Urban Trial Freestyle 2 – 7 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/19/2024
Posted in: 3DS, Nintendo, Retro Consoles. Leave a comment

Publisher: Tate Multimedia

Developer: Teyon

Release Date: 04/20/2017


Available Exclusively On

Trials is the dominant 2.5D motocross physics game. It’s a hard category to describe. I reviewed Trials 2: Second Edition over a decade ago and have loved the series ever since. RedLynx knows how to mix fast-paced gameplay with well-designed courses and tracks that are fun to master, and restarting isn’t always an absolute pain. Urban Trial is a fairly decent clone of that game, but it falls flat in many areas.

Firstly, there is no story, so don’t worry about that. You can just jump straight into the main campaign, which consists of five different urban environments and seven tracks in each area. To unlock the next area, you need three stars or better on every track in the previous map. This isn’t too difficult. Just get through the course without crashing a lot. My issues with the game started on the second map and made me question whether I wanted to keep going, at least in a single playthrough.

The physics in Urban Trial Freestyle 2 are mostly okay, but they put you on moving platforms that the physics engine isn’t great at emulating. Riding on a moving grate across a bunch of moving barrels isn’t as easy as you’d think in this game. A lot of times my bike got stuck on the edges, and I couldn’t pull back to get over them. Even stationary stairs are hard to get over. The physics feel almost too centered. If I push too far forward or backward, the bike loses complete control, and it’s too hard to correct it. The bike also feels way too heavy once it is not completely centered. This was never an issue in trials. The tracks are also haphazardly laid out, with too many steep jumps next to each other, so it makes it hard to gauge how to take each ramp. 

There is some sort of jump scoring gauge that was never explained, and I couldn’t quite figure it out. When you approach a certain jump, a couple of green bars will float around, and your rider will make a comment that he made it or didn’t. I don’t understand what this was for, and it seemed pointless in the end. It’s hard to pull tricks on these bikes with the physics the way they are.

There are cash icons to grab in each level, but I was never interested in getting these as the unlockables are pretty lame. You can customize your dude and bike, but the options are very limited. Just a few colors and clothing items (I mean less than 10 each), and they cost a lot of money, so it’s not worth it. This felt like a throw-in at the last minute to make it feel more like a sequel or something. There is a freestyle mode where you can do stunts, but with the wonky physics, it’s kind of hard. There is also a track editor mode, which isn’t intuitive at all. It requires a lot of trial and error to get everything placed right, and with the weird physics, it just isn’t worth the effort. I feel this is for kids who have nothing else to play and got this on sale and are just bored. 

The visuals are actually pretty good, with decent textures and a lot of detail in the environments, and there wasn’t really any slowdown that I noticed. I wish the music was better and there were more ambient sounds like in Trials, but for a budget eShop game, this is actually not that bad. What’s here is fun to fill a couple of evenings, and if you are itching for a Trials game, then you can’t do much harm with this game. If the physics felt more balanced and the track design was a lot better, it could go a long way toward really competing with Trials. The track editor is passable, and the unlockables feel thrown in at the last minute. All this game made me want to do is go back and play a much better Trials game, but for a few dollars it’s harmless.

Rhythm Heaven Megamix – 8 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/16/2024
Posted in: 3DS, Nintendo, Retro Consoles. Leave a comment

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo

Release Date: 06/15/2016


Available Exclusively On

Rhythm Heaven has always been a difficult game to master. This isn’t Warioware or Hatsune Miku. This game requires precise timing, and you must be really in tune with the beat. I had to physically tap my foot or nod my head to keep myself in rhythm for some of these minigames.

The game has a typical Nintendo-esque storyline in the vein of Warioware, with goofy characters. The art style is nice and cute, with skippable dialogue, which most people will probably do. Each section contains four mini-games that you must pass to move on to the next set of four mini-games. These games are some new and mostly old from the previous two games. Mini-games require you to press the A or B button or tap the stylus (this is an optional alternative). Being on the beat is a bit more forgiving than previous mini-games, and scoring is a lot more generous. If you are just a couple of points from passing, the game will give them to you out of pity, and the boss stages will let you pass if you spend 30 coins for at least trying. My biggest gripe with the previous games was the lockout from progression, which would make you want to quit playing.

