Epistory - The Typing Chronicles Review

NOW on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/398850/ Epistory immerses you in an atmospheric action/adventure game where you play a girl riding a giant fox who clears out an insectile corruption from an origami world. As you progress and explore this world, the story literally unfolds and the mysteries of the magic power of the words are revealed.

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. 

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!

Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale Review

When you think of turn based RPGS, you usually imagine 3 or 4 characters taking turns attacking groups of enemies. In Return to PopoloCrois this is true, but with one added element. Before the characters can attack, they have to get in range of their enemy by moving a limited amount of spaces in the battle area. This tweaked approach to standard turn based combat adds enough flavor to make the experience feel new without creating a large learning curve. This allows people who may not be JRPG experts the ability to pick the game up and get the hang of it quickly. If this wasn’t enough to make users feel comfortable, there are encounter rate and difficulty sliders that can be adjusted at any point.

The story revolves around Pietro who is the prince of PopoloCrois. The kingdom is getting ready for a celebration for Pietro’s 13th birthday. The party is short lived, because mysterious creatures start showing up and start corrupting the soil of PopoloCrois.  Once Pietro finds out that a faraway place, Galariland, may be where the monsters are coming from, he convinces the king to let him help. This transportation doesn’t go as smooth as everyone in PopoloCrois would have liked and Pietro is sent away with no way of getting back to his homeland, thus setting up our adventure.

Instead of Pietro dwelling on the fact that he is away from his family without having any way of contacting them, he puts himself to work. After a short amount of time, you receive your first farm where you able to grow vegetables and raise livestock. The farming system is fairly simple and doesn’t require too much of the player’s attention. One of the benefits from keeping your farm active is that you can ship off your vegetables for some extra cash. I never ran into much need for extra cash, but that’s because I will generally grind areas for long periods of time and focus mostly on side quests. For someone who may just want to progress through the story without doing much side work, the farming system would be a good source of income. Another great way to make money on the farm is by capturing butterflies with a net. There is a guy who lives at your farm who will pay top dollar and you also receive gifts for hitting milestones on a stamp card.

Besides Pietro there are 6 playable characters and the story determines which three other characters you will have in your party of four. This means that you don’t keep extra characters with you at all times. Some character combos even have major team attacks. These attacks cost a lot of mana, but it only takes the mana from the person summoning the attack.

As you make your way through the adventure, you’ll start to notice that there is a great amount of voice acting in the game. There are even two Japanese settings, as well as one English setting. One issue that I had with the Return to PopoloCrois is that it’s not fully voice acted. I understand that it takes money and increases the download size, but there were times when I was fully engaged in the audible conversation only to have it go to strictly text. The dialogue in the game can be weird, but it’s absolutely hilarious, so it’s a shame that the player doesn’t receive a full experience.  

The biggest downside to Return to PopoloCrois is that the main story objectives can be repetitive. The player will arrive at a town that has corrupted soil issues that need to be solved. Pietro will of course oblige and help defeat the monsters that are corrupting the land. The objective in itself isn’t bad in any way, but the player does it so often that it just doesn’t give enough variety. The upside is that there are a lot of side quests in the game that you can do when you need a break from the main objective.

In total, there are seven chapters and an epilogue that will take around 25 hours to complete. Once you finish the main story, you unlock new quests and you are still able to use your farms.

Overall Return to PopoloCrois is a fun game that is very accessible to all level of gamers. If you’re looking for a JRPG to play, you definitely should check out Return to PopoloCrois.

3.75 out of 5 Stars

Thank you to Xseed for providing the review 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.

The Gamers Lounge Goes Hands On At The 2016 NIS Press Event

NIS' 2016 lineup is going to be incredibly strong. Here's my impressions of the games that I was able to get my hands on. 

Stranger of Sword City

About the story: Your flight crashes after passing through a mysterious portal. As the sole survivor, you awaken to an unfamiliar land lit by stars you've never seen. This land is Escario, the city of swords.

Stranger of Sword City is a first-person dungeon crawler where survival is the name of the game. You control a party of six characters, but don’t think that having more characters gives you an advantage. I consider myself a pretty seasoned JRPG player, so I figured each battle would be fairly straight forward; however I was wrong. Stranger of Sword City isn’t the type of game where you can press X, kill stuff, and move on. Each battle really makes the player work and this is perfect for those who love a game with a challenge. When I asked about the length of the game, I received a rough estimate of 20-30 hours, but was told that there are multiple endings which add a lot of replay.

One of the things that was mentioned by the NISA team was that the Stranger of Sword City took a more western approach to the artwork to make it look less like an anime. As a result of this, you get a JRPG with art that is sort of similar to Dragons Crown and that’s not a bad thing at all.

Stranger of Sword City will be released March 22nd for the Xbox One and April 26th for the PlayStation Vita.

Grand Kingdom

Uploaded by sonyplaystation on 2016-02-03.

