The country rock song that opens Rochard is, in some ways, a perfect analogy of the excellent mix of entertainment it introduces. This is a game that is as bouncy and lighthearted as it is a parody of everything that has come before it. The song gives a good idea of exactly what will follow, which is: space hicks and silliness.
You'll take the role John Rochard, an asteroid miner in search of some precious something or other... I'll be honest, you won't be playing Rochard to follow its story. It’s not as if I wasn't paying attention to the cutscenes that join level to level, just none of it was apparently worth remembering. What’s important here is that things have gone bad in space and it’s up to you to right those wrongs with guns and physics manipulation. I rarely need an excuse to engage in platform puzzling and mass brutality and this game has plenty of both.
Rochard has a fancy gun, you see, one that was apparently swiped from the hands of fellow game man, Gordon Freeman. With this you have the ability to grab onto objects, pull things towards you and swing ape-like from conveniently placed crates. It’s a weapon as well as a tool though, offering you laser power and a multiple grenade launcher in case any of that mining work requires the firepower more readily available to the Starship Troopers.
Of course, you won’t actually be doing any mining here. Each chapter is divided into a series of rooms, more often than not with puzzles to solve to allow you to move on to the next screen to further your quest. It’s formulaic in a sense, but owing to the tools available it’s generally up to the player as to how best to approach each problem. Crates can be grabbed and thrown to make stepping stones or to boost jumps, fuses can be switched to power any number of devices or to avoid hazards. Gravity can be turned on and off at the press of a button to allow you to float serenely about and reach tricky ledges. Enemies can be shot in the face.
There are so many different aspects to the abilities with which Rochard allows you to experiment that I won’t be able to lay them all down here. Suffice it to say, there can be a great deal of freedom as to how you mix them up to achieve your goal. Much like Frozenbyte’s Trine, Rochard understands that there’s fun to be had in letting the player experiment with a varied toolset.
And despite this complex arrangement of actions, the controls (at least with a 360 gamepad) fit sublimely. For those tied to their keyboards I would say that mouse aiming leaves something to be desired. Instead of a reticule with which to aim, any movements made simply decide the character’s facing, so it can be tricky to be accurate, especially under pressure. Truth is, you should already have a gamepad if you’re interested in PC platforming - these days it’s essential.
What’s interesting about this game is how much of it has been lifted in spirit from those preceding it. If you have any interest in physics puzzling, you’ll likely have seen half the moves on offer here, from the gravity gunning, to see-sawing and energy fields, very little here is brand new. But that’s not to say it’s not enjoyable. Rochard is entirely derivative, but its constituent parts are so finely manipulated to fit in with the bigger picture that it doesn't ever become dull or obvious in its solutions.
The story is a different matter. It's entirely skippable. When you’re playing a fat miner with a gravity gun you really shouldn’t need any further motivation to become inventively sadistic to those who oppose you.
Few people may fall in love with Rochard, but many will find it impossible not to smile at its clean, cartoony nature and the increasingly elaborate puzzling antics. It may not be the most original game released this year but it's packed with variety and a desire for fun that is frequently refreshing. It's also a decent length of play for the price you'll pay and when time equals money for certain video gamers, this should be where they're looking.
Rochard is out now and available to buy on Steam, here. (£7.99)
There's something to be said for how quickly To the Moon captured my attention. The setup is brief but perfectly executed: Two scientists arrive at a house in the woods with a box of tricks which allows them to alter the memories of whomever happens to have paid for their service. The catch? The grim reaper is breathing down the client’s neck. It's an excellent hook that instantly throws up a ton of questions as to the possibilities and limitations of such a device.
Our subject is Johnny, an old man on his death bed. He has one wish: to have visited the moon. Why does he want this? He doesn't know, so it's up to the game's leads, Drs Rosalene and Watts, to find the answer and make his dream (or rather, memory) come true.
To the Moon does not present a challenge. Essentially, it's an interactive story in the guise of a 16-bit adventure game. What control the player does have is heavily restricted by the precise experience that the developer, Freebird Games, intends them to have. There are a couple of choices they can make along the way, but the player won't be reloading through death or be required to bloat their inventory in order to progress through the chapters. They simply guide the characters and watch as the plot unravels.
This could be an issue for anyone seeking a test of intelligence or skill, or some kind of thrill ride, but for those after an interesting story told well, To the Moon rarely falls flat. It makes use of common traits of the medium to absorb the player, keeping their hands busy and their eyes locked on the screen.
For the first act of the game, you'll be tasked with tripping back through Johnny's memories one at a time. In each version of the subject's past reality you'll need to discover more about him, but also seek mementos - little keepsakes - that can be used to form gateways into earlier memories. Searching for these items is as close to a typical adventure game as To the Moon gets. It's item hunting with a dash of puzzle solving required to activate the next area.
The boredom that this sort of repetition might usually provoke is offset by the constant progression of the plot as your insight into the minds and motivations of each character develops to a point at which you genuinely care about what may - or might previously - have happened to them. Snapshots of half-recalled conversations play out in these instances, building a picture of why it was that memory reconstruction was requested in the first place.
To the Moon could easily have become a succession of saccharine moments designed to melt hearts which instead only inspired the urge to vomit. By its very nature - dying man, lost love, sentimental desires - Johnny's story is, without question, a nose-blowing sob story. But what thankfully turns this on its head is the detached viewpoint that a couple of scientists going about their day jobs provides.
Following these characters in performing what they perceive to be quite mundane work is endlessly interesting and frequently amusing. They are the ones who provide the smirks and the flippant remarks so that the player doesn’t have to. The banter between the two doctors, who are completely at odds with each other in terms of personality, provides just enough comic value to allow the main plot to breathe and to ensure that the player never feels overwhelmed with a barrage of emotionally loaded codswallop.
It also means that those moments which are truly heartbreaking are far more effective when allowed a quiet moment to play out.
Outside of the realms of fabricated memories is a reality that was never far from my mind throughout my time with To the Moon: There can only be one ending. Johnny will inevitably die and he will never have truly visited the moon. It’s a sobering thought and being reminded of this fact every now and again grounds a tale that could easily have floated away into fairyland.
But it’s not depressing. It is enlightening, charming and funny. The balance between comedy and tragedy is well trod and I commend Freebird Games on creating such a memorable and tightly written story that works so well in this medium. As I’ve said, making your way through To the Moon does not require skill. It is a work of interactive fiction, but for the four hours that it took me to complete it never struck me as lacking anything that a great gaming experience should have.
It's a brave thing for a developer to do, to expect the buyer of their game to act as a bystander to their own creation. After all, if we as gamers were after such an experience, wouldn't we just watch a movie or pick up a book? To the Moon, by it's very existence, would like to argue that point and I can confidently say that it is one of the finest games I’ve played all year.
