Review: Stray

Do you like the following things: Indie games, robots, the post apocalypse and cats? If you said yes to one or more of those things, especially the one about cats, then you should play Stray, the latest game from developer BlueTwelve Studios. 

In Stray, you play a stray cat. You can run, jump, meow - everything a cat can do short of your licking yourself inappropriately. The game opens on the cat and its litter, where you can run around a small platform and play with your friends in an adorably cute and cuddly fashion, before exploring further a field and eventually stumbling into the games main story. The cats, from the off, are excellently rendered and if you have had or been around felines for any period of time feel right in the way they move, which is incredibly impressive and lets be frank here, if they messed that up the whole game would fail before it even began. 

Fortunately they nailed it, and as you explore more as the cat you stumble into the world of the robots, sentient automatons with CRT monitors for heads and each one having its own personality, emotions and motivations. Some are main characters, some are side and some simply add a bit of lived in flavor to the world around you. The city you explore feels lived in and, without getting spoilery, in more ways than one. 

Not long after you arrive in the city you find a small hovering drone called B-12, who interprets the robots language for you and communicates with them, gives clues and stores useful items for the adventure ahead. He is how the game splits the difference between roleplaying as a cat and giving you an actual adventure to carry out and it works really well. Also, if you think that loveable ginger cat is cute, wait until you see B-12!

The art of the world of Stray is really cool, the robots have a striking design that I personally really dug, with the story giving context for how they dress and differentiate themselves from one another. This differentiation also reflects a slight meta commentary on social class systems in the real world. It’s not the deepest thing ever produced, but, again, it adds to the environmental storytelling in the beginning of the game. 

The large levels are built with the cat's abilities in mind. These aren’t some supernatural thing, the cat is literally just a cat with a drone on its back, but each level is built so that if you think a real world cat could make a particular jump then the one in game definitely can. It gives a sense of just knowing how to play because you have almost definitely seen a cat jump before and it just makes sense.

The game doesn’t out stay its welcome, being a relatively short experience at around six hours of play time and that is a good thing, if the developers had attempted to pad things out with lots of side quests it would have gotten boring very quickly because while there is a version of combat for a very, very, small amount of time, it's not like the cat is a tiny four legged tank, it really is just a cat. 

By the end of the game your heart will be warmed and you will still be left with a few questions you might want answered, but you will be left satisfied with the conclusion. It’s one of those stories where not everything is wrapped up neatly with a bow, and that is a good thing because it leaves you thinking about the game way after you have put it down and coming up with your own potential answers. It sounds weird to say but I kinda hope they don’t make a sequel and just leave Stray to be the unique, satisfying experience it is.

Review: Tunic

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and if that is true then Tunic is the most sincere game ever created. But what happens when that imitation becomes so good it almost betters its inspiration? 

That is the thing about Tunic, its designer Andrew Shouldice wanted to create a game a lot like classic Legend of Zelda but in so doing has produced a game that in some regards out classes its inspiration. Tunic is played from an isometric perspective as you control a fox looking for…something. As you play, the true nature of things unravels and you discover just what you are adventuring towards. 

You start out with no weapons or equipment and no real instructions, you just figure it out as you go. Now, understandably this might seem like a bad thing, but it draws on years of institutional knowledge of video games that people these days just…have. You already know how to control the Fox, you already know that you can go up to that sign and it will give you some information. What you don’t know is that you can’t understand that information, because Tunic has its own language. 

Some things are given to you in your regular language of choice, but everything else isn’t and you have to piece information and directions together from what little you do have, exploration and one of the coolest design choices in the game, the instruction manual. That manual is part instructions, part story and part map. However, at the beginning of the game, you don’t have access to it. Exploring will grant you pages but the game also annotates those pages with hand written notes that add tiny tidbits of information about secrets or such as you travel around the world. 

It’s a cool effect, and as you play you realize that Tunic is a game about secrets, not combat (which we will get to), not adventuring, but secrets. Because everything starts out as a secret and only by doing everything else do you start to reveal them and discover more and more about the world around you. It creates not only a compelling world that begs you explore, but a narrative that fuels that exploration.

It's the hidden locations that aren’t on the map, little hidey holes behind waterfalls or subtly hidden in plain sight as you look at the screen that really make running around the world of Tunic feel awesome. There is always something to find, some new bit of the manual or an upgrade to find and it's here, along with the combat, that the inspirations for the game become apparent and its true genius is revealed. 

When it comes to combat it is not what you expect. The rest of the game is a cross between Zelda and metroidvania style games, and at first you think that each battle will play out in a similar fashion to that but you should actually be thinking more along the lines of Soulsborne, where everything can kill you if you don’t respect it. 

Taking your time is the key to fighting and it actually takes more getting used to than you would first think, or at least it did for me. This isn’t a fault of the game, but rather a deliberate and excellent design choice that gives it a unique feel because anyone who has been gaming for years has played a lot of what you initially think this style of game is, but by forcing you to respect even the lowest of enemies it pulls the rug out from under you and breathes fresh life into what would have ultimately been a ‘meh’ aspect of the game.

I won’t lie, I still got overwhelmed even late into the game, but it forced me to figure out the combat and respect the enemies. The dodge roll and later some upgrades, became my best friends but again just like the Soulsborne games sometimes you get hit and wonder just how big the hit box on the Fox actually is.

The music is equally as great as the rest of the game, adding to the otherworldly feeling of the world. It is calm and serene where required, and swelling for boss fights,  almost indescribable in the way it just adds to the game. It’s fantastic, and would be a great background soundtrack to your working day. 

The only real downside to the game is that it can be easy to get lost and not know which way to go, and spend an age spinning your heels trying to figure how to get that obvious upgrade so you can get that manual page or chest that is in plain sight but can’t get to. There are a couple of enemies that are on the top end of annoying, but otherwise I have very little negative to say about Tunic. Go, play, you will not be disappointed.

