Have you ever been kinda drunk and decide to play a game that's in your backlog? And then as soon as you start it up you think "Certainly I didn't drink this much!?!"
And then you pause the game to write a mini review on it and then a voiceover starts and says "What have we here, this pause screen certainly looks entertaining" and you just get so confused about everything?
I would recommend that you play Tearaway Unfolded. And also that you go in blind. And also kind of drunk.
Wednesday, 31 January 2018
Saturday, 27 January 2018
Return of the Blog
Hello blog!
I'm sorry I abandoned you for so long, but I bought my own domain and was blogging on that and everything was going great. And then I had to renew it but I put that off, and I ignored the e-mails and GoDaddy deleted the whole thing without warning me about it!!! (To be fair, they did warn me they would delete it multiple times, but I just skimmed their e-mails and assumed they would just turn my site back on if I gave them some money, not delete everything!)
Anyways, I didn't archive any of my posts myself, because why would I do something so obvious? Which means all my exciting posts were lost. Thankfully the Wayback Machine had crawled the homepage of my site a couple of times, so I managed to grab a bunch of the articles, but unfortunately not all of them. I am going to put them up on this friendly blogspot, so let it be known that everything on here from 2015 and 2016 was actually from my other domain. I've only managed to salvage about half of what I had which is disappointing, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I've just counted and have lost 15 old articles. Screw you crumbling cookie! For my own completionist's sake, here is a list of game reviews I did that are now lost to the ether of time:
Hey, exiting, I will also do some new things sometime. Yeah!
I'm sorry I abandoned you for so long, but I bought my own domain and was blogging on that and everything was going great. And then I had to renew it but I put that off, and I ignored the e-mails and GoDaddy deleted the whole thing without warning me about it!!! (To be fair, they did warn me they would delete it multiple times, but I just skimmed their e-mails and assumed they would just turn my site back on if I gave them some money, not delete everything!)
Anyways, I didn't archive any of my posts myself, because why would I do something so obvious? Which means all my exciting posts were lost. Thankfully the Wayback Machine had crawled the homepage of my site a couple of times, so I managed to grab a bunch of the articles, but unfortunately not all of them. I am going to put them up on this friendly blogspot, so let it be known that everything on here from 2015 and 2016 was actually from my other domain. I've only managed to salvage about half of what I had which is disappointing, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I've just counted and have lost 15 old articles. Screw you crumbling cookie! For my own completionist's sake, here is a list of game reviews I did that are now lost to the ether of time:
- 140
- The Beginner's Guide
- Fract OSC
- Gods Will Be Watching
- Kairo
- La Mulana
- Leviathan: The Old City
- Long Live the Queen
- Master Reboot
- Mirror Moon EP
- Party Hard
- Refunct
- Stephen's Sausage Roll
- Titan Souls
- Virginia
Hey, exiting, I will also do some new things sometime. Yeah!
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft (1998) Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
I’ve just finished playing Tomb Raider III, as I’m playing through all of the Tomb Raider games as part of the Veizy.com Tomb Raider 20 Years of Fun Times Retrospective. Tomb Raider 3 was released in November 1998, developed by Core Design, and published by Eidos. Tomb Raider!
Tomb Raider III sticks to the Tomb Raider formula that was successful for the past two games. It’s a 3rd person action-platformer, with levels based on a chunky grid system, through which you jump and shoot your way to glory. Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft, to give it its full title, sees Lara stumbling across a weird artifact in deepest India. An overly-friendly Welshman tells Lara that her artifact is part of a set, with three more hidden throughout the world. It’s up to Lara to collect all of the artifacts, then be inevitably betrayed by someone she thought was her friend. The first few levels take place in India, the last few take place in Antarctica, and the middle section has levels in London, the South Pacific, and Area 51. You can choose which order you do those three, which is a neat idea but doesn’t really have any effect on gameplay.
The new moves this time around are crawling, sprinting, and monkey bar swinging. I found the monkey bar mechanic to be quite forgettable. There were a few puzzles throughout the game that I got completely stuck on, as I had forgotten all about the monkey bars. Swingable areas were rarely highlighted as such, so it took a while for me to get used to looking up and checking the area for swinging. Sprinting had a similar issue but that problem was usually resolved much quicker, if I tried running through some trap and didn’t make it in time I remembered that I could sprint and did it again successfully. These problems are probably due to me playing all the Tomb Raider games one after another, and not really taking the time to appreciate the new mechanics. Maybe.
The game doesn’t stray far from what has come to be expected in Tomb Raider games, but there are a few cool graphical upgrades. There’s now dynamic coloured lighting effects, which are probably overused, but you can see the green glow from the crystal in the screenshot above. Bullet casings from your gun now fly out and linger on the ground for a few seconds, which is quite nice. Levels are also much, much bigger than before, and have wide open areas. There are also a couple of new vehicles to play with. There’s a kayak for paddling down some rapids, an underwater propulsion vehicle for faster swimming, and an amped-up quad bike. I completely missed the underwater thing when I first saw it, as I just assumed it was part of the scenery so didn’t try using it, it was only later in the level when you pretty much need it to go down a long underwater corridor without drowning that I realised it was a vehicle.
The game has less combat than was in Tomb Raider II, and you also fight a wider variety of enemies. You do murder a whole bunch of humans, but there’s also many animals that Lara ends up murdering. Tomb Raider II was very combat heavy, so it’s nice that the game has reeled it in somewhat, with more puzzle solving and platforming to make up for it.
There’s also a good mix of different locations to go to, however London was by far my least favourite area. I’m unsure if the different areas were designed by different people, but I hated London. You start on a rooftop, break through into an abandoned tube station, swim through flooded sewers before finally surfacing in an office building. I hated all of it. The first London level had too much slow, vertical movement that I got incredibly annoyed. I ended up climbing the same ladder about 5 or 6 times due to switches sending me all over the place, and ladder climbing is so slow. I also hate water levels, and there was a big one. Having said that, the boss of the London levels was awesome. You chase a businesswoman up the side of a building as she shoots energy bolts at you. It was short and fun, and unlike any of the other boss fights in Tomb Raider up to this point. The end boss of the game is also great, he is a giant spider monster who looks awesome. I am noticing the trend of the end boss of each Tomb Raider being a human who transforms themselves into a giant monster form, almost like the Resident Evil games. What a satisfying connection between two game franchises.
I played Tomb Raider III when it first came out but didn’t really remember it too well, so I was quite shocked at some of the parts during the game. The levels set in Area 51 see Lara breaking into the famed military base, causing a prison riot, and killing a whole bunch of military personnel. A AAA-game could never be released today with that sort of content, so it comes across feeling very weird. They don’t even try and explain away Lara’s actions, like that maybe the base is run by a corrupt military general who surrounds himself those loyal to him. It is literally, Lara wants to steal something from a military base so she goes in, kills a bunch of people, and then takes it.
Things stay political in the levels set in the South Pacific, which see Lara laying waste to a village full of dark-skinned tribesmen, complete with tiki masks. It is weird playing a AAA release game with these sorts of things in, especially after the Resident Evil 5 nonsense from a few years back scared developers off from including racially-sensitive situations. The game is 18 years old, and it’s interesting to note the shift in what is and isn’t acceptable.
What I found most interesting is how this paints Lara Croft as a character. This isn’t a Tomb Raider II situation where Lara was fighting against the mafia so it’s morally acceptable to kill them. All of the human deaths in this game are because Lara knowingly trespassed in a place she didn’t belong, and then killed the people there. I know I am reading far more into this than I should, but nowadays there are stories in games to justify all of the killing. This being released during the time period before story became an important part of game design makes it an interesting experience.