Out of all the games at the NIS Press Event, the one that I heard the most discussion about was Grand Kingdom. This 2D tactical RPG features an awesome battle system where you really have to plan out your attack. Your party of four, as well as the enemies, are spread out on a plain where you must strategically move around and attack. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, where the real challenge comes is that your movement and attacks are limited to the amount of stamina you have. If this wasn’t enough of a challenge, you can also hurt your fellow companions with friendly fire and accidentally heal enemies if they are too close to your allies when you cast a spell / use an item. If you’re a fan of the Valkyria Chronicles series, you will definitely want to check out Grand Kingdom.

One of the greatest features of Grand Kingdom is that you can take your created team online to battle against other players.

Grand Kingdom will be released on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita June 21st. One quick side note, I was able to play Grand Kingdom on both platforms and can honestly say no matter what system you choose, you won’t regret it.

Touhou Genso Rondo

Cubetype has released the debut trailer for the PlayStation 4 version of shoot 'em up Genso Rondo, due out via PlayStation Network in Japan on June 11. The PlayStation 4 version features full high-definition visuals, a UI overhaul, new characters and event CGs, game balance adjustments, system additions and regulations, existing character adjustments and barrage changes, a Story Mode, Arcade Mode, Boss Rush mode, online play, and more.

Love bullet hell games? Then you need to see Touhou Genso Rondo! This game features all the intensity that you would expect when you are being bombarded with thousands of bullets, but with a huge twist. Touhou Genso Rondo is actually a competitive shoot ‘em up (or shmup) that was compared a few times to Street Fighter. Having played very few shmups in my day, I was confused on how it could be compared to a fighting game until I got my hands on it. At the beginning of the game, you select a character that you want to play. You then go into a mode that would be similar to arcade mode in any other fighting game where you take on enemies one on one.

This mix of genres was fascinating, if nothing else. I was pretty confused at how to effectively attack at first, and I ended up getting destroyed in my first attempt. Once I switched characters, I was able to get a better grasp on what I was doing and began defeating opponents. I hope that bullet hell fighters catch on, because I believe that there is a lot of potential and NIS deserves praise for not only introducing this genre to the west, but for taking a chance on a game that you wouldn’t normally see in the states.

Touhou Genso Rondo will be out on the PlayStation 4 this summer.

Criminal Girls: Invite Only PC

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I love my PlayStation Vita, so it’s no surprise that I’m always on the look out for the next game to play on my commute to and from work. One of the games that I keep seeing pop up on Amazon, GameStop or Best Buy is Criminal Girls: Invite Only, but I have been reluctant to pick it up because of my crazy backlog. So when I saw Criminal Girls: Invite Only on display, I figured it would be a good chance to try it out. What I didn’t expect was to get as hooked as I quick as I did. The battle system is fairly unique in which four options appear on the screen and you have to select one. Some of the options can be solo attacks, group attacks, or heals. I should mention that there could possibly be more attacks, but these are just the ones that I saw during my hands on.

Criminal Girls: Invite Only for PC will be released in April of 2016. Now I just have to decide if I want to wait to get it for my PC or if I should just pull the trigger now and get it for the Vita. Also, at the end of the of the announcements, there was a hint in the picture below that Criminal Girls 2 will be coming to the West.

Yomawari: Night Alone

About the Game: A young girl is walking her dog Poro around town at dusk when a tragic accident forces her to return home with only Poro's leash in hand. The girl's sister commands her to stay home while she goes out into the night to search for the dog.

Now for the darkest game at the NIS press event, Yomawari: Night Alone. What seems to start off as an innocent game about a girl and her dog, almost instantly takes a surprisingly dark turn. Unfortunately, the game was still in Japanese when I was playing it, so I couldn’t really advance that far in the story, but what I did gather was that there are ghosts all around that you can reveal by shining your flashlight on them. If you get spotted by a ghost, you must run and hide until the coast is clear. I’d talk more about the story, but I’m going to choose to leave out any details because I believe that it could spoil the game. What I will say though is that if you like games like Limbo, Murasaki’s Baby, and Dokuro then Yomawari: Night Alone will definitely be a game you will want to pick up.

Yomawari: Night Alone will be coming out in North America in late 2016.

There you have it! Overall the 2016 NIS press event was a success in my opinion. They have a great lineup of upcoming games, and the fact that they are making a strong push to PC and are continuing to support the PlayStation Vita, shows that NIS is dedicated to all gamers, no matter what console they prefer. Thanks for reading!