Review: Backbone

It’s very easy for games to fall foul of ‘style over substance’. The medium inherently sets developers up for this trap, as so many components make up any given game that leaning too much on one or two aspects sacrifices the substance to enhance the style, and it is a balancing act that all too often fails and leaves the game worse than it could be. 

Backbone, the new game from developers Eggnutt is, unfortunately, a Style over Substance game. It looks great with a cool jazz tinged noir theme that runs throughout, but gives way to a hard pivot into a twist that comes out of the blue with little setup and makes no sense given the world that has been created up to that point. 

You play as Howard Lotor, a private detective in a Dystopian version of Vancouver. He is also a raccoon, as this version of Vancouver is populated by anthropomorphic animals, ruled over by the apes, who are the higher class. The story sets up an interesting world of class and social issues, gangsters, drugs and all the same rubbish stuff that we humans have to deal with - just with talking animals. 

It starts off with Howard getting a fairly normal P.I case, as such post-noir stories do, with a wife wanting to know if her husband is cheating. From there, it becomes a fairly standard point and click adventure, with a heavy emphasis on talking. The dialog is the game's main thrust, and at first it seems that paying attention to what is happening really does help. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t last long, and you soon begin to question if you are actually affecting any conversations as while you might be able to be an arse or be nice and understanding, if at first it does seem like you have messed up it will always loop around and get the result you need. 

This is disappointing, because it makes the conversations you have feel kinda pointless, and you can just button mash through without paying attention as the game will always feed you the right thing. Once you find out there are no multiple endings, it makes it all the worse, as that would allow multiple playthroughs and make the conversations feel meaningful. As it stands, when you complete you game you feel like your time was wasted a little. 

That feeling is compounded by the fact that there is very minimal sound in the game. I appreciate that Eggnutt is a small developer, and that voice acting is expensive and beyond many studios, but Backbone is a game that could have really done with it. The minimalist sound design makes the game more than a little boring, and voice acting could have really helped with it. This is a nit pick that isn’t really the developers fault, but the other issues with the dialog just adds to the idea the game wasn’t respecting your time. 

I will say that the graphics look fantastic, with great animation for the characters when moving around and background art that really invokes the dystopian city feel. It is enough to propel you through the story, though again, those other issues do make the game's completion feel wasted.

The story itself, without getting to spoiler heavy, is weird. As I say it starts off with a standard ‘cheating husband’ case, and spirals out into a deep, conspiracy heavy and potentially world changing mission from there. The problem is that the game invoked in my head one story which would have been really cool to see play out, but that twists into a story that makes absolutely no sense, has no real resolution and the motives in the final act for some of the characters seem completely at odds with the overarching narrative on display. The game would have been so much better had it leaned into it’s early politically motivated ideas and had real, grounded characters that made sense in the world, but that twist just sends it off on an completely unneeded tangent that spoils the rest of the game. 

Had this happened, some of the genre splicing the story does would still work, it would just make a hell of a lot more sense and give a much more satisfying conclusion. It's a shame that it doesn’t because it would have made for a very cool detective story, an in-over-his-head tale in the best traditions of the thriller genre, just with a talking racoon as a protagonist. 

If you plan to pick up Backbone, do so on Xbox Game pass. It makes the sting of how it all ends and lack of multiple endings less painful. It will provide a game that looks great, but is ultimately disappointing and makes little sense. Be warned.

Review: Call of Duty Warzone

Let me be clear from the off: The act of playing Warzone (as it will henceforth be referred to) is fantastic. The game feels amazing to control, taking down enemies is satisfying and the production values are second to none. In that regard it really is a great game, which makes it that much more unfortunately that everything around the act of playing varies from confusing to outright terrible. 

Apart from the obvious non-comic or sci-fi setting, Warzone differentiates itself from other Battle Royale games by having 150 players on the massive map at once, be that in the quads, trios, duos or Solo modes. Some of these modes are cycled in and out, but to be fair that makes little difference unless you can only scrounge up one friend to play. I mainly played Solo’s because I have few friends to play with and it was a good time up to a point. 

The big innovation, and it is one of the coolest things Warzone does, is The Gulag. When you are killed for the first time in a given match, it isn't a game over straight away. Rather, you are sent to The Gulag, which is basically the shower room scene from The Rock in game form. There you wait your turn until you are put into the centre against one other opponent You get a gun and some other kit and in true battle royale style, the last person standing wins. If you win, you’re immediately dumped back into the map to continue playing, sans weapons and equipment. 

You get one round of Gulag, then when you die you’re gone for good. At least, that's in Solo’s, in the other modes if your team have enough cash they can buy you back into the game ala the reboot system from other games. The Gulag is a very cool addition and distills the game down to that final battle and that first win in that is such a great feeling that dying can make you pumped to continue the match. 

Another difference is the sheer amount of weapons available to you. Whereas Apex Legends or Fortnite give you a relatively small loot pool with a set of clearly defined more powerful weapons - the gold level gear in both, Warzone gives out lots of different guns and equipment. These are organised into assault rifles, smgs, shotguns, LMGS, marksman rifles and sniper rifles for the primary weapons. There is a melee category too but that consists of the Riot Shield and seems a bit pointless as a primary weapon. 

You can also carry a secondary weapon which consists of either pistols, launchers or another Melee category, this time just holding the combat knife. On top of these, you have three equipable perks that grant things like more sprinting time or the ability to use two primary weapons. That last one is probably the most useful in the game, or at least it was for me, as it meant I could carry an assault rifle and a sniper rifle at the same time. 

The last set of weapons are the Lethal and Tactical equipment. Lethal are basically various forms of grenades, while Tactical are things like smoke grenades or the heartbeat sensor for detecting close by enemies. There is a lot of kit in Warzone, and that's before you even get to all the attachments for the weapons which improve accuracy or reload times or a number of other stats, and these are individual to each gun and unlocked by using said gun while playing. 

