The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux – 8 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/17/2023
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: The Astronauts

Developer: The Astronauts

Release Date: 07/15/2015


Available On

When it comes to walking simulators, some get more praise than others, and some are just forgotten. Ethan Carter was talked about quite a bit upon its first release, even receiving a BAFTA award for best game innovation. After playing this game, I can’t understand that kind of high praise for game innovation, but it sure does look pretty, and I have to give the ending some credit. It’s one game that builds up to a great conclusion where everything comes together. However, during the actual journey, the narrative is pretty messy and vague.

You play a detective trying to find a boy, Ethan Carter, and along the way, you solve murder scenes. The game is built to be sort of open-ended. You can easily miss side content (in the form of puzzles) if you don’t wander off and check out the house off the beaten path. Your main goal to advance the story is to find every clue for the scene, then go to the main part of the scene (usually an object), hold down the mouse button, and go into detective mode to piece everything together. Blue whisps fly out and show scene segments. You need to put them in the correct order and play it out to find out what happened. Once you do this, you get a piece of Ethan’s story and can move on.

There are a couple of areas with optional puzzles. You need to navigate an area to find the clues, which are usually identical to the area with the puzzle in it. These are either audio or visual clues; they can be quite challenging and make you think a bit. Notably, there aren’t any collectibles in the game, so you don’t have to worry about missing much. There are a couple of objects to find for achievements, but that’s about it. I wish there was some sort of reward for taking off into random, remote corners of the game. The path seems to be far more linear than it lets on. It’s really more of an illusion of how far you can walk.

The locales vary quite a bit, and the game is really pretty. When the game was initially released, it was a great piece of tech for PC gamers pushing Unreal Engine 3, and now it has been ported to Unreal Engine 4. While it looks sort of dated today with some less-than-stellar lighting effects and a lot of 2D leaves and branches on trees, there is still a lot of detail. Huge open vistas look into the forests, lakes, rivers, and dams of the Wisconsin wilderness. It looks good in these wide-open areas, but the interior parts look pretty average, and there’s nothing to write home about in terms of art direction or style. It’s hyper-realistic-looking, with very minor touches of horror sprinkled throughout.

While looking at the landscape is nice, you can easily get lost as the game prides itself on not holding your hand; however, being completely clueless also isn’t fun. Without a guide, many will turn the game off before even knowing you must solve these murder scenes during the first ten minutes. You can walk for quite a ways before realizing nothing is happening or hitting a dead end. This requires a lot of backtracking and aimless trekking through nothing but silence. While there is technically a “path” you can follow, it’s very loose and not so obvious all the time.

My favorite atmospheric segments were when the detective narrates and you’re just traveling through the vistas and valleys, taking in the scenery. It’s a bit foreboding in spots but never creeps into horror game territory. There are no jump scares, no ghouls, and nothing supernatural. A building might be dark and dilapidated, and you might enter an old mine, but there’s no creepy music or anything. It’s foreboding. That’s the best word I can come up with. I constantly found myself confused and disoriented trying to figure out what was going on in the story most of the time, so I always looked forward to that break in solving crime scenes with the walking and narration.

Overall, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a game I have put off for nearly a decade, mainly because I knew it would be a confusing mess and the story would disappoint, but I do have to say waiting for this Unreal Engine 4 port was worth it. If you like walking simulators, this is among the best visually and is a nice change of pace from the horror ones we seem to get mostly. Even if the open-ended nature of the game frustrates you, stick with a guide or keep trying, as the ending is well worth it and those open vistas are incredibly gorgeous to look at.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Stasis: Bone Totem

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/16/2023
Posted in: PC Reviews, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified. Leave a comment

Publisher: The Brotherhood

Developer: The Brotherhood

Release Date: 05/31/2023


Available Exclusively On

The original Stasis is one of my favorite point-and-click adventure games. The atmosphere, the raw, gory imagery, the soundscape, and the overall tone were just fantastic. While the story and characters themselves were forgettable, you really got pulled into the alien world. Bone Totem continues this path but does a better job with the characters and story as well.

You start the game as a married couple who do contract work for private companies. Mostly rescue and salvage operations. Mac and Charlie have their own unique skills. Charlie can take two items together to combine them, and Mac can break a single item apart into a new item. You will use these features throughout the entire game, as items can be swapped between characters at any time, making backtracking a minimal thing. Oddly, this trick is never explained, as how do these items warp between characters no matter what situation they are in? Moses is your third character, introduced late in the first chapter, and he has no abilities. He is an animatronic bear with some sort of AI.

