Review: Titanfall 2

When the original Titanfall was released, it was, to be fair, a stripped down game. With no single player and a smaller budget than the team at Respawn Entertainment were used to, having come from Call of Duty creators Infinity Ward, they never the less created arguably 2014’s best multiplayer shooter.

Fast forward two years and Respawn return with Titanfall 2. The budget been increased, single player is in and the multiplayer has been refined to near perfection. In short, they did it again, and even more surprisingly the single player is awesome.

That mode focuses on rifleman Jack Cooper, who after a disastrous drop onto a planet is paired with Titan BT-7274, a vanguard class titan. The tutorial before this show’s BT’s former pilot taking Jack through training exercises so he can take his pilot's exam, showing you how to jump, wall run and shoot, it setting up the story in a way that invokes the opening of the original Halo. Once BT becomes Jack’s titan, the story really takes off.

BT is probably one of the best new characters in recent memory. The AI that makes up his personality gives advice to Cooper, along with world building exposition and the odd funny comment, born of a machine's inherent inability to understand sarcasm. It makes him believable, a character you can root for. The team of Cooper and BT take you through the story with a relationship that just feels right.

This adds to the universe Respawn started in the original game, which had very little world building. In contrast, even the levels in the sequel flesh things out, let alone all the actual exposition that is done with cutscenes etc. The only problem with the story is the fact that the bad guys are painted as ‘the bad guys’.

What I mean by this is that no time is devoted to why the IMC are actually battling the Militia forces in a galaxy spanning conflict, you are just given a gun, a titan and pointed in their general direction. Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but the rest of the campaign sets up such an interesting universe that it does it a disservice to have to go to a wiki to figure out quite what is going on in the greater war.

This extends to the ‘bosses’ of the campaign, a series of mercenaries known as the Apex Predator’s. There is no reason given for their employment, and are actually a bit of an overused trope as they say things like “I haven’t been paid to kill you”, pretty standard dialog when combined with all the comments that most other games use for their mercs.

On the plus side, a couple of these bosses are pretty cool. I especially like Viper, who pilots a airborne titan and spouts almost IP infringing dialog ripped straight out of Top Gun, and I appreciate the goofiness it brings to an already slightly goofy tale. This does feel a little random and out of place, but the boss fights don’t overstay their welcome, so it's a small niggle.

Every so often, BT gains a new loadout, taken from the Titan presets in the multiplayer mode. It is a great addition because it stops the sections where you stay in the cockpit becoming boring, giving you new toys to play with. Not all of them are perfect, but that is very much a player preference thing, and with that said, there was something about each that was kinda cool, such as the Ronin loadouts electrified sword that can be used to deflect bullets.

There are some great levels in the campaign, with Effect and Cause being one of the most cleverly designed shooter levels in recent memory. It is cohesive and fun, and doesn’t take the gimmick of it too far. I am trying not to spoil things, as it really is part of what makes the campaign so good. One of the final missions is a blast as well, again not overstaying its welcome with its gimmick.

Overall the campaign is a brilliant, a real surprise to an already great package, assuming that they didn’t mess with the gameplay in the first one. They in fact did, but the changes made streamline aspects of the core feel, and this makes Titanfall 2 one of the best multiplayer shooters in years.

All the usual unlocks, merits and modes are there, but changing your character gives you a primary ‘Tactical’ ability. So if you want to use the STIM pack, that is a different character model than the one with the grapple hook, with every weapon available for all models.

As you unlock more, secondary abilities can be swapped, giving you personal cloaks among other things. The original game suffered from what felt like a very small amount of unlockables, but Titanfall 2 strikes a good balance. Is it as many as in say Call of Duty? No, but it doesn’t need to be, there is enough to unlock without feeling like you got everything super quick.

The nebulous ‘feel’ of the game is pitch perfect, I have rarely played matches where no matter how bad I did, it felt great to play. I wasn’t killed almost upon spawn, battles escalate nicely, I never felt hopelessly outclassed and felt like with some deft exploitation of the environments I could get the drop on opponents. I managed to get a three skill streak in more than a few matches with this and it felt great.

Titanfall 2 is a great package. It has a surprisingly great single player campaign, with some memorable characters, outstanding levels and badass moments. The multiplayer is the perfect way to battle real players, escalating to pitched battles with Titan vs Titan and pilot vs pilot action. If you want a lasting shooter experience, you can do no better.

REVIEW: Gears of War 4

I remember watching a documentary on the making of the original Gears of War. One scene in particular has always stuck with me. Members of the development team, including the outspoken Cliffy B,  are having lunch with Microsoft producers. Cliffy B turns to them, shifting in his seat excitedly and asking “Did you see the chainsaw gun? Did you?”.