I have written three paragraphs about what kit is available to you in Warzone, and needless to say it can be overwhelming. That is before you add in ‘blueprints’ which are developer designed weapon combos with different names. So for example, there is the ‘Black Asp’ assault rife, which is a weapon I have found from chests but had no idea what the difference was from any other gun apart from a name change and fact it was blue coloured. Turns out this is a standard Oden rifle with a bunch of attachments and renamed, though I had to figure that out by picking one up and swapping the between it and a normal oden to look at the pictures in the bottom right of the hud. 

I have had to google multiple times to work out the best load out to take into the game, but then the load out options all feel a bit dumb in the context of Warzone. Most BR games have you get loot from chests, in game drops or just the ground, and while all of these are present here, you can only get the loadout you created outside of a match by either buying a loadout marker from a buy station or hoping beyond hope that no one is camping one of the randomly spawned free loadout drops. 

It replaces, in a manner of speaking, the luck of the draw aspect of the chests as by opening enough chests and grabbing enough ground loot you can buy the best guns in the game after a few minutes. It’s an interesting take on the concept, but it simply isn’t as good, as it removes the  feeling of besting a better equipped opponent. Plus it adds in an extra thing for annoying players to camp near for free, cheap kills and this being COD, of course they do that. 

To be fair to Warzone, it is trying to do BR a different way so all these weapon options fit in with that as do the loadout drops, and it does some genuinely interesting things to stand out, for example if someone is aiming a sniper rifle at you, you can see the light reflecting in the scope so you know its a sniper shot coming  your way. It might not seem like much but it's a cool little addition. 

Another is the cash drops that pop out of chests and are strewn over the ground. Grabbing these means that when you find one of the buy stations scattered around the map you are purchasing kill streaks, armour plates (warzones shield equivalent), loadout drops and in the team based versions a killed squad member. Again though, the buy stations are just another thing for players to camp on and get free kills, so it's not exactly worked. 

It's not this stuff that brings Warzone down though, it's everything around the act of playing it. The download is 100GB for just Warzone. 100GB. The problem here is it isn’t just Warzone you get, you actually get the whole of Modern Warfare as part of the install, it's just the main game is hidden behind a £50 pay wall to unlock it. Which would be fine, if you weren’t limited to just two operators (character skins) if you don’t make that purchase. 

It's a shady thing to do in what is supposed to be a ‘free’ product. This is compounded by the fact that all of the options and settings available to players of the full game are available here, which again, would be fine if it doesn’t cause stupid issues. For example, there is the option to turn off crossplay, so you only play with players on the same platform as you (in my case PC), except Warzone requires that it be turned on, so you can’t play with it off. If that was the case, what is the point in the option even being in the client? 

Then  you have the killstreak screen that lets you pick which killstreaks you will receive depending on how many kills you get. Except this is pointless because you don’t earn killstreaks like that in Warzone, just the main games multiplayer, so again, why is this in the game client if you can’t use it?

The UX in Warzone is also terrible. There are so many menus for different things, and icons denoting you have something to look at, that it can be hard to figure out where to go. But then those little icons don’t show up in logical places, adding to the confusion. For example, using a particular gun and getting kills with it will increase your level with that weapon and unlock attachments and gun skins or charms. When this happens and you are dumped back to the main menu, the weapons tab will have a little green icon to say you have unlocked something for a gun. However, clicking on the tab means that icon disappears, it won’t show up on a particular weapon type. 

Clicking on a weapon type and scrolling down the list will also not show you which weapon has something unlocked. Only by clicking on a specific weapon will you get the ‘gunsmith’ option to customize it, and at that point, two menus down, do you see the icon to say something has been unlocked. Would it really be that hard to put the same icon on the weapon type tab and the actual weapon icon? 

Now I do appreciate that this might be something that only annoys me, but this is Call of Duty, the budget would suggest that some of the best developers in the industry are working on it and yet no one seems to have figured out this relatively easy fix? It’s a dumb thing that just annoys and brings the game down. 

This is all assuming that the icons even work properly because I have had a  couple of instances where I have looked at everything and the icon remains for no reason. Another little bug is that when the match is starting and your character is walking to the back of the plane ready to drop, your character skin will change for no reason whatsoever. I normally play as an asian woman operator but several times I have swapped genders and outfits just at this screen for no reason at all. 

In Solos, it will randomly add a teammate into screen while the game loads, confusing you as to whether you clicked Duo’s or not. All these are little things but they add up and take away from what should be a seamless experience. 

Actually dropping in and playing the game, though, is fun to a point. When you are killed you can get the same feeling you would get playing standard COD multiplayer, like you have been decimated before you could react, or even see the person firing on you. This isn’t helped by the real world setting and clothing on the character skins - they don’t exactly jump out at times so it can be easy for players to hide and get the jump on you. I suppose that is just part of the game, but it can be frustrating when you can’t see them cause they are hiding in the corner of a building, covered in shadow while in all black clothing. 

Getting a few kills in a row is a great feeling, especially since characters are very squishy and can be ripped apart in stand off if one is a slightly better aim than you. I played on PC and it was slightly weird to have this happen so much because I was mainly playing against Xbox and Playstation players due to cross play, so in theory I should have the advantage but I really didn’t and I could never figure out why. I suspect it was my own skill more than anything, but there was this sense that they always seemed more powerful. 

Of course, they could have had better guns so that’s why, and I do freely admit my skill at COD is lacking after years away due to frustrations with how the standard multiplayer always pans out, so this might just be a case of getting used to how the game plays, as it is very different to other BR games. 

I want to be clear on one point though: Warzone exists as a way to get you to buy Modern Warfare. It is NOT the benevolent freebie the marketing would have you believe, and everything is geared to getting you to spend money on either the main game or the battle pass and skins. I wouldn’t have an issue with the battle pass if this was a proper stand alone game, and might even invest in it because the moment to moment gameplay is good enough. It’s just unfortunate that the shady practices that surround this put me off rewarding the developers, despite knowing that it was a business decision above their heads. 

