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We Happy Few

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/24/2018

Posted in: Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Xbox One. Tagged: action, bioshock, first person shooter, fps, shooter, stealth, we happy few. Leave a comment

Publisher: Gearbox Publishing

Developer: Compulsion Games

Release Date: 08/09/2018

Available On

We Happy Few is a stealth action game in the vein of BioShock. The premise is actually really interesting and fresh. The game takes place post-World War II, in which the Nazis won the war and took over Britain. The citizens must take a drug called Joy that makes them see everything for what it isn’t: a cheery, delightful, and stress-free world. You play Arthur Hastings, who is a reporter who decides not to take his joy one day. People quickly catch on and start chasing you, and this is when the game starts kicking in.

We Happy Few isn’t exactly an open-world game, but there are large areas you can explore and various missions to partake in. Outside of the main quests, there are side quests. There are also two types of areas to explore. The first is outside the cities where downers are kept, and you must make sure you look trashy like they do and are off your joy. Just make sure you don’t take anything from them or run, and you should be fine. When you are in the cities, you don’t really have to take Joy, but you can’t run, jump, sneak, or do anything crazy, or everyone will catch on. It’s not as simple as this, though, as there are a lot of variables in the stealth mechanics that make the game very frustrating. There are various gadgets that can sniff you out and detect you are off your joy, and doctors roam the streets sniffing you out. You also can’t run and sneak around here either, or you will be swarmed and killed. There is also a curfew, so being out at night is a huge disadvantage, as everyone will come after you and kill you.

Sadly, other variables make this further compounded with frustrations, as you can’t skip time at night and can only do this sleeping in your own bed in your secret hideout in each area. Not to mention this is kind of a survival game with crafting involved, so many mission items must be crafted or obtained elsewhere, and it can seriously halt progress. Combat kind of takes a backseat, as you are really at a disadvantage here, as most of the time you are overwhelmed with too many people to handle. Sneaking around is a must, and being able to see footsteps through walls helps, but sometimes the game is just so overwhelmingly repetitive and has flawed AI that I died dozens of times throughout the game trying to figure everything out.

There are plenty of gadgets to craft to help you out, including weapons, distractors, healing items, and buffs, but most ingredients needed for healing are really rare, and you won’t find better blueprints until late in the game. I mainly relied on sneaking up behind people and choking them out or distracting them with glass bottles. If you get caught, you can run and hide in various places until the enemies lose interest, but sometimes this doesn’t always work. Some enemies won’t go back to their patrols, and I was stuck darting out and hiding somewhere else. I felt no matter what I did, I was always too hindered by the game’s mechanics, felt suffocated, and was always frustrated. The game rarely felt fun.

If I died, there would be weird checkpoint placements, sometimes putting me several objectives behind and requiring long stretches of repetitive nonsense. Sometimes I would be put back at night and would have to run through enemies to get to where I needed to be. I appreciate the number of gadgets and ways to sneak around objectives, but sometimes the easiest was always the quickest way through by just running through everything.

Once again, combat consists of just swinging things around and blocking until the enemy dies. It’s clunky and not very fun, but it works in a pinch. As you progress, you can level your character and add new skills and abilities, which wound up being really helpful, but then I would always have more materials to craft for things I couldn’t make than ones for blueprints I had. I was always overburdened, throwing stuff out that I could never use.

The story is enough to push me through the frustrations; the dialog was witty and the voice acting was superb, but I just felt there was something missing. There just wasn’t enough of it between long stretches of repetitive gameplay to make it worthwhile in the end. It’s a very interesting world, and I felt it got lost in the survival stealth aspect of the game. I wanted to explore more freely, but I was on a time limit; I couldn’t run and climb where I wanted, and doing anything besides being a good citizen got me caught and took five minutes to become not wanted.

Artistically, the game shines and has great-looking art and designs that look similar to BioShock, but it’s technically dated. The game looks almost last-gen and is poorly optimized, with framerate dropping below 60FPS on an overclocked GTX 1070. It’s not going to make your GPU sweat; it just confuses your drivers.

