Persona 5 Royal - PS4 Review

Persona 5 Royal by developers and publishers Atlus and SEGA—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

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Having stolen the hearts of thieves and the title of 2017 game of the year, Persona 5 Royal is an enhanced and reimagined form of Persona 5. With loads of new content and re-worked quality of life features, it gives both fans of the original and those who've been thinking about it a good reason to jump in especially with everything currently happening in our real world.

2017 has been a great year for gamers, and as we sit around the one-third point, there are already some Game of the Year contenders starting to shape up. Right now, Persona 5 is the leader in that race, and for me it’s not even close. Memorable characters, an engaging storyline, fantastic systems and fluid combat all come together to create a fantastic experience.

Nick 2017 Persona 5 Review

When the original announcement stated that Royal would be a separate instance from the original and that certain elements wouldn’t / couldn't carry over, some people were a little less than impressed. Being a bit like Persona 3 FES or Persona 4 The Golden, Persona 5 Royal adds in new dialog, adds in new features, and unlike Persona 3 PSP which added in a female protagonist to play as, P5 has added a new character to the roster that gets embedded into the already existing story. While this alone could amount to why there’s a new version to start from scratch, with the tons of other changes including new parts to dungeons and new features to Mementos, it’s worth starting back up from the beginning.

On its original launch, Nick and I shared progress updates for about maybe the first ten hours as I went through the introduction and the first dungeon. Unfortunately after that point, I got busy with other titles and have since just wanted to go back and restart from scratch. Having amazingly been given this chance, there were several features that were immediately noticeable while others felt so integrated I had to look up the checklist of new features to see if they had been there in the first place. Overall, a lot of smaller ticket items will just blend in but some of the bigger ones really come out to play starting between the 25-40 hour marks depending on how much time you’ve spent doing what until the start or end of the third major Palace Dungeon.

Not holding anything back, the newest member of the Phantom Thieves shows up to lend a helping hand in the opening sequence which on its own was already hosting a bit of the change in direction. Acting is a bit of a tease, and not wanting to spoil any more of it, it isn’t until much further down in hours that you actually get to start spending time getting to know this person alongside the others that you’ve befriended through school, part time jobs, buying “weapons” or lab experiments with the doctor that sells you healing items. While things are expensive and while you may want to get a job to fund your piggy bank, if you’ve already played any part of Persona 5, you’re in for a bonus and getting 50,000 Yen to start off? Made the opening Palace a little easier to get started.

For the most part, things are playing out the same. You get up from Monday to Saturday, you go to school, you can do something after school, and eventually once you get the keys to where you’re staying, you can head back out into the evening. What you do in this time is generally up to you. Hang out with friends. Hang out with other people like the Doctor to increase your Persona ranks of that specific type. Challenge yourself to eating a gifreakingnormous burger. Go to the batting cages. Catch a movie. Work out. It’s a simulation of time management and it’s time that should not be wasted as you need to get smarter, faster, stronger if you’re going to survive the real world as much as the shadow one. What about Sundays you ask? Those are entirely up to you!

While managing your time, reading books, playing games and learning how to make coffee in the real world, you’ll also be dungeon crawling into the shadow’s realm. Now whether you’re exploring someone truly awful’s Palace to give them a change of heart or you’re diving into Mementos to explore the depths or perform smaller changes of hearts, aka side quests, the premise is about the same. You uncover the map in order to move forward, you defeat shadows, you level up your characters and you acquire new Personas which in this case, are masks to be worn. Now while sharing a lot of similarities, there’s a distinct difference between exploring a Palace or diving into Mementos.

Inside of a Palace you’ll be sneaking through trying to not raise the alarms. If you’re spotted, if you’ve accidentally moved into a security camera or tripped a sensor, the alarm rate will go up. The only way to bring it back down is to defeat enemies by sneaking up on them and not being noticed. In Mementos however, you’ll be driving around in a large “van” that can crash into shadows and if there’s enough of a level difference? Take them out entirely without having needed to fight. Moving into one of the smaller newer features, is that now when you’ve finished a battle? It’s one press of a button to get back to the action instead of one for the exp, one for the money, one for the items. Even levelling up is a quick screen before getting you right back and into it.

Before you get experience though, you need to beat up some shadows and this too has seen a bit of an upgrade. Taking a little longer to get to as it only starts to show up in the third Palace are Showtime attacks. These are over the top cinematics in which parts of your team perform crazy stunts in order to damage the entire enemy retinue. These cost nothing to do so there should never be a hesitation to perform them. What’s the catch? Showtimes show up when they show up so they should really not be one of those things that you bank on for defeating tougher foes.

Compared to Showtimes though, while it may not seem like it’s a big thing, guns now basically have “infinite” ammo as they’ll refill as soon as the battle is over, not once you’ve left a dungeon so you don’t even need to craft it anymore. Using firearms should really be brought into the mix for your approach alongside elemental attacks as they now basically cost you nothing in order to help you get the upper hand in battle.

Persona 5 wasn’t a short title and having added even more content in? Persona 5 Royal is going to take a lot more time than its predecessor even if you have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing which leads into one of the last two things that are going to be worth your time. The first of these is that each Palace now has new rooms that can be discovered that contain seeds of the palace owner that when combined can give some pretty neat items. More than that, when you pick up these seeds you’ll get some SP back which is often one of the reasons to call a dungeon session to a halt because no one wants to tackle foes on martial might alone.

The other feature that makes things interesting is that there’s now someone that you can meet up a resident of the area named Jose. Riding along on his own little car / kart, you can trade newly acquirable flowers to Jose for items of varying degrees. While this itself is neat, it’s the other feature through Jose that can make Mementos really worth spending time inside. Now available on each floor are stamps that can be collected in order to permanently increase the rates of acquiring experience, money and items.

Finally, the last little neat feature is a location called the Thieves Den which is accessible from your main menu and it lets you deck it out with Personas, Bosses or locations that you’ve explored. Paying for these though is not going to be “cheap” as you need to complete challenges to gain the currency required. Bonus? Most things aren’t that expensive, but you’ll really need to go out of your way to complete the challenges if you want to add more stuff for your den or unlock artwork that you could use as wallpapers for your PSN themes / Profiles. If none of this is your thing? Then there are some card games that can be played against your fellow Persona users to wind down from a tough dungeon crawl.

