Developer Aerosoft has a long list of simulation games on PC and has now brought truck simulation to consoles with On the Road: Truck Simulator. While consoles have a pretty spotty history with reliability in simulation games, On the Road does a good job of providing exactly what’s promised. While there’s nothing ground-breaking on offer here, it’s a stable and moderately detailed game that should fit well with any simulation fan’s collection.

On the Road does exactly what it says on the box and not much more. It’s a decent simulator and a solid choice if you are looking to play something simple to play to kill some time or wind down. Don’t count on it to grip you for very long though. From the beginning, the experience is underwhelming. You’re given a quick menu that lets you set up your driver profile and your business. You manage on your own from there.

6500km of Autobahn action

You select a number of available jobs with the goal of growing your business, your number of trucks and trailers and your funds. Time management is an important factor and will determine your pay at the end of the delivery, as well as any penalties accrued along the way from missing deadlines or damaging goods. You need to plan your routes to manage multiples pickups and dropoffs, stop for rest and to refuel. What’s impressive is that you also need to drive well, otherwise you can get speeding tickets that affect your funds and your reputation. Passing red lights will also get you a nice little photo of your vehicle committing the crime.

The controls are a little difficult to work out at first and don’t seem like they’re designed for a D-pad controller. Even starting your truck is a multi-step process that won’t work until you figure out the card system settings. Steering is difficult even on lower settings, and it’s all too easy to lose control and damage your goods with a trigger accelerator. Oddly, your truck doesn’t feel like it has much weight on the road, even with a large load. Sensitivity can be adjusted to make it easier but you still seem to be driving on black ice at all times.

Damage isn’t much of a problem when you have no goods as there’s no change to your vehicle and no impact on the environment, so it’s hard to go beyond the confines of logistics when you’re looking to add a little fun to your delivery. Players with a racing wheel may get a better experience out of On the Road but a PS4 controller is definitely not optimal.

Truck Master to Truck Mogul

The game is very much a single channel experience in that it is purely a driving simulator. There’s very little outside of driving for thousands of kilometres to keep you engaged. Lifeless cities, empty buildings and driverless cars pull you out of any immersive state you might have reached. Long stretches of German highway do have a nice feel to them and can be pretty relaxing to drive through but needing to stop for rest, fuel or to load/unload takes players right back to reality because, by the looks of things, you’re the only human left on planet Earth. You can hop out of your truck to open your trailer doors and refuel but this mostly feels like a chore to do for a small sense of realism.

While there’s a large area of Germany to drive through, there’s very little to look at other than long stretches of motorway ahead of you. The game has some nice city settings which help to break up the monotony of driving past empty cars and poorly textured trees with 2D foliage. The game features a performance warning simply for having your truck rearview mirrors on instead of just being a rectangular grey smear, which shows the strength of the build on console versions.

Your render distance is far too close as trees and cars appear and disappear into a large white mist that follows your every move. When travelling at high speeds this is especially bad as cars pop into existence a couple of feet into the air before falling onto the highway and joining the road.

All the fun of the German motorways

The trucks themselves are the most detailed and aesthetic aspect of the graphics, with multiple makes and models to choose from. The cabin of each truck is the most detailed area in the game, and I have to admit that it looks great inside. Everything outside of that however needs a lot more work, given that there’s nothing to do but look at the surroundings.

On the Road or On the Shelf?

As you’d expect from a simulator, there’s no clear ending so you can take all the time it needs to get your money’s worth. If you can make it far enough to start building your business, you can start buying additional vehicles and hire drivers for those vehicles. From there, the game just repeats until you have a complex system of jobs going as you keep the high-end trucks for your own drives.

Beyond that, On the Road leaves it up to you to find enjoyment. Eventually, driving from company to company and selecting routes for your drivers loses its appeal. If you make the mistake of going off-road, invisible walls and kilometres long railings along the autobahn will block your way. Couple that with indestructible trees and you will soon find there’s not much point in leaving the road. Vehicle controls are clunky but there is some enjoyment to be taken from stopping for red lights and indicating when needed or needlessly flashing headlights or the horn at other drivers. Once those lose their draw, you can consider this the end of the game.

