Mark McMorris Infinite Air Preview

Do you spend your days dreaming about cruising down a mountain on a brand new snowboard? Mark McMorris Infinite Air aims to deliver the most authentic snowboarding game to date and it absolutely succeeds.

The first thing you’ll notice when you get dropped into the massive mountain range is that you can go anywhere – and I mean anywhere. By simply summoning a helicopter you are able to search for the perfect place to start your next run. What happens if you can’t find a place to shred that sweet, sweet powder? You can use the incredibly in-depth world editor to remove objects, increase or decrease the elevation, and smooth out the ground. You can then set up rails, ramps, jibs, pipes, buildings, and more. Once your epic run is complete, you can publish it to share it with other members of the Infinite Air community.

Most snowboarding games are all about impossible tricks and getting millions of points. Sure that’s fun, but Infinite Air reinvents the snowboarding genre by delivering realistic physics. The entire game uses the thumbsticks and triggers to perform tricks, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going master Infinite Air in just a few minutes. Once you finally get a solid grasp on the controls, every trick feels like an accomplishment. These mechanics may seem familiar and I think it’s easy to say that Infinite Air is the Skate of snowboarding games.

One of the most impressive aspects of Infinite Air is the amount of tricks. Even though you only use the triggers and thumbsticks, there is a ton of variety. I found myself getting comfortable with a few tricks before moving on to something more difficult. After a while I had a nice collection of tricks memorized that I would use on runs. When it comes to Infinite Air, practice definitely makes perfect.

Infinite Air is the snowboarding game we’ve been waiting for. The possibilities for runs are literally endless. You can spend all day designing mountains, checking out player generated runs, or relaxing in a newly discovered slice of the snowy paradise. There’s no doubt that Infinite Air is the real deal.

Infinite Air will be out on October 25th for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Thank you to Maximum Games for providing the code.  

Hands On With Dropzone

The RTS genre can be a little intimidating for inexperienced gamers, but Dropzone by Sparkypants is definitely a game that anyone can pick up and play. The premise is simple - at the end of a 15 minute match have more points than your opponent and you win. This is, of course, easier said than done, but nonetheless after a few matches most people will get the hang of it. 

The first step in Dropzone is drafting your squad. You can select three pilots from five different classes. You can even pick three of the same class if you'd like, but the only restriction is that you can't pick the same pilot twice. During my demo the Gunner, Tank, and Mechanic were unlocked. The Gunner is quick and offensive, the Tank is strong and can take a beating, and the Mechanic can heal your party. These classes don't stray too far from what gamers would expect in any game, which makes it easily accessible for everyone. 

There are multiple ways to score in Dropzone. The first and most common way to score is by destroying hives of enemies which drop cores and upload those cores back at the center of the map. The other way to score is by completing map objectives, which are randomly selected before every match. 

One of the more surprising elements of Dropzone is that killing your opponent does very little to benefit you and really the only time you would want to kill them is when they are destroying a hive or uploading a core. Your primary focus should be on scoring and leveling up, which you can both do by killing enemies. The XP you gain is shared among your team, but you can only level one pilot at a time. When you level them, you receive extra abilities and new gear. 

As I mentioned before, Dropzone is easily accessible for most gamers and will have casual style gameplay to prepare players for the intense battle they will eventually experience. For those who have experience with RTS's or MOBA's they will feel right at home with traditional controls. 

Dropzone is a great game that allows you to get a quick gaming fix right before dinner or when you are pressed for time. Dropzone's open beta will be out by the end of the year and when the game launches it will have 2-3 maps with a new map every two months. 

Fenix Furia Review

Jump, dash, die, repeat. That's pretty much what you're going to be doing over the 4-6 hours of Fenix Furia and you wouldn't want it any other way. 

Fenix Furia is one of the most frustrating and addicting games I've ever played. As with most games, the beginning is fairly easy, but this doesn't last long. There are 10 worlds in Fenix Furia, each with 20 levels, as well as an Arcade where you can unlock extra games. Your objective is to use your unlimited jump and dash abilities to weave in and out of enemies who are moving up and down and all around. I would say once I reached the later levels I would die around 10-15 times guaranteed with a high of being 48 deaths on one level.