To the Moon was released 1st November and is currently available for trial and purchase here. (£7.99)
Please be aware: This review reflects only the single player portion of the game.
What I like most about Ignite is the boost button. I think it’s the one on the dashboard they labelled TEAR REALITY ASUNDER. That’s what it feels like. When you call for nitro in this game you’re essentially passing the steering wheel to the devil himself. The screen contorts and blurs and one errant twitch of the thumbstick will have you scraping the wall at 150mph. The thrill is immense, whilst it lasts.
Ignite is a funny old thing, really. In some ways it reminds me of the original FlatOut, which held a similar wild enthusiasm for speed and destruction, but it doesn't really break any rules when trying to present the same brand of unhinged arcade racing. In fact, it doesn't even feel that unhinged when you don’t have the capacity to TEAR REALITY ASUNDER.
To start with you'll be offered some straightforward races against a few stupider-than-thou AI opponents. If you lose to these guys, I'm assuming the game just quits and uninstalls itself from your system, because to do so would mean that you’d likely never seen a gamepad before, probably never heard of ‘the internet’ and certainly shouldn't be left alone with a computer.
After this the learning curve climbs, but not all that much. You’ll whizz through it without too much hassle, unlocking cars and tracks with your successes. Within the three main car types - muscle, street and race - you'll gain access to new paint jobs that come hand in hand with bonus attributes to help you gain the lead in races.
The twist? You can lose a race and still win it. That is to say, race wins are determined on points gained from smashing, speeding and drifting your way around each track, not simply by your finishing position. Leading the pack helps, but it's not the be all and end all if you finish in second place with five thousand points in hand, whilst the guy in front has only made a couple of hundred. Points count as deductibles of your time and these are tallied up at the end of each race.
The reason for this? Presumably it gives more aggressive, slower drivers the opportunity to win big by bothering all the other cars and smashing up the scenery. But unless you're talking tricks and spins and big air, which this game explicitly isn't, then where's the fun to be had in not taking pole position? I'm unsure on this point.
After experimentation, I found it rather simple to lead each race on both points and time by picking a roadster with a destruction bonus and knocking down every piece of signage I could find. No other style or car type earned me a fraction of the points that this method did and - because points convert to nitro - I maintained the thrill of being at Beelzebub’s side the whole time. Good for me, bad for Ignite, because something’s clearly awry when your toolset consists of one sledgehammer and a bunch of inflatable mallets.
The point scoring does get in the way of the actual racing. Keeping track of it and trying to understand why you might be behind when everyone else isn’t means your mind is kept from enjoying the thrill of the chase. And because you’re given two variables by which to judge your lead, you’ll often have little idea of whether you should be threatened if you’re either lagging behind or lacking in points. It’s an odd experience and means you can never accurately gauge the competition.
For all its colour and noise there's unfortunately very little here to get excited about. It’s a pretty game and there are moments of genuine spine-tingling speed, but all too often the game seems to be holding you back, tying you to its EXCITING! NEW! CONCEPT! which, on closer inspection, isn’t that exciting. It’s still good old fashioned fun if you’re willing to accept the flaws, just don't go into it expecting the next Burnout.
Ignite is released on 28th October and will be available to purchase on Steam. (€14.99/$19.99/£12.99)
I recently commented on how often developers feel obliged to force uninspired storylines upon their games in an attempt to give some sort of substance to proceedings. Most of the time it doesn't add anything at all, which was my point, particularly when the focus of play is purely on the destruction you can wreak between cutscenes. It's hard to give a crap about individual character relationships when you spend most of your time massacring entire species. Which is why I applaud the approach PomPom Games took in introducing the player to this finely realised game world:
'You are a lone Spaceman doing something or other. Driving around in your spacecraft, visiting random planets.
They are the Alien Zombies. Intent on the destruction of all Spacemen doing stuff... in space.'
Bravo. It's as if they wrote that intro simply to emphasise the fact that it wasn't needed at all. And I also appreciate the insinuation that, if the aliens weren't zombified, they might have been a decent bunch of guys.
Alien Zombie Megadeath is very much a game about wanton slaughter. It's also about earning points and madly shifting between numerous horizontal platforms to avoid contact with - and death by - an array of colourful foes.
This is trad arcade in many ways. You don’t need to have been playing games for most of your life to take one look at the screenshots here and realise exactly what it is you would have to do were you playing it yourself. Move and shoot, shoot and move, pick up those crystals, power up and blast the hell out of legions of space slime. Easy.
There are eighty levels of varying difficulty, most of which will have you clearing each screen of aliens. Variations that pop up from time to time consist of bomb disposal, space baby rescue (really) and good old fashioned survival, along with the odd boss fight. Further levels and designs for your spacesuit are unlocked as you earn medals from specific achievements within battles, but you’ll rarely find yourself having to replay to perfection in order to proceed through the game.
In this respect, AZM is accessible enough for a casual gamer to dip in and out of, but big and tough enough for the hardcore to spend a lifetime completing and unlocking everything that the game has to offer.
It would be easy to pass off AZM as a throwaway, nuts and bolts shoot ‘em up at first glance, but that’s not the case. A wealth of enemy types keep you thinking on your feet and there are enough entertaining additions (jet packs, anyone?) and game types to keep it from becoming a desperate space-slog. It may not be spectacularly pretty, but bright colours and distinctive creature designs mean it’s generally simple to keep track of all but the most frantic of shootouts. To compliment this, the controls are particularly responsive and work well enough on either keyboard or gamepad.
I'm not saying the game will rob you of your sleep, but if you're a fan of arcade shooters, AZM is robust and entertaining and there should be enough content here to keep you going for a very long time.
The Bridge is a bit of a looker. That was my initial thought as I was prompted to play an active part in the introduction of our slumbering protagonist. The hand drawn visual style is an obvious look for an indie platformer, but it works beautifully here. On instruction, I shook the world around our unnamed hero, presumed to be M.C. Escher, and a piece of fruit soon fell from the tree bows above his head. It was a rude awakening, and an instant introduction to the game’s foremost mechanic - the perception and control of gravity.
Making references to previous titles as points of comparison can be both lazy and insulting, but I do feel it important in recommending this title. Braid, And Yet It Moves and Limbo are the most obvious direct links to how this game looks, plays and feels thematically. The artistic design and the smarts required to solve some of the obstacles you'll come across exhibit echoes of all of these games. And The Bridge’s world maintains the same dreamlike quality that hints at something sinister beneath the cutesy surface.