It’s also rubbish that Warzone’s lifespan is probably exactly one year, and a new version of Call of Duty Battle Royale will most likely appear with this year's game. That is cynical, I admit, but perfectly justified given the annualised history of the series. It will be, however, very successful, because there is a very large subset of people who don’t want sci-fi - making Apex Legends a dead end, who want an antithesis to the ‘kids game’ that is Fornite and who want a free Call of Duty. 

Cynically it is very shrewd to release Warzone given these parameters, but it is clear business has trumped giving the users a decent experience, and that is very sad, because as a small, stand alone experience that sells a battle pass and some skins Warzone is a very good Battle Royale game for the most part. 

Review: Saturday Morning RPG

Sometimes you come across a game that just misses the point. Either in its execution of systems, attempt to ape a bigger game, or the purpose of a given story type. Saturday Morning RPG is such a game, and while it has some entertaining stuff and a distinct sense of humor, those points it misses are too glaring to ignore.

The setup is simple, you play a guy who likes 80’s Saturday morning cartoons. If you’re of a certain age, think things like G.I.Joe, Transformers etc. You play as Marty, who is given a magic notebook that grants him the ability to fight using various objects as weapons, as well as his fists. This being an RPG, fighting is the primary mechanic of the game, the problem is, it sucks.

Most RPG’s, especially turn based ones, gradually ramp up your abilities and weapons as the game progresses, giving you the capability to take on ever more difficult foes while also selecting buffs and power ups from a menu. Those power ups might be a higher form of armour to increase your health, a fire imbued sword or a potion that grants a temporary bonus.

Here, those bonuses are granted via scratch stickers, obtained as you play. When you engage in a combat encounter, the first screen you are shown is the one containing all the stickers you currently have equipped, and you have a set time to scratch them before the games moves you into battle. When I say scratch, I mean it - you have to rub the Switches touch screen as fast as you can or move the left stick just as quick. You will never scratch all the ones equipped, and you will never find an upgrade that grants longer time on this screen.

This is compounded by the fact that each one comes with a scratch rating, so the better the sticker the longer it will take to scratch. It means that adding a decent modifier to your health might take up most of your time on the that screen, not allowing you to use any others, but then you can’t pick which ones you can scratch first, you place all the stickers you have, the screen pops up and it will just decide which one is the first one you can use, so any strategy that might come from careful use is thrown out of the window.

Once you get past the stickers, you are in proper combat, which is turn based. There is a series of icons at the top of the screen that shows you who goes next, and you have various options open to you. Marty has the ability to ‘charge up’, giving him a multiplier to his attacks. There are a few problems with this, most notably it screws you over.

The idea behind powering up at the start of a fight is sound, but it takes turns to do that and you only get so much of the stamina meter needed for it. To get a full x9.9 multiplier can take three of your turns, by which point enemies are already attacking you and in the late stages buffing and debuffing you. Sure you get to unleash that first attack at an elevated power, but with half your health gone, accuracy lowered, attack lowered with burn applied and the enemies with increased HP, increased accuracy and increased attack you might take out one of them max, even with a multi hit attack.

This doesn’t get better over the course of the game either, that same loop exists at the start as it does at the end, and can mean you have to restart basic encounters multiple times. If you had the ability to heal on a regular basis it would have worked better, but you don’t. There are items that grant healing, but it is a max of three uses and the only one I found as a 25% heal. It helped, but wasn’t the full heal that would have helped in the tougher encounters.

Things you pick up in the environment count as weapons, so there are some obvious ones that do not obvious attacks, like the sword that calls down a lightning strike, and some not so obvious ones. The pencil compass, care bear and straight up Optimus Prime are examples of the some of the crazier weapons, all the while ramming home that 80’s pop culture reverence that is the games bread and butter.

You can block attacks with a well timed button press, which also gains you back some meter to power up, but that isn’t telegraphed as much as needed and the amount gained back is minimal for most attempts as all but the most well timed blocks will grant any kind of decent restoration. Even then though, the block mitigates most damage not all, and if the turn order works out that the enemies have a bunch of turns stacked up (it's rarely 1v1) it can still cause you problems.

Missed points are most evident in the combat. You can find slightly more powerful weapons in the environment, but not without exploring every inch, gaining nothing but XP from winning fights. This is a creative choice and I get that, but RPG’s should provide a continual sense of getting better. Traditionally, this is due to a fairly steady rate of new weapons and gear, though recent years have seen it become getting to grips with controls and frame priority. Either way, you get better over time.

I never felt more powerful in Saturday Morning RPG. Even after several hours with the game, Marty was about as powerful as he was when I first started, and the weapons never became that “Ama gonna mess you up!” spectacle that the best the genre has to offer provides. It made the combat worse than boring - it was a slog.

Having said all that, there is a sense of humour to everything that makes it a light and airey affair, it's all dumb, with the types of baddies you found in fact find in cartoons back in the 80’s. From the Cobra Commander styled Commander Hood to the takes on various Transformers, it really does nail the 80’s nostalgia kick. I am just sad that the game wasn’t a better RPG, developers Mighty Rabbit Studios concentrated just a little too much on the style and nostalgia rather than nailing a quality, if short, RPG.

If the 80’s tinge tickles your fancy, there are certainly worse ways to spend your time, just don’t expect a game that delivers on power fantasy, that game could exist, but isn’t this. Instead you get a few hours of time wasting, but nothing that will stick with you.

Review: Golf Story

I do not do sports. A slightly sad statement, but most traditional sporting activities do not fall under my purview, and I especially don’t get the extreme fandom some people go to with it. Being British, this is especially true of Football, which, while fun to actually play on occasion, constantly baffles me.

An aspect of this bafflement has been sports video games, I mean if you want to play Ice Hockey or Football, just go actually play the sport. There is, however, a caveat to this: Golf. It is the one real world sport that seems to translate to the screen perfectly, with easy to understand mechanics and just a single player to contend with. I haven’t played a golf game in many years, but I remember always having a good time with them.