Overall, We Happy Few is a great idea that isn’t executed as smoothly as it could have been. The story, dialog, atmosphere, and characters are there, but they are held back by repetitive gameplay, boring exploration, and pointless side quests.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Spy Hunter – 6 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/10/2018

Posted in: 3DS, Nintendo, Nintendo Consoles, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: racer, racing, spy hunter. Leave a comment

Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Developer: TT Fusion

Release Date: 10/09/2012

Available On

While I’ve played the arcade original, there were many Spy Hunter games released when I grew up, and all of them were terrible. This version is no exception, as somehow it doesn’t translate to 3D very well.

With the power of the Vita and being a launch title, I figured Spy Hunter could finally be done right, but boy was I wrong. The game starts out by taking a photo of you for your license and throwing you out onto the street with four weapons. Each weapon is assigned to a face button, and I started out with a flashbang, flamethrower, machine gun, and shocker. As I drove along, I was ambushed by generic-looking cars that rammed me, some that dumped explosive barrels, and some that had machine guns. The action itself was quite dull, with little going for it as the game already looked extremely ugly and boring.

Even with new upgrades and morphing into a boat, things did not get any more interesting. Driving the car feels like sliding on ice, and crashes are uninteresting. For a game that is supposed to be so high-octane, it doesn’t feel that way at all. The story is also pointless and pretty stupid, as there are no established characters or reasons as to why you are doing anything in the game.

If only the game looked better and felt more polished, I feel it could have been something. As it is, this feels like a beta or an incomplete game. Physics is awful; the weapons seem cool, but the results are uninteresting, and then when you repeat this a dozen times, it’s enough to make your brain melt. I can’t recommend this game even to hardcore racing or action fans. This isn’t even worth a bargain bin purchase because there are other bargain bin games worth buying instead.

Reviewed On

Asphalt: Injection – 6 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/07/2018

Posted in: PlayStation Vita, Sony. Tagged: asphalt, gameloft, injection, playstation, ps vita, racer, racing, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Gameloft/Ubisoft

Release Date: 02/15/2012

Available Exclusively On

Gameloft and I don’t really get along. They used to release good Java mobile games back in the day, but after smartphones took off, they released nothing but free-to-play or pay-to-win garbage. Sadly, this leaked over to handhelds a few times, and the Vita was no exception. Injection is a dumbed-down port of Asphalt 6: Adrenaline for mobile phones. A mobile game directly ported to a handheld isn’t the best of ideas, and this game proves why.

With all of the pay-to-win aspects taken out of Asphalt, this is a rare opportunity to see how the game would play if all microtransactions and other cancer-riddled stuff were stripped out. On the surface, it’s a reasonably accessible and playable racing game with licensed cars, more like a low-budget PS2 title. The tracks are boring but work, with boost icons and jumps. The purpose of the game is to boost your way through the track as much as you can and take shortcuts. Once you fill your boost meter, you can go into adrenaline mode, which allows you to easily knock cars off the road in Burnout style and zoom ahead. I found the cars to all pretty much handle the same; drifting is awful, and the whole game feels stiff and poorly made.

That’s not to say there’s zero fun in the game; it does work and is a nice mindless racer for fans of the series or anyone wanting a bargain bin racer on the Vita. Gameloft is not a genius when it comes to handhelds, as they don’t work like mobile phones. Outside of career mode, you can race with other people (no one was even playing during launch, don’t worry), and there are typical event types to participate in, such as elimination, time trials, and various others that have been done to death.

Injection is ugly, stiff, boring, and a slightly upgraded port of a mobile game that was already over a year old before the Vita was released. If you have exhausted all your other racing options on Vita, then go for this dead last.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz – 6 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/07/2018

Posted in: PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: banana splitz, handheld, playstation, ps vita, puzzle, Sony, super monkey ball, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Marvelous AQL

Release Date: 10/23/2012

Available Exclusively On

I love Super Monkey Ball. I remember playing this back on the PS2 and having a blast being OCD about collecting every banana in every stage. The GameBoy Advance version was probably my favorite of them all, but when I found out there was one for Vita, I was quite intrigued.

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Sadly, the fun didn’t last long. For starters, the game hasn’t evolved one bit, with the same tiled, textured levels and blurry backgrounds. While the game looks decent on Vita, it looks quite boring and bland. Outside of that, the controls feel somewhat off, and the gyroscope and thumbstick controls just don’t feel right. Even though the D-Pad controls on Super Monkey Ball Jr. worked well on a 16-bit handheld system, what happened? When using the thumbstick, the levels move around so fast and are so jumpy that it was nauseating just to get through a level. On top of that, the levels may seem challenging, but they just aren’t that well designed. It almost feels as if they were randomly generated and slapped into the game. You get 60 seconds to complete each level and get higher scores by collecting all the bananas, or you can be brave and find a shortcut on some levels and jump down to the goal.