Pictures from the 2016 NIS press event

14 Games That I Am Happy I Got To Try At The Playstation Experience

1. Alienation

Developer, Housemarque, (Super Stardust HD, Resogun) is working on Alienation, the “spiritual successor” to their smash hit, Dead Nation. When you first jump into Alienation, you instantly want to rush into battle, but you’ll quickly learn that’s a huge mistake. My three teammates and I were tasked with setting bombs in three different tunnels and then moving to evacuation point. Being the gamer that I am, I decided to go rogue and try to take on all of the alien scum by myself and was swiftly met with the slimy hand of E.T justice. This is due to the way the game scales when you have more people in your party. If you’re a solo gamer, Alienation will be much more manageable and provide you with a great experience.

If you’re a fan of top-down shooters, you’ll definitely want to keep your eye on Housemarque’s Alienation in 2016.

2. Dead Star

Trailers and videos can give you a good representation of a game, but there are certain games that you really need to play to get a full understanding. Armature Studio’s, Dead Star, was an incredible surprise that I wish I could have kept playing. The twin-stick style shooter puts you into 10v10 multiplayer battle in an area of space called “The Wastes.” Every match has procedurally generated maps that have outposts, hazards, and other secrets that you and your team must find in order to fight another day.

My favorite part of Dead Star was teaming up with a few of my team members to take down one of the larger ships. Our tiny ships trying to do damage to the large enemy shop felt like a boss battle. Eventually we were destroyed and the other team won, but that’s okay. It made me want to redeem myself, but there was a long line of people waiting for their chance to achieve interstellar dominance. 

Dead Star is slated to come out early 2016 on PS4 and PC and I can’t wait for my chance to return to the fight.

3. EarthNight

When I first saw Cleaversoft’s runner, EarthNight, at E3 I was instantly hyped. I love the challenge of trying to exceed my highest distance run, while picking up collectibles and completing objectives. This however is not exactly what you will be doing in EarthNight. During the game you’ll be running down the back of a dragon using Stanley, a freelance photographer, or Sydney, a 14 year-old girl with a very useful double jump ability. The goal is to get to the head of the dragon where you will have to stab them in the head repeatedly using timed attacks. These timed attacks add an extra challenge to the game, because you can’t just mash until success.

Another critical feature to EarthNight is that you can speed up or slow down your character by pressing forward or backward on the directional pad. This gives you a little more flexibility while trying to jump on platforms that are in the air or when trying to kill/avoid an enemy. The ability to speed up and slow down can also get you in trouble because you may try to avoid an enemy just to be damaged by another.

EarthNight may seem like a traditional runner, but the little tweaks to this genre change the game enough to give you an enjoyable, yet challenging experience. EarthNight will be cross-buy for Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita hopefully by late 2016, early 2017.

4. FutureGrind

Have you ever come across a game that appears so simple only to find that it’s incredibly challenging? Well, FutureGrind is exactly that. What should be an easy task of matching the specific color wheels to certain color tracks proves to be difficult for even the most seasoned gamer. There are times when you are speeding along, feeling pretty good about your last landed trick only to crash and burn on the next one. At every “death” you get a result screen that tells you just how far you made it. My average was about 60-65% before I inevitably died a fiery death. This simple, yet addicting and challenging game has the same difficulty of OlliOlli. Sure you could blast through the course barely getting any points, but it’s so much more fun to be a savage racking up some serious multipliers.

FutureGrind is being developed by Milkbag Games and is coming to Playstation 4 and Steam in 2016.

5. Ratchet & Clank

One line that was surprisingly short was Ratchet & Clank. I figured that gamers old and new would want a crack at the newest iteration of what was once a critical part of the Sony arsenal, even if it is a re-imagining of the first game in the series. As you may expect, you’ll find yourself blasting enemies with wildly creative guns while platforming your way through obstacle. Gamers that have played any of the R&C can rest easy knowing that this classic series has returned to it’s true form while gamers that have never played it can finally know what all the fuss is about. 

Insomniac Games is planning on releasing the re-imagining of Ratchet & Clank in the spring of 2016.

6. RocketsRocketsRockets

Radial Games’, RocketsRocketsRockets may be one of the smoothest games I’ve played on the Playstation 4. I played a multiplayer game with one of my friends and was sort of disoriented at first by the speed and fluid movement, but after a few matches you really start to develop the necessary abilities to take out your opponent. The rockets also have three different attacks, each with their own strength and weaknesses. This adds a bit of strategy to the game and really makes you think about what you should do next.

According to the Radial Games website, RocketsRocketsRockets has a multiplayer, singleplayer, and Zen Mode “where Rockets learn to love.” I don’t know how in depth the singleplayer mode is, but my multiplayer experience is enough to buy the game when it comes out on the Playstation 4 sometime this year or early 2016. One quick note, if you can’t wait to get your hands on RocketsRocketsRockets, you can pick it up on Steam.

7. Shadow of the Beast

Heavy Spectrum Entertainment Labs’ Shadow of the Beast was definitely the bloodiest game I played at the Playstation Experience. In this side-scrolling beat em up you find yourself controlling the savage beast, Aarbron, who will literally rip apart anyone or anything who stands in his way. Besides the graphics and the smooth gameplay, I’d have to say the quick time style rage chains were the highlight of my experience.