You might not know exactly what it is you're getting yourself into when you make your first foray into the highly illogical environments presented by the game, but I'm going to be intentionally light on the specifics of how puzzles are solved. A good deal of the thrill in beating The Bridge is learning its rules for yourself and then going about bending them to your own advantage.
An Xbox controller is recommended, but not essential. The game tempers its pacing enough that rash moves are rarely required and if you're losing repeatedly because of pixel perfect jumps or close encounters with grinning boulders then you're likely being too aggressive in your puzzle solving.
And let’s remind ourselves of the aforementioned influence here - the work of M. C. Escher. That needs little explanation and from the screenshots you’ll see on this page, I defy you not to be itching to involve yourself in this world, to experiment with its limitations. Here, up becomes down, left becomes right, down becomes both left and right and... well, you get the picture, but in spite of how confusing this could be to someone who just wants the ground to stay wherever the hell they left it, the game does a great job of not becoming a confusing mess of directional woes. It manages to avoid being obtuse to the point of frustration.
There's little narrative to speak of so there's no ultimate goal from the outset, but the world is fully realised in that it provides an evolving hub from which to visit the different levels of play and you’ll realise as you explore and increase your abilities just how to make the most out of your surroundings. You’re not out to rescue the princess here, you exist to progress.
That's not to say that there isn't an overriding theme. The character you play is inherently spectral; he is drawn into the lands he explores, and the periodic messages that drift onto the screen provide a kind of poetic justification of your actions within the world.
Playing through the main body of the game will likely not take you longer than a couple of hours, but there are a couple of additions to keep you coming back once you've hit the end screen. Firstly, there are achievements to be had, if you happen to like having your successes verified by pop-up text. Secondly, once completed, you'll gain access to beefier versions of the original mind-bending levels. Believe me when I say that these will keep you scratching your head for a good deal longer, although I felt they didn’t quite match the purity of the original experience.
The Bridge is good, solid indie fare. Having an eye for the abstract and a brain for the patently absurd is not essential, but you will need a modicum of patience if you're new to this kind of puzzler. That said, it's forgiving enough for those who just wish to relax into a game which does so many things right in portraying exactly what it is that makes Escher's work so incredibly absorbing.
The Bridge has not yet been given a solid release date, but is likely to hit the PC early next year. Pricing has also not yet been confirmed.
Trauma did seem to come and go without a great deal being said about it, at least as far as I was aware, so having recently acquired it through the excellent Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, I felt it appropriate to brew a large pot of coffee and give it a whirl this evening. A nice, slow whirl.
This is a game I can relax into. I mean, the undertones are pretty dark - you certainly won't be giggling you're way through it - but there's a pleasant floating quality to the gameplay and a sense that whatever pace you happen to take it at is just fine and dandy. So as I passed through it - and I do mean 'passed through' - I almost felt as if I weren't playing the game, but that the game was playing me, leading me onwards with a succession of gentle prods to uncover its secrets.
This casual, wandering aspect is simultaneously a strength and a weakness. The game is instantly engaging because of its sense of mystery and the simple point and click method of play, but it also lacks the depth of character required to keep it from being anything other than a pleasant time-killing Flash game. Which is odd because, as you progress, you appear to be exploring the dreams of a young woman who is recovering from quite severe physical and psychological difficulties.
Once again, it's not a laugh a minute.
Advancement in the story is achieved by navigating through polaroid snapshots of several strange and hallucinatory worlds. You'll piece together clues to the girl's past whilst solving simple puzzles and finding ways to end the dreams, but it never really becomes emotionally engaging. I was aware of the struggle of the protagonist in the vaguest of ways but, instead of sucking me in and taking me deeper into her personal tragedy, it maintained a level of surrealism that always held me at a distance.
I don't dislike the game. I think it's an attractive and unusual treasure hunt, but I couldn't honestly say anything kinder than that and it did leave me feeling slightly empty once I'd uncovered all of its secrets.
Have a go, you might like it, but don't expect it to pose any questions greater than, say, "Where the hell is that final item?"
Feast your eyes on this, the new game developed in part by Edmund McMillen; indie hero, father of Gish, mother of Meat Boy and author of that largely unsexy game about ladies’ private parts. This time we enter the world of Isaac and if your bible is well read, you'll either appreciate the reinvention of this twisted tale or, I'm sure, abhore it. Personally, I think it's an original and suitable setting for the game, but I’m not in a position to judge whether it could be perceived as a middle finger to those of certain faiths.
Quick précis? Little Isaac's mother hears the voice of God, and it demands that she purify her child of all his sins. One thing leads to another and the booming voice above eventually asks that she end her son's life in a typically grizzly demonstration of her belief in the big man. To escape his knife-wielding mother, Isaac enters the basement of the house through a trapdoor in his bedroom floor. From then on, he becomes involved in a bloody quest to kill the nutty bitch, arcade shooter style. Naturally.
The Binding... is in many ways like a top-down take on Spelunky; all randomly generated rooms, item shops and enemies. For this reason, it appears infinitely replayable, even as I enter my thirtieth turn in its grizzly underworld. There are no second chances here - you have but one life with which to make the endgame. Really. Have I beaten it yet? No. But I'm not done trying.
It can be a cruel and vicious game, punishing the player in its thirst for variety. You may pick up an item that causes insta-death, or you might come across room after room of monsters with nary a power-up in sight. Sometimes you'll be locked and loaded from the get go with a handful of bombs and a damage buff you've picked up in the second or third chamber. It's never predictable and there is always that sense of unwrapping a gift each time a new game is fired up. Will it be a glistening jewel when I begin again, or a box of steaming poo? To be honest, just like in real life, either way is fun. You make of it what you can, even when lady luck does happen to boot you in the balls.
The game consists of layers of dungeons that you'll descend through as you progress. The maps on each level are non-linear so you get to choose where it is you’d like to go whilst exploring, but you’ll always need to face one super-baddie in a particular room before you’re allowed to reach a lower stage. It’s a simple goal, but you’re constantly weighing up the odds of survival, checking the map to see whether you should get the level boss over with, or risk some more basement rooms on the off chance some newly discovered loot will turn you into the teary-eyed murderer you always wished to be.
Isaac kills with tears, it’s true. He also wears his mothers heels to gain range and can, on occasion, call in a missile strike from above. The combinations of passive perks and power-ups are practically limitless. You’ll unlock more and more as you progress through the game and, as you become accustomed to them, you’ll also be learning the strengths and weaknesses of each enemy you encounter. It’s a great little hook and ensures that with each death both your practical experience and your ability to survive increases. It’s another step in maintaining the 'one more play' player attitude that this game thrives on.
