Rive: Ultimate Edition Review
Rive: Ultimate Edition is a 2D twin-stick shooter in which you play as Roughshot, a scavenger trapped in a vast, dilapidated ship from which you must escape. You’ll embark on your adventure in a Spidertank, a walking/flying hybrid ship that fittingly looks like a spider.
Release Date: November 17, 2017
Developer: Two Tribes
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Price: $14.99
Rive: Ultimate Edition is a 2D twin-stick shooter in which you play as Roughshot, a scavenger trapped in a vast, dilapidated ship from which you must escape. You’ll embark on your adventure in a Spidertank, a walking/flying hybrid ship that fittingly looks like a spider. Using your Spidertank, you’ll need to find your way out while taking out all kinds of enemies and collecting scrap metal they leave behind, while dying quite often. Thankfully you come across checkpoints quite often because you’ll need these checkpoints, considering the amount of times you will die. Most enemies you encounter don’t do a whole lot of damage, but the amount of enemies that come at you at any given time can be overwhelming and take total concentration to avoid their attacks.
The main campaign in Rive: Ultimate Edition offers 12 missions, each with worldwide and friend leaderboards. There are also a few other modes and options to keep you coming back for more, such as single credit mode where you do not get any continues. There is also a unique co-op multiplayer mode where each person takes control of one aspect of the ship. One person will control movement and the other will man the gun, alternating after each death. I found this mode to be quite fun with friends and family.
The core gameplay and mechanics of moving, jumping and shooting are very fluid and smooth, and even though the rigid difficulty can be frustrating at times, I always found myself jumping back in for more. Unlike most shooters of this genre, you won’t find random upgrades in the environment and then lose them upon dying. Instead, you use the loot you find by destroying enemies to permanently unlock four different abilities by purchasing them after completing missions. Each upgrade has situations when they work best, such as the shotgun blasts are great for tight corridors with hordes of enemies. Homing missiles are solid for more open areas where enemies are spread out. These abilities should be used wisely as each one can only be used once before you need to find more ammo. In addition to upgrading your abilities, you can also boost your ships armor and range in which it gathers ammo. However, the most unique ability is the ability to hack. Early on you’ll hack computers to open paths for you to continue pushing forward, but eventually gain the option to hack certain enemies. These range from heal bots to literal trains.
Visually, Rive: Ultimate Edition look fantastic and runs at a smooth 60FPS in 1080p when docked and 720p in handheld mode. Even with all of the hectic action happening on the screen at once, I never noticed any slow down. The environments both inside and outside of the ship look sharp and detailed.
Rive: Ultimate Edition is a very fun, albeit difficult, twin-stick platformer/shooter. While the difficulty can be mildly frustrating, I found myself wanting to play more and more, rather than giving up. For $14.99 on the Nintendo eShop, it is a steal!
Pros
Solid, fluid gameplay
Fantastic graphics with no dips in framerate
Tons of fun
Cons
Mildly frustrating difficulty
Could use more upgrades
A special thank you to Two Tribes for providing us a review copy of Rive: Ultimate Edition.
This is the Police Review
In This is the Police, you play as long-time Police Chief Jack Boyd. At the beginning of the game, Jack is given the news that the Mayor is forcing him into an early retirement. He is given 180 days until his job is finished, and he will be forced to hand it down to his successor. You begin playing at the beginning of those 180 days as you attempt to and keep your police force together for those 180 days.
Release Date: August 2, 2016 (PC, macOS, Linux); March 22, 2017 (PS4, Xbox One); October 24, 2017 (Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Weappy Studio
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch (Reviewed)
Price: $29.99
In This is the Police, you play as long-time Police Chief Jack Boyd. At the beginning of the game, Jack is given the news that the Mayor is forcing him into an early retirement. He is given 180 days until his job is finished, and he will be forced to hand it down to his successor. You begin playing at the beginning of those 180 days as you attempt to and keep your police force together for those 180 days.
The gameplay in This is the Police basically consists of managing your police officers, which are split into two shifts and alternate between days. As calls come in for your officers to respond to, it is your duty to send out what you feel is the correct number of officers, as well as which officers will successfully respond to the call without any injuries or casualties. A majority of the calls you receive will be dealt with without your intervention, but some of them require your input on decisions that will end the situation in one of a few ways. For example, I had a situation where a domestic dispute was happening inside of a home and officers could hear yelling. I could choose between knocking on the door, breaking down the door or surrounding the house and yelling in.
I found most, but not all, of these decisions to be fairly easy to choose the best answer. It seems that every question has a logically correct answer, a “risky, but could work answer” and a “obviously not going to work, but let’s see what happens” answer. I don’t think I had any of these events give me a decision that I didn’t immediately know the answer to. Not only are the best answers obvious, the decisions don’t really make a difference at all when it comes to the story, which really hurts the game. No matter what choices you make, the story follows the same path. It would have been much better if there were different storylines based on the decisions the player makes. The only thing that happens when you make a bad decision is that you can be fined money, which is used to hire more officers. In the end, this does make a little difference in how you play the game, but the “fines” are not that big, so it doesn’t affect your strategy too much.