Once you fill up your blood meter you can activate a combat mode that allows you to chain together attacks. The more you chain together, the quicker the QTE’s have to be. I know a lot of people hate these sort of button prompts, but if you fail one it’s no big deal.

You can expect Shadow of the Beast to be released in Q1 of 2016.

8. Headlander

Double Fine has a lot going on these days with developing Psychonauts: In The Rhombus of Ruin, Psychonauts 2, remastering Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle as well as publishing GNOG and Gang Beasts, it’s surprising that they have time to develop Headlander, but lucky for us gamers, they are. Headlander at first seems like it is going to be a slightly serious game, but within the first few minutes the Double Fine charm sets in. To solve puzzles you must launch your head off of your body and float around the level to find solutions. Your head also gains powerups such as a vacuum that can suck the heads off of the bodies of enemies. You can then land on those bodies and use them to help you progress. If you love Double Fine games, then Headlander is right up your alley!

Headlander is being published by Adult Swim Games and will be out in second half of 2016

9. Super Impossible Road

Super Impossible Road was another delightful surprise for me. What seems like a simple racing game has an incredible amount of strategy that adds intensity to every race. You start off racing against five other balls and to win you must fall off of the edge to the track below, but there’s a catch. You only have 5 seconds of free failing time to reach another portion of the track or else you are sent to the last checkpoint. One of the nicest features of Super Impossible Road is if you fall off of the track and don’t think you will make it to the next part within 5 seconds you can press a button to respawn and try again. This makes it so you aren’t committed to every move you make and allows you give it another go. I was racing against another player and was basically in last place the whole time, but once I got the hang of the game I finished in 3rd place, which was well ahead of my opponent. This just goes to show that no lead in Super Impossible Road is safe until you cross the finish line. 

Super Impossible Road is being developed by Kevin Ng and is coming to the Playstation 4 hopefully sooner than later.  

10. Trillion: God of Destruction

As an RPG fan, I feel that there have been a ton of strategy RPGs lately. This is especially true when it come to the Playstation Vita, so when I hear of another strategy RPG I tend to groan.  Luckily the line for Trillion: God of Destruction was reasonable and I needed a rest. Trillion’s premise is that the final boss has 1,000,000,000,000 HP and you are chipping away at him as you progress through the game. The strategy of the game comes from it’s unique movement system. You get a certain amount of points that allow you to move/use special abilities. If you go into a battle with low points because you moved too much, you’ll struggle through the battle. This prevents users from just wandering around and makes you really think about your next move. This twist on strategy games was enough to keep me intrigued, because it’s not the same old style game I’ve been playing since Ogre Battle.

Trillion: God of Destruction will be out in the Spring of 2016.

11. Fallen Legion

One of the games that you heard a lot of people talking about around the show floor was Fallen Legion. The game was so popular that it was one of the few games that actually had one station set up on each floor at the Moscone Center.  This action RPG has a shakes up the genre by adding a unique combo system. You queue up attacks for four characters using triangle, square, x, and circle. The twist is that you just can’t mash the buttons. You have to make quick decisions to ensure maximum damage. While all of this is going on you have to block your opponent’s devastating attacks. It may take gamers a few encounters to get comfortable, but for anyone who enjoys side scrolling beat em ups or have experience playing Dragon’s Crown will really enjoy Fallen Legion.

Fallen Legion is set to release the summer of 2016.

12. London Heist: The Getaway

The one word that comes to mind when talking about London Heist: The Getaway is “wow.” I knew VR was going to be pretty cool, but I never expected it to impress me as much as it did. In the London Heist demo you are sitting in the passenger seat of a van cruising down the highway. The small details like being able to change the radio dials, open and close the air vents, pick up soda cans, open the glove box, and even open the car door and lean out allowing you to look behind you gives the user an experience like no other. All of this is serious amazing, but I haven’t even got to the shooting yet.

Eventually enemies ambush you and your driver. The driver tosses you an Uzi and then it’s time to take care of business. One of the greatest features of the game which was made the entire experience feel much more realistic was the manual reload. As your gun empties the clip falls out and you have to pick up another one and place it in the bottom of the gun.

There is no release date on the Playstation VR which is fine because I just want the first version of the device to be as close to flawless as possible.

13. Tumblestone

If you’re into puzzle games, look no further than Tumblestone. The goal is simple, match 3 like color squares and move on, but as time goes on this of course becomes more difficult. There are a lot of times where you find yourself stuck and you have to refresh the level. I say refresh instead of reload because you don’t have to start from scratch, you just have to reset the game board. I played a four player match with two other people and an AI and at first we all sat there thinking about our moves more than actually removing blocks. By the end of the session we found ourselves neck and neck in intense color matching battles. If you love games like Puyo Puyo Fever, Tetris, and Dr. Mario then Tumblestone is definitely something you want to check out.