This excitement was well founded, the Lancer as it later became known is now one of the most iconic weapons in all of gaming. The brutal machine gun, comically over sized to fit its comically over sized owners, dealt death from afar and blood spraying, satisfying vivisection when the distance becomes point blank. It summed up Gears of War in one single image, and made that first game truly cool.

Fast forward a decade and a few sequels, with a few years off and a new developer, Gears returns in Gears of War 4 and I can most definitely confirm that the Lancer is still cool as all hell. This time though, it is wielded by a new generation of gears, including original protagonist Marcus Fenix’s son, JD.

We are introduced back to the world Sera some twenty five years after the events of Gears of War 3. The planet is scarred by the explosion at the end of the third game and the younger gears, JD, Del and Kate have grown up in a world where the series main bad guys, the Locust, no longer exist, the COG (the government) have started to rebuild the world and women are told they should be mothers to rebuild the population.

At the start of the game, this isn’t your dad’s gears in terms of story. The writing is much improved, the setting genuinely feels like a world trying to rebuild and the main protagonists feel like they no longer believe in the government, and so have become ‘Outsiders’ - people who live away from the main cities, the COG and more over, the law. Meaning they have to perform raids for supplies.

This is the first mission, a raid on a construction site for some supplies. The enemies supplied are robots, called DB’s, and are fresh foe to help regenerate the series. They take cover and flank where appropriate, with bigger and badder robots being introduced the further into the game you get. Unfortunately, this doesn’t last. A few levels in and the ‘real’ enemy appears, and they look awfully familiar. This is actually deeply disappointing.

Falling back on long standing antagonists to remind everyone they are playing a Gears of War game is totally unnecessary. The opening missions set the stage for an intriguing tale of government vs outsider, where superior technology takes on human grit and pure muscle, but The Coalition, the new overseers of the franchise, chose to quickly forget that and move into the same thing players were doing a decade ago.

Therein lies the rub, with ten minutes of play reminding you that yes, this is indeed a Gears game, through and through. The active reload, familiar weapons, weight of just about everything and copious amounts of blood provide comforting knowledge that the core gameplay hasn’t been messed with and the developers know how to make this game and do it well. It just needs better story arc’s, something that moves the universe forward, not back.

That said, the writing is vastly improved over previous entries. One sequence in particular, where the team move from a partially built hospital, scattered with posters and pamphlets about how every women on the planet should become a mother, sticks out. At the end of this, JD asks Kate if she doesn’t like the thought of being a mom, to which she responds that she likes it fine, she just doesn’t like being told she has to.

It once again reinforces that anti-government story that would have been so cool to see played out, while also marking out what a great addition to the series cast Kate is. JD and Del on the other hand, fit more into archetypes seen in previous games, with Del being a wisecracking sidekick, despite being the one that asked Del to leave the COG, for reasons never fully explained. JD on the other hand isn’t as gruff and hard boiled as his father, presenting a youthful exuberance, but feels like he is a character transplanted from a previous game in the series.

Its unfortunate that more isn’t made of these characters, but, this being 2016, the game lets you know there is time. The ending, while not spoiling anything, achieves almost Halo 2 levels of ‘Oh F*** off!’ when it just stops and the credits roll. While this is a good few hours in, it just feels like a cynical way to remind people that this is the start of a new trilogy.

Taking all other elements away, and focusing on just the gameplay, this is probably the best gears game released so far. The new elements, some light tower defense sections and battling through spectacular ‘Wind flares’ during a few levels give some welcome changes of pace and push the Xbox One’s powers, and that core gameplay loop that always Gears so a great game remains fully intact.

The multiplayer returns, and if you loved the previous versions, then you will be very happy with what is on offer here. I didn’t play a huge amount of it back during the series heyday, but I did play enough to know that everything you loved about then is still present and correct today.

If Gears of War was never a series you were into, that this new entry will do nothing to change your mind, but for those who loved the hyper violent, gritty sci-fi and slight ridiculousness of the originals, Gears 4 will be a most welcome return to form. It’s just such a shame that it was felt necessary to cover old ground so completely, Gears of War fans deserve more respect than that, indeed, Gears of War itself deserves better.  

Review: Doom (2016)

Ah DOOM. It is the game that changed so much. ID software’s seminal shooter, while not the first FPS on the market, was responsible for many’s first foray into modding, online multiplayer, hyper violence and the first person viewpoint. I remember playing it as a kid, and it remains one of my favourite games of all time, and the series has earned its place in gaming’s hall of fame.