If there is anything to pick at in criticism it would likely be the configuration options, notably the control scheme. Although the game has recently been updated to support joystick use, that support only extends to instructions on downloading JoyToKey, a third party button-binding app which isn't ideal when you're after plug and play with a standard Xbox controller. Considering Super Meat Boy implemented joypad support so well, this surprises me, and I will always be more willing to play a game like The Binding of Isaac whilst slouching in a chair, madly bashing buttons, rather than sitting upright at a keyboard.
This, though, doesn’t take away from the fact that McMillen has once again displayed his talent for creating absurdist pantomimes within compelling cartoon worlds. The Binding of Isaac is full of filth and depravity, but with enough comic value to negate any serious sense of doom and gloom. For the price of a pint of ale, you’d be crazy not to pick this up.
If anything, it makes for a nice change of pace to slip into some casual indieware at a time when videogame blockbusters aren’t blinding me with all their many polygons and loud bangs and flashes. Quite the opposite to all this, Orczz is a fairly unassuming affair. There is very little fanfare when diving into this cute, if simplistic, tower defence game.
The theme is unabashed comic fantasy. You lead the knightly good guys on an eastern island - all swords and castles - in defence against the Orcs (or Orczz?) across the channel to the west who have decided it’s about time they attack the purer race, not to gain access to your swords and castles, but, indeed, to pilfer your mead. Why are they after your mead? I don’t know, I haven’t picked that up, but I can totally accept it’s the kind of shitty thing that Orcs would do.
Fair enough. So far, so tongue in cheek.
Orczz is accessible enough for those familiar with this style of game. It’s tidily presented. You buy your units prior to each progressively tricky battle. In combat you slap them down feverishly on the copy/paste battlegrounds in an attempt to keep the evil green hordes at bay (entering from the right of the screen). And there are some basic mini-games to break up the pace.
But what instantly sticks out like a gnarled green Orc thumb is the sight of these character sprites in motion. It doesn’t add up to the cartoon flair of the art design. Battle animations are so awkward as to be obstructive of the player’s perception of the action; each time one of your archer’s arrows hits home, there’s no physical reflex from the enemy, no loss of limb, just an ungainly clip-art sprite to depict contact. Indeed, the only indication of how much damage you’re actually inflicting on a foe is the slight shade of red they turn just before their death slump is sketchily depicted and a single coin of reward floats up from their body for you to harvest. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just... lacking in shine when the game seems to set itself up for some bonkers comic antics. Most importantly, it doesn’t make it easy to gauge the sway of the fight.
The actual meat of Orczz is mildly enjoyable if overly tricky (seemingly whichever difficulty you play on). On two separate ‘casual’ playthroughs my cash reserves between battles fell so low that I was unable to purchase any units prior to the next encounter, thus ending my game. Even the supposedly free ones were off the menu due to some knuckle-chewing bug. It’s unforgivable. It also means that I still haven’t played the game through to completion.
When things do occasionally go your way there can be value in winning fights for the upgrades you’ll accrue, but there never seems to be any room for experimentation due to the constant pressure and rigidity of the game’s available actions. To explain, my biggest gripe, aside from the above mentioned game ender, is one that takes a lot of getting past.
You’ll often be rewarded with newer, better units when you win battles. That’s fun. You might imagine that this means you can drop an elite unit onto the battlefield to take care of a particularly nasty group of attackers whilst building up simpler, cheaper defences in other, less hectic spots. Right? Well, no. For some inexplicable reason, each time you drop any unit onto the battlefield you have to wait for all units to recharge from scratch before making another selection. Naturally the bigger, badder units take a long time to become available, but in practice not so much longer than their weaker counterparts to make it worth placing a cheap unit and sacrificing another twenty seconds without your strongest army asset.
The upshot of this is that all lesser units become redundant and your battle is only as good as your strongest fighter, not your finest strategic approach. When I twigged this fact my enjoyment of Orczz unfortunately took a decisive tumble. The entire game teetered off-balance, keeping it from being approachable in a playful and creative manner. It could be said on this understanding that the only input required of a player is to click the mouse wherever the meanest enemy soldiers are approaching from. The rest is down to luck.
It’s maddening, and a little depressing when you consider that this fumble could so easily be solved. It’s baffling, in fact, that another game - a spiritual predecessor if you will - has so many of this game’s traits, but doesn’t make the same design mistake.
If you were in front of me right now, you’d be subject to a lot of suggestive nudging and winking.
All right, you got me, we’ve an elephant in the room. Can you guess it? Are you blind? Take another look. It’s Plants vs. Zombies. There, I said it, and everyone else was thinking it but were too afraid to say anything, but it really can’t go unnoticed and I absolutely refuse to let it go unmentioned.
My thoughts for this game ultimately boil down to the following: Unless you’ve a particular aversion to simulated horticulture and/or the walking dead then I can’t honestly recommend that you play Orczz over that big eared, tusky bastard in the corner over there. In fact, even if you’ve already sampled Popcap’s finest hour, just boot it up again. And then, when you’ve had enough of it, perhaps turn to this game for a refreshing interlude before PvZ 2 inevitably sees the light of day in a year or so.
As Telltale Games unleash their second brave revival of a cult LucasArts franchise it's hard not to imagine them ducking for cover behind their desks in anticipation of the uber-fan backlash. If the reception of the new Sam and Max games was anything to go by though, they should be fine. Take the bull by the horns I say, and so they have.
Saying that Monkey Island has a history is something of an understatement, but the ease at which this first episode, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal slips us back into the familiar world of Threepwood and co. is commendable. The instant insertion into a battle with Le Chuck minutes before the credits roll and the familiar sounds of the MI series kick in are stirring to say the least. It's like being held in the arms of your estranged wife years after she ran away to be with that Wookie-faced lover of hers. It doesn't even matter that she's only returned to you because she bled him dry, she's back you fool!
It's not all sweetness and light though. Consistent with Telltale's past projects, the humour in the game can range from well-timed slapsticked to dialogue that just seems as if the writers were trying that little bit too hard to draw a chuckle. There are some great moments though, led by a new addition to Threepwood's physique, and if it's not all laugh-out-loud hilarity it is at least a well-constructed tribute to those games of old.
The puzzles in adventure games are naturally what keep things ticking along and here they're generally well employed. If I were to nit-pick then I'd say that the game does at times tend to scream 'I'M A PUZZLE!' at you when you were already doing perfectly well coming to your own conclusions regarding the dog, the blowtorch and the chocolate eclair. Despite these mild cases of patronisation though the puzzles are nicely thought out, often leading to that ultimate pay-off of striking a solid gold solution with an exuberant 'Ohhhhh... yeah!'.