When Sidebar Games released Golf Story onto Switch, I picked it up as it seemed a  great take on the golf game. An RPG but you are a golfer? Sounds cool to me, and it is for the most part. The game has some issues, and a back quarter that is a serious slog, but the writing, graphics and depth of its version of the sport do makeup for a lot.

You start the game with your character leaving his wife. It sounds depressing, but she is pretty unsupportive and he needs to go and become a pro golfer to to fulfil a legacy to his now deceased father. It is a pretty simple setup, but it works, and from that point you travel to various locations and taken on challenges to get better and improve.

In many ways, it is a lot like what you might think of when the term RPG is used. The differences being that battles are now golfing challenges, which might be hit balls in a specific set of holes, or use only one type of shot to sink a ball, or get a ball into a certain area. Each golf course has its own challenges, both in terms of those and aspects of the terrain unique to that area.

For example, Lurker Valley, the second course, has tar pits and fossils that can affect your shots. It also has cavemen as other players and course officials. To say Golf Story doesn’t take itself too serious is an understatement, it is goofy and fun in all the right places, and this gives a unique twist to each new course.

The representation of the sport actually does have a lot of depth, as there are various shot types and clubs to choose from, and have to take into account things like ball bounce, wind speed and direction and green slope. It makes for a lot to take on board and learn, but the game does a bad job of telling you about these things, and I kept forgetting I could curve balls and all sorts of other things that would help with the most difficult holes.

There is an overworld you navigate with the odd secret as you travel to each course, each course has its own visual style and characters, and with each successful challenge you earn XP to upgrade your stats and become a better golfer.

Unfortunately, this is where the game starts to break down. It at no point explains what the stats really do, and how they affect your game. Most RPG’s stats are relatively obvious, with things like ‘Damage’ meaning you hit harder, and ‘stamina’ meaning you can do things for longer. Golf Story’s stats are: Power, Purity, Strike, Ability and Spin. A couple of those, like Power and Spin, are fairly self explanatory: add more points to Power to hit harder, but the rest are confusing, to say the least.

This is compounded because you can take points out of the power stat at any time and place them into the any of the other four, meaning you have a less powerful drive but be better at something else. The problem is that you can’t do the reverse, once those points are spent on the other stats, they remain there. Since it isn’t obvious what they do, it is very easy to slip into a mindset that doesn’t help you play the game, and can cause you problems as you get towards the end game.

I ended up having to look at a FAQ to figure out what the stats did and how best to arrange them, but I had already put twenty hours into the game before that became something I had to do to try and figure out why it was getting so hard, and even then I was still at a loss as what most of them did.

This might speak to the universal language of games, and the players that understand it. I can look at a game like Final Fantasy and understand the upgrades and stats almost immediately, because they relate to a standard gaming activity: Combat. Attempting to translate those same mechanics to something more real world is more a challenge than one might think, because the fantasy bit of fighting monsters is easy to understand, but how do you represent the skill of a human playing golf?

Golf Story unfortunately does fail to find the balance with this, and the leveling system becomes something you have to do, but not something you want to do. You never want to discover just how strong and powerful your character can get, or I guess how good in this case, because you just don’t get how it works.

Another issue is one that is given away in the title: Golf. Now yes, if you don’t like the sport or don’t want to play a game about it then maybe it was obvious this was an issue, but for those who want to play for the opposite, then the issue is simply the amount.

Apart from playing ‘disc golf’ which is basically frisbee, everything you do uses the golf mechanics. While this means that you naturally get good at playing through sheer repetition, it also means there is a lot of golf, and combined with a last course that is almost unfairly hard, burning out is a real problem. I slogged through for review purposes, but honestly the game could have done with one less course and a much lower difficulty spike on the final one.

That last course is basically ‘the final battle’, but honestly is so ridiculously hard that it requires an almost perfect run to get through, and I threw myself at it for most of the last five hours of the thirty five I spent with the game. The perfection required grew frustrating, and I almost put the game down forever before I finally got the run I needed.

It adds to the feeling that the whole thing is just a little too long, and there is just lack of variety of things to do. To be fair, the game does make up for this by throwing scenarios at you that require light puzzle solving and talking to various characters, and those are well written and funny in spots, but it just isn’t enough.

Golf Story is a good game that misses out on being great due to a lack of task variety and an end game difficulty curve that is just way too steep. It’s just a slavish dedication to the idea of golf that ultimately lets it down, just a few different challenges and a slightly shorter overall play time would have led it to be something so much better.

Review: Destiny 2

Let me say this straight away: If you didn’t like the original Destiny, stop reading and go play something you do. Destiny 2 differs in some good ways, but the core mechanic of shooting various factions of bad guys in the face remains almost completely unchanged, so if you didn’t like it then you ain’t gonna like now.

The follow up to Bungie’s loot fest is...well a loot fest, but one with a way better story, some logical and needed changes to how said loot works and some new areas and planets. That doesn’t mean to say you won’t be playing through those same places over and over again to grind out better guns and armour, but let’s be honest here, that is, and always will be, Destiny.

In the first five minutes of the campaign, Destiny 2 tells more story in a better way than the whole of vanilla Destiny combined, excluding maybe The Taken King expansion. This time around it is the faction known as the Cabal who are the big bad, with a particularly evil leader taking the fight to the guardians.

The tower, the main social hub of the first game is destroyed as is the last city for the most part, and of course the mysterious giant sphere hovering above, The Traveller is under attack. This means that your side actually starts on the back foot, as the light The Traveller provides no longer protects you, which means you are mortal again, i.e. you get killed you are dead.