On top of all this, the mini-games are bland and boring and make no sense, and then the course editor doesn’t actually let you save courses and create your own from scratch, so it feels pointless. Multiplayer is fun as always, but playing by yourself should always be enjoyable. I’m not sure if I’m just burned out on SMB’s overall design, which has stayed the same for nearly 2 decades, or if this is just a not-so-great version.

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Banana Splitz could have been a definitive version of the series, culminating nearly two decades of SMB into one fantastic game or rebooting the series into something different. The game is somewhat enjoyable, but it always feels like something is missing or wrong with the game. The series is really stale at this point, and unless something drastically changes, I won’t be rolling around Sega’s classic series again.

Flower – 5 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/07/2018

Posted in: iOS, Mobile Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified. Tagged: adventure, flower, indie, thatgamecompany. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEI

Developer: thatgamecompany

Release Date: 11/12/2013

Available On

That game company is a really talented bunch. With Journey and Flow under their belt, they are known for making artistically stunning games on Sony’s consoles. When Flower was released on PS3, it amazed gamers around the world with its gorgeous visuals and music. It’s a very simple game, but that’s okay for what it does.

You control a single flower petal and ride the wind to help other flowers bloom and remove gloom and grayness from the world around you. You can control the speed of the petals, and the novelty came from using the PS3’s SixAxis controller to move the petals around. On the Vita, you can use the gyroscope or hold the rear touchpad. I honestly don’t like the controls and feel it is very difficult to control at low or high speeds. I always missed a set of petals in a run and had to turn around and go back, breaking the magic and flow of the game.

It was like this constantly throughout the entire game. Once I felt the game had jumped from petal set to petal set only to let me go and lose focus of the current run. As the game progressed, this became more complicated as you avoided falling electrical towers that would shock you and send you flying backward. It’s a beautiful game to behold, even on Vita, but the frustrating controls and mechanics bring it down quite a bit.

Flower also has some underlying environmental message that feels hypocritical. The game goes from green grasses to dark and dreary in a few levels, only to have you restore color to the city (which clearly represents Los Angeles), so I don’t have any idea what the story is or what the message is about.

There are about seven levels, not including the credit level, which was interesting. Flower is a PlayStation classic and should be played just for its beauty and unique gameplay that no other game can touch. The music is amazing, and I really felt sucked into the game only to be ripped out again by bad controls.

Reviewed On

OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/04/2018

Posted in: Linux, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox One. Tagged: indie, olliolli 2, skateboarding, sports, welcome to olliwood. Leave a comment

Publisher: RollingMedia Ltd.

Developer: Roll7

Release Date: 03/03/2015

Available On

Skateboarding games have always been one of my favorite genres. They’re intense, require an insane amount of skills and coordination, and are just so much fun to play. I started all the way back to the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and ended at Skate 3. From there, the genre pretty much died, but Olli revived the series a bit, and I fell in love with the first game.

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The second is no different, and that’s both good and bad. On the plus side, the game feels smoother, there are more tricks, the entire game is more responsive, and there are more modes and new levels and themes. The downside is that it’s pretty much the same game with no real evolution of the series.

Career mode is where you will spend most of your time. Here you have six different goals, varying in tricks, scores, and special spots. Using the left analog stick, you can push down and then up to pop the board up and flick it around to do tricks. Holding it down over a rail will allow you to grind. To properly land a trick, you must press X right before landing, or they will all be sloppy. This trick system is similar to Skate’s and is a great evolution of the button combo system.

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Sadly, you can’t do grabs, and there’s no vert skating. Half-pipe rounds would have been fun, and it’s sad that the sequel doesn’t really add all that much. There are two other modes, which are trick spot and just a leaderboard tracker. They’re fun but aren’t really different from the career mode.

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The game looks nice with fun music, awesome 2D scenes, and a great Hollywood/Los Angeles theme, and it’s just super smooth. With all that said, OlliOlli 2 is a great entry for newcomers and veterans who will find enough new stuff in the career mode to consider a purchase.