My favorite mini-games are the ones that have something physical to track. The LumberBear one is a perfect example. Logs get laid out in front of you, and each mini-game has a second type of beat to follow. There is usually a fast-paced rhythm and then one where it requires longer pauses or rapid-fire button presses (in the form of three most of the time). The first tower you play is actually much harder than the later towers because the second version of these mini-games is longer, which allows you to miss more and still pass. There is a practice mode before each game starts and if you miss too much the bottom screen will show a rhythm pattern for you to follow. This helps as some patterns are just hard to get down. Again, another way for the series to be more forgiving this time around. 

There are some mini-games I was just terrible at or weren’t designed in a way that made staying on beat intuitive. There is always a visual or audio cue, but sometimes the mini-games will trick you and pull the camera out, obscure your view, or cut the audio, and this requires mastering the mini-game. It all becomes muscle memory at a certain point. This isn’t a casual rhythm game or mini-game compilation like we’re used to. Can we call this a hardcore rhythm game?

You can unlock trophies and other extra mini-games in the museum and cafe. This never really interested me, as this isn’t a game I wanted to finish 100%. Once you finally finish the story mode, there’s no real reason to come back to this game unless you really love punishment. I found this game wasn’t relaxing at all for how tense and focused you have to be to play it and pass the story stages. Even with the goofy characters and skippable dialogue, the story mode is quite long, with seven towers to finish. The graphics are great, and each mini-game looks unique and charming. This has that wacky Nintendo signature all over it. If you disliked previous Rhythm Heaven games, I would give this a shot since it is more forgiving and the timing has been somewhat refined.

Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/11/2024
Posted in: 3DS, Nintendo, Retro Consoles, Wii. Leave a comment

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Sega Sports R&D

Release Date: 11/15/2011


Available On

This is my first time playing a Mario & Sonic Olympic game outside of an arcade room. The series never appealed to me, and it’s been around for what seems like forever. They never reviewed very well; they all looked and seemed to be too similar, and they felt aimed at kids. A mini-game-style game set around the Olympics is usually something you can blow off. Anything Olympic-branded is most likely hot garbage, but there is something here.

The 3DS version of the game has a story mode, unlike the Wii version. The mini-games are also hand-tailored for a more pick-up-and-go style and are much shorter. The story mode is quite simply dead-ass boring and a complete snooze fest. There was zero effort put into it, and there is no reason to play it other than to get used to some mini-games. The basic premise is that Mario and Sonic can’t start the opening ceremony because Bowser and Dr. Eggman have set off a fog machine that produces evil versions of everyone. The cutscenes last way too long, sometimes up to five minutes, and consist of characters standing around grunting, showing emotes, and yapping about a whole lot of nothing. All of your usual Sonic and Mario characters appear, such as Team Chaotix, Princess Peach and Daisy, Yoshi, and Metal Sonic. That means absolutely nothing. When everyone is done running their mouths, you can pick a challenge. Some challenges are one event only; some can be more. There are five chapters in the story mode and then bonus chapters focusing on Bowser Jr. after the fog has cleared.

There are a lot of mini-games, so I will give the game credit there, and they are varied. You use everything in the 3DS to play these games. Shooting mini-games uses the gyroscope and the shoulder buttons; swimming might have you partially rotating the circle pad. A swimming game has you using the touch screen with your fingers. Some require timing and reflexes, but I felt some were pure dumb luck unless you played against an actual person. Some mini-games are just hard to understand, with about four screens of instructions before each game starts. This makes the story mode drag on, as you just want to jump in. I don’t need to confirm three times and get instructions more than once. Even restarting an event resets all of this, and it’s back to confirming everything. It drove me crazy.

Mini-games play fine on normal difficulty, but hard feels nearly impossible. Not one mini-game ever feels right or perfected. Some feel sluggish and unresponsive; others are hard to grasp and take multiple tries to understand. Some I never quite knew what was causing me to fail, such as the BMX sport excusive to the 3DS. You press A to jump, but you need to tilt the 3DS to land flat. I could never figure this out and always landed wrong, no matter what I did. Games that require timing, such as fighting sports, just get frustrating because it seems the CPU knows what you pressed, and it’s a dice roll as to whether it fails. This is most notable in table tennis and badminton. I would get 50 rallies on one match and fail, but the next serve, the CPU would fail in 3 rallies. It never felt fair.