Except that's not quite right because of course you get those powers back. Honestly the major beats of the story are sci-fi action movie hokum, but Dominus Ghaul, leader of the Red Legion is actually an interesting antagonist, with an agenda beyond “Lets just kill everything!”. It adds much needed backstory to the Cabal, and enriches the Destiny universe overall. Even better, you don’t have to go to a website and look up a bunch of cards to get it, it's all done in game.

On the Guardian side of the story, the main three leaders from the first game return: Cayde-6, Zavala, and Ikora Rey. They entrust saving the good guys to you for the main part, but also get their hands dirty when required, again providing good backstory to the universe. Cayde in particular is witty and great, Nathan Fallion continuing a quality voice acting streak coupled with some good and funny writing.

Once the main campaign is complete, after a few hours, the main meat of the game opens up and then it becomes, well it becomes Destiny. You return to areas, grinding out more powerful loot, you do strikes - more difficult version of missions, you run patrols, do the raid if you have friends and time and complete quests. If all this sounds familiar then you would be right, but the thing about this franchise is, at its core, it's really good.

All of the main changes to the format are quality of life improvements over the first game for the most part and improve the overall experience, but that core shooting is still just as awesome as it ever was. If you didn’t like it first time, you won’t like it second, simple as. If you did, you will find an improved experience, one that streamlines some aspects of the original.

For example, you now don’t have to return to Orbit to travel to another planet. Simply pulling up the director will allow you to go to any of the planets available, which are, apart from Earth, all new. It might sound simple, but it really was a pain in the ass in the first game and is probably the best improvement in my eyes.

Another change is that your weapon classifications have changed to Kinetic, energy and power. Again it might not sound like much, but the secondary Energy weapons allow you to take down the shields on certain enemies quickly, and deal more damage when you do. The power weapons are your sniper rifles, rocket launchers and the new grenade launcher. That last one is a bummer because I have yet to find a good one, and it seems massively unpredictable when using it.

That's the thing about Destiny though, you will always find a loadout that works for your playstyle, and the loot comes thick and fast, so one rubbish weapon type is no big deal. That is coupled with another new addition: weapon mods. These are almost exactly like what you have used in other games, slotting one in will change the guns elemental affinity or increase its strength, a useful way to change things up. You can also feed more powerful weapons of the same type to a weaker one, improving it if you really do find one you like.

The final main combat change is for each subclass, those awesome abilities that let you shooting lightning from your hands or use a giant fire sword. They each now come with specializations, which allow you to customize your character with say, more focus on your super or helping your team keep a killstreak for longer.

It is cool but honestly it is something for the more hardcore players out there, casual types such as myself will notice little difference. That’s not to say it isn’t a good addition, but it will apply more to the raid and strikes than anything else. To be fair, that was the same in the first game with some aspects, the more you play the more nuance you will get out of the combat.

One annoying aspect is the fact that shaders now apply to just one piece of equipment, rather than your overall look, and are one use only. Again this might not seem like much, but when you can only change a couple of bits to the same colour, it can be vexing. Though to be fair, it can make for some very unique looking characters.

Those who played the first game will be wondering just how much content is in this game, as the last one was...sparse to say the least. The good news is that there is so much more to do, and exploring the maps feels so much better this time around because there are small things to find, such as regional chests with loot to grab and lost sectors, which are small PvE encounters that are a bit more of a challenge than just roaming around fighting enemies on the surface.

It doesn’t include the standard strikes, public events, random firefights, patrols and et all that dot each planet, so there is so much more to do in Destiny 2 and it really does feel like an evolution of the formula. That said, you will, inevitably, get to the end of all that, and then what?

Well, frankly, that is Destiny. You play until you can’t, put it down, and wait for the next DLC. If you have friends you can run the strikes with them, play the raid (which still doesn’t have matchmaking) and fight in the multiplayer focused Crucible. Eventually you will grow tired, and again wait for that next DLC, and if that isn’t what you want out of your gaming experience, maybe this isn’t for you. Those who get it though, who loved the first one and want more of that, well, Destiny 2 is the perfect sequel.

It won’t make you change your mind if you didn’t like the first one on a fundamental level, but if you did it's a great follow up, improving just about everything you wanted from it’s predecessor. The core shooting is still amazing, the game is as gorgeous to look at as ever, and the quality of life improvements streamline the experience in much needed ways. Destiny 2 is worthy of the time you will put into it, until the inevitable day you close it and await the next pack of content.

Review: Tacoma

The walking simulator is a relatively modern genre for video games, one where story takes precedence over shooting stuff in the face, and with a great story these games can be powerful, showcasing just what the medium can do and lending credence to the growing art form of games.

My first experience with this was The Fullbright Company’s first game, Gone Home. It topped my game of the year list upon release and it’s themes have stuck with me ever since. When the developer announced its next game I was excited to say the least, and while Tacoma won’t stay with me the way Gone Home did, it is a great game in its own right.

Set aboard Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma, the game places you in the shoes of Amy, the person sent to investigate what happened on board and where exactly the crew have disappeared to. On paper, this makes it sound like a horror game, where some unknown alien menace has infested the station, but that is far from the truth. Tacoma connects you to the on board A.I via an augmented reality interface and from there the meat of the gameplay plays out.

‘Plays out’ is the right term here, as walking into certain rooms will net you a A.R. scene, recorded at some point before your character boarded the station. This could be as simple as one of the crew sat on their bunk playing guitar or as complex as a party where everyone is present. Watching these scenes delivers the story as to what happened to these people, but it also presents something games can struggle with: real lives.

The crew of the Tacoma are real people, they each have families, friends and pasts. They are struggling with something unique to them, which could be something to do with their family or their quest to do better in the gym. It’s brilliant because it makes you feel like the whole situation could be something that actually happens in real life, I got to the end and thought about the news reports that would show each crew member, and the people speculating on what is going on up there.

