A Rose in the Twilight Review

What seems like an innocent game about a little girl and her monster companion is actually a deceptively twisted adventure filled gruesome blood offerings. As Rose, you find yourself waking up with a cursed thorn sticking out of your back. Using your abilities control blood and time you must figure out how to escape an ancient castle. 

A Rose in the Twilight puzzles are broken up by different rooms in the castle.  For the most part, each room has obstacles that require you to manipulate different objects that are either obstructing your way or will help you advance. For example, there will be a platform that you repeatedly have to freeze by absorbing the blood on it. Once that object stops in the correct position, you can jump on it and proceed. 

You also enlist the help of a giant monster who is also looking to escape the castle. This monster will help you carry heavy objects, get through thorny areas that would kill Rose, defeat enemies, and throw Rose to areas that she wouldn't be able to access on her own. Rose in the Twilight does a great job balancing gameplay between the giant and Rose. There's never a time where you feel that the either character becomes a burden. 

The overall pace of the game is pretty slow. Rose doesn't walk very fast, but once you have the giant helping you, you can use him to carry her around. Before I knew that the giant was in the game and I was only playing as Rose, I felt that the speed of the game was going to be something that I didn't enjoy. Luckily, this feeling subsided after about 30-45 minutes and it never really crossed my mind again. Rose in the Twilight is also very somber. There's no dialog and only a few vignettes that give you some insight on what's happening. I think that a lot of gamers might not even know what's going on which may leave something to be desired. 

For the most part, the puzzles in A Rose in the Twilight aren't too difficult. You will run into a few that will require some thinking, but I never felt like I was ever stuck. At times you are required to revisit areas that you've already explored to unlock blood memories. These memories are actually required for you to advance with the story, so there is a tiny amount of backtracking using a simple fast travel feature. The best (or worst?) part about these blood offerings is that you get to see Rose killed in some surprisingly brutal ways. 

A Rose in the Twilight took me roughly 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours to complete. The whole time I was playing I was constantly reminded of Limbo, which is never a bad thing. If you're looking for a fun puzzle-platformer with a decent amount of blood then Rose in the Twilight is definitely worth checking out. 

4.25 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NIS for providing us with the code. 

Everything Review

David OReilly is probably best known for making unique animations, but recently he has begun developing video games. In 2014 he released his first game "Mountain", where you simply observe a mountain without controlling anything. This may sound a bit odd, but Mountain received critical acclaim and laid the foundation of "Everything." 

As soon as I heard that Everything promised to let the player control anything from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, I instantly put up my guard. There have been way too many times where developers promise gamers the ability to do something you've never done before only to leave them disappointed. Fortunately for us, where other developers have failed, Everything delivers. 

You first start off by entering a name. You are then put on a random planet controlling a random object. For me, I started on an ice planet controlling a polar bear. The very first thing I noticed (which is also the same that other people noticed in the official trailers) is that a lot of the animal's movements resemble stiff somersaults. At this point, I'm thinking what is going on? But I pushed through and began exploring my surroundings. After discovering a few different types of trees and a few standard animals, I started to get that feeling of dread that I may have been lied to again, but that quickly went away when I learned how to ascend and descend into different levels. These levels range from microscopic to being out in the middle of the universe surrounded by different types of galaxies. Only once I realized the true scale of Everything did I really start to appreciate what was happening. 

Now even though you can get as small as the smallest atom, Everything never becomes overwhelming. While there doesn't seem to be true objectives, you will find yourself collecting objects from certain classifications (animals, trees, viruses, spacecraft, etc) to try to complete a collection. Whenever you go to a new area the map appears to be as far as the eye can see, but when you move around you'll start to actually see that you're really in a confined space. This limits the number of objects that you'll find and encourages you to move to another area. The awesome thing about this is that if you visit the same type of area twice in a row (ice continent, city continent, grass continent, etc. ) there will always be something new, as long as you haven't completed your collection. 

A major aspect of Everything are the readings of philosopher Alan Watts. As you progress there will be opportunities to listen to different audio clips that talk about the different ways the world is connected. These readings support the underlying theme of the entire game and have a nice calm presence that makes for an enjoyable experience. 

Everything took me about 2.5 - 3 hours to complete. Once you finish, you can keep collecting objects in your game or start a new game plus. Everything relies heavily on experience, which isn't a bad thing, as long as you know what you're getting into. If you've enjoyed games like Journey, flOw, Flower, or even the Katamari series, then Everything is definitely worth your time. 

4.5 out of 5

Thank you to Double Fine and David OReilly for providing the code. 

Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin Review

The PlayStation VR was easily one of the more anticipated pieces of technology last year. There were plenty of reasons to get excited about it, but since the launch, there haven't been too many must-have games. Fortunately, Double Fine has stepped up to the plate and hit a homerun with Psychonauts In The Rhombus of Ruin. 

The story takes place after the events of the original Psychonauts where we find out that the Grand Head of the Psychonauts Truman Zanotto, has been kidnapped. The main character, Raz, and the rest of the crew discover that Truman is being held in underwater at the Rhombus of Ruin, a former Psychonauts lab. On their way, their ship crashes and the crew is separated. Raz has to use his psychic abilities to gather his powers and save Truman Zanotto.

Right from the beginning, you can tell that a lot of time and effort went into creating the world. There are an impressive amount of fine details that most other VR games seem to neglect. At one point I picked up a record and flipped it around to find an actual tracklisting for this fake album. These little inclusions make feel like you're a part of the world rather than a spectator. I feel that I have a lot of experience in VR and there were even times where I almost reached out to grab something that was in front of me. 

The gameplay is a lot different than the previous Psychonauts. Instead of being a 3D platformer you use Raz's clairvoyance ability to jump into and out of the minds of the surrounding people or creatures. In fact, you don't walk around at all, and to interact with objects or to jump in the mind of something you simply look at them press a button. The game essentially plays like a point-and-click adventure, where you have to solve puzzles moving objects or combining certain objects. None of the puzzles are overly difficult and with a little bit of trial and error you'll figure them out in no time. 

As I mentioned before, to interact with things you have to look at them and press a button on the controller. This generally works fine, but there were a few times where I really felt like I had to stretch my neck and turn my head quite a bit to discover where I had to go to next. This was really the only issue that I had over the three and a half hours that it took me to complete Rhombus of Ruin. 

Overall, if you're looking for a new PlayStation VR game, I couldn't recommend Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin enough. The world that Double Fine created is amazing and the characters are as lovable as they've always been. Do yourself a favor and pick this game up!

4.75 out of 5 stars

Thank you very much to Double Fine for providing us with the code.

Sports Bar VR Review

Virtual reality games provide the user with immersive experiences that can at times be overwhelming and intense. The amount of games that are currently out there that just let the user chill out in a virtual world with their friends is severely limited. Luckily, that’s where Sports Bar VR comes in to save the day.

Currently, there are four games in Sports Bar VR; Pool (8 ball, 9 ball, 3 ball, and Killer,) darts, skee ball, and air hockey, with more to come in the future. The games are pretty straight forward if you’ve played them before, but at times the controls and Move Wand responsiveness can get in the way of what would be an overall fun experience. 

Without a doubt, playing pool is the highlight of Sports Bar VR, so naturally, that’s where we are going to start. Originally the game was released as Pool Nation for the HTC Vive, which allowed you to physically walk around a virtual table. With the PlayStation version, you can either teleport to different parts of the table or you can access Hulk Mode which allows you to rotate the table around you. To set up the perfect shot all you have to do is lock on using the back left trigger on the Move Wand, pull the right Move Wand back,e and then push forward. It’s simple enough to execute a shot, but it definitely takes some time to get good. 

While playing pool you can play against an AI for an extra challenge. The AI is actually really good at the game and is a lot of fun to play against. You can also invite over a total of 5 real life players to your sports bar to play against, but I will get into the multiplayer a little more later. 

The next game is darts and as much as I’d like to say it’s as good as the pool, it’s just not. I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to throw the darts consistently and never got a grasp of it. The trouble may reside in the Move Wands because I’ve had a lot of trouble with throwing in other PS VR games, but regardless the darts experience wasn’t enjoyable. 

Skee ball is another game that is pretty straight forward and does actually work well. Start up a game and just start rolling the balls up the ramp hoping to get the highest score. This is a nice addition but skee ball, in general, doesn’t have a lot of substance unless you are playing with someone else. 

Air hockey is probably my second favorite game after pool. The AI is incredibly well balanced and every time I played against it I felt that it was a good, close match. The Move Wands responsiveness works perfectly when playing air hockey so if you’re a fan of this arcade staple, then this is the only place that I know you can currently get it in a VR environment. 

The major downside for me was the multiplayer. Unfortunately, one of my Gamers Lounge companions, Robert, and I were never able to get a good connection. This caused a ton of issues when playing the game and made us wonder how well could the game handle six people if it can’t handle two. There were times where I was receiving points during an air hockey session even though it appeared that he had hit the puck back to me. It also made darts virtually impossible and the pool experience was also plagued with lag. After troubleshooting, restarting multiple sessions, and switching hosts we determined that the probably must be with the game. This is unfortunate and I do hope that the connectivity issues that we experienced eventually gets addressed in the future. 