And ALL OF THIS is wrapped into an amazing blend of story, characters, music and visuals that sing so well together. I think it goes without saying, Persona 5 Royal is a shining example of what both an RPG and a revamp of an already stellar RPG should be. With the plenty of amazing dialog, emotions, environments and the general crazy that comes with a Shin Megami Tensei, the return of the Phantom Thieves may yet again steal away that Game of the Year title as right now? It’s currently mine!

Score: 10 / 10

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Element Space - PS4 Review

Element Space by developer Sixth Vowel and publishers Inca Games and Blowfish Studios—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Element Space is an interesting little title that finds itself somewhere between the likes of XCOM / Phoenix Point, and Mass Effect. Framed for the terrorist attack on a currently being decommissioned warship that will serve as the symbol of unification of three factions after the end of a recent galactic level war, you are now on the run. With no other options than to build a team and go after those that framed you, you’ll be fighting tough odds with a squad of specialists that may just let you reach that goal.

With all of the great ideas and the nostalgia that Element Space imposes as it really makes me think of the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, there are a few larger elements that are rather rough around the edges and sometimes just don’t work so well together. Starting off from the beginning, you’ll be viewing the action from a top down isometric view that often gives you a fairly good view of the environments that you’ll be moving and fighting in. In this view characters will chat, you’ll have some dialog options, you’ll move around and finally you’ll have firefights against those trying to kill you.

Moving around on the console is wonky at best and it took a bit of time in order to figure out exactly how far to move the thumb sticks to get the views that I was relatively looking for. It wasn’t as smooth as Phoenix Point was with a controller and it really felt more like I should have been using a keyboard and a mouse in order to get what I wanted. From there, I honestly wondered why I was having to move around the maps at all. You go in, you get dialog, you fight, you get out. Having to move from one of these to the next with no actual exploration but a simple jog down the corridors or alleys felt like a waste of time.

Where there starts to be some redemption is that the dialog isn’t bad, it’s voice acted, and you’ve got options for what kind of person you want to be. That said, there’s an unfortunate feature that makes it so that all dialog while on a mission is on autoplay whether you’re ready or not and there’s not even a way to pause it. The only pausing? Is when there’s a dialog option which is weird because when you’re on your ship, you have to press “X” to move each and every line over to the next. So why was one on auto while the other on manual? I really don’t know but it made for some annoyances if you wanted to double check what someone said because they said it too fast.

Where Element Space won me over was its combat which made the rest of the issues that I had pretty much go away as combat is about eighty percent of what you’ll be doing. Given a small fire team, you’ll have to play smarter than your enemies as more often than not there are either more of them than you, or less of them and they are powerful behemoths deserving of the word “boss”. Combat is a more simplified version of a turned based strategy where you’ll move from cover to cover for protection as you try to eliminate your foes.

Moving through your units in a your turn / their turn fashion, each unit has two major actions that can be taken. One is to use an attack / ability, and the other is to move. Attacking is as easy as targeting your enemy and the reason that this is simplified is because you don’t pick a body part to target, you simply pick the target and the accuracy vs cover algorithms take care of the rest. Cover too is simple enough as you are either 100% in view, 50% covered or 100% covered. Being a little more realistic is that cover can be destroyed if you try hard enough so if your shots are not landing on your enemy, they’ll at least be in full view soon enough.

Upping the interest a little bit are character abilities. Your main character for example has a grappling hook that lets him either pull an enemy into melee or to move around the map at a much faster rate. Bringing a foe into melee will deal less damage than a shot from a firearm, however, they are in the same boat and if they try to move out of melee, attack of opportunity. Still on the grappling hook, it has the other above mentioned strategic advantage of being able to move around quickly to get out of danger or into a better vantage point to put your enemies into a crossfire. Other abilities can disarm shields, prevent units from seeing, or my favorite from one of your first new allies is the ability to knock enemies off of the map. Why take out all of their hit points when you can just knock them out of the ring?

And the combat is fun which is good because like I said earlier, it’s most of what you’ll be doing. Unfortunately, here’s the but, Element Space was very buggy. Frame rates for certain characters had the 50/50 chance of crashing the game which got really bad when in combat because once you reloaded, you start to start back at the previous checkpoint which was often far enough back as combat isn’t the fastest as you plan and evaluate each move. If there’s a bright side to these crashes? It let you know what did and did not work without having to use up one of your tries to either restart the combat or restart from the previous checkpoint.

So all in all, Element Space has some great ideas, great combat, decent storytelling which is sometimes blended into the combat sequences, but is a bit rough around the edges. Given some time and some patches though, this should be a much smoother and accessible title especially on the consoles.

 

Score: 6 / 10

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Wartile - XB1 Review

Wartile by developer Playwood Project Aps and publishers WhisperGames and Deck13 Interactive—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Wartile mixes a gorgeous visual presentation with a solid if unspectacular gameplay system. There are some really cool ideas here, and people like me who grew up on board games using physical pieces like this will no doubt be tickled by the aesthetic, but there is not a ton of meat on these bones eithers.

Right off of the bat, Wartile wows with its visuals. There is just something absolutely alluring to its 3D set pieces that eel like they would be right at home on your coffee table surrounded by your friends. Sloped landscapes cut off dramatically, there is a true sense of verticality to the presentation, the board has a very tactile feel to it and it is all touched off with some nice additional effects like snow here and there. I honestly can’t think of anything quite like it visually, and this is all complimented by fantastic audio. The sound effects are varied and engaging and the music here is the type of soundtrack I would listen to on repeat if I was writing one of my fantasy short stories.

This game is absolutely gorgeous.

Where things get somewhat more muddled is in the actual gameplay, which tries very hard to merge turn-based combat with real-time mechanics. The results are decidedly uneven. How does that work? Well, there is a sort of cool-down system churning away in the background, so you can stack things like your movements up on one another, but it takes a bit of time for them to execute. Enemies move about within that structure as well, creating a sort of synchronized system of tactics that generally works well. Thankfully you do have the option to slow down time so you can think somewhat more strategically. This mostly boils down to unit location and whether or not to trigger a special ability (tied to a card in your inventory, giving it a very light collectible card game flavor).