Reviewed On

Apple iPad Pro 10.5″ (2017)

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/01/2018

Posted in: Hardware, iOS, Mobile Reviews. Tagged: 10.5", 2017, apple, iOS, ipad, pro, tablet. Leave a comment

Manufacturer: Apple

Release Date: 06/13/2017

MSRP: $649.99 (wifi only) $749.99 (4G)

Colors: Rose Gold, Space Grey

Some longtime followers of my site may actually laugh at this review, and some may have noticed I’m a hardcore Android user. Sure, I have a ton of iOS reviews from years ago, but after my last iPod Touch 4G, I hadn’t looked back at the platform. As the years went by, there were a ton of iOS games that just never made it to Android, from Infinity Blade to Civilization VI, not to mention timed exclusives. Why an iPad and not a Touch? Well, for starters, the Touch devices are being phased out and haven’t been updated since the iPhone 6 hardware. Second, the iPad series is still frequently updated and features more powerful hardware and a better experience than the Touch. Third, price. You can finance an iPad at wireless carriers, as the full price of these things is outrageously expensive.

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For starters, the device is about what I expected; it’s sleek and fairly slim (not as slim as the Samsung Tab S tablets, however), and the 10.5″ size makes a huge difference over the standard 9.7″ tablets I am used to. The screen is gorgeous, and the speakers are phenomenal. So what’s powering this iPad? The A10X processor is Apple’s latest and greatest chip offering and runs everything at lightning-smooth speed. It is accompanied by the PowerVR 7XT GPU, which will run the latest and greatest games at high framerates. The display has an odd 4:3 aspect ratio at 1668×2224 resolution, which is also odd, and has a 12 MP rear-facing and 7 MP front-facing camera. The iPad features HDR10 and a 120Hz refresh rate for HDR content on YouTube and Netflix, as well as lightning-fast framerates. It’s probably the best-looking tablet camera I’ve ever seen. Let’s not forget those speakers. I thought the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3’s speakers were great, but these blow those out of the water. I can actually feel the bass rumble in my hands at max volume, and the sound projects very well and actually sounds like PC speakers rather than tinny muffled garbage.

The iPad Pro also features the new lightning charger cable that was featured in the iPhone 5. It’s no big deal to longtime Apple users, but for me, coming from the older iPod Touch hardware is really nice. Sadly, the tablet has no wireless charging, which should be available by now but just isn’t due to Apple’s stubborn design quirks. With that said, the tablet features a great physical home button with a responsive fingerprint sensor that’s quite impressive. You can clearly tell the iPads aren’t second-rate hardware like some other manufacturers on the Android side.

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Onto the software, and this is where the impressions kind of sizzled away; the iOS suite hasn’t changed much in 8 years. It looks nearly the same, just more streamlined, sleek, and faster. My iPad came with iOS 11.4 and the new dock and multitasking features actually impressed me as they are more intuitive than Androids. Swiping up from the bottom on any app to get to the dock and then long-swiping for the control panel is genius. Snap multitasking works so smoothly by dragging an app from the dock into the screen, having an overlay, or tapping the title bar to bring up true multitasking. It works so well, and they seemed to have gotten it right. The only downside is that you need the apps you want to snap into the dock, or it won’t work.

I do like how iTunes is dying and is no longer required to tether to your PC to download apps and music. The App Store is now separate from iTunes, which is awesome, as back in the day, these were all in one. There are plenty of customization settings and ways to tweak your device, much more than 8 years ago, and I was pretty satisfied. However, customization is still absent after all these years. No widgets, custom home launchers, or any of those awesome features that Android offers, including the more intuitive drop-down menus. What iOS offers is simple, easy to use, and very smooth, but it hasn’t really evolved in 10 years.

Games look and play amazingly well on the iPad Pro, and the Apple Pencil is the big selling point for these tablets. I don’t have one myself, but I’ve used my wife’s as she draws with it, and it’s so smooth and responsive; it’s a fantastic piece of hardware. The pencil alone has evolved the iPads into something more than just steamrolled iPhones. They are true productivity devices that can do things laptops can’t even do.

Overall, the iPad Pro is an amazing tablet and offers Apple’s best tech. It’s great for mobile gaming, drawing, watching videos, and overall everyday use.