Just like in the first game, you can click around to move the characters on the pre-rendered backgrounds. Right-clicking will flash green and blue dots on the screen. Green are descriptive items, and blue are interactive ones. Always go for the blue. Each screen usually has something to interact with, and if you run out of things to do, then another character needs to advance the story somehow. The swapping of objects is how you solve puzzles. Some puzzles are strewn across all the characters who need to do something. Create a new object, find an object, break down an object, or something along those lines.

Cut scenes are all voiced, with pre-rendered scenes sprinkled here and there. Every time you enter a new area or interact with a blue object, a cutscene usually plays. The story is well-detailed, and it takes its time over the 8–10 hours it takes to complete the game. The salvage operation turns into a horror and nightmarish hellscape quickly, and the descent is pretty amazing. The visuals change constantly as you progress, and you always run into “WTF?” moments. The Brotherhood is great at making the game look like a 90s point-and-click with fantastically drawn art. A mix of their own style fused with H.R. Giger is just wonderful, and I can’t get enough of it. If you liked the look of the recently released Scorn, you will love the art in this game.

A lot of disturbing imagery fills this game. Flayed bodies, disemboweled creatures, eerily humanoid androids, and weird aliens The list goes on, and every time you interact with one that ends up being a blue object, you get an up-close, full view, and it’s marvelous and incredibly disturbing. The Brotherhood set the bar in the art department for retro point-and-click games. Every screen has something new to look at, and I couldn’t wait to see what they would show visually. Thankfully, the voice acting is pretty good, and the pre-rendered cut scenes are janky, but in that classic ’90s way, that’s so bad it’s good. They are clearly made this way on purpose, and I love it.

Thankfully, I always felt a sense of progression thanks to the lack of backtracking. The worst it got was when I remembered a clue maybe six screens back and forgot to take a photo or screenshot of it. Usually, it was my own fault. Puzzles are also not insanely cryptic. Usually, some fiddling here, some thinking there, and you always get that “AHA!” moment fairly quickly. Every time I got a new object, I would try it out on the next blue object for each character. Some items get held on to for hours at a time; some are used right away; but few are obvious in their uses.

Overall, Bone Totem is a great follow-up to the original. The gorgeous art, dark horror, gruesome rawness, and visceral detail in the imagery are a sight to behold. The voice acting is decent. The characters have depth, and I was hooked until the end. The ending also felt like a conclusive finish, and while I still wanted to know more about a few of the characters, their mystery might be on purpose. If you love 90s point-and-click adventures or just love gory art in games, then look no further.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – 8 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/10/2023
Posted in: PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEI

Developer: The Chinese Room

Release Date: 08/11/2015


Available On

Walking simulators are something I really enjoy as they can focus mostly on the story, characters, and atmosphere. Sadly, it’s also a big gamble as sometimes the story can be great, but the gameplay is awful or the story is awesome, but the ending sucks and pretty much makes the entire experience not worthwhile. The Chinese Room is notorious for its walking simulators, being almost exactly that, and this game is a spiritual successor to Dear Esther which looked great but was forgettable.

The game puts you in a small rural British town of Shropshire where there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. All you know is to follow a ball of light floating around and it guides you around the town to activate cut scenes of the main characters talking about what happened at that moment. You will see the aftermath such as a wrecked car, a turned-over box, bloody rags, etc. There are no actual character models as they are just whisps of light in the shape of people acting things out on screen. This can make the game aggravating to play and pay attention to. A game with literally zero gameplay outside of an action button, and doesn’t have any characters on screen better be damn good right?

As you walk around and follow the ball of light you will sometimes hear a numbers station playing on a radio or a telephone ring. These are extra tidbits of stories you can listen to. Each part of the town focuses on a specific character, but sadly I was often lost as to who was what as there were no faces to put to any of the voices. Once you see a cutscene play out your ball of light will stop and wait, sometimes. There were quite a few glitches in the game in which the ball of light would get stuck in the ground, not continue on, or just disappear somewhere never to be found. I had to restart the game to get the ball back on track.