There is some strategy involved in This is the Police that helps keep the game interesting, such as hiring new officers and promoting current staff. Each officer has a rating and a “stamina” bar of sort. The higher an officer’s rating, the more likely they will respond to a call without injury or casualties. Each incident call has a limit to the number of officers you can send, so choosing the best officer combination for each call adds a bit of strategy to the game as well. You don’t want to have your top officers out together on a call and have a high priority incident call come in, leaving you with only your lower rank officers to handle the call. Each day the officers’ stamina bar will drop and if they get too low the officer will not perform as well as normal and will need a day or two off in order to restore their stamina. Sometimes officers will request random days off, with various reasons. It is your job to approve or deny these days off and, depending on your answer, the officer may get upset and not perform well because of it. These are the only decisions that I found made a big difference in gameplay.
This is the Police has a good concept and the story is actually pretty good, even though your decisions do not change it at all, but the non-branching storyline and repetitiveness are pretty big downfalls. At the $29.99 price point, I would wait and give the game a look when it’s on sale.
Pros
Good, funny storyline
Simple, easy to learn UI
Good concept and strategy elements
Cons
Non-branching storyline
Becomes very repetitive
No real consequences for bad decisions
Thank you to Weappy Studio for a review copy on the Nintendo Switch.
Slime-san Review
Slime-san is a simple, yet very difficult platformer where each single-screen level consists of four very unique stages, which constantly change in mechanics and available tools to use. Players control a green glob of slime and have less than a handful of moves to help guide him/her/it through the levels, a standard jump, a dash move and a phase move.
Release Date: Auguest 3, 2017
Platform(s): PC, Nintendo Switch (Reviewed)
Developer: Fabraz
Price: 11.99
Slime-san is a simple, yet very difficult platformer where each single-screen level consists of four very unique stages, which constantly change in mechanics and available tools to use. Players control a green glob of slime and have less than a handful of moves to help guide him/her/it through the levels, a standard jump, a dash move and a phase move. Each level is contains items that are one of three colors, green, red and white. White is the main surfaces of the level, which are nothing special. Anything red kills you immediately. Green can be used by Slime-san in many ways. A green block can be used as a standard platform, but using phase allows Slime-san to pass through these blocks, which I will get into further detail below. There is also a level timer that ticks away as you try to get through the stages. As the timer runs out, the level will fill up with red slime from the outside in. Touch this red slime and you are done. Players must use the different elements around the levels, along with these moves, in order to pass. The dash move is exactly that; Slime-san dashes in the direction you’re pointing, whether in the air or on the ground to cover distance quickly. It takes a little bit of practice, but It’s great for getting into tight spaces, and when coupled with the wall-jump it allows Slime-san to go pretty much anywhere. Slime-san’s other ability is a phase move, which allows him to pass through anything green. You are able to use both abilities at once as well, which can be helpful for getting through a green block and is surrounded by red block on both sides of it, which can be pretty tough. Phasing also slows down the level, but not the level timer. The level timer is still ticking away at standard speed but everything is moving more slowly.
The gameplay in Slime-san is great. Controls feel very nice and fluid, which is necessary in a platformer that requires this much precision. The game is difficult from the beginning, but the further along you get, the more mechanics you run into and the higher the difficulty gets. For example, shortly into the game you learn a dash move that is used to push or break blocks. It seems like a new mechanic is introduced every couple of levels, which keeps the game interesting. I have even managed to find a secret exit or two along the way, which get you special coins to use in the Arcade.
While the main game contains a lot of content, there’s also a huge amount of extras in what is called Slumptown. The little town of Slumptown provides a couple of areas to visit which contain creatures that sell all sorts of things, such as extra characters, each with their own traits, and clothing items for Slime-san.. There’s also an arcade with a selection of games. Slumptown is fairly expansive, with five main areas plus a few offshoots to explore, and the secret exits from the main levels add more characters to it's population.
The coins I mentioned earlier are only for the arcade, everything else costs apples. Each area in a level has an apple in it somewhere. These apples are not hidden, but can be hard to reach. I’ve found myself wanting to get the apples on each stage and have died multiple times because of this. There are times I could have easily cleared the level without getting the apples, but for some reason I didn’t want to clear a stage without that dang apple.
Speaking of dying, which happens a lot, Slime-san has infinite lives. When you die, you instantly spawn back at the screen’s start, not the beginning of the level. There is literally no noticeable loading when the stage is resetting after dying, and yes you lose the apple if you die after reaching it on that stage.
Slime-san is very trick, challenging and unique platformer that demands quick fingers and perfect timing. Sometimes the difficulty can be a little frustrating, but it’s usually in a good way. Slime-san is also a great game to pick up and play in short bursts. The graphics are definitely nothing special, which may be my only drawback. A game like this does not need great graphics, but I think it would be pretty cool to play this game with better visuals.
A special thank you to Fabraz for providing The Gamer’s Lounge with a review copy. This review is for the Nintendo Switch version of Slime-san.
Pros
Controls and gameplay is very polished and smooth.
Lots and lots of contents, both in main story and extras.
Challenging enough to make you want to play more.
Cons
Graphics are not the best.
Can be a little too difficult at times, which gets frustrating.