The game looks crisp and colourful as well, realising the vivid cartoon tones of the series for the first time in full 3D. Wandering about the locales, conversing with characters and inspecting curious objects is half the fun and seeking out little interactions placed amongst such well laid scenes is always a joy. Telltale still haven't made the leap to truly reinventing the genre, but it does mean that the game is accessible to adventure pros and newcomers alike. The former, however, are more likely to be disgruntled with the lack of progression with the format.
Without a doubt there are some things to be improved on with later episodes in this five parter. If the characters evolve enough to become as memorable as those we already associate with the series then it really could become the game that the fans have been waiting ten years for. Most people who play Launch of the Screaming Narwhal are likely to enjoy it a great deal if only for nostalgic value. Others, of course, will refuse to see anything good in it. Personally, I feel that if anyone's up to the task of rejuvenating the Monkey Island brand, it's Telltale. VERDICT: A fine start to a resurrected classic.
I feel that there's a common attitude held amongst veteran gamers these days that stems from a nostalgic perception of what we were playing ten or twenty years ago. I'll admit I'm guilty of it myself at times. Many of us at one time or another are prone to saying that modern games appear dumbed down, unimaginative, too focused on aesthetics or just plain dull compared to what we may have experienced back in the day. Of course, this sort of uncompromising generalisation can ring true as much it can seem complete codswallop, but nevertheless we're guilty of saying it from time to time.
What I'm leading up to in a rather convoluted fashion is that whilst playing Frozenbyte's recently released co-op platformer, Trine, I had a revelation of sorts. Something about the childlike nature of the game was appealing in such a way that it occurred to me that it's something I wish I'd been able to play when I was younger, being the sort of game with enough creative energy and style to draw you in and really stick in your head for a good while. So much so that I can imagine people in years to come might say: 'Hey, do you remember that game with the wizard and you could move stuff around to solve puzzles? And you could switch characters?Games just don't do things like that anymore...'
So, I'd like to preface this piece with a little advice to those as cynical as me: Remember that computer games exist for our enjoyment and that time can cloud judgements. Games like Trine are here to remind us of that.
Right. Now that the fluffy, over-sensitive babble is out of the way I'll get on with the review proper.
I'll go ahead and predict that one thing which will crop up in many reviews of this game is the word 'charming'. This is because Trine is charming to the core. From the introductory video through to the character design and the vivid variety of the visuals, playing through the game is like being read a fairytale before bedtime. What with the three noble heroes, the classical fantasy setting and a nasty skeleton horde to dismantle as you please, you may as well be rescuing a princess from a tower. Except you're not.
The plot, in fact, revolves around the discovery of a magical artifact called the Trine by three very different people. The Thief - all sarcasm and slyness - is the first to happen across the object, after which comes the womanising Wizard and finally the burly, oafish Knight. As their hands each touch the stone we discover that they've been bound together in one body with the ability to switch forms on the fly. Hence, we have our first major gameplay device.
All of the above is swiftly and seamlessly delivered by way of three short tutorials in which you control each character as they approach the ancient stone. From then on you're let loose on a quest to dispel the evil of the land and find a way to release your souls from the stone.
Before I go on, I need to point out that my first experience with the game was less than magical. Setting up the control system for two player co-op took a good half hour, mainly due to the insane default configuration of the gamepad controls. Admittedly, I don't have a 360 controller which I imagine most games are geared towards these days, but when a handful of essential button-presses are bound to several directions on the right thumbstick it's easy to become more than a little peeved by the trial and error approach required for controller configuration. However, compared to these initial issues, once you're actually playing it controls like a dream.
The actions are responsive, the controls intuitive and the visual feedback that you get from jumping and moving around is spot on, meaning that you rarely get caught out by tricky maneuvers. All of this is paramount for a game that is built around such kinetic use of simulated physics.
Throughout the levels - besides the evil skeletons you'll want to be killing - are spread many blocked paths and seemingly impassable areas. The beauty of the game is the way in which you work around them using the powers available to your trio. The Wizard can move objects around in the world and construct boxes and the Thief's ability to grapple and swing from anything wooden makes her indisposable for certain tasks. The Knight, well, he's just a brute. Switching between characters to suit your needs at the press of a button is an excellent system and one of Trine's main selling points.
The puzzles in the game are certainly not mind-bending conundrums. The focus here is on using teamwork and inventiveness to bypass problems in the best possible way. The lack of chin-scratching is definitely a good thing though, allowing the players to be experimental and construct solutions on the fly without losing the excellent pacing of the game.
Taking all of the above into account as well as the ability to play through the game with company means that Trine is guaranteed to make you laugh a lot, most likely through your own ineptitude or that of your partner's. At some point you'll think you've concocted the perfect solution to a puzzle only to end up flying off the screen or dropping serenely into a vat of lava. Well placed checkpoints that revive your party ensure that these sorts of events never frustrate.
On top of the standard platforming you'll also be presented with a simple leveling system that allows you to advance by collecting experience points from downed enemies or finding potions scattered about the levels. It makes for a compelling reward system and if you keep your eyes open you'll also discover many chests dotted about that contain magical trinkets or armaments to enhance any character's performance.
Depite my love for Trine, I have to admit to one minor failing of the game. I played it throughwith my girlfriend and it took us around nine hours to complete. The first eight and a half were fantastic. It's fair to say we were completely captivated by the style, beauty and endless dicking about that it allowed us. The last half hour of play, however, stunk. After adventuring through such varied locations and making the most of the exploration that the game encourages we were confronted by the ultimate platormer horror: A RISING LAVA LEVEL.
We were horrified. Two days of gorgeousness for this? It was as if the game had collapsed under it's own brilliance, hurling everything it had at us from above whilst perpetrating one of the worst genre-cliches in the business. It was like a physics-vomit within the depths of hell and even after the satisfaction of finally succeeding and completing the game, we were left with a bitter taste in our mouths and angry beyond belief. For those who fancy a challenge then you may find it to be a cakewalk, but for us it was a disappointing departure from everything that had come before.
That said, soon after the infuriating finale, we did the best thing we could to cleanse those unhappy feelings, and started the game again. Bliss.
With Trine, Frozenbyte have come up with their own unique selling point. Three characters, three sets of abilities and three ways to solve problems. Despite the wealth of alt-platform games we've received in the last couple of years, Trine still manages to be a breath of fresh air. It may not have the ego or ambition of the competition but, as it is, Trine remains a consistently fun and beautifully compelling game. Playing it alone is enjoyable enough, but cooperatively the possibility of inadvertant comedy and a multitude of puzzle solutions just makes it so much better.