Major cutscenes that actually advance the story are triggered by grabbing a ball of light and moving it left and right until it explodes. This was originally an excuse to use the then-new DualShock 4 touchpad. Here it’s just a mouse drag and feels pointless. You know you are done with an area when you get a ball of exploding light that takes a few seconds to trigger. After this cutscene, the area goes dark and you follow a trail of lights on the ground to the next area. This is all there is to the game. It’s pretty to look at, even today. The game uses CryEngine so it looks awesome and holds up well, but it’s still forgettable. There’s nothing memorable about a realistic-looking generic old English rural town.

I did eventually get into the story towards the end. However, the game just ends on a pretentious note and I felt deflated and annoyed. I really hate endings like this. This was four hours I will get back and I won’t take anything away from this game at all. No interesting gameplay, no memorable visuals, and no exciting story. The voice acting is great, but that’s about it.

Sadly, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a game I’ve avoided for a decade and there’s a reason for that. I knew that this game would be very forgettable and a waste of time. I enjoyed the idea of this strange apocalyptic infection that’s passed around through phone and radio waves, but there’s no pay-off in the end. That also doesn’t take into account the aggravatingly slow walking pace that most people won’t be able to put up with. Even if it was two times faster it would be more tolerable. It feels like you’re crawling. That would be fine if there were more visuals to look at but there aren’t.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Bramble: The Mountain King

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/06/2023
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S. Leave a comment

Publisher: Merge Games

Developer: Dimfrost Studios

Release Date: 04/27/2023


Available On

Linear, narrative-driven adventure games are some of my favorites. Bramble does a great job trying to be different than the rest by delivering a little bit of everything and not overstaying its welcome. You play as Olle, who is trying to rescue his captured sister from the bramble and evil forest creatures who took her.

The game does a great job of luring you into a false sense of security. The game starts out bright and colorful, with beautiful sweeping vistas of green. You get to solve various simple puzzles with cute gnomes that laugh like little babies. The first third of the game is cheerful and bright—until it suddenly isn’t. Bramble quickly turns dark, gory, and downright depressing. Sacrificed babies, wading through pools of animal gore, climbing moldy meat—and those cute little gnomes get slaughtered at some point. It’s just done abruptly and suddenly, and it’s shocking.

The majority of the game has you running around areas with fixed camera angles, jumping, climbing, pushing the occasional push, twisting the odd lever, and solving the easiest puzzles. I honestly don’t know why these puzzles are even here. Exploration is also nonexistent. You go into a room with a locked door, only to find the key on the table in front of you. This happens multiple times as well. I don’t understand the point of it. There is a bit of combat thrown in, but it’s saved for boss fights. You have a ball of light that’s not only used to illuminate areas and clear some paths, but you can also chuck it at weak points at bosses. The boss fights are the only challenge in the whole game, as you must memorize attack patterns and dodge, jump, or toss your ball at the right moments through waves of attacks.

The environments are constantly changing, and they all look fantastic. Depth of field is used well here as you are a small person in a giant’s world, so everything from blades of grass to a normal-sized rock is huge. This is well shown, and the perspective is pretty cool with the depth of field effects used. Textures look great, and models look good too. The entire game is narrated by a woman, so it’s the only voice acting in the game. I do want to mention that the soundtrack is gorgeous. During chapter changes and while the camera pans across a vista while you’re running, an incredible vocal soundtrack will play, and I honestly would listen to it outside of the game. The soundtrack by Martin Wave and Dan Wakefield is fantastic.

Despite the great pacing, wonderful visuals and soundtrack, and challenging bosses, there still isn’t much of an actual story here. The game is narrated like a children’s storybook from medieval times, but that’s about it. I had no reason to get attached to the characters or the world around me. The monster and creature designs are top-notch, and I always looked forward to the next screen because it was always a surprise. The game is nice and short and is better than most short, linear, narrative-driven adventure titles. I love the dark tone and theme, and while you may not discuss this with your friends a year from now, it’s at least a sight to behold.

Reviewed On

Xbox Series X Controller

The Quarry

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/31/2023
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S. Leave a comment

Publisher: 2K Games

Developer: Supermassive Games

Release Date: 06/10/2022


Available On

Supermassive games are well known for the interesting worlds they create, albeit how small and linear they are, and their knack for telling decent horror stories. Until Dawn is still considered one of the best PS4 games to date, and it was a fantastic game. Mostly in terms of the lore and story behind the characters. The pacing was also pretty great. Supermassive went on to create the episodic The Dark Pictures Anthology game, which is mediocre at best. The Quarry is the first stand-alone title they have made since Until Dawn, and their experience from The Dark Pictures carries over.

