Titan Quest Review

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Release Date: March 20, 2018
Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC
Developer: Black Forest Games
Price: $29.99

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Titan Quest is a loot-gathering dungeon crawler that was first released on PC in 2006 and was one of the main contenders up against Diablo 2. Titan Quest, and it’s expansion ‘Immortal Throne’, were both critically amazing games and ranked up there with the best of the games within the genre.  Fast forward to today, Titan Quest has been released on current gen consoles, but can it hold up to its success from 2006?

The story in Titan Quest is pretty good.  The Titans once ruled the primordial darkness before the Olympian Gods appeared and thus begun the great war. The Titans were all exiled and imprisoned whilst the Olympians ushered in a golden age all across the mortal realm. Sometime later, three smaller Titans called Telkines had managed to break the communications conduit the Olympians held between the immortal and mortal realm and thus, summoned hordes of creatures to terrorise the humans and prepared the release of the mighty Titans.

You take control of a character, which you can only customize by sex and color of their tunic, who is learning of these events. You begin by running into enemies terrorizing a horse in a field, but before you know it you will be battling with hordes of enemies across all of the land.  Through your journey, you will travel to Egypt, China, Greece and Olympus. You will encounter many different creatures of the underworld as well as mighty Titans and even Olympic Gods.

As with most games released on PC only in this genre, they were originally controlled by keyboard and mouse.  Having multiple menus and interfaces may be difficult to map onto a controller, but Black Forest Games did a great job of mapping these controls without causing too much confusion.  Navigating to the different menus is pretty smooth and easy to learn.  However, the basic movement controls of your character are not as smooth.  Pressing the stick slightly in one direction or another moves your character quite drastically, making precision movement very difficult. 

Another issue I have with the controls is that you cannot choose who you are attacking, you are simply locked onto the nearest enemy.  I found myself in multiple situations where I wanted to attack a distant enemy first with my bow, but was not able to because other enemies were closer.

Another question most people have about a game first released in 2006 that is re-released in 2018 is how well do the graphics look?  Titan Quest was remastered with updated graphics and it looks pretty good.  While you can’t move the camera around, you can zoom in and out and when zoomed in you can see the great detail put into remastering the visuals.  All of the models look very good both zoomed in and out.  

Being a loot-gathering game, there are a vast array of weapons and armor which you can pick up off dead bodies, find in chests and buy from the merchants.  With that said, most of these are purely stat-increases and don’t really make a huge difference in combat.  There is a decent selection but you will find yourself with multiple duplicate items.

Titan Quest can be played single player or online co-op with up to 6 people.  Unfortunately, there is no local co-op, which is a real bummer.  However, the online play works very well and is a lot of fun.  

Overall, Titan Quest is a good remaster of the 2006 original.  Fans of the original will likely enjoy the remaster, as long as they can get over the wonky movement controls.  Others that enjoy loot-gathering dungeon crawlers may enjoy Titan Quest, but they should understand that it is a remaster of a 12 year old game before jumping in.  

Pros

• Nicely remastered textures and environments
• Menu system and UI remapping were done very well
• Entertaining storyline

Cons

• Movement controls are not very fluid
• Cannot choose enemy to lock onto
• No local co-op (online only)

Thank you to Black Forest Games for providing us a copy to review on PS4.

Strikers Edge Review

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Release Date: January 30, 2018
Platform(s): PS4*, Steam PC
Developer: Fun Punch Games
Price: $14.99

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Strikers Edge, developed by Fun Punch Games, is basically a game of Dodgeball with weapons combined with classic arcade visuals and sound. Two or four players are put in an arena that is divided down the middle and contains barricades, which can be broken.  Depending on the characters chosen, players throw swords, axes, arrows and more at their opponents to try to eliminate them.  The gameplay is extremely simple, you control your character with the left analog stick and aim with the right. Players can also dodge, block and use a special attack. The action is very fast-paced and can get quite intense.  

Each character offers slightly different movesets, but the only way to learn each one is simply by playing as each character.  While there is a tutorial that shows the basics of the game, there is no training mode that allows you to practice.  With that said, there is a campaign mode that contains a storyline for each character.  These storylines are pretty thin, but it helps make the  somewhat repetitive single player mode a little more enjoyable.  

Multiplayer is where Strikers Edge really shines and playing with others is a much more enjoyable experience than facing the AI over and over. Online multiplayer features cross-play with the PC version, but finding an opponent can take a while. The online matches I played were quite fun, but there was definitely some noticeable lag, which is a bit of a problem in a game that has you aiming precise shots and second guessing your adversary's movements.

