Tag: 2020

Endzone – A World Apart (PC)

As we get ever close to the years end I’ve started thinking more and more about my end of year awards and as it stands I have only reviewed 3 games from this year (Resident Evil 3, Final Fantasy VII Remake & Fall Guys), which kind of makes for slim pickings. So I’m hoping between now and the end of the year to build up this list by first reviewing games I’ve already played followed by games I’ll hopefully be able to afford to purchase. So lets start off with a game I eagerly anticipated when I first heard about it, Endzone – A World Apart.

Endzone is a post-apocalypse city builder where mankind has emerged from a series of underground bunkers called “Endzones” 100 years after the world was devastated by nuclear war (Guess it is true what Ron Pearlman said “War never changes”). It is up to you to build your settlement, gather resources, keep your settlers happy and healthy by keeping them fed, watered, clothed, entertained and free from radiation.

Hands up anyone that’s played Banished? If you have then you have a pretty good idea about how Endzone plays. It feels a lot like a re-skin with a new overlay and a few extras tied in. The manual resource gathering is exactly the same, the allocating of workers is the same, the farming mechanic is identical to name but a few. Aesthetically however they are completely different, where Banished is lovely and bright Endzone is mush moodier and darker (I suppose an apocalypse is a sure fire way to tone down the mood).

I have a love-hate relationship with city builders. I love the idea of them, watching as from noting but an idea a small settlement emerges from it’s humble beginnings into a vast expansive metropolis. However I do find that as my settlements start to expand and become a bit more complex I start to loose interest. The problem I find is that as my project expands I start to loose sight of what the overall objective is. That’s why I prefer mission based strategy and simulation games, at least then I have a tangible goal to aspire too. This may have less to do with the actual game itself and more to do with my own indecision and inability to set long term goals for myself… but I digress. In fairness though Endzone in one of their recent updates has introduced a scenario mode into the game which renders everything I’ve just said moot.

The game is still in early access so as to be expected there are still a few kinks in the system that are being addressed, this is more in regards to balancing the gameplay and adding features rather than anything physically wrong with the running of the game. In the 15hrs I’ve played the game in total I think I’ve only crashed to desktop once or twice.

I mentioned earlier how Endzone has a few extra bells and whistles compared to Banished. Some of those additions you can imagine are more common place in a post-apocalypse world, things like radiation levels, dust clouds, drought, electricity etc. Although one addition that does stand out for me that I particularly enjoyed is that of the expeditions. This involves sending scouts out to ruins such as warehouses, greenhouses, factories and the like. Then sending out teams of explorers to scavenge ruins for resources. What I really enjoy about this mechanic is that some ruins will require explorers with certain expertise or equipment, for example exploring a greenhouse would require someone who has expertise in farming in order to gain new seeds or you might need to take better grade tools in order to clear obstacles. My only problem with this is that there is no way to micromanage your settlers so that you can train specific settlers to gain experience in specific fields, meaning that meeting conditions for some of the more demanding ruins can be more pot luck than anything else.

I have been playing Endzone on and off since it came out back in April and it has been steadily improving since it’s initial early access release and with more improvements scheduled I hope to see further improvements. Additionally, the developers have teamed up with OneTreePlanted who will plant a tree for ever purchase of the Save The World Edition of the game. Turns out you can save the planet by playing video games… Who knew?

by Individuo

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PC, PS4)

So anyone that knows me on a personal level or from the other side of a two way mirror will know that I don’t play well with others. I think I’ve got this boiled down to 2 reasons, 1; when I’m playing against others the idea that there are people out there that are better than me hurts my ego so badly that I go into an emotional downward spiral causing me to question my self-worth, and 2; when I play co-op with people I don’t know I get impatient towards others for not following my strategy and inevitably fuck everything up leaving me left looking like a twat for trusting someone with the IQ somewhere between a sea sponge and a damp cloth. If you haven’t already guessed I’m not in a good place this week so here’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.

Fall Guys is a multiplayer battle-royale where 60 players are pitted together in a series of Takeshi’s Castle/Total Wipeout esc. mini games whittling the numbers down round by round until the final round where the last… thing? standing takes the crown. When you play, you gather a currency called “Kudos” which can be used to purchase skins and costumes for you character. When you win a game you get a crown which can be used to purchase premium items.

Aesthetically the game is quite pleasing, it’s very colourful and cutesy. This is also reflected in the character you play as. You play as some sort of sentient jelly-bean that as previously mentioned can be customised to looks like a pigeon or wear other ridiculous outfits. It has a certain charm that makes it warm and inviting. Another aspect I enjoyed was it’s simplicity to play, the controls consist of run, move camera, jump, dive and grab, meaning the game doesn’t take you long to learn so you can jump straight into the action. I like that this means that seasoned veterans have little strategic advantage over new players making for more of an even playing field, however this does mean that a lot of the rounds are based more on luck than actual skill. This is especially true at the start where you have gangs of contestants trying to occupy the same places in both space and time leading to pileups of bodies tripping over each other and Three Stooges style jams between obstacles.