I may have knocked the game for the woefully generic final level and the control issues I encountered, but there's no denying that this is a game to be played and enjoyed in the purest sense. No mind-bending situations to puzzle over, no grinding for points or pixel-perfect jumps. It's just great platform gaming with a few neat tricks thrown in for good measure. So, take my advice - parents play it with your kids, girlfriends play it with your boyfriends and friends play it with your other friends. If this happens then I'm pretty sure we'll all look back at some point in the future with very fond memories of Trine.
VERDICT: Compellingly versatile, Trine is a platforming gem.
EDIT: Frozenbyte have contacted me since this review was posted to say that they're planning on releasing a patch for Trine very soon that will lessen the difficulty of the final level as well as allowing the difficulty setting to be changed easily on dying. This should go some way to relieving any frustrations.
First-person action gaming can at times appear rather stale and uninspiring. It seems that we, the players, are often made slaves to the genre staples established by games that were seen as being revolutionary over a decade ago. A great many titles released these days differ little from the norm in terms of theme, colour or expression and there seems to be a fear prevalent amongst many developers of enriching gamers' imaginations or exceeding expectations - a fear of scaring people off perhaps.
Of course, this is good enough if you want to guarantee a quick buck, but the end result is this: You could point most PC gamers in the direction of the latest shooter and they would know - without blinking - exactly how to deal with the nazis, terrorists or aliens that are inevitably going to attack in their hundreds. And those types of enemies, well, they all really equate to the same thing don't they?
So where is the sense of surprise or the excitement of exploration? Where is the continued thrill when it's always just you against identical evils with a gun?
And whilst we're on the subject of guns, anyone who has played a few action titles will already know what to expect. We've become amateur weapons experts. Yes, it's a very basic familiarity, but these sorts of items form a safety net within these virtual shooting galleries along with warehouses, crates, exploding barrels and the colour brown. How on earth would we cope without these genre standards?
It takes only a few minutes of play to realise that Zeno Clash is from a different galaxy to ours. Its feet are firmly on the ground, but its head is way, way up in outer space, scouting around for whatever weird shit it can find and pull into existence. And that's the first point of interest. Almost everything is alien here - not in the sense of spacesuits and laser rifles, but simply... unusual. The landscape, the flora and fauna, the weaponry and the characters are all captivatingly bizarre. It's a jumbled freakshow of a game where anything you see can be simultaneously beautiful and repulsive and rarely standard fare.
Zeno Clash is very much it's own creature, but the laziest way to describe the game's aesthetics would be to label it as cave-punk. It's a stupid term - I'm well aware - but it's inhabitants are often wild in nature, neanderthal and unkempt. The clothing they wear is striking and organic. Bones and animal parts adorn masks and helmets to make the whole world appear as if conjured by a voodoo priest on an acid high. It's so fantastically insane that even if the gameplay were appalling, the eye-candy alone would probably be enough to keep you pushing onwards until the end.
You play the part of Ghat, a human being and son of Father-Mother, a ten-foot tall crow-beast with a giant chip on its shoulder. The game begins with the death of this hermaphroditic monster and after a brief and amusing tutorial on the basics of combat you find yourself on the run from your kin, a motley crew of birdmen, ogreish humanoids and giant rats (to name but a few). The ensuing story is told through a series of intermittent, playable flashbacks as you explain your past to your female companion, Deadra, who bucks the gaming trend by not being at all irritating.
The storytelling is schizophrenic in nature, but the back and forth of the plot suits the style of the game. It's a decent tale and one that's tightly written and compelling enough without requiring any drawn-out expositions to explain what the hell is going on amongst the madness of the game world. The voice acting is also remarkably well-done considering the size of the team involved and whether the often absurd dialogue is down to poor translation or not, it only seems to add to the charm of the game.
The only sticking point for me is a significant lack of characterisation, especially in the case of Deadra, who says little of worth and explains even less about why she's actually following you and helping you out. I can only assume that this will be resolved in the next game, to which there is a feverish nod at the end of this one. So, to all you cliffhanger-haters out there: you may want to prepare yourself for the worst.
As you'll know if you've seen any of the preview videos, the gameplay is strongly focused around the combat system. A good old fashioned fist-to-the-face isn't something you often see done well in first-person games. It's a mechanic that's difficult to perfect, to recreate the brutal satisfaction of hand-to-hand fighting. Chronicles of Riddick is the closest comparison I can draw to what you'll see here, although that game seemed more geared towards portraying the violence of such confrontations than creating completely workable methods of attack and defence.
Zeno Clash handles it admirably. It's a solid enough system that allows you to lock on to an opponent, left-clicking for a sequence of blows and right-clicking for a more hefty thump. This simple control basis eventually opens up a variety of fighting techniques, allowing you to block or peform counter-attacks and once you've pummelled someone enough to stun them you can either elbow-drop them or launch them across the floor in the hope they'll take another down with them. The visual and audio feedback from each successful hit is fantastic, to such an extent that I often caught myself reeling backwards like a fool whilst winding up a powerful right-hook.
On the whole, the combat is well implemented and if you take the time to learn the moves and if your reactions are reasonably quick, you'll soon feel like a champion fighter. However, there's a strong chance at times that you'll find yourself battling the controls when facing multiple foes. The problems come infrequently, but are frustrating enough to mention. Targeting inconsistencies and the fact that the same key is assigned to locking on and picking up health or weapons sometimes means you'll lose tricky brawls because the controls got the better of you.
As a side note, for those players who do become adept at brutalising their opponents there is a seperate challenge mode that requires you to confront several tiers of increasingly tricky enemies. It's a nice addition and increases longevity of play with online scoreboards through which you can compete with your Steam friends for top spot. It's an unexpected addition and a great way to keep enjoying the game without having to retread the entire story.
During the main game, when you're not using your fists to hurt others you'll most likely be shooting things at them. Weapons appear periodically and if you can spare the time to pick one up and fire it before some oaf knocks it from your hands then it's useful for keeping enemies at bay. Ammo is thankfully unlimited, but the clip sizes are small and timing your reloading is crucial to keeping yourself standing up.
I have to say that the weapon models and animations are incredible. Technically they handle no differently from standard FPS pistols or rifles, but once you've hunted down a giant rabbit with a couple of fish guns in your hands you'll begin to wonder at what period in the history of gaming did most of the creativity, insanity and pure joy of playing get thrown out of the window.
Zeno Clash brings it all back with formidable style.
And style is where the true appeal of the game firmly rests. What many people may realise whilst playing the game is that the diversity of the visuals is not quite matched by the variety of play. With all the surface material stripped away it could appear to be, in part, a regular corridor shooter. The bare-knuckle and melee action is brilliantly implemented, but there is an awful lot of it, especially towards the end of the game when you'll be pelted with bosses or three or four nasties at once, several times in a row.