Local multiplayer is definitely the best experience.  Playing with 4 players on the couch, throwing, dodging, blocking and yelling at each other can get pretty hectic and fun.  I played several matches that had everyone in the room watching and yelling as me and my foe were both down to our last bit of energy and one of us would dodge just before getting hit.  Moments like that are what makes Strikers Edge fun.  Unfortunately, after a few matches, it does get a little repetitive and old.  Strikers Edge is very light on content, with only four arenas in which to fight and very few modes to try. The stages alter things slightly with different obstacles and hazards, but you'll quickly grow tired of them. 

Overall, Strikers Edge is a good, fun couch multiplayer game. The pixel art style and sound are almost perfect for this type of game since there is so much going on at all times.  The controls are easy and fluid, but the gameplay gets boring after a little while.  Having more modes, such as a free-for-all, as well as more variety in arenas would be a great addition.  With improvements, I could see this being a big multiplayer game.

Pros
Local multiplayer is lots of fun
Unique characters
Pixel art style fits the game very well

Cons
Gets repetitive after a short time
Lacks content
Campaign lacks depth

A special thanks goes out to Fun Punch Games for providing us with a review copy on the PS4.

This is the Police Review

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

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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.

Ancient Amuletor Review

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Release Date: June 27, 2017
Developer: TiGames
Platforms: PlayStation VR
Price: $19.99

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Ancient Amuletor combines a first-person shooter with tower defense to bring a very under-explored genre to PlayStation VR. However, in most tower defense games, players build and upgrade their towers and defenses to protect their towers from waves of intruding enemies.  In Ancient Amuletor, the only goal for the player is to protect their tower, which in this game are big blue crystals spread out through the map.

Players begin by choosing from four different heroes, with two additional hero slots marked as “Coming Soon”.  Each of the four different heroes play very differently, which requires a bit of strategy from the player.  One hero is an archer that you have to nook the arrow and pull back to shoot, which requires precision but gives good range and damage.  Another hero dual-wields pistols that you can shoot rapidly while flicking upwards to reload.  While this hero can shoot much faster than the archer, the pistols have far less range and damage than the archer’s bow.  There is also a mage that summons orbs from a spellbook and then throws them down at enemies with a magic hook, causing a bit of splash damage where they hit.  These orbs give medium range and damage.  And lastly, there is a puppeteer that throws down a metal golem that mimics the moves you make, giving you the ability to melee enemies.     

As I said, Ancient Amuletors also has FPS elements.  Players do not run around like in a traditional FPS, they warp to different platforms around the map and attack the waves of enemies that come from various directions.  Thankfully, you can swap heroes on the fly, so if one hero isn’t able to perform at a certain time, you can switch to one that may better suit the situation. This is essential for beating levels solo, particularly on harder difficulties. It can become quite a fast paced game of moving to the right platform with the right hero to take down the variety of enemies you’ll be facing.

The controls for each hero work very well and playing as each character is a lot of fun.  I found it can take some time getting used to warping from point to point because of the way the game adjusts your forward position on each platform.  It takes some getting used to, but once you get it down it isn’t much of an issue.

Ancient Amuletor currently has two areas to choose from, Desert and Empire, with two levels in each are.  There are two additional areas that are locked and labeled “Coming Soon”, which could come as DLC or a future update.  As is, Ancient Amuletor is a very short game. It took me less than an hour to run through the four currently available levels.

Once you play through the four levels there isn’t much else to do.  Thankfully, there is a multiplayer co-op mode to add a little bit of replayability to the game.  You can team up with up to three other players and battle it out.  Each player can select any hero they want, even if another player has already selected the same hero and players can stand on the same platform as their teammates.  I am not sure if I would rather have only one player per platform and no duplicate characters or not.  Either way, the multiplayer mode adds some much needed replayability, but not a whole lot.

Speaking of replayability, there’s an unlockable endless mode for each level, as well as a second, more powerful unlockable weapon for each hero, but they are mostly cosmetic while being more powerful. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to figure out a clear way to unlock these weapons. I’m not sure if it is random or objective-based.  It would be nice to have some sort of information regarding this.

Ancient Amuletor is a very fun VR game in a genre that fits VR very well. I would love to see a sequel with much more content. The gameplay mechanics are great and it is some of the most fun I’ve had playing a PSVR game yet, but being so short it feels like a demo.  Yes, there is some “Coming Soon” content, but even doubling the levels and adding two more heroes may not be enough additional content.  Also, it is not yet known if this will be free or paid DLC.