It got to a point in the story mode that I avoided the timing and reflex mini-games and went straight for ones that required physical ability to win, such as blowing into the mic, tapping a button really fast, or using the stylus. When you finally beat the story mode, you can mix and match event types through unlocked playlists or create your own. Once you’ve played every game a few times, there’s no reason to keep playing against the CPU. This game really needs a second player to feel fun, but then you still run into issues with sluggish controls, and the game never quite gives you the control you need or that would make the mini-game feel more organic.

The visuals are pretty good for a 3DS title, but they’re nothing special to write home about. Textures and character models look pretty decent, but it’s your typical Sonic or Mario visual style, which can feel pretty boring around this point in time. I wish the story mode was better and wasn’t geared towards pre-schoolers, and there are a few really fun games in here, but they are buried by the sheer weight of many other sub-par games.

Reviewed On

MotorStorm – 17 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/10/2024
Posted in: PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Evolution Studios

Release Date: 03/06/2007


Available Exclusively On

I remember seeing the trailer for this game during the PS3 reveal when Sony briefed the world on their latest console. The trailer blew my mind. No one knew if it was real-time gameplay footage or not. I remember being impressed by the mud deformation effects and how light reflected off the water in the mud. After playing this game, I realized that it never looked anything like that or that the trailer was pre-rendered. MotorStorm still looks pretty good even today, but there are other problems than my foggy memory.

The game is fairly basic, but for a first-time effort for a new franchise, the game isn’t too bad. This was also what feels like a slightly rushed title to get it out the door for the PS3’s launch (which it missed). The game consists of only circuit races around nine different tracks. The draw of MotorStorm is the different vehicle types and how they interact with the terrain. There are trophy trucks, rally cars, buggies, motorbikes, ATVs, and even big rigs. Each vehicle does feel unique, and the interaction works in terms of agility and jump height. There are different paths on each track that are best suited for a different vehicle type. Motorbikes are best at jumping large gaps, but big rigs won’t make the jump. Buggies are great at lots of small bumps, but some cars might slow down a lot here. There are even areas with a lot of junk that you have to maneuver around, or you will crash.

Crashing is incredibly annoying in this game. Every crash activates a slo-mo cam, and you can’t skip this. Your car resets back to where you crashed, but the game has some serious rubber-band AI as you fall way behind after just a couple of crashes, and sometimes you can’t catch up depending on your vehicle. You have to memorize each track well and master them to get first place, or even think about qualifying. Sharp hairpin turns can send you off a cliff; the wrong path can slow you down too much if you’re not in the right type of vehicle; and the signs posted on some tracks for the vehicle aren’t helpful. I wish there was a vehicle recommendation during the ticket selection so I didn’t have to trial and error with each vehicle. Vehicles are also all the same in each category. You get to pick between three styles and three colors. There are no stats at all. Annoyingly, each vehicle must load in during a real-time vehicle selection screen. 

The main campaign is played by advancing in tickets by winning points. You must place third or better in each race to continue. There are 25 tickets and up to five races in each ticket. Races all have three laps, so you can imagine it gets tedious. And boy, does it. The same tracks repeat over and over again with no variation in even types. Why not drag races? How about tracks with lots of jumps? Something, anything, to break up the monotony. After tickets 7-8, I got tired of the game and shut it off for good. By then, I had finished around 40 races and had raced every track multiple times.

That’s another big issue with this game. The tracks are all similar. There are only desert or dirt tracks that mostly look the same. It’s just dead brown flat textures with nothing in between. The layouts themselves, in terms of jumps, turns, dangers, etc., are well done. Once I learned a track, it felt good to race around flawlessly and know what paths were best for the vehicle I picked, but after 3–4 times on each track, I got tired of it. Not to mention having to constantly restart the same one over and over again (some were a dozen times) because one crash too many made me fall too far behind. You need to flawlessly race around these tracks, and it can get super frustrating and punishing.