Tomb Raider III follows on from Tomb Raider II well. There’s much less combat, the levels are bigger, and it adds a couple of new things. The graphical progress of the series is really impressive, the Tomb Raider games were released yearly at this point, and all on the original Playstation, and it’s crazy how much better Tomb Raider III looks compared to the first. I started playing TR3 right after I finished TR2 and I couldn’t really get into it, probably due to Tomb Raider fatigue. After not playing for a couple of weeks I tried again and was hooked. I don’t think 3 is as good as 2, but it is still a great game and holds up well.
I played through Tomb Raider III on the PC. The in-game timer listed my total playtime as thirteen and a half hours, but that didn’t count the numerous times I died. I would add a couple of hours on to get my actual playtime. I didn’t play through Steam so don’t have a more accurate time to compare to, as I used a hack mod to get it running in 1080p widescreen. Old games is hard to play, man.
Tomb Raider III Steam Page
I’ve just finished playing Tomb Raider III, as I’m playing through all of the Tomb Raider games as part of the Veizy.com Tomb Raider 20 Years of Fun Times Retrospective. Tomb Raider 3 was released in November 1998, developed by Core Design, and published by Eidos. Tomb Raider!
Tomb Raider III sticks to the Tomb Raider formula that was successful for the past two games. It’s a 3rd person action-platformer, with levels based on a chunky grid system, through which you jump and shoot your way to glory. Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft, to give it its full title, sees Lara stumbling across a weird artifact in deepest India. An overly-friendly Welshman tells Lara that her artifact is part of a set, with three more hidden throughout the world. It’s up to Lara to collect all of the artifacts, then be inevitably betrayed by someone she thought was her friend. The first few levels take place in India, the last few take place in Antarctica, and the middle section has levels in London, the South Pacific, and Area 51. You can choose which order you do those three, which is a neat idea but doesn’t really have any effect on gameplay.
The new moves this time around are crawling, sprinting, and monkey bar swinging. I found the monkey bar mechanic to be quite forgettable. There were a few puzzles throughout the game that I got completely stuck on, as I had forgotten all about the monkey bars. Swingable areas were rarely highlighted as such, so it took a while for me to get used to looking up and checking the area for swinging. Sprinting had a similar issue but that problem was usually resolved much quicker, if I tried running through some trap and didn’t make it in time I remembered that I could sprint and did it again successfully. These problems are probably due to me playing all the Tomb Raider games one after another, and not really taking the time to appreciate the new mechanics. Maybe.
The game doesn’t stray far from what has come to be expected in Tomb Raider games, but there are a few cool graphical upgrades. There’s now dynamic coloured lighting effects, which are probably overused, but you can see the green glow from the crystal in the screenshot above. Bullet casings from your gun now fly out and linger on the ground for a few seconds, which is quite nice. Levels are also much, much bigger than before, and have wide open areas. There are also a couple of new vehicles to play with. There’s a kayak for paddling down some rapids, an underwater propulsion vehicle for faster swimming, and an amped-up quad bike. I completely missed the underwater thing when I first saw it, as I just assumed it was part of the scenery so didn’t try using it, it was only later in the level when you pretty much need it to go down a long underwater corridor without drowning that I realised it was a vehicle.
The game has less combat than was in Tomb Raider II, and you also fight a wider variety of enemies. You do murder a whole bunch of humans, but there’s also many animals that Lara ends up murdering. Tomb Raider II was very combat heavy, so it’s nice that the game has reeled it in somewhat, with more puzzle solving and platforming to make up for it.
There’s also a good mix of different locations to go to, however London was by far my least favourite area. I’m unsure if the different areas were designed by different people, but I hated London. You start on a rooftop, break through into an abandoned tube station, swim through flooded sewers before finally surfacing in an office building. I hated all of it. The first London level had too much slow, vertical movement that I got incredibly annoyed. I ended up climbing the same ladder about 5 or 6 times due to switches sending me all over the place, and ladder climbing is so slow. I also hate water levels, and there was a big one. Having said that, the boss of the London levels was awesome. You chase a businesswoman up the side of a building as she shoots energy bolts at you. It was short and fun, and unlike any of the other boss fights in Tomb Raider up to this point. The end boss of the game is also great, he is a giant spider monster who looks awesome. I am noticing the trend of the end boss of each Tomb Raider being a human who transforms themselves into a giant monster form, almost like the Resident Evil games. What a satisfying connection between two game franchises.
I played Tomb Raider III when it first came out but didn’t really remember it too well, so I was quite shocked at some of the parts during the game. The levels set in Area 51 see Lara breaking into the famed military base, causing a prison riot, and killing a whole bunch of military personnel. A AAA-game could never be released today with that sort of content, so it comes across feeling very weird. They don’t even try and explain away Lara’s actions, like that maybe the base is run by a corrupt military general who surrounds himself those loyal to him. It is literally, Lara wants to steal something from a military base so she goes in, kills a bunch of people, and then takes it.
Things stay political in the levels set in the South Pacific, which see Lara laying waste to a village full of dark-skinned tribesmen, complete with tiki masks. It is weird playing a AAA release game with these sorts of things in, especially after the Resident Evil 5 nonsense from a few years back scared developers off from including racially-sensitive situations. The game is 18 years old, and it’s interesting to note the shift in what is and isn’t acceptable.
What I found most interesting is how this paints Lara Croft as a character. This isn’t a Tomb Raider II situation where Lara was fighting against the mafia so it’s morally acceptable to kill them. All of the human deaths in this game are because Lara knowingly trespassed in a place she didn’t belong, and then killed the people there. I know I am reading far more into this than I should, but nowadays there are stories in games to justify all of the killing. This being released during the time period before story became an important part of game design makes it an interesting experience.
Tomb Raider III follows on from Tomb Raider II well. There’s much less combat, the levels are bigger, and it adds a couple of new things. The graphical progress of the series is really impressive, the Tomb Raider games were released yearly at this point, and all on the original Playstation, and it’s crazy how much better Tomb Raider III looks compared to the first. I started playing TR3 right after I finished TR2 and I couldn’t really get into it, probably due to Tomb Raider fatigue. After not playing for a couple of weeks I tried again and was hooked. I don’t think 3 is as good as 2, but it is still a great game and holds up well.
I played through Tomb Raider III on the PC. The in-game timer listed my total playtime as thirteen and a half hours, but that didn’t count the numerous times I died. I would add a couple of hours on to get my actual playtime. I didn’t play through Steam so don’t have a more accurate time to compare to, as I used a hack mod to get it running in 1080p widescreen. Old games is hard to play, man.
Tomb Raider III Steam Page
Friday, 19 August 2016
AM2R – Another Metroid 2 Remake Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
A few weeks ago, a free fan remake of Metroid II was released. AM2R, standing for Another Metroid 2 Remake, was in development for 9 years before being released on the 30th anniversary of the original Metroid game. Nintendo were not happy that a bunch of fans were celebrating the Metroid franchise that they’ve worked so hard to ruin, so issued a bunch of DMCA takedown notices towards everywhere hosting the game. Of course, getting a copy of the game is still incredibly easy, so I did, and I have played it! It’s great!
The original Metroid was released on the NES back in 1986, a 2D action-platformer which broke new video game ground with its kickass atmosphere and female protagonist. Super Metroid, released on the SNES in 1994, is one of the most beloved games of all time, topping numerous Best Game Ever lists for its excellent gameplay, level design, and invention/refinement/popularization of an entire genre of video game, the Metroidvania. Metroid II was released in 1991 on the Gameboy, sandwiched between those two behemoths, and has basically become a forgotten relic of the series. I played Metroid II a few years after its release and found it to be somewhat pathetic. The Gameboy just couldn’t do justice to the atmosphere of the original, and the sublime controls of the series didn’t translate to the mobile form factor. I can’t imagine many people had fond memories of Metroid II. The team behind AM2R clearly had plans to change that, by creating a remake of the game to bring it up to the graphical and gameplay standards of Super Metroid, even taking some cues from the later 2D Metroid games Fusion and Zero Mission. Metroid.