If you are familiar with any of their work, you will know pretty much what to expect. The game starts out fairly slowly, introducing the choices and QTE gameplay to you in a safe manner that won’t affect the story. You start out as two characters who are on their way to a kid’s camp in some nondescript woods to be counselors. You run into something on the road and get run off, and you need to figure out what to do from there. The dark and brooding atmosphere kicks in right away, and the game is better paced than some of their previous works. Once the beginning chapter is out of the way, you get introduced to all of the other characters, and the first few chapters build up to the horror and get you attached to these characters via personality cliches and quirks. Sadly, Supermassive relies heavily on character traits and stereotypes to get you attached to their characters. Their games are more about the here and now, and there’s little lore or character background like in other adventure games.

This has always been a fault of their games that I don’t like. While the characters are more likable than in previous games and have better and stronger personalities, I still don’t care for them after the game is over. I don’t think about them or care to go back and find out about other outcomes. You have the jock type, the strong female, the silly female, the meek female, the silly small dude, etc. They are just all stereotypes, and relying on this makes all of their games feel like B-grade horror movies with slightly better acting. I understand that’s sometimes the charm, and it’s almost done on purpose in this case, but I would like to see the studio’s experience put to use in more than just cookie-cutter horror movies you watch on cable TV at 2 a.m. and forget about the next morning.

With that said, there is still almost zero gameplay here. Your main goal is to focus on choices. You get dialog choices, always two, that can shift your attitude towards a character one way or another, and it’s your job to observe them and figure out how they will react based on how they are dealing with things in the world. During the “action sequence,” you get really easy QTE button prompts, and failing these will either end in a game over that kills a character or a second chance to try again. You can press the left analog stick in a certain direction or mash a face button. Adventure game gameplay these days is so bad. I honestly wish the puzzles would make a comeback. There are some small changes to the typical Supermassive gameplay with choice actions. A prompt will pop up asking you if you want to call out, stop someone, raise a weapon, or something along these lines. These are important and can change the whole outcome of the game. It’s a rule of thumb to either hide and hold your breath or run and don’t mess up the prompts, but sometimes you can stray off the path, and these usually have dual outcomes. Something good and bad happen at the same time.

When you rarely get control of a character, you wander around looking for things to look at and tarot cards. These cards are similar to the photos in The Dark Pictures Anthology and can show you a predicted outcome. You only get to choose a single tarot card you find per chapter, rather than seeing every outcome as you discover them. I honestly didn’t feel these were necessary, and all but one of my party survived by the end of the game. I think I did pretty well. Walking around the linear areas is an excuse to add “gameplay” and pad things out. There is even a movie mode that lets you just watch the game as a movie, so there’s that. I will admit that the choices here felt heavier and more important than in previous games. I really had to think, and sometimes I really couldn’t predict or know what my choices would do. A lot of them were based on pure instinct. So at least their path engine is getting better.

Of course, Supermassive is also known for its hyperrealistic animations and visuals. Sure, they are fantastic. So good that some of the facial animations just don’t look human or feel awkward. They still have that “video game trying to be super real” feeling to them. Their Unreal Engine is still poorly optimized, and with a high-end PC, I still dipped under 60FPS at 1440p. To be honest, Supermassive also just can’t get a lot of what most other adventure games get right. Any time they try to be “touchy-feely and deep,” it comes off as corny and cheesy. It’s not to the level of, say, Life is Strange that can really dig deep and make you believe that these characters are human and feel pain and misery.

Overall, The Quarry is a nice departure from their mainline mini-series, but it still suffers from the same issues. A poorly optimized engine, awkward facial animations, corny dialog, and forgettable characters and stories. This is a typical “2 AM B-grade made for cable TV” horror story and nothing more or less. By the time the credits rolled about 9 hours in, I shrugged and just moved on to the next game. The acting is much better than in their previous games, and their choice engine feels more organic and relies more on instinct, which is great, but there is pretty much zero gameplay. This is fun to play on Halloween night with a friend with the lights off, or just to pass an evening with some decent entertainment. Don’t expect to talk about it with your friends the next day, however.

