FORTS Review

Like Angry Birds, but with guns!

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Genre: Action, Strategy
Developer: EarthWork Games 
Publisher: EarthWork Games
Release Date: Apr 19, 2017
Price: $14.99 (As of Release)
(Information from Steam)

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FORTS! PATRIOTISM! REFERENCES! MORE FORTS! This game has them all! But seriously, this entry into the RTS Genre is both light and complex. EarthWork Games has done a solid job in this entry. It places you in control of building multiple forts across the world. Why are you building forts across the world? Well, I suggest watching their trailer. It is funny and gives you good insight into the game.

Forts, the physics-based RTS where foes build custom bases, arm them to the teeth and blast their opponent's creations to rubble, is out now! Steam Store - http://store.steampowered.com/app/410900 Humble Store - https://www.humblebundle.com/store/forts Build an armoured fort in real-time and arm it to the teeth.

So how accurate IS the trailer? Well, pretty good. It demonstrates the "pop" that these games tend to end on. It also shows some of the offbeat humor that pokes at current political events and fervent nationalism.

So, what is the set up for the campaign? Well, if you didn't watch that video I linked for some crazy reason, I'll reiterate it for you. Sometime in the future, all the oil and metal in the world is scarce. In fact, oil has been depleted to the point where there is only one rumored source left, and the three world powers left (proxies for the United States, Russia, and China) are fighting over it. As the campaign starts, it is very simple, but it quickly ramps up until the point where it took me the better part of 20 minutes to figure out how to overcome campaigns. This is great, because it actually helps improve your game play for when you decide to tackle multiplayer. By the way, you should totally dip your toes in multiplayer, if only to experience the chaos.

However, I spent most of my time in single player, because that's how I roll. I gotta say, I loved it. It has the small simple levels that reminded me of games like Angry Birds. Even the mechanic of "Shoot to the right and destroy things" carries over. However, this is where the similarities end. The whole game revolves around building a base, stocking it with weapons, then using them to destroy the enemy base and prevent them from doing likewise. This becomes a game of balancing your objectives (which unlock more levels) and building to the powerful weapons so you can quickly destroy your enemy.

POP! POP!

To build that, it is a fairly simple interface. You have 3 types at the bottom: Materials, Devices, and Weapons. Materials determine with what you build your base, such as the bracing and doors. Devices are for non-weapon sub-buildings, such as mines and the factory. Finally, weapons are the items you point at the enemy team to make them go away. You start the game with a reactor you have to protect. If it goes nuclear and explodes, you lose. You can either manually add to existing joints, or drag sections to automatically let the game handle connecting things for you.

As you build, you run into increasingly convoluted situations you have to build around, like a maze of tunnels you have to build in while avoiding the walls. Since physics are a factor, your building starts to sag and might randomly explode if joints or connectors have too much pressure on them. So, no biggie to build a reasonable base.

Overall, I would say this is a great game. It is quick to learn, and it is challenging to overcome the game scenarios the further you progress. However, there are some issues where the difficulty of missions fluctuates and you will ace some while needing to spend several attempts to finish others. 

PROS:

1.  Tight gun-play
2. Super rewarding to get the final volley off and finish a match
3. Interesting maps keep the race to the laser different.

CONS:

1. Each match seems to finish with with the Canons or Lasers
2. Difficulty isn't as smooth as an upward trend as it could be, leading to some frustrating moments
3. Finding an online match can be spotty, but it is definitely there.

Thanks to EarthWork Games for providing us the Steam codes to use for this review!

PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness Review

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Genre: Adventure
Developer: MAGES. Inc. , 5pb.
Publisher: NIS America, Inc.
Release Date: Apr 24, 2017

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PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness is a Visual Novel published by NIS America, Inc. (At least here in the US). If you are like me, I honestly didn't know visual novels were a thing until I got a chance to play this game. To boil it down, it is an interactive story that is more complex than a simple Choose Your Own Adventure, and is more interactive to boot. It allows more branching plot lines, hidden scenes, and things like that. This is one of the big reasons video games are great, and I'm glad I had the good fortune to expand my gaming horizon.

Now, this game is a bit of a special case for me. The PS4 version came out almost a year ago AND we did a review on it. In fact, it was written by our own Ryan Johnson, and you should go read it now. I'll even link it for you. It's okay. Go ahead and read it. This can wait.

Great, now that you have read that, I'm not going to discuss the story. Why? Well, two reasons. Ryan did a great job already going over several key points. The second is that I recently learned (due to the Persona 5 steaming policy), that story-driven games like this shouldn't have its plot spoiled and should definitely be experienced. That said, I'm going to talk about how this game functions on the PC.

This is a pretty standard dialogue screen. As you can see, there are a bunch of controls along the bottom with key bindings.