The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild’s Tumblestone will be released on Steam, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, iOS, Android, Windows phones, Facebook, and Ouya in the summer of 2016. 

14. Horizon Chase

As soon as I saw Horizon Chase I was reminded of being a kid playing Rad Racer. This throwback to old school racing games may not push any consoles to the limit, but the awesome update to the classics runs smooth looks great. None of the tracks that I played were too difficult, but the speed in which your car is moving can sometimes throw you off of your game. I don’t mean to say this as a knock on the game by any means and in fact it the intensity was a welcome change from the modern racing games that have been coming out lately.

The Horizon Chase that is currently out on iOS and Android has 72 tracks and I expect all of those tracks to make it over to the Playstation version when it comes out (hopefully) in 2016.
 

The 2016 Playstation Experience was an absolute hit. Gamers may have been disappointed with some of the announcements or lack of announcements at the keynote, but video games aren’t just about the multi-million dollar blockbusters. Most of my favorite games were the smaller titles with independent teams that were trying to make a name for themselves in an industry that is stacked with heavy hitters. It would be unreasonable to ask anyone to buy all of these games, but any of these games in this article are worth your time and money.

Thanks for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below in the comments section. 

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 Review

Back before first-person shooters ruled the gaming world, point and click adventure games were king. They were full of humor, difficult challenges, and incredible stories. The Book of Unwritten Tales 2, developed by King Art Games, attempts to bring back all of those qualities to long time gamers, as well as new gamers.

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is the second installment in the critically acclaimed Book of Unwritten Tales series. When you first start up the game, you are controlling a Nate, who is falling through the sky. This brief introduction to the game not only introduces you to the controls, but also the light-hearted and hilarious tone of the game. As I mentioned before, the Book of Unwritten Tales is about 20 hours, so having a bit of comedy throughout it can really help the player get through any parts where they may be frustrated. I’d also like to mention frustration doesn’t happen often, but the nature of a point and click adventure game is that it may take a lot of trial and error to complete tasks.

One of the biggest concerns about console point and click adventure games is that they don’t translate well from PC. This is however not an issue. There wasn’t one time when I thought that I would rather have a keyboard and mouse to play the game. By making solid controls, King Art Games really opened up the accessibility to console gamers.  

Players who have played the first game will recognize the four main characters: Nate, Ivo, Wilbur, and Critter. The characters have been updated and do look a bit better than their previous models. This doesn’t make or break the game, but it is nice that the characters have had some work done. Besides the characters being updated, King Art Games did a great job with the scenery. You may notice that all of the scenes are pretty much static, but that each part has a tremendous amount of detail. You will also travel to so many different locations that it’s really hard to ever feel bored with your surroundings, which is important because even though there are a lot of different locations, you do frequently visit them.

The worst part about the Book of Unwritten Tales 2 isn’t anything related to gameplay, graphics, voice acting, or anything else related to the actual game. In fact, the game is a solid experience. The worst thing is the odds weighing against it. In 2015, if you don’t have a point and click adventure game with the name Telltale on it, it’s going to be a tough sell. Pair this with the fact that it’s digital only and you may have two strikes against you in the eyes of gamers, but I’m here to tell you to give this game a chance. Not only will you be supporting a developer who seems to have a bright a future, but you will also get a true fantasy experience that you will not forget.

There are plenty of games out there that are worth your time and Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is one of them. I’m so lucky that I got to review this game, because I don’t know when I would have ever gotten around to playing it otherwise and that’s a shame. Do yourself a favor and put the Book of Unwritten Tales series and King Art Games on your radar, because I believe they are here to stay.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to Nordic Games for supplying the review code.

Persona 4: Dancing All Night Review

Persona 4: Dancing All Night has two distinct modes: Story mode and Free mode. Being a Persona game, the story mode is very interesting, a tad bit weird, and heavy on the dialogue. From the beginning of the game there is a very eerie tone. This isn’t what you may expect from a rhythm game, because dancing games generally have an overall positive feeling, but that's okay. The dark tone of Persona 4: Dancing All Night is balanced by the uplifting soundtrack that is really enjoyable.

The game’s major events are all surrounding the upcoming “Love Meets Bond” music festival. The two main acts of the festival are Rise Kujikawa, a former idol making her return after she has taken a brief hiatus and the Kanamin Kitchen Girls, a very popular group of idols. Rise asks the familiar faces of Persona 4, Yu, Kanji, Teddy, Naoto, and a few more to be her back up dancers. Shortly after Rise introduces the supporting act of the Kanamin Kitchen Girls to the rest of the gang, the Kanamin Kitchen girls get sucked into a mysterious world known as the Midnight Stage. The Persona 4 team decides that they should enter the Midnight Stage world and rescue the Kanamin Kitchen Girls and thus the adventure begins.