Unfortunately, while all this makes for a compelling and well paced game, it simply didn’t grab me in the way Gone Home did. That game's tale of a girl returning to her family home to find things aren’t as peachy as they might appear spoke to me on a fundamental level, and even four years on from it’s release I recommend it to people. I am fairly certain I won’t be doing the same with Tacoma.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a great game, and I suspect if this is your first attempt at a walking simulator then you might have a similar reaction to what I had with the developer's previous effort, I just wasn’t pulled into the world in the same way, though I will admit I was very happy and satisfied with the game's conclusion.

The good news is that the main set of characters are so diverse you are bound to find someone who speaks to you. For me it was the medic, Serah, a compelling character with a great back story, who is also dealing with a medical issue a little too familiar. Each character, each little vignette, pushes, compels you to seek out the next, not to complete the game but to find out what happened to these characters.

I just wish I got into it more, and as strange as this might sound stupid from someone whose top ten movie list has eight sci-fi films on, but the sci-fi setting actually harms Tacoma. It puts it just a step out of reach, where other games in the genre I have played were all set in the modern day, it makes for the relatively mundane but compelling story to shine through.

The space station setting here means I spend more time looking out of windows and marveling at the artistic style that getting in touch with the story, and more time wanting to learn about the universe it resides in rather than getting to know all the characters.

Tacoma is a great game, it is well paced, has a great story and a great cast of characters. My issues with it stem from the setting, which doesn’t gel with the tale being told, however cleverly it might play out. If you are looking to try a game of this style, there are far worse options out there, and as previously stated it might well give you the same reaction I had with its predecessor.

It is a worthy follow up to a stunning game, only takes a couple of hours to complete, the perfect way to spend an evening.

Review: Super Mario Odyssey

There is an old saying in gaming circles: “Never count Nintendo out”. It’s simple, to the point, and if any year in its history proves it, it’s this one. Not only did they release a fantastic console in the Switch, they dramatically overhauled The Legend of Zelda to make it probably one of the best games ever made, and now they have unleashed Super Mario Odyssey, a game shows they are still the masters of the platformer.

Talk before release was that Odyssey is a spiritual successor to the Super Mario Galaxy games, and to be honest I can see why that comparison was made. Each level has different themes and secrets to explore, and trust me there are plenty of secrets. More than that though, is the feeling you get when playing: it just feels right.

It might sound stupid, but from the first push of the thumb stick it’s like you just know everything is right, after a few minutes of play you are lost in Odyssey’s world, all your woes falling away as you explore each level. Even when you decide to move to the next, the feeling you haven’t quite found everything sticks with you, until that is you get lost again.

I played the game on a trip home from London recently. The train took just over two hours. I started playing when we set off, and put it down what I though was half an hour later. Turns out I was just twenty minutes from home and I had lost an hour and half just exploring the game, and if that doesn’t mark it out as great I don’t know what will.

Story has never been a Mario games strong point, and if I am being honest the same is true here. Shockingly Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser again, this time with the intention of forcing marriage upon the said strumpet, but he also nabs Tiara, a Bonneter who becomes the princess’ err...tiara.

Mario of course runs to the rescue, but this time is joined by Cappy, Tiara’s brother, who wants to help fight Bowser and his minions and save his sister. This is where the new game shows it’s distinctiveness. Cappy is actually a very useful little guy, Mario can throw him up, down and all around to fight enemies and collect coins, maybe even solve the odd puzzle. The most unique thing Cappy does, however, is allow Mario to ‘capture’ various creatures around each level.

The capture of a creature turns it ‘mario’, which basically means it gets the plumbers distinct moustache and cap, and let me tell you there is something quite magical about seeing a T-Rex in that state. It then grants you that creature's special ability, so for example capturing a Goomba allows you to stack more and and more on top of each other to reach high ledges or treasures. It’s a great mechanic, and allows the designers to hide things in some brilliant places.

Power Moons are the treasures I speak of, and are used to power the Odyssey, a airship the two friends use to chase down Bowser. They are placed anywhere from ‘in plain sight’ to ‘take two hours to figure out’ and each level contains more than you first think. This where you can see a similar design philosophy to Breath of the Wild. In that game something new was discovered every few minutes and the same is true here.

Turn a corner and you might find a new puzzle to solve or a hidden area containing a moon. It could lead to a boss fight or some of the purple coins littering each level, or it might even just be the top of a ridge looking out over the sea, a cool little vista for intrepid explorers to find. This is what drives you in Super Mario Odyssey, you are never quite sure what is waiting for you next.

Once the credits have rolled the game drops you back in, letting you go find all the other moons you might have missed, and I am almost certain you would have missed some if not a vast majority, there is just that many to find. It is unfortunate that revisting kingdoms means you can purchase a bunch of moons from the in game store on each without having to explore, but honestly its not that big of a deal.

There is unfortunately one major downside to the game: motion controls. Now I will always be a fan of the Wii, it was a great system that introduced gaming to the masses, but for the most part motion controls should have died with that system. Here it only works if the joy-con’s are undocked and frankly, no one plays the switch like that. Those devices are either connected to play in handheld mode or attached to the bundled controller dock that comes with the system.

I am not saying it is impossible to use the motion controls in any other state, but it’s certainly easier when the joy-con’s aren’t plugged into anything. Moving the full system around when playing in handheld mode is just a nightmare and it is jarring when playing with the controller attachment. If they had put those moves onto a face button it would have worked so much better and allowed for more creative use of the various powers by players.

To be honest though, that is the only complaint I have about the whole game. Playing is like sitting down for a chat with an old friend, after a few minutes its like you were never apart and that is what the Mario games personify, the feeling of an old friend come to see you and enjoying each others company.

Super Mario Odyssey shows Nintendo’s willingness to try new things with its core franchise, and somehow they manage to keep the same great feel the best of the previous games had. It updates everything for a new generation and I am certain this will become some of the younger gamers out there game of the generation, one of those that is looked back on in years to come with misty eyes and a slightly inflated, but no less justified sense of nostalgia. In short, it is a masterpiece.