There are a lot of good pieces in place here, with the gameplay mechanics and the co-op, but they’ve been packaged in a very scant box that doesn’t do them justice. Ancient Amuletor needs to be more than a short PSVR experience that is barely longer than the demo that’s already available for free. Perhaps all of the elusive “Coming Soon” content will fix that, but at launch Ancient Amuletor finds its quiver running out of arrows too soon.

Pros

• Great gameplay mechanics and controls.
• Character and weapon variety.
• Multiplayer is a lot of fun.

Cons

• Very short with little replayability.
• Positioning can be awkward when teleporting from platform to platform.

Thank you to Time of VIrtual Reality and TiGames for providing us with a review copy.

Playstation Experience - Keynote Highlights

Over last weekend, Sony held their first annual Playstation Experience event in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The event kicked off with a keynote conference.  Many people had high expectations and many rumors spread around before the event. I was able to watch the conference online on Playstation's Twitch channel and I think the conference was a great success.  The conference lasted about two and a half hours and they shared many announcements about upcoming games, including gameplay footage of many of the top upcoming games.

The first game shown at the conference was Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.  This was a great choice as first game to show because it seemed to get everyone pumped up and excited about what the rest of the show could bring.  The gameplay for Uncharted 4 looked amazing.  The graphics looked great and I can't wait to see what improvements will be made before the game releases next year.  Here is a video of gameplay shown at the conference:

Next, Sony Santa Monica was up to present.  They showed a trailer for MLB The Show 2015 and it looked pretty impressive.  What was most impressive to me was the announcement that you will be able to take your Road to the Show players from MLB The Show 14 and continue your career on MLB The Show 2015.  As a sports game player, this is something I have been waiting on for quite some time.  I hope EA Sports follows suit and makes this happen in the Madden series.

We also got another look at Bloodborne.  They showed some multiplayer gameplay, as well as the trailer that was also shown at the Video Game Awards show the previous night. Bloodborne looks to be a very bloody and gory game, but looks like it will be fun.

Capcom announced that Ultra Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter V are going to be released as PS4 exclusives.  Sony is helping develop Street Fighter V which will also be cross format with the PC version.  I think this is a very interesting feature and am excited to see how it works out.  Hopefully, more developers will make this a feature in more games in the future.  

One thing Sony made clear was that they totally support indie game developers.  They showed trailers for many indie games that will be releasing in the next year.  Many of them looked very impressive and intriguing, such as Severed and Skytorn.

One indie game that stood out to me was The Forest.  I have played The Forest on PC as an early access game and I really enjoy it.  Being an early access game that is not 100% complete, but still very good, has me excited to see how much is improved before completion.  I can't wait to see how the PS4 version turns out, as well. 

It was also announced that Persona 5 and Yakuza 5 are coming to PS4.

Another thing Sony made clear was that the PS Vita is not dead and will continue to have great games released, including Suikoden 1 & 2, Towerfall Acension, Octodad and Banner Saga. It is a good time to be a Vita owner!

A new Tearaway game is coming to PS4 called Tearaway: Unfolded.  The footage of this game looked very good and is a game I am looking forward to.

Square-Enix announced that Final Fantasy VII will be released exclusively on PS4 next spring. It will not be an HD remaster as many people wanted, but will still be a great game to have.

More footage of No Man's Sky was shown.  This is a highly anticipated title that continues to look better and better each time new footage is revealed.  I have to admit, I am not too hyped about this game yet, but maybe in time I will come to realize what all the hype is about and jump on the train.

To wrap up the conference, a new game called Drawn to Death was shown.  This game looks as though it could be a very good game.  It is a 3rd person action/shooter in which the whole setting of the game looks like it was drawn or sketched on paper.  It looks like a crazy game with off-the-wall weapons and characters.  It is definitely something fresh and new, which is always nice.  I think this game will do very well when it is released.  I am excited to see future gameplay and features as the game is developed.

           My winner of the conference!

I think the biggest winner from the conference would have to be Until Dawn.  They showed a gameplay demo of this exclusive survival horror game and it looks amazing!  The graphics look unreal and the gameplay looked great as well.  Until Dawn is not your typical FPS or run-around-and-kill-zombies game.  It seems more like an interactive movie and reminds me of Heavy Rain on the PS3.  I can't wait for this game to be released and I hope it turns out as good as it has looked so far!  From the gameplay demo, it looked like the controls could use some fine tuning, but I'm sure that is something that will be worked out along with any other kinks before release.

Sony's first annual Playstation Experience Keynote Conference was a big hit if you ask me.  I wish I could have been there to see it in person and attend the rest of the conference.  Maybe next year! 

Who else watched the Keynote Conference?  What are your thoughts and impressions?