Now that we’ve gone through the introduction, we know the premise, and exactly what are our goal is. This means that we get to dance, but why dancing? Inside the Midnight Stage, you are unable to get hurt or inflict pain. There are shadow-like monsters that reside in the Midnight Stage that can only be dispersed by showing off your best dance moves. As long as you can keep the shadow monsters happy by getting high combos with a low amount of misses, the monsters will be forced to leave and you will live to dance another day. 

At first the dancing mechanic feels a little confusing, because the game uses controls rather than the touch screen. This feels like a missed opportunity, but it quickly becomes a welcome feature. Persona 4: Dancing All Night doing away with the touch screen means that you use the up, left, and down arrows as well as the triangle, circle and cross buttons to connect with beats. You also frequently use the left and right stick to add optional bonuses to your combo score and Fever meter, which gives you a score boost. Don’t worry if you miss these score boosts though, because there is no negative impact on your overall combo or score if you do miss. For me, using the controls for Persona 4: Dancing All Night rather than the touchscreen was better because it never felt like I was blocking what I was doing on screen.This is an issue that I've run into with touch screen games in the past. There were even times where it was hard to see my character was dancing, but I was successfully completing the objective. Luckily, there is a handy replay mode that allows you to watch your performance after you finish the dance. 

While the gameplay is fun and there are a lot of songs to play, Persona 4: Dancing All Night does have a downside. The actual dancing is great and you can’t wait for the next song, but you're going to have to get used to waiting around for a long time. The game is so dialogue heavy that the time between dances can feel like an eternity. After the first few hours of the game the dances become more frequent, but then comes another problem. There are four Kanamin Kitchen Girls that you have to rescue individually. This wouldn't be a big deal, but with a limited amount of variety between scenes it causes a lot of repetition. This repetition can quite honestly feel like a chore a times, because you are conflicted. You don't want to skip the story, but you really want to get to the next song. I think it’s commendable for any rhythm game to have a story mode, but maybe there is a reason why the majority don’t.

I found myself very tempted to use the quick skip option to get through the text, but I never used it. Persona 4: Dancing All Night is considered canon, so it is important to the story arch of the Persona series. As a true fan of Persona, you definitely want to keep track of what’s happening, but even at times the most hardcore Persona fans may find themselves eyeing that skip text button.  The good thing is, once you get toward the last few hours of the game it really starts to pick up. You find yourself dancing more and the story becomes much more engaging.

The other aspect of the game is Free Mode. This is exactly what it sounds like, a mode where you are free to dance as much as you’d like! This is where Persona 4: Dancing All Night really shines. You start off with a select amount of songs and as you progress you unlock more songs. On completion of songs, you also receive a certain amount of money based off the difficulty you select: easy, normal, hard and eventually the unlockable difficulty All Night. The higher the difficulty and the better you do, the more money you earn. The money you earn is used to buy costumes, accessories, and items. While costumes and accessories are purely aesthetic, items can make dancing easier or harder. If you decide to select something that makes your dance routine easier, you will receive a negative bonus on your score and  it will lower the amount of money you earn. If you choose to make your difficulty harder, you get a positive bonus that increases your points and the money you earn. Despite having a rough time making it through the story mode, I still find myself making playing the free mode, even after I completed everything 100%.

The verdict on Persona 4: Dancing All Night is that the Story Mode can drag on for what feels like too long at times, but whenever you need a break from the story you can always get your dance on in free mode. When I first played through the game, I focused solely on the Story Mode. I don’t know if this was the right way to go, because I really wanted to get to the next dance. I recommend mixing it up whenever you feel like you just want to engage in some gameplay and then head back to the story to discover all the hidden secrets of the Midnight Stage.

3.75 out of 5.

Thanks to Atlus for supplying a code for review. 

Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & the Monster Seal Review

For the last few weeks I have been playing Dungeon Traveler’s 2: The Royal Library & the Monster Seal. My time with the First Person dungeon crawler was spent sweating through tough battles, leveling and re-leveling my characters, dying, and then quickly regretting the fact that I wasn’t saving often enough. When I first started the game, I figured I would be able to move through story, rapidly press X during the the battles and experience some fan service, however this was not the case. Dungeon Travelers 2 isn’t a game that you can just grind while you watch Netflix. Each encounter can quickly turn deadly forcing you back to your last save.

During the story you play as Fried, a member of the Royal Library, who is putting together a “suppression team.” Fried is very serious about his mission and even though his team is filled with beautiful women, he doesn’t let this distract him. Fried’s team is dedicated to clearing the monsters out of the different dungeons in hopes in restoring peace to the Kingdom of Romulea.