The biggest issue with this however, is that the actual tactics gameplay is somewhat shallow. Positioning is key, and using ability cards is often very important, but in terms of executing the attacks? You mostly just position pieces and let them go at it. One early battle saw my two characters flanking a particularly cantankerous opponent and they had both very recently used their skill cards. This meant that I just sort of sat there, watching the hacking and slashing happen without any real input. Whatever backend dice rolling was happening seemed to be a lot of critical failures, because it seemed like forever until the battle ended. That is not to say there is no strategy involved, but it has more to do with taking advantage of your environment (and in particular chokepoints if you are looking to lure your enemies to their death while being mindful of your combat range) than any actual actions or decisions you make during the actual combat.

One of the areas of strength in Wartile is that continuing boardgame feel, where you can collect new pieces and equip them with gear or skills. These modifications are nice, and I dig the sense of progression that comes with gaining experience and unlocking better options for each character. These RPG elements are fairly light, but they are a relatively effective carrot to dangle throughout the story. Characters tend to fall into one of three archetypes: tank, melee dps and ranged. That is not to say some of the characters do not straddle the lines in between, but there is a significant way in how the sword and board fighter plays when compared to the rangers. This is where spacing is more important than actions, because a common strategy I found myself employing was luring people out to fight against my tankier character while letting the ranged one whittle away at them from a safe distance. It certainly scratches the strategy itch, but never really delved quite as deep as I had hoped.

In terms of the gameplay, what you are looking at here is a campaign broken up into several missions. You then pick your characters and go about trying to meet the objectives. Early on these could be as mundane as picking up a specific item and interacting with a specified region on the board, but later can include more aggressive goals such as complete obliteration of enemy forces. All of this has been done before, but it is undeniably more charming with this particular boardgame style presentation. Each stage is presented in a way that touches on the overarching story, and gives you a sense of purpose, though it would be a bit of a stretch to call it roleplaying as there are really no decisions to be made along the way. Once you complete the stage, your performance is graded and you are bonused accordingly.

Another missed opportunity for Wartile is the lack of scenario creation. I realize making user-friendly tools that can do this sort of thing is no small task, but I can’t help but think that having the opportunity to make and share stages with your friends or a larger community could breathe a lot of life into this game. The campaign is by and large entertaining, but beatable in under a dozen hours and there just really is not a whole lot to do after that. Some sort of editing / creation tools, especially with those who like boardgames, really could have sparked some cool, imaginative stages I think.

Wartile’s a good game, with an interesting if somewhat flawed gameplay system that is supported nicely by a fantastic presentation. The progression system is good enough to sustain interest until the end of the campaign, but the sights and sounds are gorgeous and unique.

Score: 7 / 10

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Deep Sky Derelicts: Definitive Edition - PS4 Review

Deep Sky Derelicts: Definitive Edition by developer Snowhound Games and publisher 1C Publishing—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Just about everything in Deep Sky Derelicts tickles the nerdiest of my fancies. Turn-based combat, card-based combat, lots of RPG elements and more came together in a way that really made this sci-fi game click for me. It is a hybrid of genres and ideas, not unlike Darkest Dungeon, and for those willing to brave a slower pace with a lot of management sprinkled in, Deep Sky Derelicts will likely appeal to you as well.

Things kick off a little awkwardly – there is nothing much in the way of tutorials right out of the gate, leaving you to put together a team of three without really knowing what they are used for or how they function. There are a couple of lightweight boxes that try to describe what a stat or function does, but really I went in fairly blind while assembling my first time. I was mostly focused on the different number values of their characters and picking different classes, since I didn’t really know what any of them did.

Thankfully, the training wheels are a bit better once you get past the team makeup session. The gist of it is your party is being asked to jaunt around from derelict to derelict in the area, to see what you can find. There’s a bit of backstory about a high-up military person with a particular item they want found, but really you spend most of your time just picking these defunct ships to wander about a gridded map. There are a couple of interesting risk / reward balances to manage. One is pretty standard – characters have shield and life points and you don’t want them to die. The other is your energy, which you use when fighting and also exploring – and you don’t want to strand your team without it, so trying to ration how far to explore the ship before heading back becomes a serious consideration.

Combat itself is turn-based with initiative determining who goes first. For those familiar with the fantastic Slay the Spire, the principle is kind of the same. Each character has their own deck of cards, so each time one of them is up, they have a hand for you to choose from. Early on, the options are pretty limited, with basic attacks, maybe weaker spread attacks, attacks that can stun a person or have protective properties like raising shields. There is plenty of room for customization, not just in attaining new cards, but new equipment – much of which can be further modified – and also in gaining levels. Each level generally gives you a couple of skill points you can use. By the time you hit the cap of ten, you can have some pretty unique character combinations.

There is a lot of depth to not just the card system and customization of characters, but the way the levels themselves play out. Some rooms have traps, others enemies, some potential trade partners or friends. Some of the rooms also have innate effects that simply take place or impact your team (or the enemies) in various ways. Those are not always clear without checking the in-game legend, but after awhile I got a feel for what the different symbols along the way meant. There is a lot of fun to be had in spelunking through these old ships.

Despite having been a PC game originally, I would say that the overall controls are pretty good. For one, enemy selection works well, menus are easy to navigate and so on. I could quibble a bit that the map sensitivity is a little strange at times when you are in the datapad mode and selecting rooms. Here is how you move about, with a grid that you can either walk around blindly (not recommended) or scan somewhat frequently (but burning that all-important energy you don’t want to run out of) to reveal more rooms on the map. Sometimes the screen jumps and jars about in unwieldy fashion, which is mildly annoying when you are sliding to the edges of the map and things have to start scrolling.

The sound was perfectly fine, with some pretty basic sounds, and while the graphics are far from AAA quality, there is a novel comic book style to it that actually looks really nice. Action panels during combat are colorful, and locations like the tavern look suitably drenched in a sort of neon, sci-fi glow. Text can be a bit small to read on the television at times, but it is not terrible or headache-inducing by any means either. As nice as the game’s visuals look during combat and story sections, the datapad screen is pretty bland. It’s completely functional (except for that sort of twitchy edging when moving around), which is certainly more important, but it feels slightly lacking when compared to the rest of the game’s highly stylized aesthetic.

