Bounty Train Review: Early American Elitism

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Release Date: May 16, 2017
Developer: Corbie Games

Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Platforms: PC, Mac
Price: $24.99

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Bounty Train is a curious game. It's a sandbox trading sim/adventure game/railway enthusiast entertainment piece that, while the positions are static and the routes are fixed, still manages to give the player a great deal of movement. It's a genre bending game with multiple story routes and an excellent way to generate micronarratives as you go. It's also one of the few games where you can lose during the tutorial levels, thus causing the game to shrug and go "Well, the game's over, but here, keep playing after the game over screen." But unlike other genre-bending sandbox sims, Bounty Train keeps a focus on fixed points instead of free exploration of the map, allowing the player to focus on things like the complex economy, resource management, and the interplay between various factions and characters, opening up in a way few games of its type do, and creating an entirely unique experience.

Bounty Train's story begins sometime during the Civil War with you and a busted-up locomotive with a cargo compartment. In order to get the majority shares of your father's railroad company and keep the business in the family, you must gather up your siblings, upgrade your train, and slowly expand your rail lines across the United States in an effort to achieve rail dominance and fulfill your father's dream of a transcontinental railroad. Along the way, you will tangle with bandits, get caught up in the Civil War, trade with natives, and engage with numerous dreamers, schemers, con men, and ne'er do wells along the great iron rails. But, lest that sound too sparse, you can also hire a team of hardened gunmen yourself and go after bounties, aid bandits, or smuggle contraband across the United States if you so wish, allowing a remarkable freedom in your quest to fulfill your father's legacy. 

It's actually kind of relaxing at times. Travel is as simple as clicking on the assigned city, figuring how much coal it will take to get there and how much weight you can take with you, then hitting "travel" when you've worked out your route. Along the way, you might run into random events, but most of the time they're very well-defined on the map and you can route around them if you just want to focus on the other aspects. The other cool thing about this is that the events usually follow on storylines from previous events, so you get the sense that you're interacting with a living world. It's a pretty intriguing world, too, with people trying to involve you in get rich quick schemes and various conflicts all over the place, or telling you their life story before joining up with you. 

In fact, a lot goes into the dialogue. Even the NPCs feel like full characters with backstories and personalities, from the person you have to run from New York up to Portland, all the way to the young woman with an abhorrent bandit admirer who gets angry when he's told "no" one too many times. The dialogue also allows a tremendous amount of branching in terms of paths, with multiple methods of completing the main quests, and even some of the sidequests depending on how you react to certain characters. Between this and the extensive quest lines and numerous trips back and forth to the various cities, it does a lot to make the player feel invested in the world. 

Adding to the concrete details are both the variety of train components-- all based on real historical locomotives-- and the in-depth but surprisingly easy to understand economy that charts prices not just on supply and demand, but on the political climate, as the ensuing revolution causes various things to become contraband and prices to spike and fall based on the needs of the various cities. It helps root the game in a sense of history and place, and that accuracy helps sell the realism of the world, even if things are a little more simplified for the sake of gameplay. 

But there are definite problems that need to be addressed. Combat is a kind of scattershot slog, a real-time with pause battlefield where you defend the train from a variety of threats by positioning your people so their field-of-vision cone reaches the enemies and then hoping for the best, occasionally hitting active skills or repairing the train as need be. However, the lack of movement range within the train means that positioning becomes more or less a static thing, as there are only so many optimal positions that exist. The other issue with this is that there's very little range in terms of combat, with a handful of options at most at any given time, the best of which seem to be basic ranged and hand to hand. The other issue is that eventually, when the train becomes overwhelmed in the early stages of the game (before you can upgrade to something a little better) you have to choose between letting your train get overrun by enemies or the train moving forward, making fleeing from the combats an unusually dangerous proposition as opposed to trying to fight.

The difficulty spikes in combat also highlight how grindy the game can get. After the initial tutorial stages, unlocking new routes and upgrading your train can take a lot of swanning up and down the East Coast trading and ferrying people, with quests and assignments not necessarily carrying the load. Highlighting this is the way that, if you aren't careful, there are a few ways to lose in the early stages of the tutorial, from getting stranded in a city with no money to getting killed on the way through a story mission meant to teach you the game, to simple bad luck in an introductory combat. It's frustrating to have to either restart the tutorial again and again or to throw up your hands and play the game in sandbox mode. 

But these issues do little to detract from the true meat of the game, that being a fun trading/adventure hybrid. While the grind may get a little difficult to deal with at times, the result is still a fascinating experience, a free-wheeling trading adventure through early America that offers a decent challenge and easier controls than most trading sims, but with a learning curve that takes a bit to get used to. All in all, though, it's an excellent game. 

Pros:

- Trading game with relatively easy interface

- Incredible depth and complexity

- Great writing

- Can generate stories easily

Cons:

- Can get grindy at the beginning of the game

- Combat kind of kills the game's pacing and rhythm

MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies Review

Well, at least I have to give them credit for trying something new. 