MotorStorm has a lot of potential to be a great arcade racing series. There needs to be more focus on terrain deformation, more track and event type variety, and a bigger distinguishing difference between vehicle types. I also felt the menus were sluggish with constant loading, and the game suffered from texture pop-in a lot, but in the actual races, the gameplay and framerate were smooth. Can we also get another color in the sequel besides brown, please? Please, and thank you.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars – 15 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/09/2024
Posted in: Android, DS, iOS, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo, PSP, Retro Consoles, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Rockstar Leeds

Release Date: 03/17/2009


Available On

I never thought that a GTA game would be in handheld format. We had the original two games on the GBA, but that was kind of expected. Chinatown Wars is a brand new hand-tailored experience for the DS and later shoehorned onto the PSP. There are touch-screen controls, a whole new interface, and mini-games galore. This game feels like what GTA 3 would have been if it hadn’t gone full 3D. You get the over-the-top perspective, but everything is still in 3D. The game looks really good for a DS game and feels like a unique GTA experience.

The story is your typical GTA gangster revenge story. You play as Huang, whose father was murdered for an ancient sword that was passed down to mark the next mob boss leader. Huang flies to Liberty City to avenge his father’s death, get to the bottom of the Triad and gang squabbling, and get that sword back to help his uncle move to the top. The story is full of deceit, betrayal, deception, and revenge and is mostly uninteresting. It doesn’t have the charisma, flair, or flavor that the console versions have, mostly due to the lack of voice acting. The story is told through stills and text, which makes sense on the DS, but definitely doesn’t give the characters any well-being. Many of the mob members are stereotypical drug and sex addicts, power-hungry, stupid, and Huang can’t trust anyone. The story has around 50 missions, and they play out similar to the console version.

The main interface is custom for the DS. You get a PDA-style screen that you can touch. The map is displayed here as well as your radio stations, throwables, and weapon switching, and the menu in the PDA will show your trade info, emails, settings, stats, etc. It’s very intuitive and just makes sense. New story missions are given via red emails. These will also give you a shortcut to place a waypoint on the map leading to that new story. There are a lot of quality-of-life things like this thrown in. The GPS map has shortcuts for everything you need, from odd jobs to your safehouses. You can also order ammo and weapons from Ammu-Nation on the PDA as well. They show up at your house, and you get an email telling you when it’s ready.

Running around the world of Liberty City feels lively because of the limitations put in place. You can run and jack cars, drive off and kill everyone on the road, and gain your infamous wanted stars. Stars can be dropped by making police cars crash, which will help lower your wanted meter faster. I did feel there were way too many cops around in this game. It seemed every 5–10 cars was a cop car or a pig walking around. I was constantly caught carjacking or running over someone, and I was always running into cop cars. This felt way overdone in this game. Driving around Liberty City does feel great. The game never slows down, and the ambient sound effects of the original radio tunes (they’re instrumental and not licensed due to space limitations on the DS carts) make it feel like a living and breathing GTA game on the go.

Missions are varied, but some elements of missions can get quite annoying, causing multiple deaths and restarts. The auto-lock-on feature for shooting isn’t that great. You don’t always lock on to the closest enemy or an enemy at all. This caused many deaths when I locked onto a car instead of a person shooting at me. You can roll around and dodge people, but many times I was stuck without a weapon and would have to order something from Ammu-Nation, go to my safehouse, wait, pick it up, and go back and restart the mission. Thankfully, you can trip skip if you get to a certain point in longer missions, which saves you time, and you can skip cutscenes. A lot of mini-games surround missions, such as tapping the screen to break locks, mini-games to use cranes, plant bombs, scratch cards, tattoing, and many others. These were a lot of fun, and I was always looking forward to the next one. However,  trying to jack a car and being stuck in a mini-game of hot starting it for the 100th time got old and would make me get busted as you can’t back out of it. Most missions vary from shooting, following, and chasing, and some put you on turrets or throw bombs out of a car. Overall, the mission variety is awesome, and I never got bored.