Despite all the nice I just said about it, overall I find the game to be very hollow and empty. Maybe a host, an audience, some commentary would make the game feel more alive. It seems to me the developers have missed the point of what makes the aforementioned gameshows fun. You don’t watch Total Wipeout to watch people be competent and complete the course (That’s what Ninja Warrior is for), you watch it to see people get sucker punched and to miserably fail. This makes for good television when it’s somebody else, not so much when the person falling to their doom for the umpteenth time is you.

To me the game lacks purpose and the rewards are massively out weighed by the effort one must put in to get them. If you win you get a crown which you can spend on items so that when you next play the game you can wear a funny hat. Imagine if Katniss, when she won The Hunger Games instead of winning her freedom she won the right to fight in the next Hunger Games dressed as cheeseburger? The game is a constant perpetual struggle with no true winners except for those who run the game making money off of watching us run in our never ending hamster wheels, enticing us to keep running by dangling meaningless cosmetic accessories in front of us like a carrot on a stick. It is a complete waste of time and completely detrimental to my mental wellbeing. All this would be forgiven if the game was actually fun to play, which it was to start with but as I repeated the same levels over and over again they became more bothersome than fun.

Is this really what video games have become in the Micro-transaction era? I feel that video game developers see gamers as nothing but wallets with thumbs, dangling us upside-down and shaking to see what falls out. Bow down and surrender your hard earned cash to the faceless corporations to which you have signed away your mortal soul for your jelly bean novelty sunglasses. I hope that an extra circle of hell is created for these people where they must play Fall Guys until they mass enough points to win their freedom, only to be beaten at the last second by hackers. Everyone, rise up against your suppressors, break the chains of oppression and demand substance, invigorating stories and enriching gameplay that will stay with you long after you’ve finished and walked away from it.

I should be feeling better next week, hopefully.

by Individuo

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)

Now for anyone who knows me on a personal level you’ll have some idea of how excited I was for this when it was teased all those years ago back in E3 2005. Despite all the “will they, won’t they’s” for the following 10 years after that before finally being announced that it was happening in 2015 to it’s release a few months ago. We finally come to the moment. Final Fantasy VII: The Remake.

Just before you proceed, thought you ought to know There will Be Spoilers.

As I mentioned all those years ago when I originally did a look back review on the original Final Fantasy VII. The game holds special meaning to me, as it was one of the games that I have replayed and re-bought on several occasions, I can’t recall the number of summer holidays where boredom would set in and I’d fish the game out for another run. So to play through the same experience with a current-gen overhaul could only enhance the experience, it would but that’s not quite what’s happened.

As far as I see it there are 3 types of remakes:

  • Remaster: Where it’s the same as the previous game but with graphical upgrades (e.g. Command & Conquer Remastered)
  • Re-imagining: Where the game significantly overhauls the game-play or story but follows common motifs(e.g. Resident Evil 3)
  • True Remake: Where the game is rebuild using more modern means to resemble the original, possibly with a few minor tweaks or improvements (e.g. Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy)

Using this as our guide I would put FF7R into the Re-imagining category. I understand that this decision was done as a true-remake would alienate new players to the game, but it does mean that to fans of the original game, more of it feels new than nostalgic. For example the bombing run at the beginning gave me chills of nostalgia but later on before the second operation I felt annoyed and disheartened. In this section you have to infiltrate a Shinra warehouse with the help of Wedge, Biggs & Jesse. This section was so disjointed and felt out of place with the rest of the game. Although learning about Jesse’s past and her motivation to join AVALANCHE was refreshing. However Roche annoyed me to no end. He felt like that guy that always tries so hard to be cool in order to be liked that they come off as obnoxious and arrogant, dancing around with all the subtly of a fireworks factory exploding on what might as well have been a motorbike made of flubber given how many time it defied the laws of gravity. The section ends with another terrorist cell appearing and taking Wedge, releasing Wedge, Biggs pulling down Wedges pants and staring at his ass (yes this does happen) and then the group parachuting back into the slums within the space of 10mins.

The combat system is a change that doesn’t offend me. You get to do physical attacks in real time but in order to use magic, abilities and the like you need to fill your ATB gauge before you can use them. This system felt a lot more organic but I must admit that the friendly AI could do with some improvement. A lot of the time they don’t act with any kind of sense of urgency, It might just be me misjudging the situation but I would have thought the fact that they were in a life or death situation would bring about some sort of sense of self-preservation. Apparently not.

The game ends when the gang prepares to leave Midgar and set off into the world. For anyone who hasn’t played the original this point is about a third of the way through the first disk. Given that the original game is 3 disks we are probably about 10% through the game as we know it. The game feels like it’s far too excessively padded for it’s own good, if some of this was thinned down I recon the game could have got us to the boat out of Junion without feeling rushed. Then again I suppose in doing this Square-Enix have created an audience for the next 7-8 instalments of the game that will be coming our way if the amount of faffing about remains the same. I thought the whole point of episodic games were so that shorter games could be released at lower prices and more frequently, Square-Enix has so far missed all 3 of these targets and has missed them hard. So as it stands if the next instalments are just as padded as this one we can see the whole development time being about the length of the Bronze Age, the game would take an average person their entire life to complete and would cost somewhere comparable to the debt of sub-Saharan Africa.