Great, now forget them. Everything in the game (aside from something I'll mention later) can be done through the mouse. Honestly, I had a much better time with this than the controls. All of the little buttons you can just click, and since this game is not based on quick timing or anything like that, you can focus on the story more. Even a right-click brings up the menu screen. Basically, they did a great job on the controls. They are super simple, which lets you focus on making the choices which almost always seems to lead to 2 bad endings then finally a good one.

There is one caveat to this, and that's the mini game included in the "extras" option in the main menu. This one you should definitely get out the arrow keys. Why? Well, take a look at the screenshot below and tell me if it reminds you of anything.

That's right, it is 2048! Like Ryan mentioned, it is used to unlock all sorts of cool extras. It is the best of both worlds: a time sink minigame AND a way to easily get unlocks.

Overall, this game is a great PC adaptation. The controls make sense. Really, pick up this game. I'm going to give this a slightly higher rating than Ryan.

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This game was reviewed on the PC, but there is also a PS4 version.

Pro's
+Easy Controls
+Clear Story
+Very well translated captions
+Great Visuals

Con's
-Sometimes the background noise overpowers the audio
-The phone conversation subtitles don't pair well with the audio being subtitled

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Thank you NIS America for providing us with this code!

Alwa's Awakening: A 60 Second Review

Check Matt's first ever 60 second video review. this is for Alwa's Awakening on PC. Available now! 

Full Mojo Rampage Review

Full Mojo Rampage

I was fortunate enough to snag a copy of this fun little game. It is a top down arcade style game, where you run around and destroy various nasty beings using your magic powered by your Loa, or Voodoo deity. The music and art style are fun, and the randomly generated levels mean you have to focus on skill rather than map memorization. You also get some fun items to use and equip, and wacky wands to use.

My experience with FMR was on the shorter side, but enough to where I knew the game was rock solid. The developers clearly knew what they were doing. When I first started the game, I was expected to be spammed either with a long chain of logos, or to be dropped into a bland menu. Neither happened. Instead, a witty little cinematic comes on that accomplishes two things. First, it sets the tone of the game. The art style and tone is clear. The music is fun, yet creepy. Second, the cinematic serves as a sort of tutorial. Where it never explicitly tells you how to play the game in the intro, it shows you what to expect. You see big and small enemies in a hoard chasing you. You run around, find and use an item by destroying a mausoleum, and then turn the tables from the power-up. From that, you see you can destroy some environment pieces, what to expect from enemies (weak and strong types, and mobs), and that there will be some items to give interesting perks. Getting into the game, I played several rounds, and then died. I was expecting to return to the mission select screen, but found myself on the main menu. When I tried to reenter, I found a new game with new levels, but my same character progression. I don't know if that was something they meant to do or if I botched/missed something, but still a great touch. Don't die, or you die-die.

Overall, great game. Go out, pick it up, and play it. It is a fun game you can spend a fair amount of time playing.

Score a  4 out of 5

Full Mojo Rampage is is available  now on Xbox One and Steam. thanks to the publisher from supplying a code for review.

Things to Watch Over in Overwatch

Heroes Lineup for Overwatch, as of June 2016

Overwatch has been out for several weeks now, and is a huge success. The roll out was smooth, it quashed the competition released around the same time, and has been pretty stable so far. As such, I’m not going to go into a review for the game. However, I’m going to discuss what I think might happen to the future of the game.

I think, for a while at least, Blizzard will work on game balance in preparation for their competitive mode. This will be a huge boon for them in the eSports world, since their flagship World of Warcraft has waned in recent years. Hearthstone has helped, but it isn’t really a venue packing event like Magic the Gathering is. Anyways, this should only tide them over for a month or two until they really get balanced hammered out (speaking of Hammers…. McCree is supposedly getting rebalanced, see source). A good question here is if they will take some of the proceeds from their Loot Box sales and put it into jackpots for tournaments. This is what Halo 5 did with their Requisition Pack sales, and it really helped boost initial interest in competitive play. If Blizzard does this well, they should see years of solid following from streamers and eSports scenes alike, just like frequently-compared Team Fortress 2.

Speaking of Team Fortress 2, I think Blizzard needs to avoid falling into the same pitfalls. When TF2 first came out, it was a more simplistic game. The variations in play came from the characters themselves, and it encouraged diversification of characters. As the years ran on, and the money flow decreased, they started increasing ways to attract more players. First, it was free map updates and game fixes, which was amazing. It showed the developers were in for the long haul. But eventually they introduced the Hat-conomy, which some (like myself) would argue ruined the core game experience. While it introduced a higher diversity, it also created an environment where you were encouraged to pay-to-win. A lot of guns were difficult to get, and it sometimes made the game unfair because of inventory and not skill.