The first two games are classics in the truest sense, games that at the time were revolutionary, gaining a following that endures to this day. The third game, DOOM 3, which came out ten years after the original, doesn’t hold quite as much reverence, with many citing it as the end times for the series.

So when ID announced a new game in the venerable series, at the time called Doom 4, then later retitled to just DOOM, people were a little worried. Added to this was the fact that a multiplayer beta received much criticism and no review copies were sent out to reviewers before hand, generally a dark sign for the quality of a game.

Those worries, thankfully, were completely unfounded. The rebooted DOOM is the classic games through and through, but with updated mechanics, graphics and design that does everything required to bring what you remember about the original hurtling into the 21st century. In short, DOOM 2016 has no right to be this good.

The game's campaign opens with you awakening inside an ancient crypt, brutally killing a demon and escaping to find the ‘Praetor Suit’, the armour that will provide you protection from the forces of hell. Brilliantly, ID software have continued the tradition of not really naming the protagonist, instead the logs etc that you find simply refer to you as ‘The Doom Marine’.

From there, it's all about the killing. Like the first games, this new take focuses on brutal, bloody death with unabashed glee. It is everything that made you smile when you were younger, except now you can actually legally play it (being over 18 that is). As you travel about Mars and then Hell itself, you are given the tools to take down whatever is thrown at you.

These tools range from classic DOOM weapons like the super shotgun, plasma rifle and chain gun, to new brutal melee kills that aren’t there just for show, but one of the best ways to regain health. As you shoot enemies, they eventually stagger and glow blue. Get closer and that glow turns orange and you can hit a button to perform a ‘glory kill’ which rewards you with important health and after some upgrades, Armour.

This brutality extends to another classic weapon, the chainsaw. The iconic device makes a triumphant return, and it is just as satisfying as ever to rip through demons. However, changes have been made. It now requires fuel, which is in short supply. On the plus side, taking down enemies with it rewards you with a spray of ammo pick ups for your other weapons.

The result is a glorious ballet of shooting, melee and ammo replenishment via the chainsaw, with everything covered in so much blood that you could refloat the Titanic twice over. It is a game that will offend anyone still concerned with the violence in the medium, but to those who remember, those who know, this is what DOOM has and always will be.

Levels are massive, with lots of area’s to explore, and explore you should. Dotted around the environment are various upgrades and secrets and help with all the destruction, and the game doesn’t make finding these a chore. The DOOM marine can mantle up to surfaces, jump and eventually double jump, and even gain an upgrade that shows all the collectible locations on the map.

It makes it a pleasure to go through the levels, though some of these upgrades are a bit pointless and it can be difficult, even with the upgrades, to truly find everything. Some power ups though, are awesome. Take for example, the machine guns micro missile upgrade. This allows you to alt fire using small explosive missiles, couple that with an late game upgrade that allows you to have infinite ammo while your Armour is above 100, and you can’t help to laugh maniacally as you rain explosions on a room full of bad guys.

The story is there mainly to give some context to your actions, and as can probably be seen from how late it is in this review, isn’t the reason to play the campaign. Gameplay rules supreme here, and while the universe is fleshed out with cut scenes and the logs found strewn throughout the levels, ultimately I just wanted to get back to the killing of hell-spawn.

By the end of the game, which will take a good chunk of time, the destructive itch will have been scratched several times over. The ripping apart of classic DOOM enemies - Imps, Cacodemons, Revenants, Pinky demons and Hell Knights to name but a few - never gets old, and combat remains fun throughout.

ID Software have included a multiplayer component, and level design section ala Halo’s Forge mode, and these are fine inclusions for the most part, but once I was finished with the campaign, I had more than my share of DOOM.

I feel like the campaign of DOOM 2016 is something I could go back to time and again. The combination of updated mechanics and classic feel make it something special, and as I said before, it never gets old.

This new take on the classic franchise is everything anyone wanted out of the latest in the series and then some, as I said at the start of this review, it has no right to be this good, and it is more than worth your time.

Review: Dark Souls III

*this was originally posted on thisismyjoystick

What’s the first thing you do after being away for a few days? If I was to take a guess, you’re like me and crawl into the warm comfort of your very own bed, pull the covers up and drift off into a nice slumber – safe in the knowledge that this is the bed that had been calling to you all weekend.

Dark Souls III is much like that bed after a few days away. It provides the safe, warm comfort of pitch-perfect gameplay and challenge the series is known for. This time round there are a few changes thrown into the mix, as well as it being a breathtaking visual feast.

Set in the kingdom of Lothric, Dark Souls III represents a somewhat faster pace than previous entries, especially in terms of moving and fighting. This was no doubt informed by From Software’s previous game, Bloodborne. I missed that game, but did play Dark Souls II on PS4, and some of the changes from that are… strange.