At the beginning of your adventure you’ll start with a small team, but it will eventually grow to five playable members. You and your crew will head to many different dungeons with individual themes such as a forest, cave, catacombs, village, and more. As you progress, the dungeons will begin to introduce different elements that will increase the difficulty of your task. You may find yourself walking into anti-magic zones, where as you may have guessed, make it to where you can’t use magic, dark zones which don’t let you look at your map, warps that take you to another part of the dungeon, and traps that can poison, freeze, and inflict your party with all sorts of debuffs. There are also fake walls that you can only walk through if you have a flashlight or an active light spell. Pair these with epic battles and you will find yourself constantly face to face with death. The best advice I can give to make sure you stay alive is to always have an emergency exit which will teleport you back to the beginning of the dungeon. Also, make your map your best friend. It’s better to head back to town to be refreshed than to die and reload a save.

One of the aspects that I really enjoyed in Dungeon Travelers 2 was the random occurrences that happen in the dungeons. Sometimes you’ll come across shops, food vendors, and blacksmiths that can enchant your items. This can help give you that extra boost to keep going, which will prevent you from having to return to town. It’s advisable to always buy one thing from the food vendors to help restore your party's HP, TP (the Dungeon Travelers equivalent to mana) and motivation, which will increase the frequency of group attacks. These group attacks can really help the speed of your battles and allow you to progress a lot quicker.

One negative aspect that you are sure to run into while saving the world is that your bag only has 30 storage spots which can fill up quickly. You can throw some items away to free up space, but discarding items is always tough because you never know what you’ll need later. Luckily, back at your guild you can store up to 999 different items. It is highly recommended that you use this storage for items that you can’t use in the field because any drop from an enemy when you have full bags is gone forever.

As you progress through the game you start to pick up more party members with specialized classes. They will start off as one of the main classes, Fighter, Magic User, Maid, Spieler, and Scout. Once you reach level 15, you can choose to branch into 2-3 subclasses, and then again at level 30 where you can choose between 3-4 advanced subclasses. This customization of characters is incredibly deep and gives users the chance to really tailor their style of play. I personally like to play with a much more physical damage approach, but other people may enjoy more magic based gaming.  A quick tip would be as soon as you hit level 15, get ready to switch your class, and head out to the field to see how your character’s new skills are in action. Once you experience their skills, head back to the Royal Library and reset your character to another class just to see which one feels better. This will prevent you from leveling a character that isn’t as effective as you may like. Dungeon Travelers 2 gives you the opportunity to respec your character’s skills, but you can only reset your level to 1, 15, and 30. Leveling to 20+ with a character you end up not liking and having to reset to level 15 will set you back some precious progression time. I ran into this when I hit level 30. I was absolutely demolished by a boss. I decided to reset my characters and focus on leveling specific skills instead of spreading out my skill points into multiple categories. Having the option to customize your characters and resetting their skill points is a welcome feature because you never feel stuck. There is always the option to make adjustments that will improve your squad.

Some of the classes may seem fairly straightforward, but there are a couple unique ones that really set Dungeon Travelers 2 apart from other JRPGs. If you’re a seasoned veteran in the genre then you’re probably used to having a fighter for your main source of physical damage, a Magic User for healing and magic spells, and another source of support damage. This is the case, but when you add two new classes, the game gets really interesting.

The Spieler and the corresponding intermediate and advanced classes rely on random chances that will affect the battle. When you cast one of the random spells you may damage your enemies, heal yourself, or buff your partners. The Spieler’s normal weapon attacks are on par with the other secondary damage classes, but having the random spells make the class both different and a lot of fun. I’d recommend playing around with the Spieler to see what feels best for you. I tried out the Doll Master class, which gives you dolls that attack enemies or heal allies randomly. I like the idea, but I felt like I wasn’t benefiting as much as I’d like. I switched to the Trickster and felt much more in control of what was happening, even if it was random.

The Maid and her subsequent classes are easily my favorite in the entire game. Her abilities to recover HP and TP, as well as boost Experience make her essential to any team. While the HP, TP, and EXP spells  were the ones I felt were most important for my party, she also has defense, speed, critical rate and other support spells that will help you along get through what can be a pretty difficult game. The best part about her skills is that they don’t require TP. The fact that you can restore someone’s TP without using TP, gives this character a huge edge. Once you get into the more advanced classes you can start singing songs that will restore HP and TP every time it’s someone’s turn. This huge boost will sometimes make it feel like you are in complete control of the battle and in Dungeon Travelers 2, that is a feeling you want.

There are a lot of aspects that go into the battles. Each character’s speed, weapon speed, chant speed, and enmity ( which is how often a character is likely to be attacked) are all variables that you want to consider before heading to a dungeon and it can really turn into a numbers game.

You definitely don’t want your healer to have a high enmity, or higher enmity than your fighter classes. You also want everyone to have the highest speed possible so they can attack often, but you want your chant speed down so spells don’t take too long to cast. This may be confusing without actually playing the game, but the tutorials will give you long explanations that you should really pay attention to.