Reviewed On

Xbox Series X Controller

Planet of Lana

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/26/2023
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Xbox Series X|S. Leave a comment

Publisher: Thunderful Publishing

Developer: Wishfully

Release Date: 05/23/2023


Available On

When an indie game like Planet of Lana comes out, I’m a sucker for these types of games. 2D atmospheric platformers that may or may not tug at your heartstrings are usually quite beautiful to look at and have great pacing. When playing Planet of Lana, I got vibes from various other games such as Inside, Limbo, Max and the Magic Marker, A Boy and His Blob, Little Nightmares, and so on. There’s a mix of all these games inside, but it still has its own identity. There are also artistic vibes similar to Studio Ghibli films and even War of the Worlds. I got all of this from playing this game, and it was nice to get those nostalgic flashbacks.

The game is a strict 2D platformer with some puzzle and platforming elements thrown in. Your main character, Lana, controls similarly to other characters in games like these. He feels heavy and doesn’t jump very far, so you rely a lot on pushing boxes, dropping ropes, and moving platforms around to get around. However, to its credit, the game doesn’t heavily rely on this to pad gameplay. Puzzles happen maybe a few times per level, and they are quite satisfying and fun. For the first time, I do want to mention that this game benefits from having an ultrawide display. The luscious landscapes spread across the screen, and it just looks amazing. The game slowly introduces gameplay mechanics to you, and it really opens up when you come across your cat-like companion Mui. You use him to flip switches, jump up on robots to flip switches high up, lure creatures, etc. The gameplay mechanics are mixed up all the time, and no two puzzles are the same.

Enemies exist in the game, and you always have to avoid them. either robots or creatures. A lot of the time, there is timing involved. Study their walking path and run when it’s clear, or somehow use the current puzzle to take them down or disable them in some way. Each encounter is new and fresh, and the pacing of the game is great. You can play the game for nearly four hours to the finish line and feel satisfied. I rarely get stumped, and the environment is always changing.

I will say that this game suffers from the same thing as all other short cinematic adventure games. The story is nonexistent. You’re trying to rescue your sister from an invading robot species, and that’s it. There is a final ending, and it works, but there’s no reason or way to get attached to characters or care about them outside of Mui due to his personality on screen. I feel like developers shouldn’t sacrifice stories for short game times. There’s a way to make you care. Braid is a perfect example of this concept. The game is gorgeous, and the puzzles are fun, but please give me a story to care about. Sure, there are your typical three acts and an actual ending, and it makes sense, but I wanted to care about this world a little more.

Overall, Planet of Lana has great pacing with a lot of fun puzzles that always change up, enemy encounters that mix things up, and environments that are always changing. Having an ultrawide monitor is beneficial for the lovely landscapes, but there just isn’t much of a story here. The game is also less than four hours long, so some may feel like they want more.

Reviewed On

Xbox Series X Controller

Nintendo Game Boy – 34 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/25/2023
Posted in: Game Boy, Hardware, Nintendo, Retro Consoles. Leave a comment

Release Date: 07/31/1989

Colors: White, Clear, Red, Green, Yellow, Black, Blue, Grey

MSRP: $89.99

This was the first handheld I ever had. I got it for my 7th birthday, along, of course, with a copy of Tetris. I remember the copy of Tetris having a cigarette burn mark on the top of the cartridge and being stained yellow. I’ll never forget that! Sadly, I only ever owned two Game Boy games. The other was Galaga and Galaxian, which I found at a thrift store. Despite only having this game for the longest time, I played it a lot. I remember that green screen burned into my memory and the sound of the theme song chirping away in the background. I wish I knew just how many awesome games there were for the system back in the day, as I missed out on a lot.

And for 80s hardware, the system is quite impressive. Being such a small 8-bit system is really something else. The worst part about the system is the awful screen. There is no backlight, and it’s monochrome in green. People gave the Game Boy hell for this and still do it to this day. The Japanese market got an improved Game Boy Light with a backlight, but it was never released here. The system is quite chunky, but that can be a good thing. It has some weight and feels good in the hand, even today. There’s a contrast wheel and a sound wheel, as well as a link cable port. This thing took four AA batteries but didn’t burn through them as fast as people think. This wasn’t the Game Gear after all. The batteries could last as long as 30 hours. Not having a CFL backlight had its advantages.