The biggest setback in the game is the new feature of drug dealing. You can use your PDA to see the drug turf map for who buys and sells what. This is required to actually make money for weapons and sometimes even start missions. Some missions require a certain drug type or a large amount of cash. This means setting a GPS waypoint for a dealer who sells said drug and buying some from them. You need to make large profits, so it’s best to wait for an email when a dealer is selling at a discount and then turn around and sell it. This takes a lot of time—driving around and waiting around, however. Buying and selling drugs at market value won’t get you anywhere. Odd jobs can give you a few bucks, but they don’t pay out enough. This really slows the game down and hampers an otherwise fast-paced game. 

When it comes to visuals, the game really shines on the DS. There are small, subtle things, like street lights turning off when you hit the poles. Weather patterns such as lightning strikes casting shadows on the ground, sparks, fire effects, and even being able to close the driver door if it’s still open while driving (let go of the accelerator and Huang will close the door). These small changes help make this a high-quality DS experience and set it above the rest in terms of production values. Chinatown Wars may have a forgettable story and characters, some control issues when shooting, some frustrating missions, and a drug dealing mechanic that hinders more than helps, but overall the game is miles above what I thought a portable GTA game could be and in some ways feels better than the PSP GTA games.

Reviewed On

Ad Infinitum

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/04/2024
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox Series X|S. Leave a comment

Publisher: Nacon

Developer: Hekate

Release Date: 09/14/2023


Available On

World War I was a horrific time in the world. The creation of mustard gas and the deaths of 20 million people are just a couple of things that came from that war. You play Paul von Schmidt, a German man who returned from the war. Paul and his brother Johannes are raised by their father, who is a wartime cripple. Over the course of the game, you explore Paul’s mind and how he feels and represents the events of his childhood and the trauma from the war. Sadly, most of this is only pieced together by letters found throughout the game, as the cut scenes themselves explain little and just muddle the otherwise generic feeling of the story.

The game is broken up into two gameplay styles. An adventure/walking simulator-style mansion exploration where you solve puzzles. This part of the game is rather dull and uninteresting. Many other games do house explorations better (Layers of Fear, Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch) as the game slowly opens the house to you, but the key is to find objects to solve puzzles and find something that triggers a dive into Paul’s mind and thoughts. Each chapter (there are three) consists of one of his family members represented as a horrific monster. You can either choose to kill them or let them live to get different endings. Most of these “boss fights” require you to flip switches and run away for the most part, but they are rather intense, so I didn’t mind them.

The second part of the game is the trenches gameplay, in which the horror part sets in. You need to run around solving the occasional puzzle while also hiding from enemies. There is no combat in this game, so you have to sneak around and find your way through the dark in various environments. The creature designs are awesome, but this is probably the most exciting part of the game. It was intense sneaking past enemies, and thankfully there’s only one small section in each chapter, but the horror elements that are actually good can be counted on one hand. There are moments in which each main monster is introduced, and these scenes are fairly creepy, and outside of weird sound effects and haunting ambience, there’s not much else here. The game does portray the gruesome horrors of the war, with bodies spread everywhere, the barbaric medical practices, and the overall brutal nature of everything people endured during that time.

With the game being as linear as it is, there isn’t a lot of room for exploration outside of finding dog tags, and this only grants an achievement. There are a few extra gameplay items you can find, such as a pickaxe to break down walls, a dynamo flashlight, a gas mask, and wire cutters to cut down barbed wire, which is actually quite annoying. The barbed wire moves and is related to the story (I won’t spoil why), and you have to cut the non-moving wire or it will grab you, and that will trigger a quick-time event. This could have been done better. To be completely honest, all of these items don’t really add anything to the game. The gas mask is used a few times to get through corridors with some gas, and it lasts a few seconds. The flashlight is annoying to use, as it only lights up for a few seconds before needing to be charged again. 

The game overall isn’t very exciting. The horror elements fall flat, and the walking simulator-style gameplay is void of almost any gameplay. The story itself is convoluted and difficult to figure out if you don’t read the papers spread throughout the game. The visuals are at least good, if not necessarily unique or interesting, because of the monster designs. There are nice lighting effects, but the character models are something to be desired. The mansion areas are also a chore to play through, and it just feels like mindless wandering through rooms to find objects.