In this case the motivation to continue isn't only for personal pride and completion, but the prospect of exploring more of the world. With the environment shifting so much from level to level, it's a tour de force of artistic design, of locational beauty and wonder. For me to give away too many details of what scenes you're likely to explore would be detrimental to those moments of sheer awe that you'll encounter after turning a corner and being confronted by something magnificent, so I won't.
Zeno Clash, however, is not a simple case of style over substance. In fact, most of the game exposes its style in such a way that it becomes part of the substance. In much the same way that the Half-Life series deviates the player's attention from its limited walls, Zeno Clash uses corridor shooting to its advantage, opening it up with fantastical set-pieces and a creativity of design that puts most developers to shame.
Ultimately, Zeno Clash is something that I would encourage every action gamer to try, even if it does lead you to find every subsequent game you play to be somewhat lacking in imagination.
VERDICT: Barking mad and, in turn, an insanely enjoyable experience.
Built squarely upon the expectation that players probably want to see something different emerging within the RTS genre, Dawn of War 2 is as much hack-and-slash as it is tactical management. Squad sizes have been cut down and troop numbers diminished. There is no base-building anymore. You can almost hear Relic straining to force this Space-Marine-shaped peg into a Diablo-Rogue hole. It doesn’t fit. Not quite.
Although the idea behind this new direction is sound, no part of the game is furnished to the degree of excellence that we come to expect from Relic post-Company of Heroes. Promises of deeper relationships with the units, a tighter focus on combat, loot and character-levelling seem to have come up empty because there are so many ideas here that there seems to have been a sacrifice of substance.
The battles, all wonderful in their crimson-gore splendour, tend to play out in much the same way. Aside from the fact that you must repeatedly play on the same maps - with laborious boss fights marking the end of each one - the game supplies neither the terrain nor the variety of units to support deep strategic play. You’ll find yourself relying on the same few moves time after time and on top of this the levelling system has an emptiness to it that I just can’t put my finger on.
VERDICT: Fun in short bursts, but it’s not the RTS revolution we were hoping for.
Considering the mass of unexpected controversy that suddenly surrounded this game on release I felt I couldn't pass up reviewing The Path as soon as possible.
The game has so far - having only been released a couple of days ago - divided opinion so entirely that there have apparently even been calls for Valve to pull the game from Steam. You need only glance over certain internet discussions to see how the fiery, hate-propelled bandwagon may have started up and to observe the offence that has been caused to some people claiming that the game promotes paedophilia or rape.
Before I go into any detail of what the game actually consists of, let me lay straight where I feel the anger and discomfort in the community stems from.
Certain sections of The Path possibly contain allusions to rape. Depending on your mindset. The protagonists for the most part are very young girls. Those are the basic facts. However, (and it's a huge HOWEVER) I feel the game is being misunderstood. In the same way that an idiot may view a newspaper headline and immediately draw their own conclusions, I feel that some people aren't delving any deeper into the intentions of the developer, to read between the lines. The developer's reason for the creation of The Path was clearly not to make a 'rape simulator', a phrase that makes me shudder through it's inevitable misuse or, indeed, use at all. On the other hand, I feel that the developers haven't successfully dealt with the uncomfortable subject matter enough to deviate the attentions of the player from the most obvious of themes. The theme of physical abuse in the game is not based on anything solid or immediate. it's an idea that is drifting about on it's own without a simple plot to tie it to and I can see how some players may get the wrong impression. However -again- only an idiot would say that this game is solely about rape. Only a fool would conjure such a simplistic interpretation of the game. The developers, Tale of Tales, may have misfired, but you must understand where that misfire comes from.
The Path, if I were to pigeon-hole it into a genre, is an adventure game. The problem that many people will encounter -including myself- is that it's more of a statement than a game. It's a *deep breath* art game, a jumbled box of emotional responses that congeals into something not altogether savoury. It's an experience more than a game. If you hate it for any other reason than the bugs you encounter or the tedium of the controls, then the developers have succeeded in making you feel SOMETHING, in making you CONNECT with the game on an emotional level. The problem with it being such a statement of a game is that its true purpose is never revealed - or if you like, the statement isn't actually a statement.
Of course, it's still a game. Games don't need reasons to exist other than your own entertainment. The problem is, I will struggle to call The Path entertainment in the traditional sense. I will struggle at any length to find it's true purpose for existence, beside the fact that it seems to create such diverse reactions amongst its players. There is clearly something further that the developers want us to see or interpret for ourselves, but since so much of that message is concealed behind avant-garde, partly directionless, sometimes pretentious artiness, you may get put off before any consistent emotional bond is established with the characters or environment. If you want my advice: see it through.
It's one of the most inconsistent games I've played on so many levels and I have no idea whether the developers intended it to be. At times it's light and at times dark. It's adult and childish, morbid and gleeful, frightening and exciting, ugly and beautiful. Where it does remain consistent tends to be where it fails. It can be repetitive, tedious, glitchy and aimless depending on what you have come to expect from your computer games.
But I'll continue to explain the game...
The Path begins with a room. In this room are six girls, each dressed in red and each innocent in their youth and attire. Instantly, even if you have read nothing about the game prior to playing it, you'll see the connection to Little Red Riding Hood, but I won't go into the background and original folklore because this review is already long enough. However, if you are interested then Wikipedia is the place to go to see where the darkest of the themes presented here have originated from.
Clicking on one of the girls in the room will select her as your protagonist for the next chapter of the game. And so it begins. Starting at the crumbled edge of a paved highway, you are left facing a single dirt track with dense woodland converging on either side of it. You have a basket that consists of goodies for Grandma and which also doubles as an inventory. Nothing in it is usable and it serves only as a receptacle for objects and memories.
Your options are to get to Grandma's house directly (which takes about two minutes at a trot) or wander from the path.
This is where the initial problems with the game may arise for some people. It's a free-form experience in the purest sense. There are no goals or objectives (despite the developer's attempts to parody video game achievement systems). You do as you please. You explore and encounter whatever draws your attention.
This aimless approach to play can destroy someone's interest immediately. 'Where do I go?' is the first question you'll inevitably ask yourself. On my first go I took a deep breath and turned right, heading into the uninviting shade of the trees.
The second question you'll ask yourself is 'what do I do?'. In my own experience as I wandered between the imposing trunks, I was captivated by things in the distance that were either interesting locations or manifestations of my imagination. It was amazing how many times I thought I glanced movement or a figure in the distance only to realise I seen nothing at all. Without giving anything away, because I feel an uninformed introduction to the game is the best way to play it, within the forest you will encounter items and scenes and wolves.