The system also had a headphone jack, and the speaker was good enough. Systems are only as good as their libraries, and the Game Boy had some great additions. Sadly, there was also a lot of garbage on the handheld. Some developers didn’t know how to optimize the hardware and made ugly games with sluggish controls and animations. While others defined the system. It may be hard to go back to the original hardware today, especially when newer Game Boys play these games with better hardware. I recommend modding this system with an IPS screen and maybe swapping out the shell. A lot of these yellowed over the years, and the plastics became brittle. However, I will praise the large screen, as it’s easy to see the sprites on the screen.

Overall, the original Game Boy’s worst problem was the terrible screen, but the batteries lasted a long time, it sounded pretty good, and the screen was at least large. It may be hard to go back to an original Game Boy today, but anyone who is curious or wants to own one is encouraged to modify it with modern hardware and make it more enjoyable to play today.

Neo Geo Pocket Color – 24 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/23/2023
Posted in: Hardware, Neo Geo Pocket Color, Retro Consoles. Leave a comment

Release Date: 08/06/1999

Colors: Carbon Black, Solid Silver, Blue, Platinum Silver, Clear, Crystal Yellow, Camo Blue, Crystal White, Stone Blue, White, Pearl Blue

MSRP: $69.95

Everyone has played at least one Game Boy in their life, but the more obscure handhelds that tried to compete just didn’t get enough attention. It sounds odd that SNK, of all companies, would try to release an 8-bit handheld to compete with the Game Boy Color, but they tried, and they did a good job. Their first-party lineup on the system was incredible, and they really pumped quality into the little handheld. There was some third-party support from Sega, Capcom, and Namco, but it just wasn’t enough. SNK was having a hard time getting Western support for the system, as it just didn’t appeal to that audience.

The system itself is the successor to the short-lived black-and-white Neo Geo Pocket. The Pocket Color was ahead of its time, being the first 16-bit handheld system on the market and beating the GBA to the punch by a few years. While it still suffered from not having a backlight like many handhelds in the 1990s, it still had a clear and crisp screen. There wasn’t much in terms of I/O, like the handhelds of the 90s, but there was a link cable for multiplayer. What made the Pocket Color unique was the clicky control stick. It was the first handheld to have an analog stick, and it was meant to emulate an arcade stick. I love this thing and wish more handhelds had it, even if it is really noisy, but man does it feel good and is perfect for fighting games, which the Pocket Color was famous for.

There are only two face buttons (A and B), a soft power button, and an options button. That’s it. It’s a pretty rudimentary system, and I’m surprised it had so few buttons despite having a lot of fighting games on it. You can imagine that these games are very simple at their core, which they are. The display is slightly larger than the original Game Boy at 2.7″; however, the system does have a sub-battery that’s used for keeping the clock, as there are a few built-in apps on here. This was also the first handheld to do this. There is a calendar, horoscope, world clock, and alarm setting. I’m not sure why you would leave your NGPC on all night to use as an alarm, but it’s there. You can pick a background color as well. It’s very simple and basic, but it’s there and is cute.

A system is only as good as its library, and the NGPC is widely loved for its small but high-quality library. Only 82 games were ever released, and a surprising amount were released in the West. The games were fun, had great visuals, and just played and ran well; however, they are insanely expensive. Most complete games will cost, on average, $100 a piece. It’s also recommended to modernize the system by installing a drop-in LCD mod. This makes the system much more enjoyable, and you can play in the dark!

Overall, this is the little system that could. There are a few Japanese-only games that have fan translations, but you need a flash cart to play them, and they are expensive (about $100). You also must like SNK games to really enjoy this system. The King of Fighters, Neo Turf Masters, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug, and games of that nature If you love those classic arcade games, you will also enjoy this system.

Sony PlayStation DualSense Wireless Controller

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/20/2023
Posted in: Android, Hardware, iOS, Linux, Mac, Mobile Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles. Leave a comment

The PlayStation controller is iconic. It was the first controller that had force feedback built-in and dual analog sticks, and it became a worldwide icon. I remember buying my first DualShock controller as a kid. It was a green one, too. The controller improved with the PS2 by adding pressure-sensitive buttons, but overall it was still the same thing. The DualShock 3 was the most controversial, originally being a six-axis controller with no force feedback due to the lawsuit that Sony was in over their force feedback tech. The DualShock 3 did eventually come out, but the six-axis motion was a gimmick and was never utilized outside of the first two years of the system’s life. It also had triggers that weren’t well done, and the analog stick rubber degraded over time. It just wasn’t a fantastic controller. On the other hand, the DualShock 4 wasn’t the greatest either. The forced light bar needed to communicate with the PlayStation camera so that no one had drained the battery, and the added touchpad didn’t really add to any one experience, just like the SixAxis didn’t. It had improved rear triggers and analog sticks, but that was about it.