The Metroid franchise is one of the most beloved in gaming, so it’s strange that Nintendo have worked so hard to sabotage it. The last Metroid release was Metroid: Other M on the Wii, a ridiculous game of endless cutscenes with horrible writing, and the upcoming Metroid Prime: Federation Force is some sort of co-op shooter. The last proper Metroid game was Metroid: Zero Mission, which released in 2004, THREE console generations ago on the Gameboy Advance. Nintendo know that people want to play a real Metroid game, yet don’t ever want to make one.
With the backstory out of the way, it’s time to talk about the game. AM2R is a 2D action-platformer, unsurprisingly of the Metroidvania variety. You play as Samus Aran, a female space bounty hunter who is tasked with travelling to the planet SR338 and exterminating all of the Metroids, horrible alien creatures that pose a huge danger to the entire universe. Your main task in the game involves exploring the planet and killing Metroids, after killing enough of them the next area of the planet will unlock and you can kill some more. You get a huge number of powerups throughout the game, giving you stronger weapons, new skills, and snazzy new outfits.
There isn’t a huge amount to actually say about AM2R other than the fact that it’s amazing. It looks great. It really does look like Super Metroid, and it feels pretty similar too. There is little, if anything, in this game to make it feel like a fan-made effort, and not a full scale release. The level design is great, I’m not sure how much has been carried over from the Gameboy Metroid II, from the few comparison videos I’ve seen there are some similarities but the original has been treated more like a guide then as an actual blueprint for the remake. As mentioned above, I don’t think Metroid II was a very good game, so AM2R turning it into a great game has thoroughly impressed me. It wasn’t until I played AM2R that I realised how much I’ve missed playing Metroid. I am a fan of the genre so I knew I would like this game, but I didn’t know how much I would love it. It’s been a long time since the last proper Metroid, and AM2R has rekindled my love of the series.
My only real gripe with the game were the fights against the Metroids. You fight about 50 Metroids throughout the game (there’s a handy counter telling you how many are left to kill) and I didn’t enjoy and of them. The Metroids come in 4 different forms, all with the same glowing weak point on their belly, but getting progressively more vicious as you go through the game. What should have been exciting fights as you try to manouever yourself into the correct position to deal damage, instead were petty annoyances against enemies who tried their darndest to stay below you. My main tactic in all of the fights ended up being running face-first into them in the hopes I could hit them point blank. Even the weakest version of the Metroids I fought this way, because they never flew above me, making shooting their underside near-impossible. I wouldn’t say I hated these fights, but they seemed so much worse than every other aspect of the game. All proper boss fights of the game were awesome, including the end boss fight against the Mother Metroid, I just wish the standard Metroids which you fight so often were more entertaining.
On the whole, AM2R is fantastic. You can tell this isn’t as ultra-polished as an official release, but it’s pretty darn close. The years of effort put forth by people who clearly care strongly about the Metroid franchise is fully on display, and it’s disgusting that Nintendo don’t give a shit about any of that. If you are a fan of the Metroid series you should play this, if you’re a fan of the Metroidvania genre you should play this, and if you’re a fan of great games you should play this. Just play this.
I finished AM2R with an 80% completion rate and an in-game timer of 4 hours 40 minutes. That timer seemed very generous and it didn’t count the times I died, so my estimation for an actual playtime would be over six hours, if not closer to seven. I plan on backtracking through the game and getting all the missing items for 100% completion.
AM2R Website
A few weeks ago, a free fan remake of Metroid II was released. AM2R, standing for Another Metroid 2 Remake, was in development for 9 years before being released on the 30th anniversary of the original Metroid game. Nintendo were not happy that a bunch of fans were celebrating the Metroid franchise that they’ve worked so hard to ruin, so issued a bunch of DMCA takedown notices towards everywhere hosting the game. Of course, getting a copy of the game is still incredibly easy, so I did, and I have played it! It’s great!
The original Metroid was released on the NES back in 1986, a 2D action-platformer which broke new video game ground with its kickass atmosphere and female protagonist. Super Metroid, released on the SNES in 1994, is one of the most beloved games of all time, topping numerous Best Game Ever lists for its excellent gameplay, level design, and invention/refinement/popularization of an entire genre of video game, the Metroidvania. Metroid II was released in 1991 on the Gameboy, sandwiched between those two behemoths, and has basically become a forgotten relic of the series. I played Metroid II a few years after its release and found it to be somewhat pathetic. The Gameboy just couldn’t do justice to the atmosphere of the original, and the sublime controls of the series didn’t translate to the mobile form factor. I can’t imagine many people had fond memories of Metroid II. The team behind AM2R clearly had plans to change that, by creating a remake of the game to bring it up to the graphical and gameplay standards of Super Metroid, even taking some cues from the later 2D Metroid games Fusion and Zero Mission. Metroid.
The Metroid franchise is one of the most beloved in gaming, so it’s strange that Nintendo have worked so hard to sabotage it. The last Metroid release was Metroid: Other M on the Wii, a ridiculous game of endless cutscenes with horrible writing, and the upcoming Metroid Prime: Federation Force is some sort of co-op shooter. The last proper Metroid game was Metroid: Zero Mission, which released in 2004, THREE console generations ago on the Gameboy Advance. Nintendo know that people want to play a real Metroid game, yet don’t ever want to make one.
With the backstory out of the way, it’s time to talk about the game. AM2R is a 2D action-platformer, unsurprisingly of the Metroidvania variety. You play as Samus Aran, a female space bounty hunter who is tasked with travelling to the planet SR338 and exterminating all of the Metroids, horrible alien creatures that pose a huge danger to the entire universe. Your main task in the game involves exploring the planet and killing Metroids, after killing enough of them the next area of the planet will unlock and you can kill some more. You get a huge number of powerups throughout the game, giving you stronger weapons, new skills, and snazzy new outfits.
There isn’t a huge amount to actually say about AM2R other than the fact that it’s amazing. It looks great. It really does look like Super Metroid, and it feels pretty similar too. There is little, if anything, in this game to make it feel like a fan-made effort, and not a full scale release. The level design is great, I’m not sure how much has been carried over from the Gameboy Metroid II, from the few comparison videos I’ve seen there are some similarities but the original has been treated more like a guide then as an actual blueprint for the remake. As mentioned above, I don’t think Metroid II was a very good game, so AM2R turning it into a great game has thoroughly impressed me. It wasn’t until I played AM2R that I realised how much I’ve missed playing Metroid. I am a fan of the genre so I knew I would like this game, but I didn’t know how much I would love it. It’s been a long time since the last proper Metroid, and AM2R has rekindled my love of the series.
My only real gripe with the game were the fights against the Metroids. You fight about 50 Metroids throughout the game (there’s a handy counter telling you how many are left to kill) and I didn’t enjoy and of them. The Metroids come in 4 different forms, all with the same glowing weak point on their belly, but getting progressively more vicious as you go through the game. What should have been exciting fights as you try to manouever yourself into the correct position to deal damage, instead were petty annoyances against enemies who tried their darndest to stay below you. My main tactic in all of the fights ended up being running face-first into them in the hopes I could hit them point blank. Even the weakest version of the Metroids I fought this way, because they never flew above me, making shooting their underside near-impossible. I wouldn’t say I hated these fights, but they seemed so much worse than every other aspect of the game. All proper boss fights of the game were awesome, including the end boss fight against the Mother Metroid, I just wish the standard Metroids which you fight so often were more entertaining.