MegaTagmension: Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies is another entry in Compile Heart's massive moneymaking monstrosity, the Neptune universe. As with previous versions, the characters are all anthropomorphized versions of consoles, game companies, game journalism magazines, and other game-related stuff. Depending on the game, they go to school, conquer the world, have adventures in old, broken game consoles, and a ton of other wacky adventures. Seriously, the franchise has covered almost everything now. I'm just waiting for a Mario Party game to seal the deal. 

This time around, the Gamindustri gang is at a failing academy purportedly inhabited by both human and Gamindustri inhabitants known as Gamicademi. To drum up interest in the school, Blanc and Neptune decide they're going to film a zombie movie starring them and their friends. Coincidentally, there's an actual zombie outbreak just as they start filming, causing them to band together both to film the movie, and save the school from the zombie invasion. 

Anyone who's familiar with Dynasty Warriors or other spectacle brawler games is going to feel instantly at home mowing down hordes of zombies. It's hard not to. It's also good to know that no matter how many times you plow into a massive cluster of enemies, sword at the ready, knocking them hither and yon, it's still instantly satisfying. MegaTagmension also gives the player a huge cast to knock people around, running the gamut from fast sword strikers to blunt technicians to a brawler who hits people with a giant prawn. That's all very well and good overall, and I love a good spectacle game. There's nothing like it in the world. 

Now if only they'd just stayed with that. The game is a mess of half-visible features, including having game modes only accessible from the main menu (instead of, you know, actually inside the game,) calling itself MegaTagmension and yet somehow actually not having tag-team capabilities, and a tips screen where all the tips helpfully refer to things like being able to talk on the shop screen, a thing that doesn't even seem to be in the game. On top of all of this, the lock-on feature, something that really should be a prominent part of a game that throws a billion enemies at you at once, is intermittent at best. Most of the time, I activated it by accident in an attempt to do a super-move. When the enemy immediately died upon contact, I then felt kind of stupid. 

And it's a shame, because this is actually one of the few Neptunia games I could see myself revisiting again and again. When the controls work, they're smooth. The game balance is decent, even if it's nigh-impossible sometimes to hit a boss the proper way. Some of the between-scenes dialogue is great, and the various characters are unique enough to keep me coming back for more. But the flaws overshadow the fun of the game. Eventually, playing through just becomes and endless slog of zombies that won't quite die, powers that won't quite activate, a lack of hit recognition, a random drop system that feeds grinding, and just some odd choices mechanically. 

So, in the end, it's not a bad game. I'm still not as much a fan of the franchise as I was, and it's not something I'll play by appointment, but if there's a sale, pick it up. It's fun, and the range of characters, customization, and replayability makes this at least worth a ride part of the way. But if you're looking for a spectacle battler or mass-combat slash-em-up, I think there's actually Dynasty Warriors on PC now. 

3/5

20XX Review

There's been a trend recently for "difficult" games, and I hope we see the end of it soon. For all the reputation Dark Souls has, it's not actually difficult so much as it is a game that rewards learning and incentivizes a certain method of play. But because gamers apparently want "bragging rights," or to know that they've defeated something with a certain degree of challenge,  some developers and designers tend to front-load their games with a bunch of content designed to stack the deck against the player and make the game that much more difficult to get through. The peak of this is of course Darkest Dungeon, but other games have definitely been stepping it up.

Which leads us to 20XX. The new Mega Man-themed roguelike platformer from Batterystaple games combines two genres known mainly for their difficulty: old-school platform games, and roguelikes. The issue with this combination is that old-school platformers trade on repetition, muscle memory, and pattern recognition to move their players through the game, and roguelikes usually throw most of this out the window, meaning the players have to learn more to rely on skills and powerups than figuring out level layout. 

In theory, it's an excellent idea, marrying the difficulty and skill-honing of roguelikes with the quick-reaction ethos that drives older platformer games. In practice, however, it's a nightmare. 

An average round of 20XX goes like this: You leave your home base to a procedurally generated level (it's either Vaculab, the jungle level, or Agnisort, the lava/factory stage.) You fight your way through the enemies and hazards to the boss, and on defeating the boss, gain their power as a weapon for later stages. You then re-up, get some upgrades, and continue on to the next stage from there. Or you die, forfeit everything except the upgrade points (known as "soul chips) that you collected up to that point, and are dropped back to the base to upgrade and try again. 

This is kind of frustrating. While the upgrades offer some grading to the overall difficulty cliff, the game can get repetitive quickly. Further compounding things, the way the level structure, or as they call it "the network" changes every time but seems to spit out the same or similar boss combinations each time also gets a little repetitive and frustrating. I'd like it to show me more, but it doesn't really show me enough. And while the variety of upgrades (both passive and active) make up for it a little, it still falls short. 