Review: Horizon: Zero Dawn

There is an old adage in entertainment media that products with female leads will simply not sell well enough to be worth the effort to develop them. This seems to go double for games, were only a select few have done anything close to ‘ok’ in terms of sales, and fewer still have gone on to spawn an entire franchise, with Tomb Raider and Metroid being the only real contenders and Metroid being a stretch as for almost all the games you are barely identifiable encased in Samus’ powered armour.

Looking up the list of female characters in games, distressingly few of them are women and even fewer not portrayed as either sidekicks or over sexualized. While I will freely admit that those characters who are a bit scantily clad tickle my hetero white male sensibilities (yes I am part of the problem), I also find the ability to play as a women enticing, especially if the character is written well.

Enter Aloy, star of Guerrilla Games Horizon: Zero Dawn. She is a arrow shooting, spear wielding bad ass who can tear through packs of robotic animals with ease, genuinely develops over the course of the game's story, and is never once portrayed as a damsel in distress. Aloy is, frankly, a next generation hero, someone who is already gaining popularity as cosplay and a game character Guerilla should be proud of.

Aloy’s world is a strange one. Set hundreds of years in the future, nature has reclaimed much of the planet and only ruins of our once great civilization remain. Humanity leaves in various tribes, but are united in a common enemy: the machines.

These robotic beasts have been shown in all of Horizon’s promo material and range from relatively small, to towering monsters bristling with advanced weaponry. They represent things like horses, rhino’s, birds of prey and crocodiles and each one is deadly in its own way. Aloy is dropped into this world with a...bow, not exactly the most advanced weapon ever made, but it is amazingly effective. Her mission is to figure out where she comes from, and what is going on with these machines.

The story is actually pretty great, it twists in some interesting ways and features some memorable characters, but all of them pale in comparison to Aloy herself. The voice acting is top notch throughout with each character a believable person in the context of the world, everyone tinged with mistakes or character flaws and some outright assholes.

After a start as a small, rebellious child, outcast from her tribe to live with her adoptive father, Aloy is eventually allowed to travel the wider world.The open world is huge, with draw distances to match, a play space that is truly stunning and a place that just existing in, not even completing missions or side quests, is worth doing. Climbing up to the top of a ridge or mountain and staring out over the landscape is something made for the photo sharing features of the PS4, and made my jaw drop on several occasions, even without the grunt of the PS4 Pro and a 4K TV.

There is plenty to do and see, but, and this is crucial to an open world game, nothing ever gets overwhelming. The map does contain hundreds of icons once you discover enough or earn the shards to buy the maps to reveal things, but most of those are simply the locations of various types of machines. The collectibles aren’t into the hundreds and I was able to collect them all pretty easily. The last game I did that on was Assassin's Creed II, so Horizon is in good company.

Improving Aloy’s skills and weapons rarely feels like a chore, with most of the materials required gained through the excellent battles against machines. The combat system is expertly crafted, and never gets old even when fighting human enemies, though admittedly these battles are never as interesting as battling even the smallest robots.

Each fight can be approached in different ways, but I found sneaking around and picking my shots the most effective. For example, I came upon a pack of Striders (robot horses essentially), so I snuck up through long grass to conceal my movements. These machines have ‘blaze’ canisters on their backs, so I shot one with a fire arrow. This caused the canister to ignite, resulting in an explosion that killed the target and severely damaged nearby Striders allowing me to pick them off one by one.

That tactic is so satisfying to pull off, though it comes with a downside. Because I destroyed the canister, I couldn’t loot that corpse for it, and this risk/reward mechanic comes into play often. With many machines I can do a similar thing, but I get less back than if I attacked them in a more conventional way. This extends to making ammo for the various weapons, as this takes resources such as those blaze canisters and wood, but also metal shards.

Shards are also the game's currency, so until you get to a point where you have the weapons and armour you are comfortable with, making ammo depletes your ability to purchase items. Killing enemies and machines will net you more and selling things to ample merchants dotted around solves this, but it is an interesting way to get people to think about the combat.

Each weapon also comes with tutorial missions, such as ‘trip three medium sized enemies’ for the trip caster, a weapon that fires wires that might explode or be charged with electricity. These are great experience earners but more than that get you to experiment with other weapons, even if it is just to complete them for the experience. Personally I found a good load out that allowed me to take on even the biggest machines with relative ease, but I also played on default difficulty.

Everything about playing the game is absolutely spot on, combat, missions, side quests. The biggest problem, and Horizon’s only major weakness is animation. I am not talking about animation out the world either, every human, every machine or animal moves perfectly even during combat. I am talking about during cut scenes, and it is absolutely atrocious at times.

Aloy just won’t stay still during scenes, her head is always moving, whether she is talking or not. This goes for the character she is talking to too, but she is the worst culprit. It would be better if this movement was in anyway smooth or natural but it’s not, it is a twitchy bouncy mess, giving Aloy a look of perpetual confusion and the disposition of someone suffering from Parkinson's disease than the naive outcast girl they paint her as in the writing.

It’s frustrating because every other part of the game is of such high quality that this one problem brings the package down, and does so unfairly. Playing the game is so much fun it never gets old, but these broken animations wear out very quickly and pull you out of the experience almost instantly after a while. It can be overlooked, but that then means losing out on an interesting story if you were to skip them or look at your phone.

After 50+ hours with it, I can tell you that Horizon: Zero Dawn is a fantastic game, well worth your time. The problems around the animation are not so bad that they spoil the act of playing, and you can certainly have plenty of fun running about the world without even doing the missions or side quests. The combat is stellar and the designs of the machines are awesome in some cases, providing genuinely intimidating foes to conquer.

The missions are generally great, providing a cool story with some twists and turns and take Aloy on a journey to discover her place in the world. It’s just those damn cut scenes, the game deserves better and while it is a small thing, it ultimately brings the whole thing down from ‘classic’ to ‘great’.Still, shooting robotic dinosaurs in the eyes with arrows is so much fun you would be silly not to give it a go.