On the whole, AM2R is fantastic. You can tell this isn’t as ultra-polished as an official release, but it’s pretty darn close. The years of effort put forth by people who clearly care strongly about the Metroid franchise is fully on display, and it’s disgusting that Nintendo don’t give a shit about any of that. If you are a fan of the Metroid series you should play this, if you’re a fan of the Metroidvania genre you should play this, and if you’re a fan of great games you should play this. Just play this.
I finished AM2R with an 80% completion rate and an in-game timer of 4 hours 40 minutes. That timer seemed very generous and it didn’t count the times I died, so my estimation for an actual playtime would be over six hours, if not closer to seven. I plan on backtracking through the game and getting all the missing items for 100% completion.
AM2R Website
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Tomb Raider II (1997) Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
I’m playing through all of the Tomb Raider games thanks to the Veizy.com Tomb Raider 20 Years of Fun Times Retrospective. This here is Tomb Raider II, and it’s jolly good. It was developed by Core Design, published by Eidos, and originally released in October 1997.
Tomb Raider II is great and should be remembered as one of the great video game sequels. It refined as many elements from the first game as it possibly could, it is overall more polished, and it is a joy to play that still holds up today. It keeps the same tank control scheme from the first game and subtly improves on it. The base movements have been improved, Lara’s starting and turning speeds have both been tweaked to feel more responsive, jumping feels ever so slightly tighter, and movement on the whole feels nicer. Starting the fine Tomb Raider tradition, Lara has a couple of new moves, in Tomb Raider II she can climb ladders(unfortunately very, very slowly), ride zip-lines, and drive vehicles. In Venice you can ride a speedboat, and in the Himalayas you get to ride a ski-mobile. Both are confined to single levels and are surprisingly fun to use. In general I am against “vehicle sections” in games, but the vehicles in Tomb Raider II actually integrate themselves into the puzzles. Plus you get to pull off some sweet jumps with both, so I approve.
Graphics have also been improved from the first game. This is still 1997 technology so it’s nothing mindblowing, but huge leaps have been made since the first game that really make you realize how quickly graphics were progressing back in the day. Lara herself has a flowing ponytail as opposed to the weird block of hair she had in the first game, levels in general are much larger with wide open spaces, and level geometry is less blocky. It’s still on the same grid system, but the squares of the grid look nicer. Yes, nicer squares.
In huge contrast to the first game, and the comments I made when reviewing it, the vast majority of enemies in Tomb Raider II are other humans. Unlike the first Tomb Raider where you only fight about three actual people with the rest of the enemies being animals or monsters, other people are the prime threat in Tomb Raider II. It is an interesting contrast between the two games. This also extends to the more real-world locations featured in the second game. All of the levels in Tomb Raider I were ancient ruins, in Tomb Raider II you don’t visit any ancient ruins until the very end of the game. The storyline of Tomb Raider II sees Lara battling against the Italian mafia in a race for an ancient dagger with magical properties, and it’s these mobsters who are the primary enemies throughout the game. And they don’t just melee you, a whole bunch of them have guns. The enemy progression does follow the same as the first, with more supernatural enemies appearing later on in the game, and a Tyrannosaurs Rex showing up in the first level for no blooming reason.
The game is quite a bit longer than the first but I felt it dragged a bit in the middle. There are a series of levels where you investigate a wrecked ship that’s at the bottom of the ocean. It’s really cool, but you spend about five levels down there, and I think it got a bit tedious. The game also got a bit too weird at the end, much like the first game. The last level in Tomb Raider I was some weird meat castle, with fleshy walls and general ickiness. In the last level of Tomb Raider II you go underground and find a bunch of weird, multi-coloured floating islands. It seemed so out of place, and wasn’t very fun to play. I appreciate the descent into weirdness as the game goes on, but it felt like they didn’t really know what to do for a final level, so just put out whatever they could.
Random thoughts. The end boss of the game is a giant dragon. It’s awesome. You also fight a giant bird man a couple of levels earlier who looks silly and stupid. Killing him was great. The final level has creepy, floating samurai who shoot green goop at you. They are also very cool.
Spoilers I suppose, for the end of the game, but the very last level of Tomb Raider II is amazing. It’s a short epilogue where Lara is at home getting ready for bed when a whole bunch of mobsters show up, angry that you killed their boss. You then have to defend yourself as they storm Croft Manor. It’s an awesome way to end the game, and something very few games ever do.
The biggest downside of Tomb Raider II for me was the puzzle design. In the first game there were acceptable levels of suspension of disbelief for the obtuse puzzles, as they were left to guard ancient secrets in the various tombs you explored. However, as previously mentioned the majority of Tomb Raider II takes place in real-world locations, so it makes very little sense that the key needed to turn off an oven would be in a secret room hidden behind a painting that you can only access by clambering over chandeliers which first you have to raise and lower to get in the right position. Of course, quibbling over borderline issues like this is the entrance to a rabbit hole I certainly don’t want to go down, but it is a bit of a let down considering how much work was put into the game’s locations.
Tomb Raider II holds up amazingly. It improves a lot on the first game, and I highly recommend everybody play through it. It’s quite tough, but rewarding. You fight a dragon! What more do you want!?
I played Tomb Raider II on Steam. According to the in-game timer I finished it in eleven and a half hours, according to Steam it took sixteen. I guess that means there where four and a half hours of dying. Nice. Much like the first game there was annoying technical faffing to get it to work on Windows 10. Even after loads of hassle I never got the game running fullscreen, and instead it ran in a 1080p window. Also the screen freaked out whenever there was a pre-rendered cutscene. Curse you old game! Curse you!
Tomb Raider II Steam Page
I’m playing through all of the Tomb Raider games thanks to the Veizy.com Tomb Raider 20 Years of Fun Times Retrospective. This here is Tomb Raider II, and it’s jolly good. It was developed by Core Design, published by Eidos, and originally released in October 1997.
Tomb Raider II is great and should be remembered as one of the great video game sequels. It refined as many elements from the first game as it possibly could, it is overall more polished, and it is a joy to play that still holds up today. It keeps the same tank control scheme from the first game and subtly improves on it. The base movements have been improved, Lara’s starting and turning speeds have both been tweaked to feel more responsive, jumping feels ever so slightly tighter, and movement on the whole feels nicer. Starting the fine Tomb Raider tradition, Lara has a couple of new moves, in Tomb Raider II she can climb ladders(unfortunately very, very slowly), ride zip-lines, and drive vehicles. In Venice you can ride a speedboat, and in the Himalayas you get to ride a ski-mobile. Both are confined to single levels and are surprisingly fun to use. In general I am against “vehicle sections” in games, but the vehicles in Tomb Raider II actually integrate themselves into the puzzles. Plus you get to pull off some sweet jumps with both, so I approve.
Graphics have also been improved from the first game. This is still 1997 technology so it’s nothing mindblowing, but huge leaps have been made since the first game that really make you realize how quickly graphics were progressing back in the day. Lara herself has a flowing ponytail as opposed to the weird block of hair she had in the first game, levels in general are much larger with wide open spaces, and level geometry is less blocky. It’s still on the same grid system, but the squares of the grid look nicer. Yes, nicer squares.