Overall Sports Bar VR is a great game if you are looking to take a break from intense horror games and other crazy virtual reality experiences. You’ll have a great time playing pool and really for some, I can imagine that’s enough. 

3.25 stars out of 5

Thank you to Cherry Pop Games for providing us with the code. 

Weeping Doll Review

It's been awhile since I've played a game where the narrative has really shocked me. I've been surprised and tricked, but actual shock in what I'm hearing and seeing. Weeping Doll from Oasis Games creates a wild story that is so dark and twisted that it's almost unbelievable. 

The story follows a housekeeper through a creepy mansion that looks like it's been ransacked. You know something has gone wrong and it's your job to put together the pieces. As you progress through the story you start to uncover layers of unnerving subjects such as child abuse and neglect. While other games may use metaphors to dance around sensitive subjects, Weeping Doll jumps right into them. 

Weeping Doll, at its core, is a puzzle game. You enter a room and have to either figure out a way to get out or find an essential item that will help you advance. The premise is awesome, but the execution falls flat because the puzzles don't require much thinking. At one point, the game gives you a tutorial on how to combine items to solve a puzzle, but you only use it that one time. There's no option of failing either, which means that there isn't really a challenge. 

I also ran into quite a few major bugs in Weeping Doll, which is always unfortunate. At one point I accidentally dropped a key and it went either through the floor or under a dresser, which forced me to reload the checkpoint. After reloading the checkpoint, I had to complete the first part of the room's puzzle again, which is fine, but the piece that I needed was nowhere to be found. This meant that I had to start a whole brand new game. Luckily, I was less than 10 minutes into the game so it wasn't too much of a pain to start over. 

Once I got through the beginning, I was making real progress. The atmosphere of Weeping Doll is pretty terrifying and you constantly feel like something is about to happen. Unfortunately, there are only about three real scares in the entire game. I will say this, as odd as it may sound, Weeping Doll succeeds as a great "psychological narrative." The game really got in my head and convinced me that at any moment something scary was about to happen. 

The entire game is only about an hour long so you can easily finish it in one sitting, however, there is something odd about the way the game ends. Once you finish the game, you'll hear the trophy chime, but the game keeps going. You are able to walk around the house and you may think that there is more to do, but there isn't. This is sort of a byproduct of the PSVR not showing you trophies when you have it on, but there aren't any credits to inform you either. I probably spent an additional 10 minutes walking around trying to figure out what to do next, only to find out that I had finished the game once I looked at my trophy list. 

Overall Weeping Doll is a short and strange game. It's currently only $9.99 on the PlayStation store so it's low-risk. An added bonus is that the trophies are incredibly easy so this may entice trophy hunters, but outside of that, there isn't much there. I do feel like it some real potential and I hope that the relatively new studio, Oasis Games continues to build and develop their games further because they definitely have a knack for crazy stories. 

2.25 out of 5 Stars

Thank you to Oasis Games for providing us with the code. 

Interview with Alexandre Sabourin Red Barrels Senior Technical Artist for Outlast II

The Gamers Lounge: How does the environment play into the horror genre? 

Alexandre: You have to give emotion to the player with so many aspects using lighting. Players are ready to be scared. Jump scares are not always cheap; they have to be setup by using lighting and sound with sound being one of the biggest things you have to have working in the game. 

The Gamers Lounge: Do you find inspiration from other horror games and movies or do you try to go off on your own?

Alexandre: Our cofounders are big fans of horror games; there will always be certain aspects of horror games that are the same. We, of course, find inspiration from other games, but there are many ways to attack the horror experience. You have to change it sometimes to avoid players feeling a repetitive pattern. That’s why we watch these movies and play the games as well.  

The Gamers Lounge: How do you see the horror genre overall? 

Alexandre: The community for horror games is pretty small. The inspiration for the first one was Amensia: Dark Descent. They did a great job creating a very scary game. 

The Gamers Lounge: How is it having one of the top games in the horror genre? 

Alexandre: Considering the competition, it’s nice to hear that people consider us a top game. We’ve come a long way. The first Outlast only had 9 people, which is not a lot of people at all. We take pride in what we do, and being a small company, we all take part in everything. We work hard and we’re desperate to scare you. 

The Gamers Lounge: How big is this compared to the first Outlast? 

Alexandre: The story line is much more deep and complex as far as details. The environment has changed with indoors and outdoors, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Indoors, you have a constant feeling of claustrophobia while walking through corridors, so when the player goes outside we need to make the player feel like they have no options while they’re out there. The game is also going to be longer. There are also going to a lot more crazy things than the first Outlast. 