There are five modes when you select a level: Easy, Rage, Two, Challenge, and God. Easy mode gives you an extra hit and there is no time goal. Rage mode has one-hit kills as well as a time goal to beat. Two, which is the multiplayer, puts two people in a race to finish the level. Challenge restricts the amount of jumps and dashes you can use. God mode makes you invincible and you have to kill all the enemies on the map before time runs out. When you successfully complete these different modes, you are rewarded with stars. You can use these stars to unlock mini-games that are actually fun. 

Along your journey you will also find cookies - that's right, cookies. Collecting all of these cookies will unlock 10 Fenxi Furia themed recipes. Just let that sink in for a moment. Besides earning trophies you can get a delicious recipe. How cool is that? 

The only real issue I had with Fenix Furia is that the levels in each world don't progressively get harder. You may come across a level that feels like it's impossible and the next level you breeze right through. I don't feel like this is something to knock points off the games total score for, but at times the difficulty does feel inconsistent. 

Fenix Furia is an absolute blast. My stats show that I died over 2500 times and I have no issue with that. The game is challenging and rewarding and that's exactly what you want from a game. I'm holding out hope that one day Fenix Furia makes it way on to the PlayStation Vita because I think it would be the perfect console for it. Do yourself a favor and buy this game!

5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to Green Lava Studios for providing the code. 

Hands On With Loot Rascals

The first thing you'll notice about Loot Rascals is the colorful classic cartoon look, but once you get over the pleasing aesthetics, you find a rich, turn-based, roguelike game. Your character moves around a procedurally generated world on hexagonal tiles. Your goal is to find the exit on each level before exceeding the amount of moves on the turn counter. If you do exceed the move limit, stronger enemies will start to appear around the map. If you want to hang out and explore, you can, but this is not advised. 

Loot Rascals has a day / night cycle that affects if you or the enemy will hit first in battle. You always want to try to get the first hit, but if you're feeling pretty good about your situation, it's not too big of a deal to let them hit first. The time of day changes every five moves, so you definitely want to be aware of this as you're moving around the map, especially when you're desperate to attack.   

One of the biggest parts of Loot Rascals is the card system.  You can have a mix of ten offensive and defensive cards equipped with six in your inventory. Certain cards have bonuses that affect other cards, but are required to be in certain slots, positions, or rows. Loot cards drop all of the time so you are always switching them out. Once you find yourself with too many cards, you can decompile them for currency. 

There are also cards that you can place on other cards that give you extra long distance attacks or self heals. To use these attacks/ heals you simply select them from a pin wheel and drop a cursor on an enemy or yourself. You get so many cards that I don't think it's absolutely necessary to save your attacks for when you see a tough enemy, but you should definitely keep a few attacks handy for when you're near death. 

One of my favorite aspects of Loot Rascals is when you die the enemies will steal your card, which drops it on the server and will show up in someone else’s game. That person can then choose to send it back or keep it. If you find someone else’s card during your game you can choose to keep it or send it back. If you choose to keep the card then the person who lost the card can send an enemy to fight you. When you first start playing the game, the other player’s cards will be from strangers, but once you have a few that you’ve found, you’ll most likely be matched with the same select players. Hopefully if everyone is nice to each other you’ll receive the cards that you lost, but if you lose a good card you better cross your fingers. 

Loot Rascals will be coming to PC and the PlayStation 4 Q1 of 2017. 

Hands On With The Golf Club 2

I think it’s safe to say that golf games are designed for golf enthusiasts. The Tiger Woods series definitely opened up the genre to a wider audience, but without a big star’s name on the cover, most people probably wouldn’t give a golf game the attention it deserves. While these games may not be at the top of everyone’s priority list, Golf Club 2 has a good chance to be the golf game that returns everyone to the genre. 