For example, the mechanic where enemies stop showing up after a few deaths is completely gone. No matter how many times you run through an area after dying (and yes, you will do that a lot – this is a Souls game), enemies never stop respawning.

Whilst I can see both sides of the argument here, I have to follow my gut: this is a bad thing. While yes, more things to fight in a game with such pitch-perfect combat is not a bad idea, it does mean you can get stuck into sections, just running round doing the same thing over and over again.

The nature of the combat means that this is fun every time, but it does not provide any incentive to move on. It also means that at least one large section per area is ripe for farming souls. I got stuck in an early area for well over five hours just fighting the same enemies, not moving on to see new bosses.

Dark Souls III does provide the freedom to go about your business in that way and really learn an area before you do in fact force yourself to move on, but you’re the one that has do it. The Souls games have never been about hand-holding; you are given a set of nebulous rules and told to work everything else out. Nevertheless, this feels like a wasted opportunity to tempt exploration and get the player to discover more secrets first time through.

Besides the pace and lack of reasons to persist, not much else has changed. The only difference from Dark Souls II is how the hollowing mechanic has been implemented. In that game, being hollowed slowly lowered your maximum health each time you met your end, down to a maximum of half. This gave some real consequence to each death, making things that little bit harder each time.

While hollowing is still a mechanic in Dark Souls III, it has very little effect on gameplay, save for opening/closing certain quest lines. Some might welcome the change and others hate it, but for me it was just one more thing to keep track of and try to find a solution to in the previous game – one that was pretty easily solved too. Its absence here just makes everything that little bit more focused.

So aside from the setting, pacing and not having your health lowered upon death, what has changed? Not much, to be honest. If you loved the previous games, then Dark Souls III is that all over again, and this is no bad thing. What’s more, if you haven’t partaken before then now is the perfect time to jump in.

It is a master-work of gameplay that forces you to, quite simply, pay attention. There is no such thing as cannon fodder enemies here. Each and every one, no matter how small they might look, is actively trying to kill you – and will, given half a chance.

Dark Souls III always provides you with the ability to prevent this, though; you just have to figure out how to do it. A well-timed dodge or roll and quick counter will dispatch many quickly, with harder enemies requiring the use of other weapons/magic in your arsenal to take down.

Various merchants will appear to help you with acquiring new weapons and powers, while those massive, powerful bosses provide large souls that will net you even better gear if your character is built to use it. These look seriously cool and vary each time with some real stand-outs (which I won’t spoil here) in terms of visual design.

I played as a pyromancer and had an absolute blast (pun intended) throwing fireballs and playing around with the other magic at my disposal, while shredding dudes with – for a surprising amount of time – my starting axe. Of course, I found a new weapon, but I kinda loved the fact that I could compete so well for so long with that humble thing.

It took me all of about five minutes to get back into the Souls mindset, even after not playing Dark Souls II for several months. It just felt right, and I knew where to be cautious and how to figure out my opponent’s attacks. I ran through those starting areas for hours and every time I felt like I had it down, I made one silly mistake and lost thousands of souls (the currency, for the uninitiated), because I was still underestimating basic enemies.

Dark Souls III looks and sounds brilliant, with every noise potentially signalling a death-dealing foe or trap around the next corner. Spectacular views as you emerge from seemingly mundane doorways show the visual bump the series has had even since its current-generation debut last year. The animation is just as smooth as in previous games too, helping you to determine when is best to hit the attack button and when to dodge incoming attacks.

DYING NEVER FELT SO GOOD

All of the elements of a true Dark Souls game are here: ambient storytelling, powerful enemies, cool bosses, a real sense of world-building and of course, fantastic gameplay.

My only issues are niggles at best that do nothing to distract from playing a brilliant game. As always with Souls games it’s not too hard, just demanding and fair, providing hours of enjoyment even without moving to a new area.

It’s a great starting point for series newcomers as the story is pretty self-contained in each entry, and the lessons learned over four previous games have been refined to a T here. If you don’t like the Dark Souls games then it likely won’t change your mind, but everyone else will be in their element.

Review: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

*this was originally posted on thisismyjoystick

What’s the antithesis to the idea that modern games are devoid of colour? Put simply, CyberConnect2’s latest Naruto game, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. This is a game that will bathe you in bright lights and pretty colours for as long as you chose to spend playing it.

If you like Anime, love Naruto, or just want a surprisingly solid fighting game, then this is the game you want to play. It’s not without flaws, but I was genuinely surprised by the way it drew me in, even if I had my fill without extensive play of the other modes.