What does that have to do with Overwatch? First, they need to make sure to not change inventories. Having a given character do a given thing makes it so players can better prepare for each other, and not have to wonder which of the 20 guns a single character could have. Second, they need to not sell items that change gameplay. Emotes? Sell them by the dozen. Sprays? Charge people to import their own. Characters? Everyone needs access to all of them. This keeps gameplay itself fair, which is important to long term game health. Third, characters need to be recognizable. If you have 15 glowing orbs, a hat, flowing robes, and a bird head (which is admittedly hilarious), it makes it hard to process what you are fighting. Again, balance, game health, blah blah blah.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, in order in increase loot box sales, Blizzard implemented player-created sprays and skins. They can’t really make emotes and voice lines available to be made, because it is hard to imitate voice actors. Regardless, you get a free loot box for every level, but players are impatient. Double that impatience when there is a seemingly endless amount of things to unlock. This would be an area where it would be arguably okay to exploit the Cash Whale phenomenon. It would give them a long term revenue stream so they can continue developing assets without segmenting the player base.

I keep mentioning the player base. Realistically, this game isn’t going to be super popular. While it is definitely top-notch and well done, the fact is this game is in a crowded genre of First Person Shooters, and will only get more crowded. Destiny has a major expansion coming out. Titanfall 2 is currently being teased. Call of Duty will inevitably get its yearly release. This means players will have grown tired and move on to the next big thing. Plenty of players will remain, but I don’t see the sub-20 second queues lasting forever. Even now I’m starting to see more and more 1min+ queues. With the quick nature of matches, it will become more important to stay in matches once your game completes, instead of instance hopping like so many of us do after a sour match.

To reiterate, Overwatch is a solid game you should buy. Unless Blizzard really messes up, which they aren’t known to do, it should have a decent player base so long as you are patient and they probably won’t introduce anything game breaking that would ruin the core experience. If you are worried about the longevity, don’t be. While the average skill level will continue to increase, I don’t see the game becoming dull or unapproachable for a long, long time.

Party Hard Review

Score: 4 out of 5

Party Hard is a pretty great game. It has tight controls, an interesting style, and a story line that will amuse (if you have the same sense of humor as myself). The whole premise is that the player is insane, and wants to “party hard” by killing everyone at parties without getting caught. This is communicated through cut scenes you unlock by completing the levels. Overall, I would give this game 4 out of 5. Good job Pinokl Games.

As I said, the game has tight controls. You can move, interact with traps and shortcuts, and stab people. Some people even have special moves you can get. You move at a decent speed, but if you need a quick boost you can sprint. This means you have to plan your moves out, because the enemies can often move faster than you. You can also interact with certain elements in the environment to produce lethal effects, like rigging a gas oven to explode. There are also trap downs to travel through to evade police (that get boarded up if they see you using it) and windows to hop through to give you exits. All of this lends to level designs that are fun to explore and varied enough to keep you engaged through the different stages.

Like the level designs, the art style itself is also pretty good. It is pixelated, so it gives you enough colors to clearly see what everything is, but not enough detail to make you think it is one of those games that didn’t hire an artist and only went with the default Unity assets. The music makes the game feel like a classic arcade game, and so does the stage select screen… and the fact it has stages. In between those stages are cut-scenes that deliver the story.

I was confused about the story delivery. It is right on that line where I couldn’t tell if it is serious or parody. Going with the tone and the rest of the game, however, I’m airing on the side of parody. It is the story of a cop that really wants to catch the bad guy, and has a bad case of “I’m a loose cannon. Fear me”! This adds to the campiness of the game, which makes it even better.

If you like a simple game you can pick up for 20 minutes or for hours that has an arcade feel to it that you can also compete against your friends (pass the controller, fastest time!), then get this game. If you want to play the original demo, you can go to their website and try it (http://tinybuild.com/partyhard, bottom of the page). The full game is more polished, but it will get you an idea. The game is available on PC, Xbox One (where I played it), and on the PS4.

Kôna: Day One (Early Access/ Closed Beta)

(Click to be taken to website)

Kôna: Day One is the first part of a series of games created by the studio Parabole. It takes place in the northern expanse of Quebec, Canada. You are trying to solve a mystery, and things slowly reveal to be more than they seem. While the game is still in beta, it is stunning so far (Watch the video below to see what I mean). It has a style that gives it a slightly haunting vibe, and it meshes extraordinarily well with the feeling the game gives you. I'm also impressed with the interface. A lot of smaller indie game have a problem with creating an intuitive interface, and this game does just that. Maybe it has something to do with having to design it with two languages in mind (Oh Canada!)? Like I said, even at this stage the game has a lot of polish.

Right now, since it is still in early access, I don't want to go too in depth. However, I 100% recommend giving the single-player game a shot. I only see this game getting better as they flesh out the last small portions of the game. You can pick the game up over at GoG right now for just shy of $10. Oh, and bring your axe.

http://www.gog.com/game/kona_day_one Kôna: Day One is the first act of a narrative-driven interactive tale of mystery, exploration and survival, set amid a powerful and ominous snowstorm in a northern village in the 1970s. You play as Carl Faubert, a war veteran now private detective who must travel to Atamipek Lake in Northern Canada to solve a simple, yet lucrative case.