For €30.00 on Playstation and Xbox, and €25.00 on Steam, On the Road is better left for people who want a dry and serious driving experience rather than someone looking to blow off a little steam.

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In a time of quarantines and lockdowns, we’ve all had to stop at some point and try to find another hobby that can take up just a little more time. Like many of you probably have, I tried an array of things that barely caught my attention, one of them being gardening. Plants are great, of course, and we should have more of them around us at any given time but you’ll still end up waiting weeks for the payoff. This law of nature is not fun for the impatient person….unless you do it in Quarant Inc.’s Grow Big (or Go Home) that is.

So what’s it all about?

Grow Big (or Go Home) is a tricky 2D pixel art garden simulator that takes plant care and puzzles seriously. You play as Bruce, an indoor gardener with a slick pair of overalls and a talent for growing houseplants in impossible locations. As you progress through the game’s 15 levels, you get transported from Bruce’s home to Greek and Mayan civilizations, and eventually into space. Each level has it’s own obstacles to overcome in the pursuit of plant perfection and even features the houseplant’s natural enemy, the house cat.

Levels evolve slowly which makes for an easy learning curve when coupled with the game’s simple controls. While the game’s aesthetic and gameplay are quite simple, getting five stars in each area should provide a decent challenge. Once you’ve mastered every area, you unlock hidden levels in Hell which ups the intensity considerably. Playing with headphones on is a must, by the way, because the soundtrack really deserves your attention. Every level has a unique soundtrack to compliment the setting.

It’s gardening, just without the relaxation.

You’re given a short amount of time to use the various objects around you to grow your plants. You begin with just a mirror and a watering can but new objects appear every few levels that also bring new twists to the puzzle. As the sun moves from one side of the room to the other, you must angle the light and manage plant hydration.

You also need to be mindful of any other threats to your plants like fires and animals. The light moves quickly and some levels can feel chaotic, especially if you’re looking to ace each one for the hidden stages. Still, the soundtrack and pretty graphics make it worth each attempt.

Solving puzzles shouldn’t pose much of a problem to most players because it essentially repeats, just with another layer added. Perfecting each level, on the other hand, will provide a worthwhile challenge. Once you’ve mastered an area, you can unlock different outfits to garden in greater style. There’s not much in the way of collectables but it helps keep the experience purely focused on mastering each area. The game is currently available on Steam for €7.39.

For a game with an excellent soundtrack, colourful and playful pixel art graphics, a challenging set of puzzles and a replayable and procedurally generated hidden level, it’s well worth your time.

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Bio Inc. Redemption by DryGin Studios is an interesting medical simulation game that plants you in the position of Life or Death. It manages to find a happy medium for people who like to get in-depth with information and those who just like to tap for rewards. It’s a challenging experience even on the starting difficulties and can be hard to find your medical flow. Players are given a patient with a randomized set of symptoms to investigate. Through collecting cells that appear in the many systems of the body, players earn Bio Points. With Bio Points, players can run tests and treatments that may help to save the patient’s life.

Finding the right tests to run essentially comes down to tapping the symptoms and finding the disease where symptoms overlap. Once you have gotten some positive tests back, you spend Bio Points on treatments for the disease. You can spend points on upgrades to your resource collection and a variety of lifestyle changes that will improve your patient’s resistances in certain areas. For example, suggesting yoga improves the patients bone strength, a Mediterranean diet for the digestive system and so on. Getting started can be a little slow, as you need to read the detailed information on the symptoms that your patient has, the tests that you can run and the treatments that are available.

Not a substitute for a medical degree

As time progresses, your patient will develop new symptoms. Existing symptoms worsen over time so players have to be quick in collecting Bio Points and taking test samples. All tests and treatments take time to run, which can really up the intensity when your patient is barely holding on. It can also be one of the more annoying parts of the game as the cells don’t hang around long and you need to constantly be watching. Points can be slow to generate and more valuable cells can disappear within a moment. Actually collecting the resource takes time too as you have to hold down on the cell but this can be upgraded with Bio Points.