Deep Sky Derelicts does a pretty good job of mashing together a few different types of game. Visually it is pleasing to look at, and there is plenty of strategy to be had when venturing out into the old ships. Progression is fun, because it happens in multiple ways, and this game definitely had me wanting to do ‘just one more run’ pretty regularly. There are a few rough edges here and there along the way, but the overall experience was my cup of tea.

 

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Stela - Switch Review

Stela by developer and publisher SkyBox Labs—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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   Stela is a cinematic, atmospheric platformer about a young woman witnessing the final days of a mysterious ancient world.

   Overcome daunting challenges, treacherous terrain, and gargantuan beasts while traversing a decaying land. Manipulate the environment to solve elaborate puzzles and creep past dangerous creatures under cover of muted landscapes, all set to an original soundtrack. Survive sweeping environments including mysterious towns, haunting forests, and massive subterranean ruins brought to life in an atmospheric experience.

I honestly couldn’t have made a better opening if I had tried, and let’s be honest, I did, re-read the actual intro to make sure that I was on point, and decided, why not let them say it best. That said though, Stela is the type of title that will honestly stick with me for quite a while because of how well done it was. Nothing is over the top but the combination of the color palettes with the darker musical scores was nothing short of amazing.

Stela is a very short and quick title, if you understand both what you’re doing and have some good timing. Essentially always moving from left to right through a series of treacherous environments, Stella can walk, run, move objects and “jump” like a normal person or hold onto ledges in order to pull herself up. There are no super powers here and the monsters are both very real and very scary as just one attack can end Stela’s life.

https://youtu.be/J1rryp9MnWc

With how easy is it to die, either by a monster, a horde of rats that made me think of Plague Tale: Innocence or simply from falling too far down, there’s thankfully a very robust system for checkpoints as well as loading and reloading the game as you try to figure things out. Honestly? The puzzles are not the most complex but sometimes there’s just something that you know that you are missing and it’s figuring that out that can sometimes take a while in order to get past where you are stuck. Such as, my pro controller not being responsive enough so it wasn’t until the handheld mode that I finally passed a certain puzzle with a certain rolling object of death. Otherwise, it’s just figuring out that there’s something that needs to be pushed or jumped on at the right moment.

What impressed me the most, and what I wish there had been something to tell me from the beginning, is that Stela isn’t quite a 2.5D platformer, but you do sometimes move Stela either forwards or backwards on the two dimensional plane to get past certain puzzles. It’s subtle, but it’s there and it makes for an even better time as it makes the short adventure more than just a straight run from left to right.

Finally, there are the visuals and the music. Visually, you’ll often have a very zoomed out view that lets you see everything in front of you and then some. It helps to avoid monsters. It helps to avoid arrow showers. It helps to plan out your next move. Added in either the very dark or sometimes very bright colours on screen, you’re never at a loss as to where to go, just at a loss in order of how you’re going to get there. Only adding to the urgency, or the horror, is the musical scores that are either eerily haunting or jacked up with so much base that my heartbeat ran in tune with it as I tried to sneak past and run away from some of the earlier monsters.

With all it has going for it, Stela isn’t perfect but I could never truly figure out if it was because of Stela herself, or the set input lag of what you’re asking of her. As I mentioned earlier, Stela doesn’t have any superpowers going for her. She can literally run and move objects around, but when it comes to things like even jumping, oftentimes it’s going to take a few tries to get it right. Part of it is because when you say jump, it can take a second before she does it. Now whether this is because of the input lag, or by design as she has to prepare for it, it cost me many a reload and even sometimes when you think you’ve got it down? You’ll find her not jumping or falling short making you have to reload and try again.

Overall though, even with how short it is, Stela is worth a playthrough if for only the visual and the musical presentation. It won’t take long to go through, but this is definitely something that should have the sound system on high and the lights turned low to allow yourself to immerse into the world as Stela runs and puzzles her way through it.

Score: 7.25 / 10

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Weakless - PC Review

Weakless by developer Punk Notion and publisher Another Road—PC (Steam) review written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes 

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Weakless is a simple puzzle game that has players traverse through their home region to save the almighty tree of life. Each character played is an outcast of their society. One is deaf and the other is blind. Both must work together to reach the tree in order to save it from resin which seems to act more like molten lava. In fact, it is so disastrous that it has ravaged much of the Weavelings home region.

After finishing the game, I found myself enjoying the short experience, but it does have some minor points that I'll cover below.

Gameplay

Weakless has very little controls to work with, and even though I received a copy of the game on PC, I used a controller to play the entire game. Players first have to know that this is a puzzle game very similar in style to The Witness, where they can move, interact with certain objects, but cannot do much else. Depending on the object, the player can only interact with the objects using one of the characters. For example, certain puzzles require the blind one to move a pillar so that the deaf one can reach another location. (And before anyone makes the assumption, I am not calling either character the blind one and the deaf one to be heartless, I distinguish the characters this way because neither is given a name!) The blind one can also interact with various musical instruments that are strewn about the area. Another predominant feature that the blind character has, is the ability to echo-locate through use of its staff. The object not only serves as a walking stick, but as a way to solve music-based puzzles.

The character that is deaf can use his plant light orb to 'power' the plants so that they move out of the way of the blind one's path. Through the course of the game, this character often sits down to draw or paint. It is also capable of climbing onto planks. That said, if players climb up onto these planks, they cannot go back down.

My previous point leads to one of my issues with the Weakless. While it never explicitly tells players where to go or what to do, except in the guise of paintings on the walls, the story has only one direction. There is no way to kill your character by falling off an edge, nor does entering an area that you cannot go backwards mean you're stuck. Any side paths will either lead to an instrument for the blind character or a bench for the deaf character to draw. In fact, the game is so linear that it ends up being a short game because there is nothing else to do!

Now, there are side areas that I missed when playing through Weakless, I don't feel like it's worth going back for another playthrough to find the other musical instruments or painting areas since there isn't much purpose to their existence. Yes it does show that these two characters have some depth to them, but we are given little else after the first couple of instances. Sadly, those elements are placed in the game for achievement hunters and not for anything else, which is unfortunate really.

