So recently, my dad picked up a copy of K-Zone on the basis of "It's the only place I can get the Lego polybag of Poe's X-Wing", and in that K-Zone was an article on the new Lego Star Wars game (the one that they're bringing out for The Force Awakens and the other two movies in the new trilogy). So I thought to myself "Oh, this looks interesting given my recent views on the subject. I wonder if they're going to try and break from formula or if they're just going to slap on a new coat of paint." And let me tell you, no phrase in any article that I have ever read before has leapt out at me as fast as "Did someone say third-person cover-based shooting?"
I know I've been harsh on Lego Star Wars. I take it all back. I take back everything I said about it being repetitive, or the fact that I keep stubbing my toe on the Dimensions portal. I no longer want the Lego games to break new ground if the supposed "New Ground" they're trying to break is littered with bits of damaged masonry. I thought that the games industry was mostly done with collectively beating this rotting pile of organs that at one point may have been a dead horse.
On top of that, I can't quite fathom what target audience they're trying to get in on with this move. The usual audience of 6-9 year old children probably won't be allowed to play if their parents hear it's become a third person shooter, the older kids that might pick it up have mostly had enough with moving soldiers through desert and jungle environments while occasionally sucking their thumbs as their legs grow back behind bits of wall, and the people who genuinely like third-person cover shooters will be terribly confused as to why they have to keep stopping to hold down a button next to some jumping bricks to move the plot along.
That being said, I'd like to backtrack a bit because the next phrase that leapt out at me was about how they're adding in aerial combat/dog-fighting sections with the Millenium Falcon, so I might actually try and convince Dad to go halfsies on it with me so I can review it.
Thursday 21 April 2016
Saturday 9 April 2016
Press 'X' to Review: Reveal The Deep
Reveal The Deep
Platform: PC/Steam, iOS/Android
Developer: Lazy Monday Games
Premise: Explore the wreck of a 19th century steamship through puzzle-platform mechanics while piecing together the story of what happened to the ship's crew and cargo.
Release Date: 04/12/2015
So I was browsing the Steam listings the other day, trying to find something to review (lest I have to post another Press 'X' to Rant in lieu of an actual review), when I found Reveal The Deep, an Indie exploration game with a Steam blurb that ticked all my boxes: interesting mechanics, strong story focus and most importantly, short enough to get through that I would be able to play it through in time to write this article. But enough about my lack of forward-thinking, let's talk about the game.
The asking price of $0.99 gets you three chapters of game, taking you through various sections of the ship while solving platforming puzzles and peeking through people's diaries, which have somehow a) gotten scattered around the ship as opposed to being in one book as diaries tend to be and b) have somehow survived almost 100 years under water. Semantics aside, the story does a good job of selling you on the characters; an explorer/assistant to the resident professor, Beatrice (who, near as I can tell is mostly just there because it was the next ship that was going to England), and some other bloke writing letters to his wife back in England about how the ship is getting real spooky real quick.
Platform: PC/Steam, iOS/Android
Developer: Lazy Monday Games
Premise: Explore the wreck of a 19th century steamship through puzzle-platform mechanics while piecing together the story of what happened to the ship's crew and cargo.
Release Date: 04/12/2015
So I was browsing the Steam listings the other day, trying to find something to review (lest I have to post another Press 'X' to Rant in lieu of an actual review), when I found Reveal The Deep, an Indie exploration game with a Steam blurb that ticked all my boxes: interesting mechanics, strong story focus and most importantly, short enough to get through that I would be able to play it through in time to write this article. But enough about my lack of forward-thinking, let's talk about the game.
The asking price of $0.99 gets you three chapters of game, taking you through various sections of the ship while solving platforming puzzles and peeking through people's diaries, which have somehow a) gotten scattered around the ship as opposed to being in one book as diaries tend to be and b) have somehow survived almost 100 years under water. Semantics aside, the story does a good job of selling you on the characters; an explorer/assistant to the resident professor, Beatrice (who, near as I can tell is mostly just there because it was the next ship that was going to England), and some other bloke writing letters to his wife back in England about how the ship is getting real spooky real quick.
Sunday 3 April 2016
Press 'X' to Review: The Forest
The Forest
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Endnight Games Ltd.
Premise: As the sole survivor of a plane crash, track down your son while worshiping our shark overlord and surviving the natives and the island itself.
Release Date: 31/05/2014 (Early Access)
I'll come upfront and say that most of my time in the game has been in the multiplayer mode with some friends of mine, which has its own set of glitches separate from the singleplayer mode. That said, most of these glitches aren't game-breaking, and at least make for an interesting conversation piece around the campfire as you wait for your lizard and generic meat to cook.
The crafting system could use some work in terms of clarity; The Forest is definitely a game in which there is no shame in looking up recipes on the wiki. For the most part, recipes are fairly self-explanatory and there's also a progress meter showing you how close you are to making something, but when you start playing you will spend a lot of your time in crafting wondering what else you need to make something that should be fairly simple.
The base building mechanic is well implemented; using the survival guide, you select blueprints of buildings or traps you want to build and place them on the ground, and a list of supplies you need to gather to build it will appear on the bottom left of the screen. In addition to pre-made structures, there are also a range of custom building features such as individual walls or log bridges. You'll want to build near a section of the map with actual forest in it, as you will end up logging on par with the United States annual production within a few short hours of construction. If you want a log cabin, that's a minimum of 82 logs (more if you want to build it with a raised foundation). A defensive wall around your house will end with you basically committing crimes against nature on a near-daily basis. You'll also need to be careful with how you go about logging, given that natives will notice extensive logging and come to investigate.
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Endnight Games Ltd.
Premise: As the sole survivor of a plane crash, track down your son while worshiping our shark overlord and surviving the natives and the island itself.
Release Date: 31/05/2014 (Early Access)
I'll come upfront and say that most of my time in the game has been in the multiplayer mode with some friends of mine, which has its own set of glitches separate from the singleplayer mode. That said, most of these glitches aren't game-breaking, and at least make for an interesting conversation piece around the campfire as you wait for your lizard and generic meat to cook.
The crafting system could use some work in terms of clarity; The Forest is definitely a game in which there is no shame in looking up recipes on the wiki. For the most part, recipes are fairly self-explanatory and there's also a progress meter showing you how close you are to making something, but when you start playing you will spend a lot of your time in crafting wondering what else you need to make something that should be fairly simple.
The base building mechanic is well implemented; using the survival guide, you select blueprints of buildings or traps you want to build and place them on the ground, and a list of supplies you need to gather to build it will appear on the bottom left of the screen. In addition to pre-made structures, there are also a range of custom building features such as individual walls or log bridges. You'll want to build near a section of the map with actual forest in it, as you will end up logging on par with the United States annual production within a few short hours of construction. If you want a log cabin, that's a minimum of 82 logs (more if you want to build it with a raised foundation). A defensive wall around your house will end with you basically committing crimes against nature on a near-daily basis. You'll also need to be careful with how you go about logging, given that natives will notice extensive logging and come to investigate.
Saturday 2 April 2016
Press 'X' to Rant: Formulaic or Repetitive?
When I was a kid (to clarify, we're talking 6-year-old me as opposed to nearly 16-year-old me), my favorite game was Lego Star Wars. I played it with my Dad whenever I could, and I still have very fond memories of a day where Dad's day off and my having to stay home sick coincided and we played one of the free-roam levels for around an hour together.
Fast-forward around 8 years and Lego Batman 3 gets released, and Dad gets it for either his birthday or Father's Day (I honestly couldn't tell you which). For nostalgia's sake, we sat down to play the opening mission together and realised that literally nothing had changed from the first Lego Batman except for a new coat of paint and the fact that we didn't have to use the Wii controllers. I still remember the night I went to try and play Destiny to discover he had tried to pick it up again and had been stuck in the Bat-Cave for the last hour with no idea how to progress.
Fast-forward another 3 and a half years to Christmas 2015. What should Dad find under the tree but Lego Dimensions, and what should I find but the Portal 2 level pack for it. I decided to try it again to give it the benefit of the doubt. I boot it up to discover an unskippable 5 minute cut-scene followed by the same game, but now with the Dimension Portal mechanic that I keep stubbing my toe on added in about as seamlessly as a back-alley limb re-attachment surgery. At what point, I found myself wondering, did playing the Lego Game* cease to be fun?
This is a question that has haunted me since Christmas, so I feel that it's only right to finally give it something resembling an answer. Looking back, the first time I had my doubts about it would have been a few missions into Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. This does raise a few questions, however. Was it simply a matter of having grown out of it? Was it because they'd introduced voices and half of the fun of the Lego games was watching them try to convey the plot of a pre-existing franchise with exaggerated gestures and the occasional suggestive shopping center photo-booth pic? Or was it really that it had gotten to be a few games too many?
Counting the DS games, it was about 5 or 6 games for me before it got to a point where it felt repetitive. This in turn raises a slew of other questions. For example, how many games has something like Call of Duty gone on for with more or less the same game each year but with better lighting, a new sky-box and a few more guns? As it turns out, around 18 (give or take). At what point does that start getting repetitive? Same thing for Halo, or the ironically named Final Fantasy, or pretty much any game with enough installments that you can't comfortably count them on one hand?
That's not an easy question to answer, mostly for the same reason that any non-objective question is hard to answer: because there is no definitive answer. What I find repetitive may be within what other people consider a perfectly reasonable amount of sequels, and in fairness some games do stay the same for a few before shaking up the formula enough to stop it being repetitive. Then, there are some games that get repetitive in only one installment (Looking at you, Destiny. I love you, but I also love to hate you.)
That just about does it for today. As always, if you have a slightly more definitive answer to today's question, a suggestion for a future rant or review or just want to say hi, you can email me at pressxtoreview@gmail.com
-Harry
*A.N. I use the singular because, let's face it, there is only one Lego Game, in the same way that there is only one From Software game.
Friday 1 April 2016
Welcome!
Hello. If you're reading this, it means that... I'm dead. Or that I actually got around to starting this blog. Probably the second one. Yeah, let's go with the second one. This blog will mostly be about me reviewing games, ranting about games, and getting to hyperventilation levels of excitement about games. I'll try to keep it updated at least once a week, but I might occasionally post a bit late around Assessment Season. That seems to be most of the housekeeping stuff out of the way, so let's move onto the fun stuff.
My name's Harry. Some people call me Garrus-42 (well, 3 people who know me from an RP forum call me that), and some people call me Gravitron10142 (or some mispronounced variation of). I'm 15 for the next 2 months, live in Australia (land of cruddy internet and weird fauna) and I enjoy writing, playing games, and writing about playing games.
My name's Harry. Some people call me Garrus-42 (well, 3 people who know me from an RP forum call me that), and some people call me Gravitron10142 (or some mispronounced variation of). I'm 15 for the next 2 months, live in Australia (land of cruddy internet and weird fauna) and I enjoy writing, playing games, and writing about playing games.
Anyone who has a suggestion for a game to review, a rant topic or just wants to say hi can do so at pressxtoreview@gmail.com. I promise I don't bite. Mostly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)