Halo Wars: Definitive Edition

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/26/2018

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Xbox One. Tagged: bungie, definitive edition, halo, Microsoft, remaster, strategy, wars. Leave a comment

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: Ensemble Studios

Release Date: 12/20/2016

Available On

You would never think of Halo and real-time strategy; the two might not mix all that well. Halo Wars was a huge deal when it was first released, as it was a huge risk. It was the first time anyone but Bungie touched the Halo franchise, and many were skeptical. To my own surprise, the game checks most of the good RTS games off the list, but being the first time in this category, it does have its issues.

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The first issue is the story. The 15 missions are accompanied by pretty pre-rendered cutscenes we have grown to love from the series, with great voice acting and stellar music. You play as Sgt. Forge, who is assigned to the Spirit of Fire and must destroy an ancient world that is full of an unstoppable army built by an ancient race. The Covenant wants these weapons, and they capture a human scientist named Anders, as the machines can only be activated by human touch. It’s not the best story, and it really fills a minute gap in the Halo timeline and doesn’t really mean all that much.

When it comes to actually playing the game, you are greeted with RTS basics, and I mean the minimum basics, as the game never moves on past that. Most RTS games require you to find and acquire resources to build an army to defeat the enemy. Halo Wars has only one resource, and this is in the form of generic supplies. You can find crates along the ground, but you must build supply pads on your base, and this is the first thing you do on every single mission. Second, your base has limited slots for buildings, and this is where the game breaks down a little. I would have 3–4 supply pads upgraded to advanced ones, and it still takes forever to get enough resources to steadily upgrade all my buildings and troops. A solid 25–30 minutes is needed just to maintain an army to defeat most enemies on a map and even longer to get all the upgrades.

It’s a frustrating battle of nursing your resources, with most time spent waiting for them to accumulate, which is not fun and quite boring. Nearly every mission where I was given a base had my guys just standing there for 20 minutes so I could research as much as possible for only what I needed for that map. The armory is used to research technology only, and this comes in the form of +10 to population, Spirit of Fire strikes, more troops per unit, etc. After you acquire all the research here, which is only a couple of tiers, the building is useless, and you can recycle it and build another supply pad. The barracks are used for only two ground troops and for researching their upgrades. The Air Depot has three different air types, and the Vehicle Depot has a few things as well. It’s very basic, with only the core Halo units you have seen in the console games. It covers every discipline well, and they all do their job fine, but some units require over a thousand supplies, and this can take up to 1-2 minutes to accumulate just for one unit. So instead of being able to send out drones to acquire a mass amount of supplies, everything is essentially rigged to a timer, which makes things not very fun.

The population cap is 40, and that’s not many troops considering some larger units can take up to six population slots. Once you get them out and fighting, it looks pretty awesome and feels just like a Halo game with familiar enemies and sounds. The Spirit of Fire attacks can give you a leg up, but they don’t feel as powerful as they should. A MAC attack or carpet bomb, even fully upgraded, may do 1/8 to 1/4 damage to an enemy base. You would expect for the long cooldown time that you can wipe out all of or most of a base and larger enemy units. It’s so incredibly unbalanced and frustrating that I always felt I never had an advantage, no matter how well I played. Even when you get multiple bases, it doesn’t help outside of giving you quicker access to troops and more supply pads. With the pop cap at 40, you would think more bases would mean a larger population increase.

Missions are at least varied, with some escorts, defense, offense, and various others. One frustrating mission had me on a ship fending off a flood with a timed sweep that killed everything in sight. It took almost 45 minutes just to clear everything off the ship. Another mission had me station vehicles at five different spots to blow open a large base shield. I had to constantly go back and forth, defending them and clearing spots to put them down. There are not enough troops to leave with each vehicle due to the low population cap. Every troop is essential.

With all that said, Halo Wars has the units, looks, and sound down for a great RTS game, but it’s so rudimentary, unbalanced, and boring, with the majority of your time spent waiting for things to build and cool down. There’s a lot of mission variety, but it won’t matter as the rest of the game plagues these missions. The story is also nothing memorable and doesn’t mean much in the Halo universe. I really can’t recommend this to RTS fans or Halo fans unless you’re curious.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Far: Lone Sails

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/16/2018

Posted in: Android, iOS, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One. Tagged: adventure, far, indie, lone sails. Leave a comment

Publisher: Mixtvision

Developer: Okomotive

Release Date: 05/17/2018

Available On

A mysterious girl in a red cloak sets sail on a strange SteamPunk-inspired machine to always move to the right. It’s never clear what your purpose is or why you’re going on this short two-hour journey, but you’re doing it, and it’s quite interesting.