On a final note, I can see glimpses of the game that I loved so dearly though it’s obscured by excessive padding and needless content that adds nothing/very little to the story or depth of the game. It doesn’t improve anything, it doesn’t add anything and that infuriates me. In fact the part that received the most of my ire had to be the dance-off between Cloud and Andrea at The Honey Bee Inn. I mean WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK JUST HAPPENED!? The section was so out of place and so infuriatingly needless I had to quit the game afterwards and fold some washing to take my mind off it. I didn’t play the game for the rest of the day after that. If I’ve learnt anything from playing games as long as I have it’s that if a game does something to make you not want to play it, then it’s doing something wrong. I would love to have been in the committee meeting where that idea was brought to the table so I could shut it down with as much flying furniture as I could muster before it got traction. I’m not against mini-games, like the squats. They make sense, Cloud would have trained hard in the military so would be physically fit enough to do a series of squats without problem, but where outside the realms of Greace and Foot Loose would Cloud learn how to dance so professionally? What will he surprise us with next? My money is on a fishing mini-game being inserted somewhere before the end of the story. Why not? It’s only gotta be copy and pasted from Final Fantasy XV.

by Individuo

Resident Evil 3 (PC, PS4, XBOX ONE)

Given that we are all in the grips of a virus outbreak that’s crippling the world, it seemed only fitting that the next review I post be that of one that involves a virus outbreak that turns people also into mindless zombies (this one however doing so more directly). I bring you all once again back to Racoon City for the re imaginings of the 3rd instalment of the Resident Evil saga.

For those of you that don’t know, the game focuses around that of S.T.A.R.S member Jill Valentine months after the the mansion incident that brought the poor health and safety standards of Umbrella Inc. to light. This is further proven as the infection spreads to that of the local populous of Racoon City. Now Jill must escape the city while being relentlessly perused by the bio-weapon Nemesis who’s sole purpose is the eradication of S.T.A.R.S.

Most of you will be well aware of my affinity with the Resident Evil series. Still giving that, I went into this game with a bit more caution then I did with RE2 as I wasn’t expecting lightning to strike twice in the same franchise so soon. Low and behold I was right to be cautious as the game does fall a bit short when compared to the previous one. It’s not that it’s bad, on the contrary it’s rather good. I just wish there was more of it to enjoy. It is awfully short, I was able to complete the game in about 4hrs on my first attempt followed by just under 3hrs on my second. This wasn’t even me trying to beat the game as quickly as possible. The game feels like it’s the bits of RE2 that ended up on the cutting room floor mashed together with a few noticeable RE3 elements thrown in so it can be branded as such. True, the game is about the same length as one of the scenarios in RE2 but at least there was 4 scenarios to bulk the game out as well as the last survivor games as well. There isn’t even a remake of the Mercenaries mini-game from the original to unlock new weapons and the like. I know that the game is packaged with the Resident Evil Resistance multiplayer game but in all honesty I had and still have absolutely no interest in playing it. I’d rather they have put the extra effort into fleshing RE3 a bit more. Maybe have a second scenario where you play the game from Carlo’s perspective.

Just like the RE2 remake before it, it has a beautiful aesthetic behind it. Both the graphics and sound quality make the game just as immersive. Although RE3 does feel a lot more action based than that of RE2. Where RE2 is set in 2-3 different locations with jumping back and forward between them, RE3 doesn’t keep us in the same areas for long and rarely allows for revisiting old areas. This idea of a more action based game is reinforced with the new bells and whistles added from the last instalment. Unlike Leon and Claire, Jill is able to parry and counter some enemy attacks when timed right leading to more opportunities to stand and fight your enemy even when ammo is scarce.

The next big difference is that of Nemesis himself, much like Mr X in RE2 he will follow you around the map like he wants to talk to you about Jesus, although Nemesis is much more persistent than that of his predecessor, being harder, better, faster and stronger. Should you take Nemesis down at least for the interim, you are treated to some goodies usually in the form of weapon upgrades, a lot of which come in handy as enemies and Nemesis himself become harder.

Now for my final thought. The more I think about it and the more I write this, the less I enjoyed the game. I remember the early days of survival horror, the likes of Silent Hill and the original Resident Evil teaching us subtly and that “less is more”. The atmosphere of the game did draw me in but the action was that constant that the game didn’t give me the opportunity to lure me into a false sense of security, make me believe that I can step out the next door without worry. I find the best way to create atmosphere in a game is to keep them guessing. The less you see of an enemy the scarier it becomes. Nemesis was always there, relentless in his pursuit. Mr X however, you could get away from him loose him for a while only to walk through a door and find him staring at you from the other end of the corridor. That as a metaphor is why I prefer RE2 to RE3.

by Individuo