Ultimate Ninja Storm 4’s story is, to be frank, nuts. I have no idea what really went on, there was something about ninja clans, tailed beasts, a world-ending bad guy, and a moral about friendship and working together to beat anything.

I was actually surprised by how this completely insane story drew me in, and it made me want to see the lengthy mode through, even though I actually spent only maybe an hour or two playing the actual game. This being anime, we are talking about Metal Gear Solid levels of putting the controller down to watch cut-scenes.

I haven’t watched much of the Naruto show, but I have seen a few minutes here and there, and Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 does a very good job of looking the same, with the out of engine cut-scenes seemingly taken straight from the cartoon. Aside from the problems with lip-sync, everything sounds great, and the battle effects took me back to my youth watching anime for the first time.

Not all these scenes are that well animated, some are in-engine and some aren’t, with the ones that aren’t featuring characters that have either poor lip-sync or a mask to cover the problem. The in-engine ones have characters talking, but the lip-sync is even worse there, with mouths moving before any dialogue even comes out.

It is enough to pull you out of the experience, but the story kicks in and pulls you back with the craziness that comes with a full-on anime experience. I didn’t play the first few games in this series, but if they are anything like this one it would be worthy trip back in time.

The actual gameplay is pure fighting game and it’s solid, with a surprisingly deep combat system that I didn’t even come close to scratching the surface of. I played on PS4, so hitting circle will do basic combat, but adding in other buttons creates some real spectacle.

By hitting triangle, your character will load ‘chakra’, which basically means they’ll power up for a few seconds. If you time it right, tapping circle will unleash a ninjutsu attack which, depending on the character, can do a few different things. For the most part, it involves launching massive energy balls at opponents causing large explosions. Like I said, anime.

The ultimate version of this is the secret technique, and when I say this looks cool you best believe me. Hitting with one of those will blast enemies with attacks so powerful that the camera heads to a birds eye view to catch the full size of the explosion, and there is nothingmore satisfying. You can even do a team-up version, which is even more spectacular, as some fights grant you allies that you can call on by tapping L1 or R1.

I was never able to fully utilize these allies though. At the start of each battle in the story, you are given a task-list to complete. They might range from performing a twenty-five hit combo, to hitting with a ninjutsu attack three times, to knocking an opponent off a wall. When you have allies, these include ‘connect with X persons support attack’, the problem is that I could never figure out how this worked.

I would get into position, hit L1, my ally appears and hits the opponent, but I never met the condition. I couldn’t work out if because I wasn’t actually hitting, or the angle of the camera was wrong, or something else; it proved very frustrating to try and figure out but fail each time.

To be fair, this is likely me playing badly, but the Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 simply doesn’t do a good job of explaining when best to use this and what counts as a hit with it. Its a problem with a lot of fighting games, the tutorials simply aren’t there, and in order to get good you have to spend hundreds of hours learning everything.

There is plenty to learn too. Cancels, counters, guards, throws, it’s all here, but those large combos I could never pull off; I just couldn’t figure out how to keep the combo going to the point of hitting that many times. I could get into double digits, but never further than fifteen or so, even with the aforementioned super-charged attacks.

In certain instances you can trigger a series of quick-time button presses, which give all the most impressive scenes some agency, though you do miss out on what is happening by focusing on the action you need to perform. Still, by the end of the scene, someone is definitely screwed up, and your brain, if it is anything like mine, will struggle to process what just happened.

I was able to figure out enough to get through the story, and I found that once I had, I pretty much had my limit. I checked out the other modes, but really I had all I wanted out of the batshit crazy story. These modes consist of an adventure mode set after the events of the story, where Naruto takes quests and battles random enemies. Free battle and online battle, where it becomes more of a straight up fighter, and collection mode, allowing you to view stuff you have unlocked.

Adventure seemed like you could spend a good few hours playing, but it just didn’t have the balls-out action and insanity of story, and felt boring by comparison. The battle modes render it down to just the fighting to let you perfect and battle your friends, possibly meaning you can go back through the story and get that perfect S rank, but I’d had enough at that point.

I almost wish Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was just the story, with maybe the battle modes thrown in as an extra. It has everything I personally want out of this type of game, but has a combat system that has enough depth to carry those inclined to play online.

The biggest downside to the battle system is the fact that the camera can prove unwieldy. Numerous times I ended up with the camera behind my opponent, causing instant confusion when I was tapping buttons but doing something else. A few seconds later I figured it out, but it is a dumb thing to happen in a fighting game.

Yes, I have manual control of the camera, but that’s not the point. Concentrating on fighting means that camera control is a secondary concern, and Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 should do a better job of keeping it focused on the player’s avatar. It’s not the first game to do this, and probably won’t be the last, but it is a problem that should be ironed out as soon as possible.