Your ship rolls instead of flies, but that’s okay. Inside the ship, there are several red buttons that do various tasks. The whole purpose of the game is to keep the ship moving by either hoisting your sails when there’s wind or using fuel and keeping the engine running. By the ignition button, there’s a steam release button and a brake. Behind the ship are buttons to suck up fuel on the road and a lift to insert objects into for fuel. The front of the ship has a pulley system, and there is a fire hose and repair torch. Most of these items you won’t get until you come across them on your journey. It’s pretty satisfying to micromanage something as simple as always stopping the machine to grab a box of fuel on the road and having a machine pull it in for you.

As you sail across the landscape, you will bump into a few puzzles. These require a little platforming mixed with figuring out how to get your ship through a door or across a lake. They are fairly simple, and after a little fiddling, you will figure out what to do. Outside of this, though, the game is void of anything. Once your ship is moving, there’s literally nothing to do, especially when you have full sails and don’t need to micromanage your engine. I was also annoyed that the music starts and stops so abruptly, and several minutes will go by of absolute silence.

The game looks beautiful with hand-drawn art, but it drives me crazy not knowing what the purpose of this game is, and I don’t like that. I’m all for minimalist game design, but developers who make you go on a journey with no background or story are just lazy and not cute or innovative. The various button-pressing mechanics are fun and a brand new concept I have never played before, but what’s the point at the end of two hours? Did I actually make a difference or accomplish something besides finding the credits?

Far: Lone Sails has very interesting gameplay mechanics, but it’s hard to recommend outside of sheer curiosity. Don’t expect a grandiose or heartfelt story here; just an interesting game to look at and button-pressing gameplay.

Reviewed On

Xbox One S Controller

Unravel

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/13/2018

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox One. Tagged: ea games, indie, platformer, unravel. Leave a comment

Publisher: EA

Developer: Coldwood

Release Date: 02/09/2016

Available On

Playing as a ball of yarn isn’t a new concept. Nintendo first did it with Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and it was a charming blast. Coldwood tries its hand at crochet platforming, and it’s done fairly well. I can’t really explain the story much, as it really doesn’t exist. Yarny, the character, is on a journey to find various crocheted figures to attach to a photo album. Who this family is and the reasoning behind Yarny’s animation and coming to life are never explained. The entire idea doesn’t make any sense at all, but we’re here for the platforming.

The game has physics-based platforming and puzzle-solving. There’s a trail of red yarn behind you, and this is your lifeline. It can wrap around things, create bridges, and be used as a grappling hook. Simple puzzles involve hooking the yarn on points and creating bridges to drag objects up, while more complex ones involve wrapping the yarn in various ways to activate a pulley or open a door. It’s very interesting and unique, and there are so many different types of puzzles, but the problem relies on the mechanics around them.

The platforming is either heavy or too springy. Yarny will jump on an object and immediately bounce off of it in a forward motion only. It’s very hard to control this movement, especially when the camera doesn’t pan over quickly enough. The game is also hindered by poor pacing. I enjoyed running around pushing objects, pulling levers, and swinging around like a monkey, but once I got my groove and momentum, a big puzzle would halt my progress, interrupting the trance. I prefer just going forward and enjoying the scenery while swinging around and knocking things over, but once those puzzles started, I got frustrated.

Part of this has to do with most mechanics not being explained early on; the objects you need blend in too much with the background, or it’s very unclear that there’s a hook-off camera that you must jump to. Checkpoints are placed frequently, but some are misplaced, as I would have to repeat a long, easy section just to get to the one annoying jump or off-camera grapple and fall again and again. In some areas, I started over a dozen times just to get it right.

Outside of that, the game plays fine with 13 levels. You will be busy for a good 4-6 hours since some areas are really tough to get through. I loved the scripted moments, and some of the dangerous areas where Yarny runs from animals are pretty fun, but those big puzzles just really halted all the fun.

The game looks absolutely stunning, with realistic-looking textures and a huge variety of environments, including forests, tundras, toxic waste dumps, construction sites, and swamps. It’s incredible to look at and experience, and the music is great despite the same track repeating over and over through each level. It got irritating quickly.