Overall, Ad Infinitum doesn’t do anything particularly well or is interesting enough to not be forgettable. There are some good horror moments, but they aren’t anything special, and the game overall lacks a cohesive story or a way to tell it. There are many games out there that are similar and do a better job of everything listed.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – 17 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 02/23/2024
Posted in: DS, Mac, Microsoft, Nintendo, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony, Steam Deck Unknown, Steam Deck Verification, Wii, Xbox 360. Leave a comment

Publisher: Activision

Developer: n-space

Release Date: 11/05/2007


Available On

While the main next-gen console version of the game is considered to be an all-time classic and helped revolutionize the online FPS genre, the lower-powered hardware versions were completely different games. While they share the same name, you wouldn’t know these were Call of Duty games if you played them and no one told you.


Modern Warfare for the DS loosely follows the plot of the main game but instead takes liberty with its own unique levels and design choices. Obviously, we are working with barely better-than-PS1-level hardware here. n-Space really had to be creative and make entirely new games, mostly “themed” around the franchise. The game is still in first-person view, and you can switch between two different weapons. By default, you always start out with a pistol and another firearm. You can pick up weapons with the touch screen (a hand icon) and use that as your main weapon will not have any extra ammo available when you run out unless you die. When you die, you start out with your default weapons again and lose whatever you picked up, but your ammo is refilled. Weapons in this game feel decent, but the slowdown from the DS being pushed too hard (especially when enemies pop in) makes aiming a bit sluggish and janky. 


Aiming with the touch screen feels fine. Using the D-pad or face buttons to strafe isn’t an issue either, but using the R or L button to fire can give you massive hand cramps even with larger DS systems. Most everything is controlled by the touch screen. Double-tap to bring up the ADS (Aim Down Sights), switch to grenades, and tap the weapon icon to reload. There are a few quality of life things that n-space did think of, such as when you reload, you go back to ADS if you are in that mode already, and spriting pulls you out of ADS mode. My issue with ADS is that while it’s more accurate, there’s a delay in bringing it up on screen, and that delay can cost you your life. When enemies pop in and the slowdown happens, it won’t respond to my double-taps fast enough, and I would constantly bring up the ADS and back out a few times caused by the delay. It’s not game-breaking, but very annoying.


There are two mini-games when setting explosives and defusing bombs. I found the pipe puzzles annoying, and following the wires to defuse bombs isn’t really fun or challenging. These were just thrown in here to make use of the touch screen. Honestly, who wants to solve puzzles while playing Call of Duty? It’s weird and just doesn’t fit. It really breaks the flow of combat. The enemy AI is also pretty dumb. Enemies just stand there and shoot at you; don’t take cover or move out of the way. This is literally an on-rails shooting gallery and is insanely linear. Levels are way too long, and some objectives have unfair checkpoint placements or none at all. Objectives range from collecting something to planting a bomb or just shooting everything in sight. I found the scripted mounted machine gun levels pretty fun, but the AC-130 level (similar to the console version) is awful and boring. You can barely make out any enemies, and you can’t use larger weapons against smaller enemies. There are only a couple of buildings to blow up, and you just mow down dozens of enemies over and over again in almost complete silence. It was a bad level, for sure.


The visuals are decent for what the system can do. They are definitely sterile and boring to look at, with no artistic flair. The game tried capturing the hyper-realism of the consoles, and the DS just can’t quite do this. It’s a very brown and beige-looking game. There’s no personality put into this game. It feels like a copy-and-paste FPS that you could attach any name to. Multiplayer is the same as single-player, but with another person. It’s not very exciting, and your friends will get bored fast. I appreciate n-space for trying to capture the excitement of the console versions on the limited hardware, but it needs something else. Better enemy AI, less linear-feeling levels, more interesting scripted levels, and fewer storyboard-cut scenes. It’s a great first start, but it has a lot of work before it becomes a staple DS shooter.

Reviewed On

Three Fourths Home: Extended Edition – 9 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 02/18/2024
Posted in: Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Unknown, Steam Deck Verification, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Digerati Distribution

Developer: [bracket] games

Release Date: 03/20/2015


Available On

Minimalistic, story-driven games can be quite memorable and fantastic. The lack of gameplay requires you to have a laser focus on the story and characters, and the subtle gameplay can bring a visual element that no other medium can provide. Three Fourths Home isn’t one of these, sadly. While the visuals are striking and minimal, the story and writing have so much potential, but they are let down by a short and disappointing ending.