Anyone familiar with the studio’s other game, Plague Inc., will grasp the game’s resource mechanic very quickly as they share a lot of similarities. Players essentially wait for points to develop, they spend the points on upgrades and perks and repeat the process until the game ends. There are spontaneous events that happen that can either help or hinder you. If you happen to get one at the right time, it can feel like a miraculous stroke of luck for your doctor.

Medically macabre

If you get tired of saving people’s lives you have the option of playing as Death instead. Naturally, the objective of this mode is to kill the patient by worsening their symptoms. You can also operate on some notable figures like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. If you’re eager to finally settle which of your friends has the most medical knowledge, you can face off in a multiplayer game. One player acts as the doctor and the other plays as Death.

Bio Inc Redemption‘s graphics are nice to look at but the same aesthetic loses its appeal over multiple games. During games, you have an x-ray of your patient’s various systems which, with my lack of medical expertise, I can only say resembled my Leaving Cert biology books pretty well. Your patient’s figure will engage in a healthier diet, lift weights, do stretches etc. when you make lifestyle changes. They’ll ache with pain in whatever areas are affected. Plus the occasional blood spurt when things are looking bad.

Far, far cheaper than a medical degree

Bio Inc. Redemption has the option of in-game purchases which give you coins and resources. You can choose to upgrade your Doctor/Death abilities or to spend coins on a variety of perks to give you a head start on treating the patient. One downside is that you are only given 36 energy to use before needing to recharge. Treating a patient on Intern difficulty takes 6 energy but the cost rises with the difficulty level.

Casual players shouldn’t need to worry about using all of their energy very quickly. With Lethal being the highest difficulty for each stage with a cost of 24 energy, those looking for a more challenging experience may find themselves out of things pretty quickly. Once your initial rewards are used, rebuilding them naturally can be slow. It can be a drag grinding but there are daily challenges and goals to help you out. Or you can spend a little to get a boost.

So what’s the diagnosis?

Bio Inc. Redemption is free on the App Store and Play Store and costs €12.99 outside of a sale on Steam. It gets tedious swapping between systems and collecting points but the game is a lot of fun to play. I found it a lot more enjoyable to play in short bursts to ease the more tedious issues but there is a lot of replayability to find here. You might also pick up a bit of medical knowledge on the way.

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YesterMorrow is a stylish 2-D platformer with light puzzles developed by Blowfish Studios. You play as Yui, a young girl tasked with saving the future from corrupting shadows and their apocalyptic takeover of the world. Evil Shadows attack your village during the Festival of Light, sending Yui on a time-hopping journey through four islands to save two timelines.

Should It Be Left In The Past?

YesterMorrow feels like a promising experience when you first dive in. The scenery and artwork are bright, colourful and engaging. Characters are cute and well-detailed despite their small size. Small details like water ripples and Yui’s ponytail whipping as you turn or jump bring so much more life to the environment. After a couple of areas, however, it begins to feel tired. YesterMorrow is a solid adventure platformer that should keep you entertained in short bursts but offers very little innovation to the experience.

It may be a small gripe but I have a serious pet peeve towards text-heavy games that don’t let you skip dialogue. Every text panel in a conversation is slow to fill out and slower to move on. Text panels will often have only one or two sentences that linger on the screen for a couple of seconds after typing. I appreciate that everyone’s reading ability is different but some cutscenes are so much longer and slower because of this which really damages the pacing.

While the artwork and soundtrack are great, I found YesterMorrow lacking in fundamental areas. Yui’s mobility is her main tool for traversing the island. You move back and forth between the past and present to overcome monsters, puzzles and obstacles. You can wall hop, single jump and roll from the beginning and can unlock additional abilities as you progress. Despite the importance of mobility, Yui’s movement can be clunky and unresponsive at times.