In huge contrast to the first game, and the comments I made when reviewing it, the vast majority of enemies in Tomb Raider II are other humans. Unlike the first Tomb Raider where you only fight about three actual people with the rest of the enemies being animals or monsters, other people are the prime threat in Tomb Raider II. It is an interesting contrast between the two games. This also extends to the more real-world locations featured in the second game. All of the levels in Tomb Raider I were ancient ruins, in Tomb Raider II you don’t visit any ancient ruins until the very end of the game. The storyline of Tomb Raider II sees Lara battling against the Italian mafia in a race for an ancient dagger with magical properties, and it’s these mobsters who are the primary enemies throughout the game. And they don’t just melee you, a whole bunch of them have guns. The enemy progression does follow the same as the first, with more supernatural enemies appearing later on in the game, and a Tyrannosaurs Rex showing up in the first level for no blooming reason.
The game is quite a bit longer than the first but I felt it dragged a bit in the middle. There are a series of levels where you investigate a wrecked ship that’s at the bottom of the ocean. It’s really cool, but you spend about five levels down there, and I think it got a bit tedious. The game also got a bit too weird at the end, much like the first game. The last level in Tomb Raider I was some weird meat castle, with fleshy walls and general ickiness. In the last level of Tomb Raider II you go underground and find a bunch of weird, multi-coloured floating islands. It seemed so out of place, and wasn’t very fun to play. I appreciate the descent into weirdness as the game goes on, but it felt like they didn’t really know what to do for a final level, so just put out whatever they could.
Random thoughts. The end boss of the game is a giant dragon. It’s awesome. You also fight a giant bird man a couple of levels earlier who looks silly and stupid. Killing him was great. The final level has creepy, floating samurai who shoot green goop at you. They are also very cool.
Spoilers I suppose, for the end of the game, but the very last level of Tomb Raider II is amazing. It’s a short epilogue where Lara is at home getting ready for bed when a whole bunch of mobsters show up, angry that you killed their boss. You then have to defend yourself as they storm Croft Manor. It’s an awesome way to end the game, and something very few games ever do.
The biggest downside of Tomb Raider II for me was the puzzle design. In the first game there were acceptable levels of suspension of disbelief for the obtuse puzzles, as they were left to guard ancient secrets in the various tombs you explored. However, as previously mentioned the majority of Tomb Raider II takes place in real-world locations, so it makes very little sense that the key needed to turn off an oven would be in a secret room hidden behind a painting that you can only access by clambering over chandeliers which first you have to raise and lower to get in the right position. Of course, quibbling over borderline issues like this is the entrance to a rabbit hole I certainly don’t want to go down, but it is a bit of a let down considering how much work was put into the game’s locations.
Tomb Raider II holds up amazingly. It improves a lot on the first game, and I highly recommend everybody play through it. It’s quite tough, but rewarding. You fight a dragon! What more do you want!?
I played Tomb Raider II on Steam. According to the in-game timer I finished it in eleven and a half hours, according to Steam it took sixteen. I guess that means there where four and a half hours of dying. Nice. Much like the first game there was annoying technical faffing to get it to work on Windows 10. Even after loads of hassle I never got the game running fullscreen, and instead it ran in a 1080p window. Also the screen freaked out whenever there was a pre-rendered cutscene. Curse you old game! Curse you!
Tomb Raider II Steam Page
Wednesday, 13 July 2016
Tomb Raider (1996) Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
Hey, here’s a review of the first Tomb Raider game. I’m playing through all of the Tomb Raider games as part of the Veizy.com Tomb Raider 20 Years of Fun Times Retrospective. Originally released on October 25th 1996 on the Saturn, then released a few weeks later on some proper systems, Tomb Raider was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos. It’s the very first Tomb Raider game, and it holds up pretty good!
Tomb Raider is one of the earliest 3D-platformers, and really helped Sony in cementing the Playstation brand as something cool and awesome. You play as Lara Croft, a wealthy British adventurer and archaeologist who is hired to raid an ancient tomb for a valuable relic. Things quickly get out of hand as the valuable relic is technology from the long-destroyed country of Atlantis! Oh my! You have to travel the world, raiding all the tombs you can for other pieces of Atlantean technology and prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.
First things first, the game looks like ass. This is a problem with many games from the era, the video game industry transitioning to 3D happened a few years before the technology was able to properly realize the worlds that were created. It can be hard to play games from the mid 90s as the graphics are blocky and developers were still trying to figure out how to maneuver through 3D spaces. Lara controls like a tank, able to run forwards easy enough but turning her is slow and cumbersome. You have no control over the camera so have to hope that it follows you properly. Thankfully it manages the task often enough, but in tight spaces it can become cumbersome.
One of the early things that really stuck out to me is how the vast majority of enemies are animals, not humans. You only fight a handful of human enemies in this, and hilariously one of them is riding a skateboard. Quit a few of the human fights are against the same guy, who you shoot a bunch and then he runs away, really emphasizing the fact that you don’t want to kill another human. I remember reading an interview with the creators of Tomb Raider who said they did this because they thought a game where you kill other humans could be seen as too violent. It’s quite an interesting decision to look back on as nowadays the inverse would be true; a game where you mostly kill animals could be seen as needlessly sadistic. I will make a mental note to see what changes, if any, the remake Tomb Raider Anniversary has in this regard.
I also liked the idea of the different enemy types starting as simple animals, and then getting crazy weird monsters as the game goes on. It’s quite shocking when first attacked by an Atlantean, as you walk past a couple of creepy looking statues earlier in the game, so when one of them suddenly comes to life and shoots monster goop at you it’s totally unexpected. However, I think adding DINOSAURS to the first few levels of the game really ruined that ramp-up. There aren’t many places to go after killing a T-Rex in level 3. If that stuck to regular animal like wolves and gorillas before encountering the Atlantean, it would have been extra shocking and a completely unexpected twist.
The level design of Tomb Raider is impressive for it’s age. Care was taken to make the different levels appear like actual locations that had fallen into disarray. I found some parts technically impressive as well, as there are times where the level geometry is altered through your actions. One puzzle involves you setting off an explosion to clear a path. Nowadays I wouldn’t think anything of it, but for the time it’s crazy they pulled it off.
One aspect where I feel the level design is let down, is by having ideas that couldn’t really be properly accomplished with the control scheme. One level (St Francis’s Folly) has a section which involves you going up and down a tall vertical space, pressing switches at the bottom to open doors at the top. It’s a cool idea that’s let down by Lara’s janky platforming. The vertical space is an interesting change of pace, but the controls make the whole thing quite difficult to navigate. There are a few other jumps throughout the game that are only hard because of the control scheme, and I don’t think that’s a good method of game design. It really annoys me when doing something in a video game is hard if it’s something that would be trivial to do in real life. This occurs a few times throughout Tomb Raider, and I didn’t like it!
Some puzzles did get quite obtuse the further into the game you got. There was one part in Natla’s Mines where you had to pull a switch which opened a door, through which was another switch that opened a door next to where the first switch was. I’m all for running about the entire level searching for what to do, but that puzzle stood out as needless busy work. It probably didn’t help that I died just after doing all that so had to do the whole process all over.
Tomb Raider holds up much better than I was expecting. The controls are very janky and take a lot of getting used to, but once you do there is a quality game to be played. It’s also impressive for its age, and I do think it’s a game everyone should play through at least once, just to see how an entire genre of video game began.
I played through the Steam release of Tomb Raider, completing the game in about 10 hours. I, very regrettably, twice resorted to a walkthrough. Once in the Midas room as I tried to figure out how to use the golden hand, and again in the Cistern as I couldn’t find a key. I am ashamed. I vow to not use a walkthrough for any of the other Tomb Raiders. Unless I get really, really stuck. After much fiddling about with config files and patches I got the game running at 4K. Which was lovely. I played using the keyboard, I wanted to use the controller but couldn’t get it working natively, used a keyboard-controller spoofer thing that worked but felt off, and then resorted to keyboard. I shouldn’t have wasted the time as after a few levels the keyboard controls were just fine.