As you naturally progress you’ll find better items. Every point counts, but then you’ll start to get pieces that have resistances and bonuses on them. These are great, but eventually you’ll be faced with replacing one of those bonuses with a piece of armor that has no bonus, but higher defense and you’ll really sit there and wonder what to do. You could always keep both in your bag to try out, but that goes against your bag storage and it turns into a much bigger concern. Maximizing your attributes by making slight sacrifices will happen and you’ll only hope that you made the right decision.

Once you get the hang of the battles, things will get easier. This is not to be taken for granted. There is always a chance that your healer or fighter will be obliterated with an instakill attack and you’ll have to tough it out without them. Even with four remaining members, if my healer or fighter went down it was a struggle to get through the fight. Dungeon Travelers 2 really makes a point to make every member feel just as important as the other. The moral of the story is take care of your party members and they’ll take care of you.

Overall, Dungeon Travelers 2 will give you between 60-80 hours of gameplay. You will find yourself shocked by the deep customization in both the characters and equipment options. There is plenty to do, but patience is required. There will be times where you are sitting in a dungeon wondering where to go next, but once you figure it out you’ll feel an incredible rewarding sensation. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a challenge and isn’t afraid to stare death in the face.

4.5 out 5

Thanks to Atlus for supplying a code for review. 

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Review

After I finished The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, I had to take a step back and really think about everything that had happened.

You play as Paul Prospero, a detective that is working his last case. Right before you start your journey, you are prompted with the message, “This game is a narrative experience and does not hold your hand.” I think giving the gamer this message prevents a lot of frustration, as at times you will find yourself wandering around with no idea of what to do next.

As you start to make your way around the starting area, it’s almost impossible not to be instantly amazed with the scenery. This made me want to explore and really see every trail and every little hidden path. Pair this with the  sounds of running water, wind, and the subtle, yet creepy music and you have a wonderfully engaging experience.

Just a little bit of the stunning scenery in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. 

Paul Prospero, being the outstanding detective that he is, shows off his abilities as you solve puzzles. When he sees something (or someone) on the ground, a bunch of floating text questions will appear that act like running thoughts to give you insight to what is happening. Once you put together all the clues in the area, you will see memory fragments that fly to different locations. Then, you have to put these memory fragments in chronological order to wrap up the puzzle to see what had occurred. Early in the game this can be difficult, but once you get to the end you have a pretty good idea of what is required to complete the game’s task.

Making your way through the world, you will start to slowly see that things are strange. There are many supernatural references that are introduced gradually, but eventually they come together to shape a very bizarre world. As weird as the world is, you never feel like it’s too much or that you are overwhelmed.

Now for the bad part. Once the game was done, I can say that I had a lot of fun, but there were some technical issues that made the game slightly frustrating.

With a game that is so heavy on exploring, I decided to trek around and just see what the world was like. I started to notice that some of the textures on the floor were very dark and that there was a large field that lacked rocks, trees, and any other plant life. At one point, I saw that a huge boulder had missing textures and I could see straight through it. This didn’t bother me at first, because I figured that I just needed to restart the game. Unfortunately, this didn’t fix the issues. I started to ignore this, because they weren’t really hurting my progress, but unfortunately that changed.

At one point in the game, you have to cross a very long bridge...this would have been nice, but the bridge was invisible. Luckily, the game had been out for awhile on PC so I was able to look up a walkthrough of what to do. Once I found the entrance to the unintentionally invisible bridge I was able to walk across. It was both funny and unsettling to have my character floating about 100 feet above a waterfall. I got across to the other side no problem, but the graphic issues didn’t stop there.
 

This is where the bridge should be. 

There was a house I was supposed to enter that had the next puzzle. The house is supposed to be abandoned with a fully textured outside, but the house that was in front of me looked like it had been burned down and had pieces floating in the air. Once again I restarted the game, but this didn’t solve the problem. Unfortunately, I had to use a walkthrough a few times because of this and it was frustrating that I was brought out of a game that I was really enjoying.

                                           What I saw                                                                              What I was supposed to see

After I passed the puzzle, the game performed flawlessly for the rest of the story. One of the nice things is once you complete the game, you are able to fast travel to any of the puzzles that you may have missed. This is completely possible considering the game is so open and doesn’t require you to complete everything to get to the end. 

I should also mention that I have watched videos of people playing on The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on the Playstation 4 and there doesn’t seem to be any issues. I hope what I encountered were isolated incidents or at least extremely rare occurrences, because I think the developers did a wonderful job developing a truly remarkable story. 

Despite the issues I had with the game, I do think it is worth your time. This is even more true if you have enjoyed games that are heavy on story, such as Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Murdered: Soul Suspect.

3.5 out of 5

Thanks to The Astronauts for supplying a code for review. 

A side note that has no bearing on my overall feeling on the game is that it is really easy to get 100% of the trophies.