The Gamers Lounge: Is a VR horror game something that you’d like to do?

Alexandre: We have taken a look into it. It’s definitely not something that is going to be in Outlast 2, but we’ve talked about it and we have to try it. It’s a tough medium because of motion sickness. 

The Gamers Lounge: With a smaller team how much involvement does each person have? 

Alexandre: As much as they want to get involved. We listen to everyone’s idea. A good idea is a good idea no matter who's it’s coming from. Not everyone is involved in the storyline, some people who do art just want to do art. Sometimes people have wild ideas and those are the ones that pay off at the end of the day. 

The Gamers Lounge: I’ve noticed that there seems to be more things happening in the environment than the first Outlast. Could you speak on that a little bit?

Alexandre: You’ll notice that there are black blobs that are moving around. That’s actually a simple idea I had one night. You know when you see something that moves and it gives you the chills? I thought I don’t like that and I want that in our game. We made sure that when something like that happens it fits logically in our storyline. It happens where it has to happen. 

The Gamers Lounge: How long has Outlast II been in development? 

Alexandre: It’s been in development for about 2 1/2 years and is due fall of 2016. 

Strange of Sword City Review

When was the last time you finished a game and walked away feeling like it was a complete experience? A game that seriously made you have to take a deep breath when it was over and reflect on the time you spent with it? There are plenty of great video games, but there are few classics. For anyone who’s looking for a true RPG experience, Stranger of Sword City may be your new favorite game.

The first thing you’ll do when starting Stranger of Sword City is character creation. You pick the look of your character from over 60 pre-designed pictures of humans, elves, dwarfs and other various looks. Once you’re done picking your look, you must choose your character’s age. This is actually really important, because whatever age you select affects how many Life Points and bonus experience points you receive. Life Points equal how many times a character can die during your play through. Younger characters can have three, middle aged characters two, and elderly characters one. Once your character loses all of their Life Points they can no longer be recovered. Life Points can be recovered by resting your characters for long periods of time or by paying insane amounts of money; however if you have a character with one Life Point, there is no way to revive them. So why would you want to create an old character if they can only die once? The trade is that the older the character the more bonus experience points they receive.

After you select the age of your character, you get the option of “rolling” for bonus experience points, which just means press a button to randomize some numbers. If you have a young character, there’s a good chance that you’ll start off with three bonus xp, but you have the chance to get anything from three to nine. You can press the “roll” button as many times as you’d like, but you’ll soon realize that it will almost always be three or four so when you see a six pop up, you have to really think if you want to risk losing that because it could be a long time to get it again. I usually spent a few minutes rolling to see if I could get something higher and the majority of the time I settled for something in the middle of the minimum and maximum.  

Once you’ve created your character, the story begins. You find yourself in a strange place and don’t know where you are. There are people who excited that you’ve appeared and would like you to help them. It’s not a mind blowing story by any means, but it does have some pretty awesome elements. As time goes on, you are introduced to three different kingdoms. Each one asks for you to give them Blood Crystals that you find after defeating “Lineage” enemies. When you give them these Blood Crystals, you’re able to select a power and it advances the game’s story.   

Each battle in Stranger of Sword City feels like life or death. This isn’t the type of game that you can just queue up attacks while you’re watching Netflix. You have to strategically plan out your magic attacks, heals, and what type of attacks you’re going to do in each and every fight. Because death is permanent and there is no revive spell, you may find yourself in a lot of stressful situations. The best recommendation I can give is to always know where the nearest exit is, because once you head back to town, your health and mana are refilled. The downside to leaving an area is that the enemies on the level will reset and you’ll have to battle a few mandatory fights again. This is really a small price to pay to ensure that your most experienced warriors don’t die. If they do die though, it is not the end of the world, but it will make you have to spend some time grinding to get your newly registered companion up to snuff. I’ll talk about companions in depth a little later, but first I have to talk about Morale Points. 

Morale Points are a unique system that give your character the ability to call certain spells without using any mana. Examples of these spells are health regeneration, stronger attacks, higher defense, and group attacks. Certain skills can even be stacked so they can have a more beneficial effect. As you progress through the story you’ll start to get more Morale Points and you can use more skills in battle. To gain Morale Points all you have to do is attack enemies. It’s not a complicated system, but it is very valuable and should be used generously. You also use Morale Points to ambush enemies to receive better loot, but that will be covered later.