Which is a shame, because, and I will say this, unless you're getting some kind of nostalgia fix via emulator, this is the best Mega Man game you will play all year. The controls are smooth, the enemy placement makes sense in spite of the procedural generation, and learning the patterns and movements is actually a fairly painless process. This is a good game. It's also a significantly more fair game than a lot of the "difficult" games that wind up making it into general prominence. 

Before I go any further, however, I should say this: The game is in Early Access, so I have no idea what it'll be like when it finally makes it to shelves. Hopefully, the challenge is lowered a little, and the game is tweaked a little more so the process doesn't seem so Sisyphean as it does now. Once the game opens up a little after that first level, it really starts to shine, but before that, it can just be kind of a slog. 

In the end, though, if you're craving decent Mega Man action or a new roguelike to add to the shelf, you can't really go wrong with 20XX. It's one of the rare games where what you see is exactly what you get, and there's nothing wrong with that, I just see it as something that could be a little better. 

3/5

The reviewer received an early-access copy of this game in exchange for an honest review

Overfall Early Access Review

              Overfall is a game with a lot of good things going for it. There is the distinct art style, an excellent modular story engine, some interesting tactical combat, and a very dynamic setting. It's a game that promises a staggering amount of depth, especially when one gets into it. It's a big, expansive game with a big expansive map and big expansive ideas. 

                Unfortunately, this is where things fall a little flat. For a big, expansive game world with an easy to use storyline editor and a lot of cool stuff going for it, the game doesn't exactly deliver on the bountiful promises that it set out to make. It's that failure to deliver that makes everything that much more difficult. What should be an awesome game is only an okay one. 

And this is the issue with Overfall.  But as always, more below. 

                 Overfall is a tactical roleplaying game with procedurally generated elements. In it, you guide a team of adventurers around a series of islands, stopping off at each one for a different story fragment or adventure. The object is to build enough of a reputation to find the lost king who can reunite the world against a group of terrifying barbarian invaders streaming out through a portal. Your heroes solve various problems through a mixture of diplomacy and turn-based hex-based tactical combat, gaining reputation points that slowly build a rapport with various races. This in turn means the races are more likely to help you against the barbarians, and so on and so forth. 

                  Time is also kept by way of a clock in the corner of the screen, as the invaders set up bases and begin to siege the various islands throughout the vast archipelago. The game becomes more difficult as you go, with new challenges and different ships. Overfall makes an effort to make sure the player feels like there's a world, with various factions, ships, fights, and various other factors. You can actually watch wars going on as you sail from village to village and the Vorn become a bigger threat, and that's really cool. 

                When you die (and your characters will die), the game plops you back at the portal with more options unlocked: different party members, new trinkets, various abilities, and other things like that. Thus, the game becomes easier and also gains depth as you go on, with new abilities unlocking and old ones shifting, as the player goes along. The player also gains new classes and characters to unlock as the game goes along, and as your ship becomes more renowned, you can hire new characters for your party to make battles a little easier. You also unlock new weapons, relics, and a ton of other things.

                  Unfortunately, while there is a lot of depth and the game is fun enough, it's very slow. All your unlocks are tied to in-game progress, which is based on the quests you get. As the quests are completely random, it's difficult to make much headway in the plot. You can get completely screwed over just as easily as you can run through a series of all-important reputation missions that allow you access to a faction's homeland. One run may see you getting inconsequential quest after inconsequential quest, others may see you racking up rewards faster than you can spit, and that luck kind of causes the game to bounce off it's players. 

                 Which is a shame, because if you can set up a rhythm, the game is really good. When it's firing on all cylinders and lets you see its depth, it's something amazing. As a shallow time-killer, it can also be pretty cool. But when all you're doing is finding the quests that mean you get minimal rewards and there's no sense of progression, it's really annoying. The game becomes an exercise in gambling and tedium, neither of which really make for a good roleplaying game, as anyone who's played Chinese MMOs can tell you. 

                 And then there's the story editor. The crown jewel of Overfall's engine, the story editor is a crown jewel in the game. A Twine-like interface, it allows you to craft your own miniature narrative and add it to the possible random generation in the game. Furthermore, it allows you to download community adventures, play them, and rate them as you see fit. It's the kind of democratized storytelling that more games should have. It's simple to use, has a lot of applications, and can be used to tell any number of awesome mini-stories. 

                 But between the luck-based content, the tactical battle system that takes a lot to get used to (seriously, some kind of manual would be a godsend), and the just weird nature of the game, Overfall just seems like kind of a mess. In the end, I'd wait for a sale or see how much it's going to be before going out and buying it. It's a good game, but it lacks the vital spark needed to make it a truly amazing one, and I can't fully recommend it based on that.

Final score: 3/5

Full disclosure: The reviewer received a pre-release early access copy for review.