You play a teenage girl named Kelly who is driving home in a violent storm in rural Nebraska while talking to her family on the phone. Gameplay consists only of holding down a button to continue driving and choosing a few dialogue options. Holding down a single button for the entirety of the game is a really dumb idea. It introduces hand cramps and constantly breaks your focus on the story. You can honk your horn and turn off your lights, which is entirely pointless, and you can’t move the car at all. You can also choose to turn the radio on and off. There is no spoken dialogue in the game, but this requires you to make up voices and visuals for the game in your head. This may sound really dumb to most people, and some might argue that you should just read a book, and in this specific context, this would be a better medium for this story.

Choices in dialogue don’t seem important at first, but your response to your family plays into how they react to you on the phone. I guess multiple playthroughs could be worth it as there are a couple of different endings, but with how mundane the gameplay is, no one will want to sit through the hand cramps to make it worthwhile. I had issues with the controls, causing me to choose the wrong option as well. You need to skip through dialogue with a button to advance each line while holding down another to keep driving, and some times you wouldn’t know that a dialogue option would be coming up and you would just advance forward.

See, with minimal games like this, you need some sort of gameplay hook to keep it interesting enough. Three Fourths doesn’t do this at all. The mom, dad, and brother are all interesting characters, and you slowly learn about this family dynamic through this phone call. You learn about why you “ran away,” what kind of person the dad is, whether or not this is a broken home, etc. The dialogue is tight and interesting enough to keep you glued until the end, that is, if the hand cramps don’t send you packing first. I also wish more was going on visually. Occasionally, a background object will be brought up in the conversation, but it’s just black-and-white visuals without any type of payoff. The visuals, gameplay, and everything else are just an excuse to call this interactive story a game, and it does the bare minimum to qualify as that.

Most games like this have a story that ends in sudden tragedy to flip the entire thing on its head and stun the player, but this one doesn’t really do that either. If it did and the pay-off was incredible, all of this could be worth it, and there are plenty of games similar to this that pull that off. As it stands, Three Fourths Home is a well-written story in a terrible game with an even worse gameplay mechanic.

Reviewed On

CounterSpy – 10 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 02/04/2024
Posted in: Android, iOS, Mobile Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEI

Developer: Dynamighty

Release Date: 08/19/2014


Available On

Tongue-in-cheek comedies about the Cold War are something I quite enjoy. Movies like Austin Powers that make fun of the time period can be downright hilarious. CounterSpy tries this with the player working for an unknown neutral agency called C.O.U.N.T.E.R., and everything they do and their plans are all spelled this way with no actual meaning. You play either the Americans or Russians’ bases to steal sets of plans to stop nuclear weapons from destroying the moon. The goal is to keep the DEFCON level as low as possible (5), and if it reaches zero during a level, a one-minute countdown starts, and you need to find the computer to finish the level to stop it. Thankfully, if it does reach zero, the level ends, and you start from DEFCON 1 again.

The only way to lower the DEFCON level is through passive items or getting officers dressed in white to surrendy by pointing your gun at them. This can make having to repeatedly repeat levels very difficult. The levels are randomly generated each time, but that doesn’t mean the difficulty doesn’t increase. You will need to search more rooms while plans for weapons and items are hidden better. More guards will appear and there will be more open areas. These can be the most difficult to navigate, especially when security cameras come into play. The green ones can be shot down with weapons, but the orange-armored ones can only be taken down with explosives. You can dodge and roll your way through a camera’s cone of vision, but you need to be fast. I found the randomness of levels to be frustrating, as a lot of guard patrols just don’t line up to be able to be stealthy. A lot of times, you will need to mow down every guard, and some levels can be multi-tiered. Thankfully, the alertness only lasts for that section of the level. Once you go through the door to the next section, the guards don’t know you’re there.