“Go Ninja Go”, or just “Go, ninja”?

I would still give this a shot. The fighting system is deep enough to scratch that itch, the story provides a level of insanity few others can match, and there is plenty to do once you complete it, if you find that the story isn’t enough.

It’s not the most stunning fighting game ever made, but I dug what Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was doing. It looks cool, and blasts light and colour into your eyeballs with unabashed glee. It revels in fun and might just be worth your time.

Review: Firewatch

*this was originally posted on thisismyjoystick

What is Firewatch? That question became a bit of a joke since its announcement, but now Firewatch is with us and I can categorically inform you it is indeed a game; a game about two people, and no destruction, no shooting and no aliens.

Set in the Wyoming wilderness, Firewatch presents an intriguing tale set against gorgeous scenery. Not everything fully works in its gameplay, but if you are in the mood for a sedate and well written story, this could well be for you.

You play as Henry, the newest inhabitant of a watchtower in a forest prone to fires during summer. It would be a lonely summer save for a handheld radio that connects him to the next tower over from his and the lone woman that lives there, Delilah.

I don’t want to spoil too much, suffice to say that a mystery starts to unfold that Henry and Delilah have to solve. Obviously, this is mainly Henry doing the figuring out, since you play as him. I will say this of the story: At no point does it turn to the fantastical to weave its tale. The story happens to Henry and Delilah, and is a good, old fashioned mystery.

Firewatch is more thriller than anything else, though it rarely builds up any real tension, but then again, that’s not really its point. Intersecting the main story is the developing relationship between the slightly broken Henry and the just as broken Delilah. They never actually meet during the entire experience, but the writing is so good that it feels like more than just a friendship develops between the two.

The meat of the story is that relationship, and how it builds up and is shaken by the mystery that unfolds around them. Henry is trying to escape his life, but you can feel the guilt in him, and I honestly felt for the guy. I sat there wondering if I wouldn’t do the same thing as him in his situation, which is a testament to the great writing permeating throughout the entirety of Firewatch.

Then there’s the feel of Firewatch. It took Henry a two day hike to get to his watch tower, and you can really feel that walk as you move around the game world. Its actually amazing what the developers have managed to do with the visuals. Yes, there are certain barriers to just wandering through the entire forest, but none are invisible walls or feel out of place, and some even come with a bit of banter between Henry and Delilah, which is a fun way to relay info to the player.

The developers at Camp Santo have done so much with so little, and at all times I felt like I was hiking through the woods looking out for any trouble makers. The view is just gorgeous from the top of the tower, and you can see some beautiful sites as you move around the wilderness. Is it on bar with actually being in the Wyoming wilderness? Even without ever being there I can say no, because there is a slightly cartoony vibe to everything.

However, this doesn’t detract from the visuals in anyway, and if anything, it adds to them. Yes, the uncanny valley this isn’t, but the world you play in is alive and real. The sound design has just enough of the ambient noises you would hear in the woods, and makes the world - and this might sound weird – feel ‘just right’.

The voice acting is absolutely fantastic, and the two actors really do make the main characters come alive. There is a ‘choose your answer’ angle to the dialogue, which doesn’t seem to affect anything other than your personal arc with the characters, and that is kinda cool. Firewatch is one of those games that you play, and what happens therein is your version of that game. It probably won’t be the same as mine or anyone else’s, and what you take away from the story is yours too.

My only issues are that it can be easy to miss dialogue trees and, secondly, the map.

The dialogue trees pop-up while talking to Delilah, and generally have a few responses to what she is saying. The system works well, but if you are moving about the world and start to interact with something, that action takes precedence over the progress in conversation, leading to a few occasions where I couldn’t respond because I was stuck in an animation and the timer ran out.

It’s a small thing, but such was the quality of the writing that I wanted to hear everything that was said, so this was massively disappointing. The other issue, the map, just isn’t stunning from a gameplay perspective. It is functional, and offers the feel of Henry hiking his way through the woods and having to orientate himself, but it got kinda of annoying to get lost because I hadn’t checked the map in the last thirty seconds. Getting lost is a joy, but objectively, the map isn’t quite fit for purpose.

 SO… WHAT IS FIREWATCH?

Firewatch is a great game. The story that unfolds is brilliantly told and set against the stunning background of a lush forest. There is no shooting, no aliens, nothing supernatural, just a great story told well. If you want the latter, this is not your game.

For everyone else, however, Firewatch is part of a new generation of games that break the mould and do something that little bit different. With such craft and beauty it really isn’t hard to call it art.