Tomb Raider (1996) Steam Page
Hey, here’s a review of the first Tomb Raider game. I’m playing through all of the Tomb Raider games as part of the Veizy.com Tomb Raider 20 Years of Fun Times Retrospective. Originally released on October 25th 1996 on the Saturn, then released a few weeks later on some proper systems, Tomb Raider was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos. It’s the very first Tomb Raider game, and it holds up pretty good!
Tomb Raider is one of the earliest 3D-platformers, and really helped Sony in cementing the Playstation brand as something cool and awesome. You play as Lara Croft, a wealthy British adventurer and archaeologist who is hired to raid an ancient tomb for a valuable relic. Things quickly get out of hand as the valuable relic is technology from the long-destroyed country of Atlantis! Oh my! You have to travel the world, raiding all the tombs you can for other pieces of Atlantean technology and prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.
First things first, the game looks like ass. This is a problem with many games from the era, the video game industry transitioning to 3D happened a few years before the technology was able to properly realize the worlds that were created. It can be hard to play games from the mid 90s as the graphics are blocky and developers were still trying to figure out how to maneuver through 3D spaces. Lara controls like a tank, able to run forwards easy enough but turning her is slow and cumbersome. You have no control over the camera so have to hope that it follows you properly. Thankfully it manages the task often enough, but in tight spaces it can become cumbersome.
One of the early things that really stuck out to me is how the vast majority of enemies are animals, not humans. You only fight a handful of human enemies in this, and hilariously one of them is riding a skateboard. Quit a few of the human fights are against the same guy, who you shoot a bunch and then he runs away, really emphasizing the fact that you don’t want to kill another human. I remember reading an interview with the creators of Tomb Raider who said they did this because they thought a game where you kill other humans could be seen as too violent. It’s quite an interesting decision to look back on as nowadays the inverse would be true; a game where you mostly kill animals could be seen as needlessly sadistic. I will make a mental note to see what changes, if any, the remake Tomb Raider Anniversary has in this regard.
I also liked the idea of the different enemy types starting as simple animals, and then getting crazy weird monsters as the game goes on. It’s quite shocking when first attacked by an Atlantean, as you walk past a couple of creepy looking statues earlier in the game, so when one of them suddenly comes to life and shoots monster goop at you it’s totally unexpected. However, I think adding DINOSAURS to the first few levels of the game really ruined that ramp-up. There aren’t many places to go after killing a T-Rex in level 3. If that stuck to regular animal like wolves and gorillas before encountering the Atlantean, it would have been extra shocking and a completely unexpected twist.
The level design of Tomb Raider is impressive for it’s age. Care was taken to make the different levels appear like actual locations that had fallen into disarray. I found some parts technically impressive as well, as there are times where the level geometry is altered through your actions. One puzzle involves you setting off an explosion to clear a path. Nowadays I wouldn’t think anything of it, but for the time it’s crazy they pulled it off.
One aspect where I feel the level design is let down, is by having ideas that couldn’t really be properly accomplished with the control scheme. One level (St Francis’s Folly) has a section which involves you going up and down a tall vertical space, pressing switches at the bottom to open doors at the top. It’s a cool idea that’s let down by Lara’s janky platforming. The vertical space is an interesting change of pace, but the controls make the whole thing quite difficult to navigate. There are a few other jumps throughout the game that are only hard because of the control scheme, and I don’t think that’s a good method of game design. It really annoys me when doing something in a video game is hard if it’s something that would be trivial to do in real life. This occurs a few times throughout Tomb Raider, and I didn’t like it!
Some puzzles did get quite obtuse the further into the game you got. There was one part in Natla’s Mines where you had to pull a switch which opened a door, through which was another switch that opened a door next to where the first switch was. I’m all for running about the entire level searching for what to do, but that puzzle stood out as needless busy work. It probably didn’t help that I died just after doing all that so had to do the whole process all over.
Tomb Raider holds up much better than I was expecting. The controls are very janky and take a lot of getting used to, but once you do there is a quality game to be played. It’s also impressive for its age, and I do think it’s a game everyone should play through at least once, just to see how an entire genre of video game began.
I played through the Steam release of Tomb Raider, completing the game in about 10 hours. I, very regrettably, twice resorted to a walkthrough. Once in the Midas room as I tried to figure out how to use the golden hand, and again in the Cistern as I couldn’t find a key. I am ashamed. I vow to not use a walkthrough for any of the other Tomb Raiders. Unless I get really, really stuck. After much fiddling about with config files and patches I got the game running at 4K. Which was lovely. I played using the keyboard, I wanted to use the controller but couldn’t get it working natively, used a keyboard-controller spoofer thing that worked but felt off, and then resorted to keyboard. I shouldn’t have wasted the time as after a few levels the keyboard controls were just fine.
Tomb Raider (1996) Steam Page
Saturday, 2 July 2016
The Room Mini Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
Here is a game that I got in the Steam Summer Sale as part of the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016. It is called The Room, and it’s made by the lovely people at Fireproof Games.
The Room is a puzzle game, in which you have to unlock a mystery box. The only thing you can interact with in the environment is the box, but it’s full of tricksy little things that make the opening of the box quite compelling. Levels of the game are cleared as you get deeper and deeper into the box. You start with a giant safe, and upon opening that you get an ornate puzzle box, which upon opening transforms again. I don’t know how deep the puzzle boxes go, but my hope is it’s puzzle boxes all the way down.
The Room started life as a mobile game, and it shows. Not so much in a bad way, but actual gameplay is limited, all you can do is click on stuff and hope other stuff happens. But it’s all very satisfying, twisting things and lining things up. There’s a base satisfaction to pressing switches that open secret compartments that doesn’t ever seem to diminish, even though throughout the game you certainly end up pressing lots of secret buttons. I thought the game would lose it’s charm quickly, but in the hour or so of puzzling I did, the game never got boring which was a pleasant surprise.
Will I be playing The Room again? I will! The Room is very basic, but what it does it manages to do very well, and I approve of what it’s trying to do. It seems quite short, but really interesting. I plan on powering through and solving the mystery of what’s in the box, all the while shouting “What’s in the box!?! What’s in the box!?!”. It will be great.
The Room Website
The Room Steam Page
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Always Sometimes Monsters Mini Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
Here is yet another game I’ve played as part of the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016, it’s Always Sometimes Monsters, a cool RPG by Vagabond Dog.
Always Sometimes Monsters is a game I had never heard of until news of the sequel was released earlier this year. The sequel looked cool, so I got the original a short while ago, but never got around to playing it. Until now!
In Always Sometimes Monsters you play an aspiring author who’s currently down on their luck and struggling through life. You’re behind on your rent and your landlord is understandably annoyed, so kicks you out of your apartment until you get him his money. To make matters worse, your ex is getting married at the end of the month and has invited you to the wedding! With JRPG-style gameplay, it’s up to you to perform odd-jobs like freelancing at an advertising agency, get your apartment back from the asshole landlord, and make the correct choices that will lead you to a happy life.
The game looks like an RPG from the 16-bit era, with chibi characters walking about, and more highly detailed character portraits being shown during dialogue. The game has clearly been made by only a few people, but the style of the game definitely suits it. One of the first things I did in the game was help out a musician friend prepare for a gig, and there was some awesome chiptune rock played throughout. Yeah!