Many of these points of interest have markers placed around the edge of your screen so you're never entirely stuck for new things to explore. Every hundred metres you travel also causes a dotted 'treasure map' to appear briefly as an overlay so you'll usually have a rough idea of your position in the game world too. You also may be aware at times that if you leave the controls alone the character may run over to something and interact with it. It's an interesting mechanic but it's limitations are obvious within the game and can even become an annoyance when you were simply stopping to get your bearings.
In total there are three different wolves to discover within the forest and each one has a certain effect on a selected girl. These encounters can vary in subject matter and you can take them any way you like, as I mentioned above. Inevitably, however, after each encounter you'll awaken dishevelled in the centre of the path. Then you get up and walk -excruciatingly slowly- towards grandma's house and the girl's inevitable death.
I think this is where I struggle to interpret the game correctly because with each girl, up to a point, you may begin to create notions of her past life, her troubles and whimsies built upon by your experiences in the woods. To have these assumptions cut short at the end of each chapter with death can be jarring because it often doesn't follow on from the existence you may have been concocting in your head. However, that's a literal interpretation and, much like those who call 'rape' following each wolf encounter, I'd be foolish to assume that each death was anything other than a metaphor for something more meaningful. What that meaning was though, I was never entirely sure.
I found that the more I played the game, the more I liked it. Depending on how far you explore with each girl, you'll likely pick up different aspects of their characters or begin to form vague ideas about their past and what has led to their demise, metaphorical or literal. Ginger's experience in particular had the biggest effect on me. Without giving too much away, the wolf you encounter isn't quite what you may expect it to be and -I'm sorry- going back to my initial comments regarding physical abuse in the game, this contains no pointers towards such a grisly fate. If anything, unless you take it in a ham-fisted literal way, it simply points to the loss of friendship, desertion and loneliness. It's a joyful, light-hearted experience and one of the The Path's finest moments.
For the most part, the art design is fantastic (when it isn't self-indulgent enough to force itself upon you). The daydream atmosphere of the forest and the sudden feeling that you may have strayed too far from the path adds to the proceedings an uneasiness that also permeates throughout the entire game. Even the somewhat tedious ventures through Grandma's house still hold a degree of uncertainty and fear since the experience differs each time you enter it.
The sound design can also be quite effecting, becoming more intense every time you begin to run. Coupled with various uncomfortable sounds of laughter or growling you may find yourself having to sit a little closer to the edge of your seat. There are also some nice touches with music, although it can become more than a little grating after long periods of play.
In a way, I recommend going into the Path without reading anything about it beforehand, which obviously defeats the point of this review, although I purposefully tried only to describe the heart and soul of the game without poking at the actual flesh of the gameplay. To venture into it with no preconceptions and interpret each interaction in your own way is likely to get you the most from the game. It will undoubtedly create divided opinions between those who bore/offend easily and those who are fascinated by games that do things differently.
The fact that I'm almost on the fence regarding this game seems to leave me in a strangely unique position. In some ways I feel the developers have aimed too high, I feel the game can be tedious, pretentious and dull too frequently. In other ways I think it can be a mesmerising experience if played with an open mind whilst attempting to relate to the girls. I feel certain themes have been developed with a heavy hand but conversely some parts, such as the joy of watching the girls interact with the environment, can bring to the surface thoughts and feelings that anyone who was once a child can relate to.
Honestly, this is the toughest review I think I've ever done and that can only be due to something the game is doing right as much as it is about what the game is doing wrong. As such, I must recommend that every gamer with even an inkling of curiosity at least gives it a go as whether it's loved or hated by gamers or critics alike, I don't think anyone can deny that it's an interesting, controversial and perhaps important step for computer gaming. VERDICT: An intriguing attempt to try something different. A game that almost isn't a game, but something I would recommend everyone plays. As a piece of art though, it often fails.
To check out an entirely different perspective on the game and one that turned my stomach with its sensationalist content, I recommend taking a look at Alex Lucard's review on Diehard GameFAN alongside playing the game and drawing your own conclusions. I feel I have to link to this because his review made me desperate to sit down and write my own feelings on the matter.
Working along the same lines as Trials 2, your objective is to travel - in a monster truck this time - from one end of an obstacled course to the other within a time limit. It's physics-based, foolish fun. Taking place on a familiar two-dimensional plane via the above-average three-dimensional graphics engine, it's something that fans of Red Lynx will likely snap up without a second's consideration. However, I would like to issue a word or two of caution...
Monster trucks plus jumps plus stunts plus physics plus nitro-boosts should amount to a game that is more fun than this actually is. It's a good distraction for sure, as long as you're content with racing the same twenty-something tracks repeatedly in order to gain medals through faster finishing times, but MTN slips below the addictive, biker-maming pleasure that was apparent with Red Lynx's previous product. Although a faster and more fluid game than its predecessor, it's in the lack of features that the problems lie (not to mention the unforgivable omission of a broken bone counter).
I will detail the issues in a way that the developers will surely appreciate:
3 There are no online leaderboards to spur you on once you hit gold for each course, so there's no reason to go back to them besides competing with yourself. This sort of thing can only provide so much entertainment, particularly when many of the fastest times are set due to good fortune on the track rather than the product of skilful precision.
2 The front-flips and back-flips that can be performed by the trucks are a simple pleasure and seem to serve little purpose other than to slow you down mid-air and evoke a cheer from an invisible crowd. Something as simple as a boost on landing a trick would have added another strategic layer for squeezing out the best times, but as it is I managed to play through the entire game without somersaulting once.
1 For the love of all that is holy, please provide us with a track editor for this game! I can only imagine what this could become with a huge community following, swapping tracks and time trials. There's a scope for complex and varied maps that just isn't expanded on satisfactorily in the game. Go! So, there you have it. It should be more exciting, the scale bigger, the jumps faster and it lacks the maming of a computerised puppet every time you accidentally (or purposefully) fail a jump. Perhaps if there were explosions and fireworks every time you made a wrong move it would be more appealing, but as it is, MTN sits firmly in the middle ground awaiting evolution and expansion.
I can only hope that Red Lynx will see to updating this game with some simple adjustments in the near future because the bare bones of a classic indie time-waster are present. They just need to be expanded on or, dare I say it, broken in several places...
VERDICT: Currently at half-price on Steam, it's worth a pop.
The DPP is a blog dedicated to providing PC gaming news and reviews from a consumer's perspective, focusing primarily on the indie scene. If you have any suggestions for content (review codes, trailers, screenshots etc.) then don't hesitate to contact me at manintheshack (at) gmail.com
All of the awesome reviews contained within this blog are extracted from gameplay on a Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz CPU with 6GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 4890 running Windows 7. The rubbish reviews can be ignored.