Cover is your best friend in this game. Yellow arrows on the cover will tell you which way you will face, and lining up your shot is important. The longer you pop out of cover to aim, the quicker guards will notice you. Guards are pretty dumb, and cameras won’t even notice dead bodies, so shoot them out to your heart’s content. This is the only saving grace for the randomness of these levels. If this was a more realistic stealth game, it would feel impossible to finish. However, I still wound up getting each side to DEFCON 1, so I had to constantly restart a level once the countdown timer started. It’s futile to try to run to the exit in 60 seconds unless you’re already close. If you quit the mission, you just restart back to where you were prior to that level.

Once you do get all the launch plans, you can continue to play either side to get more weapons and item plans and lower the DEFCON level as much as possible. The final mission will start on the side with the highest level, so this can lead to a lot of frustration unless you really want all of those weapons. I honestly felt the game got pretty tedious towards the end and just wanted to get the game over with. I didn’t feel the need to continue playing, as the randomness kind of ruins the fun gameplay elements with poor guard patrol patterns, making it impossible for really perfect stealth runs. The Vita version suffers from frequent slowdowns when the action starts. The game will pause for a split second, causing accuracy issues when shooting.

Overall, CounterSpy has all of the elements of a fun arcade-like action stealth game, but the randomness of the levels makes it hard to get that perfect run, which can discourage the player from wanting to collect all the weapons. The tongue-in-cheek humor does the job just fine, and the controls are well thought out. Just be prepared for some frequent restarts.

Reviewed On

Home Safety Hotline

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/26/2024
Posted in: PC Reviews, Steam Deck Unknown, Steam Deck Verification. Leave a comment

Publisher: Night Signal Entertainment

Developer: Night Signal Entertainment

Release Date: 01/16/2024


Available Exclusively On

Analog horror is a huge fascination for me. After exploring this idea on YouTube and seeing Local 58 and Gemini Home Entertainment, I became hooked. It’s a mix of 90’s nostalgia, analog media, and that feeling of older technology being unclear and playing tricks on your senses. Home Safety Hotline tries its best to be the next analog horror viral sensation, but it doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head like the above-mentioned videos. While this is a video game and not a series of videos, I will say that it captures the atmosphere well.

You are an employee, plopped down in front of a 90’s beige box, and you are presented with a desktop. You will see exclamation marks on items that have new information. There are videos you can watch on the desktop as well as check your email, and then the main program is where you will spend most of your time. Once you launch this program, you clock in and are presented with a series of informational links. You are answering calls and have to prescribe the correct Home Safety Hotline information package to the caller regarding their problem. Entries are locked until you progress through the days of the week and give the correct answers.

It’s incredibly important to read every single entry thoroughly and actually remember it. You want to remember the symptoms and signs these things cause people. At the beginning, you get basic information about things like ants, bats, moles, and flies. As the days move on, the analog horror part starts to come into play. Stranger and stranger entries for things like Spriggans, Hobbs, Cellar Grottos, and Reanimations. The artwork is superb and accompanies these entires as well as some audio entires. It’s creepy for sure, but never quite the same. Turn on the lights and get goosebumps vibes. There’s some cheese added to this game that takes away from the realism factor. Analog horror is so great because it seems like it could be real. Some of the drawings, while good, don’t look like they were captured on video or with a crappy digital camera. They look drawn-in. The videos on the desktop are some of the best parts of the game that capture that analog horror atmosphere.

This is a riddle or puzzle game, so you have to guess the correct answers or get fired and have to restart the day. After each call, there is a ten-second pause until the phone rings again, but when you put the caller on hold, there is no time limit or penalty. You can take your time, read all of the entries, and make your decision. Some calls are obvious, while others are vague, and they can get quite tricky towards the end. There are anomalies and disturbances that accompany analog horror, such as weird phone calls, network interruptions, and strange messages. While I would have liked more of this, what’s here is fine for a short horror game.

Overall, Home Safety Hotline starts out pretty disturbing and odd, but slowly evolves into cheese, and it kind of ruins the whole vibe. Being an employee at a mysterious hotline is fun, and there is a lot of potential for a sequel or something more. Solving the riddles is fun, and the artwork and entries created give a slow trickle of “what the hell is going on here?” vibes, but it never quite peaks like some of the classics in the genre.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse