Press 'X' to Review: Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt

Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Ludosity, Remar Games
Premise: As a recent graduate from a school that trains healers, you must venture through Hurtland to heal the Prince and any passers-by who happen to be in need of your services.
Release Date: 01/12/14 

I picked up Princess Remedy a while ago, mostly due to it being both free and widely regarded as being pretty decent. However, I never got around to playing it because I had other stuff to play and limited time to dedicate to doing so. Recently, I found myself in need of something quick and easy to review so that I wouldn't have to worry about it interfering with the pointy-end of this term and preparations for going on holiday, so here we are. The first comparison that springs to mind is with Undertale, because it feels very much in the same vein humour-wise, with interesting background characters and things like a jealous chest that won't let you open it if you've opened other chests in that run through. Like Undertale, 'combat' also consists of a fairly simple system of dodging incoming projectiles that gets steadily harder to the point of ludicrousness the further you go through the game; and like Undertale, the aim of the game is to help people.

'Combat' in Princess Remedy takes a route somewhere between bullet-hell shooter and puzzle game. You enter by offering to heal someone, which then takes you to a separate area where you have to shoot all the enemies to cure the random passerby of their malady. This starts off fairly easy, when the game only throws one or two non-projectile enemies at you at any one time, and gets even easier when you start to unlock the AOE flasks. However, the difficulty swiftly ramps up throughout the game as they introduce projectile enemies. In addition, at certain points in the game your upgrades start to be a disadvantage, or at least a duel-edged sword. For example, cover is fairly necessary during a number of the later-game encounters. However, because combat involves the Princess constantly shooting, and because her shooting destroys cover in a fairly indiscriminate manner, if you have enough combat upgrades unlocked that you can destroy the average piece of cover in only a few seconds then you, like me, will swiftly find yourself in a situation comparable to being stuck up a particularly foul-smelling creek in dire need of a paddle on more than one occasion. In addition, it has a fairly annoying tendency of being easy to fail and taking a fair amount of time to retry an encounter. That being said, the difficulty curve is competently mapped out and I never felt unfairly weak or overpowered against the enemies.

Press 'X' to Review: Besiege

Besiege
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Spiderling Studios
Premise: Conquer the world, one zone at a time, by building siege engines relying on physics, skill, and a frankly ludicrous amount of explosives.
Initial Release Date: 28/01/2015 (Early Access)

I picked up Besiege about a year ago when it came out on Early Access, but didn't get very far because a) a lot of the elements that I ended up finding useful during my recent run through hadn't been added yet, and b) my computer at the time couldn't really run it without slowing down to a crawl whenever things started to get particularly explode-y. However, since then it's received a number of updates and I've managed to get a better school laptop as well as something vaguely resembling a gaming computer, so in the absence of anything else to play this week that I could both play and review in the time allotted, I picked it back up.

The best way I can think of describing Besiege's gameplay is "Kerbal Space Program, but with siege engines and a vaguely medieval-punk aesthetic". The only other main difference is that if your siege engine manages to get to the moon, something has gone horribly wrong instead of horribly right. The builder is easy enough to use, although it would've been nice to know about the 'rotate' control before I was three quarters of the way through the first kingdom. That being said, something being poorly explained is the kind of thing that's only a problem once. Each level gives you a vague objective, something like 'Destroy 90% of everything', or 'Steal and deliver this crystal' and doesn't particularly care how you get from Point A to Point B, and I like that it doesn't hold your hand, but it would've been nice if it gave you a couple of ideas on what to build because I'll admit that despite the variety, I ended up relying on the same handful of tools. Pro tip: helicopters are relatively easy to build, easy to mod for a variety of objectives, and unless there are archers or heavy winds in play the only real danger to you is yourself.

Press 'X' to Review: RWBY: Grimm Eclipse

RWBY: Grimm Eclipse
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Rooster Teeth Games/Jordan Scott
Premise: Play as one of the four members of Team RWBY to fight the forces of Grimm, Explodey-Grimm(tm), and android guards who will ruin your day if you're in the same postcode.
Release Date: 05/07/2016

A.N: Just wanted to say that this blog finally managed to hit 500 views over the week (WOOHOO!), so thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

So, a bit of backstory: before it was a game, RWBY was (and still is) a web-show by Rooster Teeth. I quite like the show, although volume 3 did test that somewhat. There's only so much emotional trauma I'm willing to deal with in the span of 5 episodes. Anyway, the point is that I expected that Grimm Eclipse might follow the traditional curse of the movie/TV tie-in game. However, it was also made by the same people that made the show, which from experience is pretty much the best way to avert the TV show/game tie-in curse. So, now that I've actually played the thing, the one question that needs to be answered still remains: Is It Fun?

Press 'X' to Review: Pokémon GO! (Australia)

Pokémon Go!
Platform: iOS, Android
Developer: Niantic Inc.
Premise: Pokémon, but in the real world and with pretty much all the strategy and combat mechanics stripped out.
Release Date: 06/07/2016

Between the Darwin Police Department having to issue an official statement asking players not to enter their stations looking for Pokémon or to use the PokéStop, the Tennessee Highway Patrol needing to run posters asking drivers to "Stop before you GO!" because people were having car crashes by trying to hunt down Pokémon while driving, and that whole thing with people going into graveyards or the Holocaust Museum because they're set as Pokéstops, it's been practically impossible to have not heard about Pokemon GO! over the past month. There was apparently some controversy among the Americans about the fact that Australia got access to it first given that we quote "already have dangerous creatures waiting to attack us around every corner", to which I'll simply say that it's probably karma for having pretty much every release arbitrarily pushed back by a month or two for the last forever. 

For those of you that have somehow managed to avoid hearing anything about Pokémon GO! (presumably by living in Antarctica), it's an Augmented Reality game for iOS and Android where Pokémon are scattered throughout the real world, so you walk around and attempt to catch them, whilst also getting involved in a massive clan war between Team Instinct, whose philosophy is mostly "Eh, we'll wing it", Team Mystic, whose philosophy is that Pokémon battles should be approached more methodically, and then there's Team Valour who.... hmm. Look, you know the Hunters from Destiny? Whose philosophy was basically "Let's just run at the problem with a knife in each hand raised overhead while screaming 'LEROOOOOOOYYY JENKINS!'"? Yeah, Team Valour is basically that but instead of a knife in each hand they have pokémon. Personally, for me it was a toss-up between Instinct and Mystic, because both made good points. Mystic eventually took it, because I thought the Blue colour scheme looked better.

Press 'X' to Review Overwatch: New Hero, Zenyatta Buff, and Healers in general.

So, last week on Overwatch a new hero was added to the roster in the PTR (Public Test Region), which for those that are unaware is the place where people that own the PC version of the game can play the next update before anyone else. This hero was Ana, Pharah's mum and a new way to disappoint your team. She's a sniper-support class, which on paper sounds quite good; given that most support class heroes can't take more than 3 shots to the face, it makes sense that you would have a support class that can heal from a distance. How this works out, however, is that you snipe enemies and cause damage over a short period of time, or snipe an ally and heal them for a short period of time. Possibly the best example I can think of for why this is perhaps not the best idea is when a Junkrat was requesting healing, but was in the middle of a firefight with a D.va so I couldn't hit him, and my A.O.E heal ability was still on cooldown. In addition to this, she's a sniper with no movement abilities, so she has to pretty much be with the rest of the team anyway. At time of writing, what I'd probably suggest is to maybe increase the amount of aim-assist for allies by a bit, and maybe give her a short jet-boost or climb ability or something to make her viable as an actual sniper. That being said, I also had to play against her a fair bit and based on the skill level of some of the players I had to go up against I'd say that it's entirely possible that either I just suck at her and practice may improve my abilities, or that it's just a very specialised skill-set required to use her well. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement, but what's here now is still reason enough to go back to Overwatch for a bit if you've let it sit idle for the last few weeks.

Moving on to Zenyatta, another healer who experienced some additions in the PTR recently. I'll admit that I'd not played them much before, given that they had the same health as Tracer but with half the speed and because their damage seemed a little underwhelming. In the PTR, however, their health has been upgraded to 200 (50 health, 150 shields) and they've also received a buff to their primary weapon damage. It was enough that I was able to reliably have an even K/D with them, and even when I didn't I was getting the team's gold medal for healing. They're certainly a much more viable choice than they were before, and with a bit more practice I could even see myself using them as my preferred healer. I certainly noticed a few more Zenyatta players than usual, although in spite of this I was unfortunately still unable to convince a team to help me show the enemy the true meaning of tranquility with a full Zenyatta team. Regardless of my inability to debate the merits of one-hero team compositions, it's certainly a positive development.

The last thing I'd like to talk about here is Overwatch's Support class in general. The buffs to Zenyatta and the addition of Ana could not have come soon enough, because it means that Mercy and Lucio are no longer the only supports anyone picks, and as someone that previously default-picked Mercy whenever a healer was needed I'm glad that there are other viable options; that is, options that have decent weapons. It's also good that there are now support characters where saying that they're good doesn't need to then be qualified by the statement "for a support," because it means an increase in the number of people willing to play a support character if necessary, and a boost to the number that might consider doing it voluntarily or as a first choice. The thing with games like Overwatch and TF2, where the success of your team relies on the willingness of your teammates to fill a role and perform that role well, is that the community is just as important as the game itself. A toxic or un-collaborative player base can ruin a good game, but a friendly and co-operative community can save a mediocre or bad one. That's all for this week.

As per usual, anyone with a question, query, rant topic or review suggestion can email them to me at pressxtoreview@gmail.com

-Harry

Press 'X' to Review: Dark Souls | Journal, Part 1

So I recently acquired the Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition during the Steam Summer Sale, on the basis that I have yet to hear a review about it that hasn't recommended picking it up. From what I could tell looking around the forums, it really is one of those games where everyone you talk to will have a different story and anecdotes of getting literally pounded into the pavement. I wondered for a while if it was the kind of game I should bother reviewing; for starters, it's notoriously ginormous (a quality that, while generally attractive in games, makes it a bit difficult to get through in a week to review. Secondly, everyone already knows that it's good, and reviewing it now would be akin to trying to review Half-Life in the sense that it would be a colossal waste of time. At the end of the day, I decided that I probably should review it given that it was the only game I actually got around to playing this week that I haven't already reviewed, and I didn't want to just do a rant for the second week in a row.

I started off playing Dark Souls with only a minimal amount of knowledge about the actual combat: I'd seen the Zero Punctuation review, which described it as the kind of system where "dodge rolling always works", and I'd watched a let's play of DS3 that was able to confirm that much. I rolled a Pyromancer with the Skeleton Key as my special gift, because none of the other classes seemed to have decent ranged attacks in a game where most enemies are melee-focused, and the other gifts seemed like they wouldn't be much use. After this, I was given a cut-scene that filled me in on the plot so far: the world was apparently ruled by dragons, until 4 beings somehow got their hands on 'Lord Souls', which granted them the supernatural powers necessary to overthrow their dragon overlords (with the help of another dragon that betrayed its own people). Somehow this resulted in the world being trapped in a cycle of ages of Fire and ages of Dark. The end of these ages is heralded by the dead rising from their graves to enjoy the consequent fireworks, which is where the player comes in. As an undead 'Hollow', I was dropped into a locked cell in an asylum with half a sword, because that's apparently what they do with undead people around here.

Press 'X' to Review: Overwatch

Overwatch
Platform: PC/Steam, PS4, Xbox One
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Premise: Fight! Fight! Fight! (Kiss! Kiss!)
Release Date: 24/05/2016

Alright, alright, I know what I said about double-updating on the weekend, but my sister was in the musical and I had to go with the rest of the family to watch, and then there was a friend's party, and one thing led to another. An admittedly weak excuse given that it's the last week of term and there's bugger-all else to do, but it's the one I'm going with. Anyway, here it is. The Big One(tm). Overwatch, the game that over the past year has managed to garner a social media profile comparable in size to that of Kim Kardashian. I'll say right off the bat that it was starting out with negative points, given that it's a multiplayer-only game selling at full price. I'm given to understand that in the US it's only $40, but here in Aus it was $70. I can appreciate that they're trying to be the best at just one thing as opposed to being mediocre at a bunch of things, but $70 is a bit steep. Its predecessor TF2 was never that pricey, even before it was free. And it has in-game purchases on top of that. 

Actually, the in-game purchases don't bother me that much, given that it's just buying cosmetic things like skins and sprays that don't provide any gameplay advantage (unless you count your opponent being struck dumb by how cool you look for long enough that you can maneuver behind them and shoot them in the head), but what does bother me is that there's no $5 tier of loot boxes. You see, Blizzard vouchers only come in $25 increments, and because the digital download costs $70, I had $5 left. But the smallest tier of paid loot box costs $2.99, so I now have $2 of Blizzard credit that I will never use. Wow, I managed to go from complaining about it costing too much to complaining about it costing too little in the same paragraph. But let's make like Jesse J and forget about the price tag for a minute, because realistically they can charge whatever they want for it as long as the game's fun. And it is, it's just that I wish that there was more of it.

Press 'X' to Review: Hacknet

Hacknet
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Team Fractal Alligator
Premise: After becoming the recipient of a Dead Man's Switch email from renowned hacker Bit, you set out to track down whatever caused his disappearance.
Release Date: 13/08/2015

A.N. Hello everyone! I'm finally back after who-knows-how-long on hiatus from exams. Jeez, I've missed this. To make up for the last few weeks, I'll be double updating this weekend, and over the holidays I intend to get ahead of the game (no pun intended) a bit and write a few reviews preemptively in case I have to go on hiatus again, so that we don't have a big-ass wait like this last one (again, sorry about that). So, without further ado, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

***

So, as mentioned above, I've had exams recently, which has somewhat hampered my ability to play things to review. However, I did manage to play a few quick things in the occasional break from study. As you may have guessed from the title, one of these games was Hacknet, a hacking sim (and here I'd like to quote directly from the official website) "so real you shouldn't play it in an airport." 

I first encountered Hacknet at PAX Aus last year, where I managed to fail rather dismally at the tutorial. Hacknet isn't a game that's here to hold your hand, make no mistake. I'll confess to having made several trips to one of the Steam walkthroughs, on some occasions because I was massively thick and had no clue how to do something, on others because I'd simply written down a password wrong, and on others because I'd accidentally bugged out the game and physically couldn't proceed with the story. One of Hacknet's main selling points is that it doesn't have specific mission boundaries, just contracts that give you an objective in a persistent world. However, one of the difficulties you tend to encounter with Indie games that try to have a persistent non-linear world with a semi-linear story is that it all looks and feels very immersive until it starts bugging out because after a while it just becomes variable hell and the designer throws their hands in the air and goes "screw it, that'll do." 

Press 'X' to Review: Out There Somewhere

Out There Somewhere
Platform: PC/Steam, 
Developer: MiniBoss, EQ Games
Premise: After crashing on an unknown planet, you must find a way to get your ship working again to continue your pursuit of Grigori, who's...bad...I guess.
Release Date: 14/03/2016

Out There Somewhere is a Metroid/Vania retro-stylised platformer. On paper, it sounds like it would be a good game: taking inspiration from Cave Story (A Good Game), Super Metroid (A Good Game) and Portal (A Really Good Game). In practice it's still good, but a lot of the mechanics aren't quite as polished as they could be if it weren't a pile of mechanics from vastly different games Frankenstein-ed together. It's also a bit short, but I find myself constantly falling back on the argument of "what can you expect for $1.99?" in these reviews. 

Let's talk about the tutorial. One of the core mechanics is that once you shoot the teleporter gun, it has travel time, meaning that if you jump just before it hits a wall you can get additional height out of it. However, the first time it's brought up you aren't given any indication as to how you're supposed to go about doing this, or even that it's what you're supposed to do. On another occasion, you're put in an alien village and told that the way forward is a tunnel under one of the houses. However, you cannot enter any of the houses except one which look exactly like the rest except it doesn't have a hit-box. I only found the way forward by accidentally falling into the hole while walking past the house that had the tunnel under it. I get that a game claiming to be Metroid/Vania without central exploration elements is like a cake without icing but it would be nice if I was given any indication as to how I'm supposed to use the central exploration elements.

Press 'X' to Review: Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley
Platform: PC/Steam 
Developer: Concerned Ape
Premise: After acquiring your grandfather's old farm in Stardew Valley, you are handed a large plot filled with weeds and told that if you have any intention of doing anything with the actual farm, you should probably make sure there isn't a patch of weeds here tomorrow.
Release Date: 27/02/2016

A.N. For those who didn't read the last post, I'll get you up to speed: last week's post disappeared into the ether due to the fact that I was in Tasmania on camp, so this is the second part of a double-update to make up for it. In addition, the Overwatch Public Beta dropped recently, so expect some Let's Play/Highlights type content coming from me on that in the near future. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Stardew Valley is a farming sim that basically plays as a slightly more advanced version of Farmville, except without having to pay micro-transactions or deal with actual people. There are a lot of things I don't like about Stardew Valley. The movement speed feels a bit too slow even while sprinting, the in-game time goes by way too fast to get much substantial work done in a day, NPC shopkeepers occasionally get the urge to go out and see the world (during which time you cannot buy or sell things to them, which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the shops are only open for certain time windows), and your characters energy wears down a lot faster than it should, and doesn't regenerate.