I found the beginning of the game and the character selection to be really great. After a short prologue, you start the game as one character who is looking for someone at a party. The party is full of people and you can choose whomever you want, with the person you find being the main character for the rest of the game, who then goes looking for yet another person, who ends up being your character’s lover. What I loved about this was it took something very game-y, the character select screen, and turned it into gameplay. I love touches like that in games just because it shows that the creators cared about all aspects of the gamer. It also ties neatly into the game’s themes of choice and consequences, as the initial character you play as is looking for the person they plan on giving a book deal too, showing that it’s not just your choices that are important, but the choices of others too. Art!
Will I be playing more of Always Sometimes Monsters? Yeah, bro. I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of highlighting how weird and interesting this game is. It felt like I was just scratching the surface with what the game had to offer, and it was so different to most everything else I’ve ever played, I am going to play some more. Recommended.
Always Sometimes Monsters Website
Always Sometimes Monsters Steam Page
Here is yet another game I’ve played as part of the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016, it’s Always Sometimes Monsters, a cool RPG by Vagabond Dog.
Always Sometimes Monsters is a game I had never heard of until news of the sequel was released earlier this year. The sequel looked cool, so I got the original a short while ago, but never got around to playing it. Until now!
In Always Sometimes Monsters you play an aspiring author who’s currently down on their luck and struggling through life. You’re behind on your rent and your landlord is understandably annoyed, so kicks you out of your apartment until you get him his money. To make matters worse, your ex is getting married at the end of the month and has invited you to the wedding! With JRPG-style gameplay, it’s up to you to perform odd-jobs like freelancing at an advertising agency, get your apartment back from the asshole landlord, and make the correct choices that will lead you to a happy life.
The game looks like an RPG from the 16-bit era, with chibi characters walking about, and more highly detailed character portraits being shown during dialogue. The game has clearly been made by only a few people, but the style of the game definitely suits it. One of the first things I did in the game was help out a musician friend prepare for a gig, and there was some awesome chiptune rock played throughout. Yeah!
I found the beginning of the game and the character selection to be really great. After a short prologue, you start the game as one character who is looking for someone at a party. The party is full of people and you can choose whomever you want, with the person you find being the main character for the rest of the game, who then goes looking for yet another person, who ends up being your character’s lover. What I loved about this was it took something very game-y, the character select screen, and turned it into gameplay. I love touches like that in games just because it shows that the creators cared about all aspects of the gamer. It also ties neatly into the game’s themes of choice and consequences, as the initial character you play as is looking for the person they plan on giving a book deal too, showing that it’s not just your choices that are important, but the choices of others too. Art!
Will I be playing more of Always Sometimes Monsters? Yeah, bro. I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of highlighting how weird and interesting this game is. It felt like I was just scratching the surface with what the game had to offer, and it was so different to most everything else I’ve ever played, I am going to play some more. Recommended.
Always Sometimes Monsters Website
Always Sometimes Monsters Steam Page
Sunday, 26 June 2016
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Mini Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
I am doing a very fine job of thematically linking the games I choose to play in the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016. Here’s another game with a colon in the title, it’s Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight! And it’s fun!
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a Metroidvania-style game, in which you play as a small village’s shrine maiden who journeys to the capital to get help with some bad goings-on. Unfortunately for her the capital has horrific problems of its own, such as monsters plaguing the streets. It’s up to you to kill them all!
Reverie Under the Moonlight is the fourth Momodora game, serving as a prequel to the other three, but I had never heard of the series before this popped up on my Steam queue. I’m very glad it did, as this is completely what I want from gaming. The game follows typical Metroidvania tropes, you explore a 2D area with certain parts blocked off until you unlock abilities, and it’s a genre of game I thoroughly enjoy. You are equipped with a leaf as a melee weapon, but as you’re a badass it’s basically a sword, and a bow and arrow for ranged. Both feel really great to use, the sword has real weight to it, and a small combo system mixed in with a dodge roll brings some nice tactics to each fight. In the time I played I went up against quite a few bosses and they were all great, the giant lady above barged her way into a different boss fight and started throwing evil magic at me. I love it!
The art style and animations in Reverie are gorgeous. It has a pixel art style and the animations flow incredibly well. Running, jumping, sword swinging, they all look great and mesh together so well. If there’s one quibble I had with the game’s art, and I do mean quibble, it’s that from what I played, a lot of the environments were a bit grim looking. The game starts in a beautiful forest, but once you get to the monster-infested capital it changes to a very Castlevania-esque gothic style, and I felt that it was a waste of the artistic talent on display. According to the map I only saw about 30% of the world, so it’s entirely probable that things get much nicer looking later on, but I gotta judge what I see. I just gotta!
Will I play Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight again? You betcha! Gameplay was nice and smooth, the animations were gorgeous, it’s just a lovely game all around. I also snapped up a copy of Momodora 3 in the Steam Sale, which is exempt from the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016 rules, as it’s a game in the same series, and it would just be weird to start one before finishing the other. Yes, justification.
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Website
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Steam Page
I am doing a very fine job of thematically linking the games I choose to play in the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016. Here’s another game with a colon in the title, it’s Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight! And it’s fun!
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a Metroidvania-style game, in which you play as a small village’s shrine maiden who journeys to the capital to get help with some bad goings-on. Unfortunately for her the capital has horrific problems of its own, such as monsters plaguing the streets. It’s up to you to kill them all!
Reverie Under the Moonlight is the fourth Momodora game, serving as a prequel to the other three, but I had never heard of the series before this popped up on my Steam queue. I’m very glad it did, as this is completely what I want from gaming. The game follows typical Metroidvania tropes, you explore a 2D area with certain parts blocked off until you unlock abilities, and it’s a genre of game I thoroughly enjoy. You are equipped with a leaf as a melee weapon, but as you’re a badass it’s basically a sword, and a bow and arrow for ranged. Both feel really great to use, the sword has real weight to it, and a small combo system mixed in with a dodge roll brings some nice tactics to each fight. In the time I played I went up against quite a few bosses and they were all great, the giant lady above barged her way into a different boss fight and started throwing evil magic at me. I love it!
The art style and animations in Reverie are gorgeous. It has a pixel art style and the animations flow incredibly well. Running, jumping, sword swinging, they all look great and mesh together so well. If there’s one quibble I had with the game’s art, and I do mean quibble, it’s that from what I played, a lot of the environments were a bit grim looking. The game starts in a beautiful forest, but once you get to the monster-infested capital it changes to a very Castlevania-esque gothic style, and I felt that it was a waste of the artistic talent on display. According to the map I only saw about 30% of the world, so it’s entirely probable that things get much nicer looking later on, but I gotta judge what I see. I just gotta!
Will I play Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight again? You betcha! Gameplay was nice and smooth, the animations were gorgeous, it’s just a lovely game all around. I also snapped up a copy of Momodora 3 in the Steam Sale, which is exempt from the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016 rules, as it’s a game in the same series, and it would just be weird to start one before finishing the other. Yes, justification.
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Website
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Steam Page
Sunday, 25 October 2015
The Talos Principle: Road To Gehenna Review
This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.
In an effort to stay up to date with the hottest releases in gaming, here’s a review of some DLC that came out in July for a game that came out last December, it’s the Talos Principle and Road To Gehenna, developed by Croteam and published by Devolver.
The Talos Principle is a post-Portal first-person puzzle game, where you play a robot who awakens in the middle of some mysterious ruins and is compelled to complete a number of puzzles by a mysterious voice from the sky. Puzzles are small and self-contained chambers, which are grouped into sets of 4 or 5 in a small hub world, which can be reached from a larger hub world. The puzzles start off simply enough, with you having to use signal jammers to disrupt forcefields and roaming bombs and the like, but over time they progress to boxes, switches, lasers, and the dreaded device where you can record your actions and then play them back at a later time, creating a sort of co-op experience with yourself. That gameplay concept should have a name because I’ve seen it often enough, such as in Braid or Super Time Force. Probably others too.