A Platformer With Problems

Ropes and climbing platforms need precise timing, otherwise, she will fall right past it. This is particularly frustrating after you receive the double jump ability. Most mistakes will lead to a long fall which can make it a slog to keep trying. Some platforms are obscured or blend in with the environment making it difficult to find your path. This problem was more prominent in temples and lead to several loops before finding the right path. As you progress, you will reach altars that allow you to switch between timelines. The landscape changes drastically between timelines and offers new paths through the same level.

At first, time travelling is a fun and interesting mechanic that gives you two vastly different versions of the same area. Towns, for example, are crumbling ruins in the future but they bustle with life and colour in the past. This contrast drives the effect of the ravaged timeline and really helps draw the player into the coming danger. I was honestly quite surprised by the difference the timeline makes to each area. In most areas, it will offer an almost completely new path to take.

When switching timelines outside of towns, however, it can more of a nuisance than anything else. If you’re in the wrong timeline and your path is blocked, you will need to backtrack to an altar in order to change it. It’s pretty obvious which timeline you need to be in to interact with certain areas but for collectables and certain paths, it can be tiresome switching between timelines to find the right one. Altars are fairly frequent but running back and forth -especially as the game gets more difficult- kills the momentum.

Powered-up Platforming

You unlock several abilities that help you get to new areas but they are mostly focused on mobility. You unlock a bomb ability which acts as your main offensive weapon. Getting the hang of it can be jarring at first because a light tap of R1 will toss the bomb pretty far and continue rolling. You can only use one bomb at a time so a missed shot will take a couple of seconds before you can try again. Often, this is enough to kill you and send you back to a starting area.

Save points are frequent and will restore your health on top of acting as your respawn point. Health drains pretty quickly as much of the scenery can damage you, as well as the animals possessed by shadows. When an enemy is hit by your bomb, the shadow will release the animal and float towards you. They can be killed with another bomb but in most cases, the newly uncorrupted animal can also hurt you. This makes many areas suddenly very tight and difficult to move through. Often it’s easier just to accept a hit for the sake of temporary invincibility to get you out of there.

Is it worth the time?

YesterMorrow will take around 8 hours to complete, depending on your platforming prowess and interest in collectables. For a collector or completionist, there’s plenty to keep you interested. You can collect extra hearts which add to your health, scrolls that offer additional lore and ancient artefacts. You can also pet dozens of animals in the game which just feels nice to do. YesterMorrow costs around €20 euro on PS4/XB1/Switch/PC and is pretty fair if a little overpriced for the experience. For fans of platformers, YesterMorrow will give you a classic challenge but will likely not offer any innovative experiences for you. The majority of the game outside of audio and visuals just feels like it’s been done hundreds of times before.

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Double Pug Switch is a challenging and charming sidescrolling platformer and the first game developed by The Polygon Loft. You play as Otis, the pug protagonist as he runs his way through dimensions to stop Mr Whiskers. Otis and Mr Whiskers are sucked into a dimensional portal and dropped in an alternate version of the lab.

Otis is trapped between universes, existing in both at the same time and gains new dimension-hopping powers. Mr Whiskers, however, fractures into the evil Sker, set on dominating our world with a cat army. From there, Otis embarks (sorry but I had to fit in at least one pun) on his interdimensional quest to stop Sker from bringing catastrophe (okay, I’m done) to our world.

Are Two Pugs Better Than One?

The controls are extremely simple to grasp but difficult to master, requiring precise timing and accuracy. You have a jump button which and a dimensional shift button that allows you to pass through obstacles with corresponding colours. The most important command of all, of course, is the dedicated bark button. As you progress through the levels, you will encounter power-ups to let you reach new areas and new pathways. At the end of each dimension, you’ll face off against Sker in a Sonic-style boss encounter as you dodge his attacks during the chase.

The levels are well-designed, charming and colourful. As with most platform-runner games, there are several paths to choose, each with their own obstacles to overcome. This adds to the replayability by offering you a chance to experiment with your route and can give you an alternative if one section is that bit too tricky. Levels are great looking and colour plays a big part in the visuals. You’ll need to use Otis’ dimension shift power to get past certain obstacles like walls and spikes and to land on new platforms.