Review: Oxenfree

*this was originally posted on thisismyjoystick

You know how it is: Your best friend lets you know about an all night drinking sesh on a remote island, you agree, bring along some friends and a new step-brother, and of course think it will be a barrel of laughs. Then you get to the island and realize not all is what it seems, and those spooky caves feel spooky for a reason…

This is the basic setup of Oxenfree, the first game from developer Night School. It’s a heavily scripted side-scrolling adventure, with some decision-making thrown in and a good dose of artistic expression and atmosphere. It doesn’t always get it right, but as a first game for Night School, Oxenfree is a great start.

You play as Alex, a teenage girl led to Edward’s Island by her best friend Ren. Along for the ride are Jonas, Nona and Clarissa. They are all young and just want to party the night away. Unfortunately, heading into some caves creates a supernatural problem the kids have to solve.

I am trying to be vague here because discovering exactly what is going on is the entire point of the game, and I want to let you make that discovery on your own. Needless to say, things get very strange for the group very quickly, and keep getting stranger.

The interactions of Alex with the rest of group form much of the narrative, and unfortunately it’s here that Oxenfree breaks down. The writing is good enough that you know each person had a life before the events depicted in the game, each had events happen that form the person they are at the start of the game and it feels like each one has always existed, you have just happened to stumble upon their story

Where Oxenfree fails is that it gives you dialog choices for Alex based on what the other characters are saying, but each gives a slightly different tone to her voice and ultimately gives her a somewhat disjointed personality. Sure, you can get around this problem by always picking the same option (three pop at a time, left, middle, right), but that might not feel right for the question, and you are thrown out of the roleplay that Oxenfree is trying to setup.

This is compounded by the fact that characters remember certain choices you make, Telltale’s The Walking Dead style. You might be nice one time and horrible the next, but the characters don’t seem to react particularly naturally, apart from Ren in one case, but you only see the results of that at the end of the game.

It’s a strange combination of good writing and poor editing. It doesn’t completely cripple the game, as Oxenfree is still good, but I can’t help but feel keeping Alex’s story straight and removing these choices would have made for a better narrative. Still, the voice acting is so top notch that you can be drawn into the world regardless.

Oxenfree isn’t super long, I beat it in just over five hours, and this is both good and bad. It’s good because it doesn’t overstay its welcome and pad itself with irritating missions or a ton of collectibles/map markers, but bad because the pacing feels slightly off; all of a sudden you’re at the end with what feels like no real solution to the supernatural problem at hand. The last hour just feels super rushed, but I couldn’t work out if a little bit more storytelling was required or slightly better editing.

I do know that I didn’t feel totally satisfied by the ending, and though there are multiple ones, I felt like the designers were torn between wanting to offer something more and having players simply go through multiple times.

Had a new game+ option been available, I would have been more inclined to start over and play longer, but as it stands, it likely won’t be launched again.

I had only two other issues. The controls and the walk speed. The controls are set so that the cursor keys move Alex, Space is the contextual action button, Ctrl brings up the map and Shift brings up a radio tuner. This is a perfectly fine, but in order to select a dialog option when theyappear, you have to move your hand to the mouse to select one and click. When you are climbing down a hill or doing something else this can be annoying. It’s a little thing, and your feelings on it might be different, but I found it vexing.

As for the walk speed, even when running (only when the game deems that it’s okay), Alex moves extremely slow. I feel like this was a deliberate move to add tension, but it only makes the act of playing laborious. It’s not so slow that doing anything becomes a chore, but in the situation presented, it would seem like teenagers would be moving with a touch more haste.

To be fair, Oxenfree doesn’t feel scary at all, and is more a thriller than a horror. There are a couple of moments where I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, but no jump scares or any atmosphere of dread is created, so you just end up wanting to see what happens.

Visually the game does a lot with little, and again presents a island that has been there for years and will continue to be there for years after. It is simply present, and while some textures get reused a little too often, it’s not so bad that each area feels exactly the same, and with some tricks to infuse that supernatural element, Oxenfree can be a visual treat.

BUT STILL NOT SCARY?

It’s not scary at all. I would be hard pushed to find anyone who would think it’s scary, even pre-teen kids would have seen scarier stuff on TV.

It is however, a good game. The writing is really great and the voice acting enhances it to present you with a group of people who lead natural lives but are thrust into a supernatural situation. The branching story stuff might fall flat, but if you have a few hours to kill then Oxenfree is certainly worth your time.

Review: Samurai Warriors 4

*this was originally posted on thisismyjoystick

It’s not often one series pretty much corners the market, so much so that the game becomes the genre it created. The Warriors games did this many years ago and, due to various spin offs, if you want to play a game in this genre, it comes from the developer Omega Force.

