has changed with the sequel.
The original game appears to have taught the developers very little. While it was a solid foundation, work on it feels like it was completely forgotten about. While you do continue the story of Titus, the Ultra Marine from the original game, his backstory isn’t touched upon, and you must have extensive knowledge of the Space Marine faction to truly enjoy this game. The story lacks depth, providing minimal explanation of the events taking place. The game opens up with one of the few scripted scenes as you play as Titus, who is dropped down into a Tyranid-infested planet to deliver a megabomb. This is where the game’s combat is introduced, and sadly, everything the game has to offer.
The combat in Space Marine 2 is really satisfying despite how incredibly repetitive and shallow it is. The animations are great. The weapons are punchy and all have a personality. I actually chose different weapons for different situations that arose. Melee combat is the most satisfying, with Titus using one of four different melee weapons that are unlocked as you progress through the campaign. These weapons include the combat knife, chainsword, power sword, and thunder hammer. Each has different feelings and speed as well as damage dealt. There really is only a three-hit combo with no light or heavy attacks. There is a parry system in which a blue flash appears on an enemy that is about to attack you. If it’s a small enemy, Titus will grab them and instantly kill them. Larger enemies will just deal a lot of damage. When an enemy flashes red, you can perform an instant kill with a brutal attack. Sadly, the same animation repeats for each enemy, so it gets old pretty fast.
In terms of shooting, the camera placement bears a resemblance to Gears of War. However, the game lacks a cover system, a feature it could greatly benefit from, and the sheer number of enemies necessitates constant movement. When you deal enough damage, a red reticle may appear on the enemy, allowing you to press the fire button for an execution shot. The downside is that most weapons are ineffective at close range. There are no shotguns or any close-quarters weapons outside of the flamethrower. There are sniper rifles, which are useful in limited situations. You also have a secondary pistol, which I found nearly useless, as there is plenty of ammo everywhere for your main weapon. There are also throwables, such as regular grenades, sticky grenades, and a bomb that you can detonate at your command. The game really does not give you enough grenades despite their effectiveness in dispersing large crowds. As a result, the weapons don’t feel well-balanced.
The more passive parts of combat include your Ultra ability, which grants you more damage, and you heal as you deal damage. This trait only lasts maybe ten seconds but takes forever to build back up. On two levels, you get to use jump packs, which grant you dash and double jump abilities, as well as being able to charge up a ground pound, which does some nice AOE damage. As you can see, most of the game is spent just aimlessly wailing on hordes of enemies or shooting them when they are far away enough to matter. It’s a shame the gun balancing is so poor, as they feel excellent to use. Instead of throwing masses of enemies at you, I wish they spent more time making the enemies more unique and worthwhile, like in Gears of War, which would enhance the gameplay experience. You also only get two different enemy types. The first half of the game sees the same few Tyranid types, and then the final half is only Chaos enemies, which are essentially just Space Marines. There are some sub-bosses, but they don’t provide much of a challenge, and there is only one for each enemy type. The Tyranid Carnifex and the Chaos Helbrutes. There are a couple of main boss fights, and they are the only real challenge in the game.
The entire game is fairly easy. I rarely died, and while the game itself is well paced, the level design is rather boring and uninspired. You will sprint down the same corridors and hallways just to press a button to open a big door to sprint down more hallways to shoot out in a large open area, which all look the same. Some indoor areas, particularly your main base, are detailed. Despite all of this effort, the actual layout of the levels is just boring. Back at base, you won’t see much change either. You will receive some speeches from the chaplain; you can visit the armory, but there’s nothing really here. You can’t unlock new appearances, and you can only select your loadout based on weapons you have already unlocked. Additionally, the base involves running through hallways and using elevators to navigate between levels. This terminal also allows you to select your co-op missions.
The multiplayer itself won’t last long for most people. Most of the fun in PvE comes from doing the co-op side missions. The PvP features a limited number of maps, each with a rudimentary layout that doesn’t inspire much planning or strategy. With no cover system, players are just running around shooting and whacking at each other, which isn’t very fun. I found myself playing multiplayer for a couple of hours and never had the desire to go back. Once you complete the campaign, there’s also no reason to go back. I really only recommend buying this game on a steep sale.
As it stands, Space Marine 2 didn’t learn much from what people critiqued the first game for. While the combat is crunchy, fluid, and violent, it’s very shallow, leaving you with repetitive gameplay. The same two enemy factions have the same type of enemies, so the entire game just gets boring rapidly. While the weapons feel enjoyable to shoot, they’re not well balanced, and the lack of a cover system makes strategizing your weapons almost meaningless. Despite the game’s impressive visuals and meticulous attention to detail, the level design remains uninteresting. Despite the excellent voice acting, the story lacks depth, and unless you possess a deep understanding of the Space Marine faction, you won’t derive much enjoyment from this game. That includes the passable multiplayer.
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