And on the topic of those musical instruments you can find, let's talk about music.

Music and Audio

When I think about the music, I find myself rather conflicted. On one hand, the music consists of drums and wind instruments, but no string which gives it a tribal feel - something that is also shown at the beginning of the game during the ceremony. On the other hand, I find that the music can be disjointed and doesn't mix well - even though tribal music doesn't always have the same elements as modern day music does.

So let's talk about tribal music a bit. When I think of that style, I think of music that unites a group of people together in a more cathartic way. In other words, I think back to times when slavery was still prevalent in society. And entertainment was sought in the form of music during the times when opposition came at a hefty cost. In Brazil, enslaved citizens learned a 'dance' known as Capoeira. This dance style was actually used as a way to mask the fact that it was a martial arts style. At the time, people would be deemed criminals if they practiced this 'dance' style. Not only is the Capoeira a style of martial arts but it hinged upon constant movement, unpredictability, and movement that flowed with the musical accompaniment. The music itself is played a huge role in this style of martial arts.

Anyways, today, the Capoeira is mostly a dance movement that focuses less on its martial arts component. The music in Capoeira is fluid and unpredictable but is composed in a way that works extremely well together which is why I'm using it as an example of when music works and when music doesn't. There are points during gameplay where I felt like Weakless' music, while it has moments of fluidity, sometimes has a disjointed accompaniment. However, oddly enough, the music only seemed to fail me when players used the musical instruments. The ambient music would set the tone of the game and the musical instruments would be thrown overtop with no rhyme or reason. And while it would make sense that the deaf character would not know the proper time to join in, the blind character most like would because it has heightened senses. I can't help but be bothered by the fact that the blind character didn't go a little crazy if its musical timing was off to the rest of the environments timing - but that is just the musician in me being picky.

Now, I know that it sounds like the music to the game is a hot mess, but it isn't. In fact, many of the ambient sounds and music used in the game fit extremely well. I quite liked the journey and found it interesting. On top of that, I think it's extremely awesome that the developers paid attention to the fact that hearing people and non-hearing people would perceive sound differently.

At several points during gameplay, I appreciated the musical puzzles, and the use of the staff to echo-locate the character's position. Overall, while music bothered me at certain times, I know that the composer talked a bit about the soundtrack in a developer blog post which can be found here.

Final Thoughts

I've read a number of reviews that said things like Weakless was too short or that it was too linear. There have been other people who expressed their dislike for the game because they didn't understand the point or perhaps didn't finish the story, but I think Weakless' experience was fantastic.

Since puzzle games that don't necessarily have a straight-forward story tend to be my bread and butter, I walked into Weakless with an open mind. The whole idea behind the characters was to understand the struggle, to put yourselves in the shoes of characters who did not start as friends. These two weavelings were strangers to each other and they bonded because they were both outcasts. They bonded out of the need of survival, and I believe that Weakless' purpose was to show that even with the characters differences or flaws that the weavelings can co-exist amicably. Players that took the time to make it to the end of the story saw that the two weavelings saved their tribes great tree of life - which to them is important and is perhaps seen as a deity. I also believe that this is the reason the developers chose to create a tribalesque sound for the game.

Players that jumped into Weakless for anything other than a slightly abstract story missed the comparison that the game makes to real life. Sure, the puzzles could be more complicated. But overall, the goal wasn't to make Weakless a tough puzzle game, it was to show how anyone can overcome their challenges if they work together. While the game could have stood for a lot more in the way of player to character connection, I believe the game was pretty well done.

Overall, while the story was quite linear and while I didn't always like the music combinations, I absolutely enjoyed the experience and the story. If I could make any real criticism about Weakless it would be that the sound and light puzzle at the end of the game wasn't a more prevalent feature shown earlier in the game. I also loved that if players made it to the end of the game, they were rewarded. As such, Weakless earns an 8.5 out of 10 for me.

 

Score: 8.25 / 10

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Conglomerate 451 - PC Review

Conglomerate 451 by developer RuneHeads and publishers 34BigThings and 1C Publishing—PC (Steam) review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Having taken a look at Conglomerate 451 back in early October, this Cyberpunk, Team Based, First Person Dungeon Crawler with a clone army is finally ready and I’ll be damned if it isn’t glorious. After a botched mission, that you were designed to fail at to test your mettle, you are given a promotion of being Director at an agency designed to clean up the 451 ward of the city Conglomerate. With plenty of cloning options at hand and the ability to research more, your only limitations are how far you’re personally willing to go.

Overall, between the preview and the fully launched version, not much has changed. There’s more in the narrative department and the gameplay is loads smoother as I haven’t had a single bug yet. Otherwise? It plays just as smoothly and offers just as much smooth dungeon crawling than it used to. The major bonus? Conglomerate 451 now has controller support if you feel like just putting your feet up on the coffee table!

Taking it from the top for those of you joining us now, Conglomerate 451 is a first person dungeon crawler that has you select teams of three for missions into the various areas of the district in order to reduce the influence of the companies. Selecting specialists from a variety of backgrounds to get the work done, there's no right answer but you'll soon find strategies with each specialist that either work great for certain enemies or that overall work for you.

Moving through the "dungeons" you'll be taking step by step in similar laid out dungeons that come in a variety of visuals from dirty cyberpunk slums to fancy atriums with pretty colors. Your goals in these locations is what will change and what you find inside will either make you gleefully happy as you uncover more tech points for research, or sweat with dread as your team becomes battered and bruised from the physical attacks and the strain of their cybernetic implants.

The idea of your units needing to heal up and recover isn't a new one but Conglomerate 451 does it well. Only having to deal with physical traumas in the first few weeks, the toxicity levels of your implants only come out to play once you've had time to get familiar with the mechanics and have time to look over what kinds of research that you wanted to specialize in. New tanks for healing physical wounds and new tanks for toxin removals are nice as you can do more units at a time, but, you also want to look into new bonuses for new clones as you're going to need more than one group on hand to send out.

If there had to be a downside to all of this clone business, it would be that clones can die and the experience that they earned goes with them. Yes, you can make new ones. Yes, your new clones are already a notch above their predecessors. But man does it suck. Hell, even if you retire a clone because you have too many others that are in healthier conditions, it doesn't give you anything more than an extra slot in your overall roster.