Usually when a golf game comes out, you can expect it to have licensed courses, but being a small developer HB Studios has decided to go a different route by creating an incredible course editor. In the first Golf Club, users created over 108,000 courses. This allows HB Studios to rely on an obviously healthy community and invest money in improving gameplay, as well as updating their course editor. One major improvement to the course editor is that users will be able to import their maps from the original Golf Club and add new features like waterfalls to their course. 

The gameplay is fairly straight forward, but by no means easy. You use the right analog to pull back on the club and then push forward to drive the ball. The key to success is timing your swing and making sure the ball goes straight. After playing the game for about 30 minutes, I felt comfortable getting to the green, but putting is a whole different beast. 

Putting uses the same mechanics, but trying to figure out how far you should pull back and how fast you should push forward can really become a challenge. The best I could do out of all the courses I played, was getting a birdie on a par 5, which means 4 shots total. 

Having an easily accessible golf game with one of the best course creators I’ve ever seen in any game makes my Golf Club 2 experience a hole in one! Yes, I did go there. 

Hands On With Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr

The Warhammer series is back with another installment! Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr is an open-world sandbox action-RPG sent in the universe of 40k. You play as different Inquisitors who travel around a massive star map completing missions. 

There are 3 Inquisitor classes that have different skill sets that alter the play. Each class has different skills and skill trees. For example, the Assassin has a sniper rifle that is exclusive to her. Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr may seem like a traditional action-RPG but the open world star map has randomly generated maps. This is completed by having pre-generated puzzle pieces that the game puts together when starting a map. 

Staying true to the 40k universe, there is a cover system, destructible environments, and tons of gore. All of this means that Inquisitor is a very tactical action-RPG, rather than one that you can just run into waves of groups of enemies and take them down like Diablo. You’ll find that the AI displays a great deal of strategy. You can expect to be met by smaller groups who will try to outwit you. 

Inquisitors also have secret fortresses that you can customize and use as a safe haven. You’ll also have groups of followers and defensive systems. This introduces the an indirect PVP since Inquisitors can not attack each other. 

Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: Martyr will be out sometime in 2017; first on PC and PS4 and then Xbox One later.

Hands On With The Guild 3

The Guild 3 takes place in the late middle ages, between the middle ages and the renaissance during the era of the free citizens. At first, I thought Guild 3 was going to be similar to an economy sim like the Anno or Port Royale series, but it’s very different. 

Guild 3 you play a character instead of building your own city. Your goal is to build a dynasty. You can get married and have children. Produce torches, sell them, get XP and money. Start climbing the social ladder and hope to one day become mayor of the city and eventually sovereign of the entire country. The best way to describe it is that you are a part of the world, you don’t manage the world. 

The Guild 3 is a mix of the best features of the first two games in the Guild series. One of the key aspects is that the developers has really worked with fans to create a game that will be loved by their dedicated fan base. While this may sound like it’s designed for a small niche group, Guild 3 is definitely accessible for seasoned gamers. 

To build your dynasty, you need to take care of your character or at least have a family. Characters can die of old age, be poisoned, get killed, and even get executed for committing crimes. By mixing roleplaying aspects with life and economy simulation, Guild 3 creates a wonderfully rich experience. 

In the previous Guild games, you were pretty much forced to go specific ways to increase your wealth. Guild 3 gives the user the freedom to focus on what they’d like to work on. If you want to build your economy while not focusing on a family you can. After a long hard day of work, you may want to stop by the tavern, play dice, and have a beer. If there’s someone that you don’t like and you feel like bombing their home, have a blast! 

There are a ton of professions that you can choose from. You can be a blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, medical, alchemist, apothecary and so on. One awesome feature is that the alchemist is more of an evil guy who creates poisons while the apothecary creates helpful things like potions. 

Once you reach the level of mayor, you can start to control parts of the city. In one part of the city there may be a thieves guild. You can choose to ignore this part of the city and receive a lot of money from the thieves guild, but the citizens of the city will be upset with you and possibly revolt. You can also decide to remove someone from the council and bring in your own family members. 