All that being said, it's got to be doing something right because in the four days after getting it I somehow managed to rack up 12 sodding hours of playtime. For all the little things that start to rub me up the wrong way like a pair of bathers filled with sand, there's still something terribly relaxing about falling into your little routine, watering crops and occasionally delivering specific items to NPCs to complete little fetch-quests. 

Press 'X' to Review: Destiny (April Update)

Destiny
Platform: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4
Developer: Bungie
Premise: Step 1: Shoot stuff until it dies. Step 2: Collect the new pants that the thing you just shot dropped. Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you reach the max level.
Release Date: 09/09/2014

A.N. Before we start, I'd like to start off with a quick bit of housekeeping stuff: Last week's post didn't happen because I was on an Outdoor Ed camp around Tasmania, a place that isn't really known for having stellar internet. Or, given that teachers are a bit iffy about phones on camp, any internet at all. However, this week will be a double-update to make up for the slack, and the second post will be put up a few minutes after this one. One last thing before I go: The Overwatch Public Beta has just dropped, so if you're interested in that kind of thing then you can expect to see some Let's Play/Highlights type stuff coming from me about that. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

With the April update having dropped just a few short weeks ago, and the promise of the other two DLC packs and Destiny 2 on the horizon forming a silhouette against a darkening sky in the shape of the words "Shop at Eververse Trading!", I realised that I never actually got around to reviewing Destiny. This is probably because this blog was but a wishful twinkle in my eye at the time that it actually got released. I decided that I should remedy this given that I quite like Destiny, for all the flack I give it. The shooting mechanics feel tight, the PvP is quite fun (balancing is admittedly an issue but it's at least one that Bungie regularly make an effort to fix), the PvE is...well, for the most part it's just happy to be here. But that's the base game, which hopefully I won't have to go into to much detail about because I've got enough to talk about with just the stuff that they changed in the update.

Let's start with the story mission. I like that they're adding in more story-based stuff for the events/updates funded with the money they make off of Eververse, but it would be nice to know that it was a "supposed-to-lose" fight, so that I didn't spend half an hour dying from all the ads out of a need to do more boss damage, where you're supposed to just wait until he makes his getaway so that you can face him in the Grasp of Malok Strike. The strike's alright, although the constant Shadow Touch-ing started to get uncomfortable after a while, in more ways than one.

Press 'X' to Review: Saira

Saira
Platform: PC/Steam 
Developer: Nicklas Nygren
Premise: After a teleportation accident causes the disappearance of the entire human race save for two people (counting yourself), you must put together another long-range teleporter to reach the only other human and figure out where everyone else went.
Release Date: 12/12/2009

It does occur to me that with the exception of The Forest, the only thing I've actually reviewed on this blog has been 2D puzzle platformers, optionally with Metroid/Vania elements. That being said, here's Saira, a 2D puzzle-platformer with Metroid/Vania elements that I'd like to say upfront that I quite liked. You play as the titular "Saira" after a teleportation accident leaves you the only human left in the universe, save for one other bloke who disappears in the intro sequence so that the rest of the game can be spent jumping between planets to find pieces to build another teleporter (because that worked so well last time) to try and find him.

The design aesthetic is quite good, although it does occasionally fall into the uncanny valley with photos occasionally side-by-side with drawn graphics. Each planet feels distinctly different from the others, while still keeping the undercurrent feeling of being totally alone throughout the game. Crumbling ruins of once-mighty colonies tower in the background as nature reclaims its territory on one planet, and another in the same system might be a garden world that humanity never made it to. Several planets also have gameplay mechanics unique to that planet; for example, there's a planet where your health constantly ticks down except for certain safe spots due to high toxicity, another does a lowered-gravity kind of thing, and another does a really interesting thing with electricity that I'll endeavor not to spoil.

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.

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.