So a little like The Stranger of Sword City, you'll want to rotate your lower level characters into higher level missions with veteran troops, or, put all of your newbies into low level missions while your higher level heal up. How you approach this is entirely up to you, but you'll want more than one group ready to go and with clones? You can literally have multiple same set up groups on rotation so that it always FEELS like it's the same team.

So overall, especially for fans of dungeon crawlers, Conglomerate 451 is worth it. With plenty of missions with different objectives to keep you going and tons of research to make better and better versions of your squads, taking a city back from evil corporations will keep you both entertained and occupied for quite a while.

Score: 8.5 / 10

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Project AETHER: First Contact - PC Review

Project AETHER: First Contact by developer and publisher Sleepy Spider Studios—PC (Steam) review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Project AETHER is a nice little blast from the past in the form of a twin stick shooter. Mechs, laser beams, and a really dumb mining alien spaceship, Project AETHER has a nice combination of retro style arcade shooters and more new-age graphics and gameplay decisions.

In Project AETHER you take control of the AETHER prototype mech suit. During a trial run, you encounter hostile enemy units. As the best, and only, pilot of the AETHER suit, it is up to you to fight back the alien invasion. I’m going to be perfectly honest here, the plot is incredibly corny and a little clichéd, but that just makes it all the more fun. The banter is super corny, but it gives a nice retro feeling of old alien invasion movies and arcade games.

True to the old-school arcade fashion, you pilot your mech in a top-down auto-scrolling style. Enemy fighters will pour out of the sides of the screens and you need to destroy or survive waves until you reach the boss of the stage. In order to help you make your way through the hordes of enemies, you have a myriad of tools for you to make use of. While traditional arcade style shooters would have you earn weapon upgrades or changes from enemies that drop items, in project AETHER you can take with you two weapons into battle and swap between them freely. As you progress through the game and clear stages, you will unlock more weapons that you can equip before heading into battle. In addition to your two weapons, you also have access to a dash that, as a default, allows you to dash through enemy bullets, and an EMP that you can use to destroy a group of enemies at once.

Unlike more traditional titles in the same vein, you have a health gauge instead of a single hit point, and you also have a heat gauge on your weapons. As you keep firing, you build up heat. Once it maxes out, you need to wait for the weapon to cool down before you can fire again. But no worries, as you have a beam saber you can use as well. The beam saber has a three hit combo and is actually quite useful for dispatching nearby enemies if they get too close for comfort. The bosses usually consist of large ships, each with their own gimmicks and weakpoints, and were all pretty fun to fight.

In addition to the standard story mode, you also can take part in trial missions, which task you with performing specific actions or meeting certain objectives. Some of these are time trials, others may be weapon specific tasks. There are also endless and boss rush modes, where you can fight swarms of enemies till you die, and fight all the bosses in order respectively. Interestingly enough, boss rush is actually available before clearing the game, so if you’re good enough with the starting weapons, you can either get a sneak peak at the next upcoming bosses, or even beat the last boss before finishing the game. On an interesting side note, I actually enjoyed fighting every boss in Project AETHER, which I can assure you usually doesn’t happen with bullet hell type games, as there’s usually one or two bosses that you just never want to speak of afterwards.

Project AETHER does a lot of things right. The dash invulnerability is great for avoiding lasers and helping out newcomers to the genre who might not be used to bullet hell style games, the variable weapon loadouts keep the game from becoming tedious during longer segments, the addition of the EMP was a great feature that definitely made me want to get as many enemies as I could in a single go, and the beam saber is a freaking beam saber, nuff said.

While the genre doesn’t usually appeal to more than a niche audience, Sleepy Spider Studios sure did one heck of an amazing job making it both readily accessible to newer players, as well as adding features that will excite veterans of the genre like myself to keep playing. With many optional trials and a boss rush and survival mode, there’s definitely a lot that Project AETHER can provide, despite how short the main campaign may feel. Whether you’re a bullet hell veteran or just looking for a top-down shooter style gameplay, Project AETHER aims to please.

Score: 9 / 10

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Corruption 2029 - PC Review

Corruption 2029 by developer and publisher The Bearded Ladies—PC (Epic) review written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

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The Bearded Ladies released their newest hybrid stealth and tactical turn-based strategy game a couple of weeks back and I became excited. After all, I do love a good strategy game that isn’t as frustrating as XCOM 2.

Corruption 2029, the spiritual successor of Mutant Year Zero, revolves around an American civil war between the United Peoples of America (UPA) and the New American Council (NAC). For the uninitiated, the UPA is the group that players belong to, while the NAC is the group that players must infiltrate and destroy. To achieve this, players embark on several missions that will merit various augments which helps them prevail against their enemies. Augments gained from these missions are necessary because your squad consists of only three members. With these three characters, Wolf, Tranter, and Briggs, players must succeed in their mission objectives or else they are doomed to restart from a previous save or start again.

Overall, it’s another post-apocalyptic world that could very much become a reality given the current state of affairs, but I find that the game itself falls a little short for me. In no way is the game not satisfying, it just has some issues that bug me.

Mission Choices and Upgrades

The first quest that players embark on is to find a weapon of mass destruction known as “Savior”, but players don’t know where it is found. Missions require the squad to get information about this weapon and secure it at any cost.

Quest lines are categorized in Files, which have several individual missions that players must complete to get closer to finding Savior. At the end of the first mission, players receive information necessary to complete their tasks. The second mission, of which there are two, give different enhancements that can be used for the units. However, each augment can only be used by one character, and once players enter a mission, these augments cannot be changed. At the beginning of the game, this is a non-issue, but if players make it to a multi-objective mission (where all the primary objectives must be satisfied in order to succeed), players might want to consider their augment choices more wisely.

Some of the augments that players can receive are kinetic barriers, weapon range boosts, a long jump, mindhack, and a movement booster. Now, keep in mind that some of the augments are passive while others are active augments. However, the most important element is to consider which three augments your units will use. This allows for some customizability where the rest of the game is void of it.