The latest of these spin off games is Samurai Warriors 4, and represents the genre’s first real leap to the next-gen systems. Unfortunately, that leap doesn’t extend to improved gameplay, graphical prowess or storytelling, and leaves it showing only a small spark of promise that is instantly snuffed once you realise how repetitive it all is.

I haven’t played any of the previous games before it, so I went into this with little to no expectations on what the moment-to-moment gameplay really was. I had an idea, but I was happy to expand my horizons with a series I had never played before, and at first I was pleasantly surprised with a starting character’s ability to mow down hundreds of guys easily.

Soon after, though, I realised that that is literally all you do. Sure, you pick up items to help you out in the next battle, but you really only wander a boring battlefield attacking anything with a health bar until they disappear to indicate you have killed them. This is accomplished with a simplistic combat system that could almost be deep if it wasn’t so pointless.

That system is essentially two buttons to control different attack types, but by stringing them together, you can unleash a whole heap of different attacks. The problem is that it is all window dressing; just one heavy attack and one light attack would do, especially when combined with the musou attacks and rage meter, which grant screen filling spectacles that clear out an area – and any more powerful enemies – very quickly.

Trying to hit buttons in the right way to unleash the different moves in the list feels like button mashing because that is exactly what it is. The move list itself doesn’t do what it says, compromising of a bunch of pictures of the square and triangle buttons next to each other, with no context as what hitting them in that order actually does. It does make the player character do different things, but I just didn’t care.

The story mode makes this worse and consists of a series of battles segmented by what appear to be various historic Japanese clans, fighting it out during what’s known as ‘The Sengoku Period’, though it never really tells you what that means. So a series of five battles will be fought for one clan, then the credits roll with an incredibly boring and drama-free end to that storyline, and you move on to the next.

These segments offer different characters to control, each with their own weapon, but once again, none of it really matters. Each character has pretty much the same move list in terms of controls; it’s just what happens on screen that may vary, but not so much that it makes any real difference. They just aren’t distinct enough.

Story wise, Samurai Warriors 4 is both terrible and inconsistent. If this is supposed to be set during a real historical period in Japan, why does one of the segments feature what appears to be a demon who can disappear at will? Why would you be fighting a set of enemies in one segment, only to have them be your allies in the next? Why do some characters have magical abilities if this is a real battle during that period? It makes absolutely no sense at all.

The voice acting and lip syncing are both terrible

It isn’t helped by the fact that the voice acting and lip syncing are both terrible, and there is no option for an English voice-over. To be fair on that last point it is a game set in Japan in a period where no-one spoke English, so in one sense it is understandable, but it might have given what little plot there is more meaning to a western audience.

On the plus side, there is the odd small spark of inspiration during the campaign. If the developers had focused on fewer characters and woven the story between a few different sides of the same conflict, showing why exactly those people are fighting and the political machinations that lead to each battle, it would have proved much more interesting. Sadly, that spark is put out by poor writing, terrible voice work and a complete lack of sense.

The other modes included are a Free mode where you can play any level with any unlocked character, and Chronicle mode, which is actually the one good thing about the whole package – that is until you realise you still have to fight the battles.

Chronicle mode lets you create a character and then sets them free to wander Japan and build up a book about the people from the Story mode. You do this by either increasing your friendship with them by changing your ‘life’s ambition’ or by fighting alongside them, depending on the character.

Defeating them in battle somehow translates to them becoming your friend and saying they will join you on your journey, and to be fair, it can be interesting to see how these characters progress. On the other hand, it is all stuff you can find out about the real people on the internet and it brings little to the table other than trophy/achievement chasing.

At least the game runs smoothly, as I didn’t notice any frame rate issues or graphical bugs, but it also isn’t the prettiest thing to look at. Some cut-scenes look okay, with the majority just as good as anything on the previous generation, but they wouldn’t have been anything special then and they certainly aren’t now.

I suppose I should have realised just how bad things really were when every single menu option always defaults to ‘No’, and that includes the one that asks me if I want to load my save game. If you are actively asking your player base to not load the save for your game, something has gone very wrong.

ITS ABOUT HISTORY, SO IT’S WORTH IT RIGHT?

Wrong. Samurai Warriors 4 is not a good game by any standards. On Easy and Normal it is so mind-numbingly repetitive that you wish for something, anything to break up the flow, but increasing the difficulty just leads to frustration as it tasks you with moving around the battlefield at a pace characters are not set up for.

The few small areas that see Samurai Warriors blossom into a truly great game are crushed by this frustrating gameplay loop, dropping the whole thing into an endless abyss it never recovers from. There are far better ways to spend your money on the new consoles, so don’t waste it on this.