Guild 3 has complete simulation of weather and season effects. At any point of the year, there can be plagues, but it will most often occur in the winter. Winter also means that the farmers have no crops, so some of them may die of starvation. There are also storms that can occur that will affect your town. If lightening strikes your building, then your house will be on fire. If there is a home next to yours, then that home can also catch on fire. 

The developers have made sure that the game has been thoroughly researched. The cities are more realistic than in other games. The citizens make the world feel really alive. At any point you will see people who could be drunk, starting revolutions, talking, and hanging out.  

Guild 3 is easily one of the most in-depth games I’ve ever seen and I seriously can’t wait for it get released.  Guild 3 will release this year with 12 scenario maps that are concentrated in central and northern Europe.

Hands On With Compulsion Games We Happy Few

At the Microsoft press conference, I was taken back by a strange looking game called 'We Happy Few.’ Described as a 1960s dystopian urban survival game, you play as the only person who’s not high on a drug called Joy. Not taking your happy pills classifies you as a “Downer." Your goal is to escape a city that is on an island, by traveling through different biomes and areas of the city. 

The first thing you’ll notice are the visuals. There is a slight Bioshock feel, but the true inspiration for We Happy Few came from movies from the 1960s.  Compulsion Games’ art director has a very unique style that you may recognize from the PlayStation 4 launch title Contrast. 

Crafting seems to be a major part of We Happy Few. The nature of it being a roguelike survival game means that permadeath is a very real possibility. They have easier settings that will prevent this, but the truth is that this isn’t just a game that you can run through, die, hit a checkpoint, and continue on. You really need to think about your approach and take it slow. 

I only played as a one Downer, but there are three total that have interweaving stories. I definitely wish I could have had a little more hands-on with We Happy Few, but with the early access coming July 26th it won’t be long before I can jump right back into this paranoid, drugged out English city. 

The full version of We Happy Few will coming out on the Xbox One and Steam early next year. 

Epistory - The Typing Chronicles Review

When you are first dropped into Epistory – The Typing Chronicles you can’t help but be impressed with the paper-look of the game. A path of pages opens up around you as you walk along it, opening up a rich environment of trees, grass, rocks, and flowers while holding on to the look and feel of paper. Before you know it, the soothing soundtrack mixed with crashing waves and the beautiful narration has fully immersed you into the story.

While discovering everything the land has to offer, you are of course met with obstacles. To get through these obstacles or defeat enemies you must press the spacebar and type the corresponding words. Whenever you revive the earth, destroy an enemy, or get through an obstacle you receive Inspiration Points. Inspiration points are used to buy upgrades and to unlock certain parts of the game. Gating certain parts of the game may sound annoying to some users, but Epistory does a great job keeping you moving, never making you feel like you have to grind out extra words just to advance. There is also a combo meter that allows you to receive more Inspiration Points the longer you string words together.

The upgrades for the game make a huge difference. You can upgrade your movement speed, combo time, knockback, but more importantly you can upgrade your unlockable skills. For example, your fire attack has a great feature that will add a unique twist on damage over time on an enemy letting you destroy them faster. You can upgrade the speed of this damage over time and get yourself out of some serious jams.

As I mentioned before, you have to press the spacebar to hunker down and then type your words. In fact everything in Epistory can be controlled with the keyboard. You move with W, A, S, D and you can just type in whatever commands you want in the menu. Not being a primary PC gamer, this took me a little bit to get used to, but any seasoned PC gamer should have no trouble at all.

One downside that I frequently ran into was when I unlocked the Fire and Ice skills. The further you get into Epistory you must switch your skills to kill enemies who are only vulnerable to that element. The problem arises when you’re using the Ice skill and you need to kill something that has an “F” as it’s first letter. Once you type that “F” Epistory will prioritize your skill selection and expect you to complete word “fire” rather than prioritize the enemy which is coming to kill you. Luckily, Epistory does two things to alleviate some of this pain. First off, when you die, it’s not the end of the world. You can easily pick up where you left off in a matter of minutes. Secondly, if you reach a point that you just can’t pass, Epistory will adjust and give you a little bit of an easier time. At times, I felt like this was necessary.