Completing puzzles in Talos Principle awards you with tetrominos(you know, the Tetris pieces) which you have to use to solve block-fitting puzzles which then unlock more puzzles. And so the cycle continues. All the while doing this, the booming voice warns you to stay away from “The Tower” that is in the middle of the world. Climbing “The Tower” angers the voice, and is unsurprisingly what you have to do to finish the game. There are audio logs that tell you the backstory of the game, along with computer terminals you can access which contain text logs, and an AI with whom you can discuss philosophy. (Full Disclosure, the original version of that sentence ended with “an AI you can discuss philosophy with” but ending a sentence about discussing philosophy with a preposition just seemed altogether dirty. Please ignore all other grammar errors in this, and all future, reviews. Thankyou.)
For the masochist, there are also completely horrible secret stars that require collecting, the vast majority of which are hidden out of sight so you have to work hard to even find them, let only collect them. They often require you to break puzzles by removing objects from one puzzle and smuggling them into another, which can be maddening. Collecting all of the stars unlocks even more puzzles for you to conquer, so they’re worth getting. I will not lie to you, The Talos Principle is a pretty difficult game but I managed to solve all the standard puzzles on my own. However, I did use a guide for some of the stars. Be warned if you go for them.
Road To Gehenna follows much the same pattern as the main game, with you having to complete a number of self-contained puzzles set in a number of larger hub worlds. Gehenna contains four hub worlds(five if you count the secret world I suppose) each of which contains four or five puzzles, bringing the total puzzle count to 25ish. This figure will seem very small when compared to the main game as the number of hub worlds there is about 25, each containing four or five puzzles bringing the total puzzle count to nearly 150. However, the difficulty of Gehenna assumes that you have completed the entirety of the main game, meaning those 25 puzzles are all a step up in difficulty from the main game. To put it into a time scale, it took me about 20 hours to fully complete the main game, and 8 hours to full complete Gehenna.
After solving each puzzle in Gehenna, you free a trapped robot who leaves behind a computer for you, on which you can log in to the trapped robot’s discussion forum. The storyline of the game is revealed when you navigate and post on this forum, selecting from a few pre-selected options on how to respond when prompted. You can play through a number of basic text adventures, as well as read the musings and stories created by other trapped robots who’s only understanding of human culture was gained by reading through history books. I liked this approach to story telling, as when you’ve completed a particularly tough puzzle it’s nice to take a breather and relax. It also allows people to easily skip the story if they want to hurry on to the next puzzle. More games should take this sort of approach as there are a large portion of gamers who don’t really care about the story, and forcing people to watch lengthy cut-scenes when they’re not invested in the story is the worst.
I would completely recommend The Talos Principle and Road To Gehenna to go along with it. The game is now old enough that it’s likely to show up in some Steam sales if it hasn’t already, and if you’re a fan of puzzle games I think getting this is a no-brainer. In that it will make you feel like you have no brain. Because of how difficult it is. Puns!
I played The Talos Principle and its DLC on the PC, but it’s also available for the PS4 in which the DLC is bundled in. I have 32/40 Steam Achievements over 34 hours playtime. That includes two full playthroughs of the main game in which I got the three different endings, plus a full playthrough of Road To Gehenna. The achievements I didn’t get related to collectibles and performing specific tasks that I didn’t bother doing!
The Talos Principle Website
The Talos Principle Steam Page
The Talos Principle Playstation Store Page
In an effort to stay up to date with the hottest releases in gaming, here’s a review of some DLC that came out in July for a game that came out last December, it’s the Talos Principle and Road To Gehenna, developed by Croteam and published by Devolver.
The Talos Principle is a post-Portal first-person puzzle game, where you play a robot who awakens in the middle of some mysterious ruins and is compelled to complete a number of puzzles by a mysterious voice from the sky. Puzzles are small and self-contained chambers, which are grouped into sets of 4 or 5 in a small hub world, which can be reached from a larger hub world. The puzzles start off simply enough, with you having to use signal jammers to disrupt forcefields and roaming bombs and the like, but over time they progress to boxes, switches, lasers, and the dreaded device where you can record your actions and then play them back at a later time, creating a sort of co-op experience with yourself. That gameplay concept should have a name because I’ve seen it often enough, such as in Braid or Super Time Force. Probably others too.
Completing puzzles in Talos Principle awards you with tetrominos(you know, the Tetris pieces) which you have to use to solve block-fitting puzzles which then unlock more puzzles. And so the cycle continues. All the while doing this, the booming voice warns you to stay away from “The Tower” that is in the middle of the world. Climbing “The Tower” angers the voice, and is unsurprisingly what you have to do to finish the game. There are audio logs that tell you the backstory of the game, along with computer terminals you can access which contain text logs, and an AI with whom you can discuss philosophy. (Full Disclosure, the original version of that sentence ended with “an AI you can discuss philosophy with” but ending a sentence about discussing philosophy with a preposition just seemed altogether dirty. Please ignore all other grammar errors in this, and all future, reviews. Thankyou.)
For the masochist, there are also completely horrible secret stars that require collecting, the vast majority of which are hidden out of sight so you have to work hard to even find them, let only collect them. They often require you to break puzzles by removing objects from one puzzle and smuggling them into another, which can be maddening. Collecting all of the stars unlocks even more puzzles for you to conquer, so they’re worth getting. I will not lie to you, The Talos Principle is a pretty difficult game but I managed to solve all the standard puzzles on my own. However, I did use a guide for some of the stars. Be warned if you go for them.
Road To Gehenna follows much the same pattern as the main game, with you having to complete a number of self-contained puzzles set in a number of larger hub worlds. Gehenna contains four hub worlds(five if you count the secret world I suppose) each of which contains four or five puzzles, bringing the total puzzle count to 25ish. This figure will seem very small when compared to the main game as the number of hub worlds there is about 25, each containing four or five puzzles bringing the total puzzle count to nearly 150. However, the difficulty of Gehenna assumes that you have completed the entirety of the main game, meaning those 25 puzzles are all a step up in difficulty from the main game. To put it into a time scale, it took me about 20 hours to fully complete the main game, and 8 hours to full complete Gehenna.
After solving each puzzle in Gehenna, you free a trapped robot who leaves behind a computer for you, on which you can log in to the trapped robot’s discussion forum. The storyline of the game is revealed when you navigate and post on this forum, selecting from a few pre-selected options on how to respond when prompted. You can play through a number of basic text adventures, as well as read the musings and stories created by other trapped robots who’s only understanding of human culture was gained by reading through history books. I liked this approach to story telling, as when you’ve completed a particularly tough puzzle it’s nice to take a breather and relax. It also allows people to easily skip the story if they want to hurry on to the next puzzle. More games should take this sort of approach as there are a large portion of gamers who don’t really care about the story, and forcing people to watch lengthy cut-scenes when they’re not invested in the story is the worst.
I would completely recommend The Talos Principle and Road To Gehenna to go along with it. The game is now old enough that it’s likely to show up in some Steam sales if it hasn’t already, and if you’re a fan of puzzle games I think getting this is a no-brainer. In that it will make you feel like you have no brain. Because of how difficult it is. Puns!
I played The Talos Principle and its DLC on the PC, but it’s also available for the PS4 in which the DLC is bundled in. I have 32/40 Steam Achievements over 34 hours playtime. That includes two full playthroughs of the main game in which I got the three different endings, plus a full playthrough of Road To Gehenna. The achievements I didn’t get related to collectibles and performing specific tasks that I didn’t bother doing!
The Talos Principle Website
The Talos Principle Steam Page
The Talos Principle Playstation Store Page
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