To get new companions all you have to do is register them at the Strangers Guild. The nice thing is that you can register a ton of companions so you can try to out different classes. A nice feature in Stranger of Sword City is that whenever you register a new companion their experience will be based off of the amount off of your main character, however they still start at level one. This makes it a smoother transition than to just have a level 1 character that needs to spend hours leveling up to 10+. You simply take them into battle and as long as they don’t die you’ll see them level from 1 to about 6 after one fight. 

The Stranger’s Guild also allows you to switch party members whenever you like. Whichever party members are not active are being “trained” which means that they are gaining experience. This experience though won’t actually level them, so if you have a level 12 fighter they won’t go from 12 to 13, but rather gain experience that will only require them to fight one or two times to get from level 12 to 13. Every time you check on your resting companions you will receive money that they found on their adventures. I’d recommend that if you have a lot of people sitting out that you check on them whenever you head back to the Strangers Guild so you can collect money and check on their progress. 

 Stranger of Sword City has a unique way of getting better gear for your group. There are locations around the world where you can “ambush” enemies. During the ambush you have a certain amount of turns to kill the leader of the group before they escape. If they escape you just receive experience and some money, but if you successfully kill them you get some type of gear. These ambushes cost Morale Points and the costs increase over time. This prevents you from repeatedly ambushing and getting all the phat loots in one sitting.  One nice feature is that you will know what type of gear you’ll be getting beforehand and you can choose to pass if it’s something you don’t want. This is essential to your party’s success, so I recommend you start getting used to ambushing early in the game. 

As you progress in the game, you’ll find that the maps are fairly large and most of them have an area that is blocked until you progress in the game. Within each level there are stones that you can discover to teleport yourself to and from town. This makes getting in and out of levels so much easier than having to use the main entrance and exit every time. Without these, Stranger of Sword City would be a much longer and much more difficult game. 

Overall it’s really hard to explain enough about the incredible details of Stranger of Sword City that will really do them justice. For anyone who is looking for a real adventure that will test you time and time again, this is definitely a game you want to pick up. I’ve had my PlayStation Vita since launch and I can say honestly that in the last four years that Stranger of Sword City is the game I’ve been looking for. 

Final Score: 4.5/5

Thank you to NIS America for providing the code. 

Catlateral Damage Review

Have you ever wondered why your cat knocks everything off your shelves? You could try it out by setting something on your counter and give it a good hard swipe, but in the end you’re going to be cleaning it up. So what can you do? Thankfully, Fire Hose Games has developed the cel-shaded adventure, Catlateral Damage!

In Catlateral Damage’s Objective mode you play as a disgruntled cat who is upset with their human. Your goal is to knock over a certain amount of objects before your owner gets home. This means climbing on dressers, opening the refrigerator and swiping out all the contents, jumping on bookshelves and sending those classics to floor. There are multiple ways to accomplish your goal. You can pick items up with your mouth, ram things with your head, hold one of your legs straight out and runinto things, or swipe left and right with your paws. The absurd nature of the game, along with the cel-shaded graphics may remind some gamers of the Katamari series and that is never a bad thing! 

When you first start a level your cat is slow and weak, but as time goes on you pick up a ton of upgrades that increase your speed, jump, and swipe ability. If you focus on finding upgrades you’ll be in great shape to dominate your owner's home. Some of the ways you find these upgrades is by interacting with objects such as the litter box, unraveling a roll of toilet paper, and interacting with cat toys that are around the procedurally generated levels. By the final levels your cat will be able to jump halfway across almost any room. 

There are a guarantee of five levels per play through, but if you find a hidden object you can actually increase this amount. I personally was only able to find two extra levels during my play through, although I think there are more.  To finish all of the levels will probably take you around 45 minutes to an hour. If you’re a trophy collector, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll need about 5-6 hours to get all of them. Besides levels, you can also unlock different cats to play as by knocking over pictures of cats or by completing specific objectives that are related to trophies

Catlateral Damage also has a Litterbox mode where you can choose around 10 levels to play in without a time limit. This gives you the opportunity to play without the stress of a constant countdown. There are a few trophies tied to Litterbox mode, but other than that there’s not much to do. 

The questions with all reviews is if the game is fun and worth a purchase. The simple answer is yes, however this does depend on what you’re looking for. If you’ve ever dreamed of playing as a cat whose main goal is to cause the destruction of a home then this is the game for you. It’s also a great game for anyone who is new to gaming or someone who likes games, but isn’t too hardcore. I honestly believe that a grandparent who has had limited exposure to video games could pick up Catlateral Damage and have an absolute blast. If you’re a casual gamer or have someone in your life who is, then 100%, no question Catlateral Damage is for you, but if you consider yourself somewhat above casual you may be a little disappointed. 

Final Score: 3.75/5

Thank you to Fire Hose Games for providing the review code!