Gameplay and Combat

Combat in Corruption 2029 is turn-based, much like XCOM or its own predecessor Mutant Year Zero, but it has a mechanic that I was not familiar with prior to this game. Corruption contains a stealth element where players can stake out the area for medkits, remote detonators, or other useful items. When roaming the map, players have the ability to set themselves up advantageous to them, making combat much easier than something like XCOM 2 where there is less ability to do so. In some cases, maps will have a radio that can be used to distract nearby guards or lure them into the radius of a remotely detonated grenade. It is a mechanic that is perfect for players like me because I absolutely love stealth-based games. Doing so means that players can potentially take out smaller guards before dealing with the heavy hitters. Also, this allows the squad of three to fight on more even footing rather than being overwhelmed by reinforcement units. (cough cough XCOM 2)

Much like Corruption’s predecessor, this game has a healing mechanic that other turn-based strategy games lack. If a unit is taken down by an enemy agent, the player has three turns to reach their squadmate to revive or heal them. This is both very useful and irritating because it forces players to keep units close to each other yet far enough away to set themselves up against the enemy, which is difficult if you have to devote a squadmate to save another. Players aren't overwhelmed in this game as easily, but if one goes down, the results can be dire. I once had a squadmate get taken out on the way to reviving his squadmate!

For all of the neat elements in Corruption 2029, the element of mystery, stealth mechanics, augmentation capabilities, etc…, it’s not without its flaws. For one thing, the AI is incredibly stupid. And by stupid, I mean really stupid. For example, I set my units to scope out the map for enemy locations, targets, and grenades or medkits. I was able to kill small groups of guards that were easy pickings. In each mission, I was left with the bigger, more challenging units, to take on. Here is the stupid part of the whole deal: not only was I able to take down units without alerting others, but I was also able to do so without hiding the bodies! On top of that, patrol units would walk right by a dead colleague of theirs without even noticing something was wrong! Oh wait, but there is more! In one mission, I was able to use the distraction radio multiple times without the enemy realizing that something was wrong. I expected them to pat around further or send another buddy over, instead of following the same path to the radio, allowing me to sneak on past.

Another flaw in Corruption’s design, in my opinion, is the fact that if a unit of yours goes down in combat, there is no penalty for the character once the objective has been completed! Let me explain. In an early mission, two of the three of my units were downed. As a result of this, I had nothing left to lose and so I sent the last guy to the computer terminal to hack it for the information. My hope was that I could complete the mission as well as see what the game does when losing units. The moment I completed the objective, my other two units just GOT BACK UP and had FOUR HEALTH BARS just given to them! In other words, unless players enter in massive combat missions where they don't stealth through the area, units going down is not worth the medkits.

In fact, on that note, there is no cybernetic repair cost, penalty to the mission, or anything to show that players had a rough mission. Players will either succeed or they will fail. That is all. And the fact that the AI is unintelligent, makes Corruption 2029 a much easier tactical strategy game.

Audio and UI

The UI in Corruption is fairly straight forward. Players use WASD to move around the map, they can use the spacebar to execute commands, and they can see most of the information needed on the screen. In the top right, is a small bar of icons that show how many medkits or grenades a player has available to use. Please note that players only have access to 3 of the medkits, grenades, and remote detonators. The way the UI is set up is extremely user-friendly.

Before starting any mission, players choose which task they will complete first (because sometimes there are a couple of options), then they pick their loadout. This is where players will add any augments they wish to have on the units during a mission. After these are chosen, players get to pick their dropzone. (Which, is useful if you want to stock up on supplies but know that if you complete an area and then go back to it, there will be more enemies and items will be in different locations. Just be warned. There isn't a free pass in Corruption.)

The only issue I had with the UI in this game was the camera pan. It’s incredibly awkward to hold down Q and rotate around the character to see nearby enemies. It's a feature this isn’t really grating, but it took a little getting used to. I wasn't a fan of the way players needed to camera pan, but we can't have everything…

My biggest issue with Corruption 2029 is the audio. While the gameplay and UI had its issues, and the AI annoyed the crap out of me, and the story wasn't fully thought out, the audio ruined the experience. I'll try and explain my issue with the audio. It wasn't the sound effects of the water when walking through puddles or the birds fluttering off, because all of those added to the atmosphere. But, when players are about to enter combat, the sound becomes a slow heartbeat and it intensifies for every step players make closer to an enemy unit. It's at that point when the music glitched out. Corruption’s combat music sounded a lot like it was being played in slow-motion, with a hint of background static. I’m not even sure how to explain it properly, except that the music only caused a problem right before combat situations. This was enough of a bother that it soured my experience of the game, where the rest of it was mildly satisfying. And what’s worse is that I have no idea if the issue was limited to my copy of the game or not. I've looked through other reviews and not one single other reviewer made mention of an audio issue. Furthermore, I assume the problem has to do with my copy of the game because I played it on a couple of different computers to end up with the same result.

Corrupted Final Thoughts

Overall, I enjoyed my experience with Corruption 2029. While it is not as difficult as other turn-based strategy games like XCOM 2 or BattleTech, it has its charm. I love the ability to stealth around before combat begins, and I love that players get to outfit their units with various augments to give them an advantage in missions. In fact, despite my issues with the game, none of them are game-breaking where I'd be forced out of playing it. I really do enjoy the fact that I can both stealth and employ tactics to complete missions.

Even though Corruption 2029 is much more simplistic (in my opinion) than others in its genre, it doesn’t make it unworthy of play. In fact, I will go as far as to say that Corruption is an entry-level strategy game that doesn't force players into unfair fights which cause you to scream endlessly at your computer. If you want a challenge, play XCOM 2. If you want easy, play Corruption 2029. If you want something in the middle, well, I'm still looking…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQGZPbn39m4

In my opinion, if players are looking for a game that shows aggro radius, allows time to set up their positions, and very little penalty when losing squad members, then this is the game for you! It’s not as tactically challenging as others in its genre and I find that it is a great place to start. In short, while I had my issues with Corruption 2029, I think the overall game is worth a 7.5 out of 10.