I type pretty fast and Epistory did a great job pumping up the difficulty with long difficult words (some I had never even heard of before) and increasing the speed and frequency of enemies. As great as this is, I still ran into the problem that my character and her fox weren’t able to shoot at enemies fast enough. There are times when these little flying enemies come out and they only require one letter to kill them. Well, when you queue say five at one time, the attacks don’t come fast enough, resulting in your death. Do this enough times, the game will make it easier for you and bada bing bada boom you’ve advanced.

Epistory also has a lot of puzzle elements. To receive your skills you must retrieve them from a dungeon. The most frequent puzzle is where you must light up blue tiles by stepping on them without stepping on the same one twice in a row or stepping on a red tile. It’s really not a terrible thing when you step on the same tile twice, but stepping on a red tile will result in the puzzle being completely reset. This makes it much more stressful when you have to do these tasks on ice.  With the nature of the game being a story, the puzzles don’t feel like they are to frustrate you. With a little trial and error and some critical thinking, you can get the puzzles fairly quick.

One element that I definitely feel needs improvement is the map. It sort of looks like a zoomed out Minecraft map. While the map does have some handy icons on it that will help you find treasures and gates, a little more interactivity would go a long way.

I don’t want to end on a sour note. Epistory – The Typing Chronicles is a solid game that is absolutely worth trying if you’re looking for something new to try. Combine this with a great story, beautiful music, phenomenal world building and an outstanding narration, you have yourself an adventure you won’t regret taking.

Final Score: 4.5/5

Thank you to Fishing Cactus for providing the code. 

Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed Review

Since Hyperdimension Neptunia’s debuted in North America there have been 10 total games in the series, but Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed is the first action-RPG set in the world of Gamindustry.  The player will use 10 different characters to hack and slash their way through over 40 missions and 3 game modes.

Each character comes equipped with a different weapon that changes the way character plays. Some of the character weapons you should expect are swords, staves, hammers, guns, and even a lobster-like blunt object. These weapons dramatically change the way one character plays from another. The sword wielding characters will fill more natural to anyone who has played an action-rpg, but there are a few weapons that feel a little stiffer and out of place. Out of all the character weapons, Uni’s gun was the only that I didn’t really enjoy playing. At times it felt too stiff and it lacked a proper way to aim. This being said, I am impressed overall that out of 10 characters there was only one that I thought could use improvement.

As you start playing through the quests in Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed you’ll start to notice that a lot of the objectives are pretty similar. Most of the objectives revolve around killing bosses or killing X amount of enemies. I figured that after 8-10 hours this would start to become tiresome, but it never did. There is enough character interaction and story moments to keep the player engaged with the game. Let’s be honest, killing waves and waves of enemies can get boring, but Action Unleashed does a masterful job creating an experience that players will want to continue to enjoy.

One of my favorite aspects of Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed was medal collecting. Whenever you kill an enemy they have the chance to drop medals. Once you collect enough medals you can then use them to purchase accessories, better weapons, and global stat upgrades for all of your characters.  Collecting medals is probably the most grindy thing you’ll run into during your experience, but it doesn’t take too long to collect them all.

The Hyperdimension series is no stranger to fan service. In Action Unleashed you’ll find yourself battling groups of enemies when all of sudden your clothes get ripped off! One feature that may please gamers is that you eventually can get clothes that rip easier or clothes that don’t rip at all. So regardless of how you feel about fan service, Action Unleashed gives the option to enjoy the game as you’d like.

Overall Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed is a game that I feel that anyone who enjoys the Hyperdimension and/or Dynasty Warriors series would have fun playing. It’s also a great game for people who want an introduction to the Gamindustri, but aren’t the biggest JRPG fan.

4.75 out of 5 stars

Thank you to Idea Factory for supplying the review code.