Here is the scrapped DualShock name. I have to salute that name, and it will be missed. We are now in the DualSense era. This controller is probably the first ever to be truly as innovative as the built-in analog sticks and force feedback from the DualShock 1. The haptic triggers literally change how a game plays and feels. These aren’t gimmicks. There is a resistive force on the triggers in the game. You can hold down a trigger partially, and it will stick to the motor. Pull down harder to actually shoot a gun or arrow. You can feel the swings of an axe in God of War: Ragnarok. The triggers can even vibrate a bit and feel suddenly loose or tight, like in The Last of Us Part 1. It changes the way I shoot in games. Spider-Man Remastered lets you feel the webs that you shoot with physical force.

This is the best part of the entire controller, and I miss it in every game that doesn’t have it. The rest of the controls are just slightly tweaked for a better hand feel in the grips, and the top light bar was finally removed. However, there are still lights around the touchpad, which is fine. The controller just looks so good now, too. The change to a pure white launch color was strange but also brave. The texture of the controller is improved as well. It doesn’t feel as slippery, and the plastic doesn’t feel as cheap as the DualShock 3 (I’m sorry, but that controller was my least favorite from Sony). The D-Pad also feels better this time around and is less mushy. I also love how the controller is now USB-C and we can finally get away from the micro connector. You still have Bluetooth availability, and it seems to be more compatible with devices than what the DualShock 4 could do. I do like the actual PlayStation logo as the home button now, and the controller retains the speaker and mic features. There is also a mic mute button right on the controller, which is a great feature.

Overall, the DualSense controller is the first controller revolution since the Wii remote and the original DualShock before that. The haptic triggers literally change the way you play and feel the game. There are so many things you can do with this type of resistive technology, and many first-party games are coming out swinging already. The battery life is improved over the DualShock 4, the ergonomics have been tweaked just enough, and finally, get USB-C! I’m not sure how Sony can improve from here.

Mortal Kombat 3 – 28 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/18/2023
Posted in: Game Boy, Game Gear, Nintendo, PC Reviews, PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Saturn, Sony, Super Nintendo. Leave a comment

Publisher: Williams Entertainment

Developer: Software Creations

Release Date: 11/1995


Available On

I remember MK3 very fondly as a kid. I remember seeing ads for it everywhere. Specifically, a cardboard standee in a Walmart with the giant logo My parents had a friend bring the Saturn version over once during a really bad storm. I remember seeing the arcades as well. I wound up renting it for the Super Nintendo and had a blast. I mostly loved the much darker and more mature tone the series took. MKII felt more cartoony and stylish, while MK3 felt like it pushed the first game’s realism even further.

Sadly, it does not transfer over to the Game Boy version. I don’t know why they bothered at this point. Probe dropped the ball after the pretty decent MKII and made MK3 just about as bad as the port of the first game. Back are the smaller sprites, sluggish animations, unresponsive controls, and weird speed issues with jumping animations. Animations seem to speed up and slow down, making the game just slightly better than a Tiger Electronics version. The control scheme is mostly intact, which isn’t that bad, but we also get the running mode, which is useless on such a tiny screen with a low frame rate. A new developer took the helm here and went with a 512K cart this time, which could still be bigger. Sure, we get four stages, but they’re ugly, and the music stinks too.

Once again, we get quite a few cut characters. Liu-Kang, Stryker, Nightwolf, Kung-Lao, Jax, and Shang Tsung are all missing. That’s nearly half the roster. Every character has their babality intact, but only a single fatality and mercies were kept in. It honestly doesn’t matter how insanely slow the game plays. It feels like everyone is wading through mud. It’s just so unacceptable at this point, as many Game Boy games look and play so much better.

There is nearly no redeeming value in playing this atrocity. It’s the worst version of the game, and at this point, 8-bit versions should have already stopped. We’re almost into 1996. 32-bit systems have been here for a couple of years now. The Game Boy is already almost 7 years old. I can only say this is for people who are curious about or are collectors of Mortal Kombat games. Otherwise, stay away.

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