 

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Yakuza 0 - XB1 Review

Yakuza 0 by developer Ryu ga Gotoku Studio and publisher SEGA—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

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What better way than to start off playing a series than from the “beginning”? Taking place before the original Yakuza, Yakuza 0 acts as a prequel to the already established series and having only played Sega's Judgment, there was no better way to start the series before jumping into the Kiwami remakes of the first, second and the revamps of 3-4-5 before the current 6.

Prior to sitting down to Judgment over the summer, I had been under the impression that while the Yakuza series entries were some very highly recommended brawlers / beat ‘em ups, that that was all that they were. From that point and seeing the depth of story and storytelling with plenty of characters, and believable characters at that, I had set out to collect the revamped versions of one through six. Having beaten me to the punch of starting, Yakuza 0 fell into my lap as it launched for the Xbox One and I can fully attest that this is a well worthy time sink. Just the opening four chapters for both protagonists will bring you anywhere close to 8-12 hours depending on the side quests taken. There are a total of seventeen chapters...

Taking two different paths in different parts of 1988 Japan, both of your protagonists Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima will be fighting for reasons similar enough, yet so different, that it requires actual recaps as you switch between them. Kiryu who has just recently been framed for murder, tries to leave the Yakuza so that it will not affect someone who he holds in high regard even if it means that it could cost him his life. Leaving the Yakuza and becoming an “ordinary citizen”, it isn’t long before he joins up with a real estate firm that seems to be much more than it publically lets on to find out who’s really behind everything.

In contrast to Kiryu, Majima finds himself running a high end hostess club and is revered by those that offer patronage to the establishment. Smooth as silk with his words and his dealings with even the most unsavory of customers, Majima only exudes a calm demeanor in which the customer is king and that’s all there is to it regardless of how they behave. Being nothing more than an excellent mask, Majima too has been put outside of the Yakuza’s walls from having disobeyed an order from his superiors and running the club is his punishment. Like Kiryu though, it doesn’t take long for real trouble to find him and while Majima will have cool moves inside of the club, outside, he’ll willingly put anyone down that gets in his way.

Now because this is my first in the series, I can’t compare to how the systems and the narratives differ or mesh together with two protagonists and three separate fighting styles each. What I can offer however is that what is present is almost mind blowingly good at how well its written and how well the gameplay flows for hours upon hours of play. Often it felt like you’ve been playing for fifteen or twenty minutes only to find out that you’ve been brawling for half an hour and going through the story for hours once you’ve checked the time on the clock. The blending of the two is fantastic and the voice acting is spot on for just about every character. While there are no English voice overs, I was perfectly fine with it because of where the events are occuring. I honestly need to go back to Judgment to experience it in the same way.

While their stories offer very different perspectives, the executions of these stories, the dialog and the combat follow the same patterns. When things become very serious, the story is told through high end rendered cutscenes. When things aren’t as serious, the camera will still pan around but it’ll be within the gameplay engines’ graphics and you can often hit a button to move the dialog along faster if you would rather read than allow the characters to fully voice their lines. Finally, you have the basics that are almost stills of the characters in which you absolutely have to hit a button in order for the dialog to move along. The last of these doesn’t happen much after the first hour or so, but the blending of walking around and then chatting up the various peoples? It works.

While not talking to people or possibly punching their faces in, you get to walk around either of the cities that Kiryu or Majima find themselves in. Large boulevards, small back alleys or shopping arcades with restaurants and corner stores. You can move at your own pace and often it’s really dependant on you. You can walk slowly and barely nudge a person if they come close. You can move at a decent pace that will bump a person in a fairly rude fashion, and then you can all out sprint for a little bit which will almost knock someone on their ass. Some people won’t like any of these, some will obviously not like the last one and then there are those just spoiling for a fight so what’s a person to do? Give it to them!

Men in black suits, other Yakuza members, biker gangs and just general wannabe punks, they’ll all want a piece of you and often they’ll come in a groups of three. They tend to be fairly easy to dispatch, but, as time goes on and even as you level up your abilities with the hard earned Yen taken off of these foes of yours, there can feel like there’s a gap that isn’t quite being crossed and it wasn’t until I just bought some stuff in a corner store that I realized that, you can have equipment. This equipment? It raises your attack, your defense to fists, gunshots and blades. Having only noticed this AFTER the first MAJOR boss, I realized that I had been playing on hardmode. Once you find this out? Between leveling up your abilities for hundreds of thousands and millions of Yen, you’ll be on the best of terms for almost anything that can be thrown at you short of the big guys that exist only to take your money and make you literal millions if you can actually take them out.

While all six fighting styles are different from heavy punches, to flurries of blows or using items in the environment or break dancing, the core of each is the same. You have your normal attacks, you have a heavier attack that can lead into what is called a Heat Blow if you have enough Heat charged up, and then you can either kick with the style or grab hold of someone to punch them or throw them. The system is fluid. Either Kiryu or Majima can switch between these styles and it’s just as efficient if you’re fighting against a boss, three street goons or a horde of Yakuza on the way over to their boss. The only issue to look out for is that it’s easy to fall into a groove with one style but you have to be willing to change it up as there’s no one solution and often, switching from heavy blows with a stick to break dancing was all you needed to tackle a downward battle with some well trained enemies.

Once you’ve survived all of this, it’s a rinse and repeat but because of the dialog only ever moving forward with new trials and challenges, it doesn’t feel repetitive. Only helping to alleviate this are the side quests that are some of the most random things that I’m not even sure I could make up if I tried. Some are normal enough like pretending to be someone’s boyfriend to get their dad off of their back. Others? Helping a Dominatrix become more dominant so that she doesn’t lose her job. Meeting somewhere in the middle are teaching a bunch of nerds how to be tougher because of the music style they chose or taking over a director’s role because the director didn’t show up. Only a bonus, these events can take up twenty or thirty minutes at times so they are their own little side stories only adding to the crazy adventures that these two protagonists are already on.

Overall, Yakuza 0 is fantastic. Two protagonists. Two engaging storylines. Six combat styles that just make this beat ‘em up style worth continuing on for hours at a time without feeling boring. Between all of the elements, my only regret is that it’s taken this long to get into this series and I’m very much looking forward to my upcoming journey’s through the current six titles while everyone waits for Ryu ga Gotoku Studio’s Yakuza 7 to get localized.

 

Score: 8.75 / 10

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