Charmingly Frustrating

Despite the cute characters and visuals, the game can be quite unforgiving. Jumps and dimensional shifts have to be timed perfectly, which can lead to some very frustrating runs. I found that some of the checkpoint markers are poorly placed, which meant you have to be prepared the moment the level resets. You can also run straight past checkpoints which really amps up the pressure, especially after a particularly challenging section.

The soundtrack is fantastic and it fits the atmosphere of each level very well. It can really help you to find your jumping/shifting rhythm. If you happen to get stuck in a death loop, you will end up hearing the same 3 seconds of the song repeated again and again until you finally reach the next checkpoint. Despite the nightmarish frustration these loops cause, there is a very satisfying feeling from getting past the challenges.

Worth The Challenge

There are 40 levels in total, so the length really depends on your skill level with this genre. If you’re like me, there’s a long and admittedly cute challenge ahead of you. If you’re not, you will likely clear it within a few days. You can unlock a variety of hats for Otis giving a level of replayability in Double Pug Switch for collectors. And pug fans.

While Double Pug Switch does a lot of things right, it doesn’t push boundaries in any way. It feels more like the developers wanted something safe to release as their first title. This is a respectable choice and you can see that the mechanics were chosen with care, opting for the tried and true mechanics that have entertained us for years. You can buy Double Pug Switch for around €8.00 on Mac/PC/PS4/XBONE/Switch and on the App Store.

There’s a lot to like about Double Pug Switch. I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s a mobile game ported to other devices. Considering the fact that the PlayStore and Appstore have hundreds of near-identical games (mostly for free), I really would hesitate to pay any more for it.

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Onee Chanbara Origin is a retelling and rebuild of the original PS2 classics The OneeChanbara 1 and The OneeChanbara 2 bundled into one game. Despite being two stories rolled into one, it barely manages to come together as a single story. Both the first and second game have been rolled into one continuous experience, allowing you to switch between Aya and Saki as you take on each stage. You’re given 10 to 15 seconds of exposition at the beginning of each stage which gives a very general idea about why you are where you are.

I found myself trying to fill in the gaps in narrative myself for the first few hours before I realized that the exposition doesn’t get any better as you progress. Small pieces of information are given through dialogue during combat but are easily lost in the moment. Any information that it does offer only gives insight into the characters themselves rather than the world they inhabit.

What in the world happened?

Admittedly, the background and context of the story of Onee Chanbara Origin is fairly interesting. Unfortunately, there’s barely any mention about why or how the undead took over, and with only five characters in total, the world feels empty and inconsequential. Your cursed bloodline, known as Baneful Bloodline, is fairly interesting in that it brings a dramatic change to your character’s appearance and operates with pseudo-vampiric logic. Basically, if you get fully covered in blood, you get powers.

Some scenes from the original OneeChanbara games were shortened or removed for the rebuild. Pivotal moments in the story are missing motivation like they were hamfistedly thrown together between meetings about getting the boob jiggle right. Despite the story, there is a lot of fun to be had by viciously attacking or expertly dodging and parrying your way through, sending limbs and viscera flying all the while. A quick look at the game will tell you that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and scantily-clad, action-filled combat is what the game is all about. 

Let’s get down to the hacky-slashy

Combat in Onee Chanbara Origin is extremely simple and doesn’t offer much beyond your usual hack and slash title. You have a basic attack, a stun attack, and two special attacks depending on the weapon you use. Finally, you have parries which help to greatly increase your enemies stun gauge and a completely spammable dodge. You can switch between your main weapon and a sub-weapon which slightly varies the attacks and stuns you use and allows you to perform different combos. Honestly, the entire game can be played by spamming the basic attack and the dodge buttons because the combos don’t require much thought or practice.

Each hit and kill will add to your Stain Guage which, once full, will send your character into Berserk Mode, increasing your attack power and speed but reducing your defence. Keep the slaughter going long enough, and you will enter Xstatic Mode, which boosts your stats like in Berserk mode but it also consistently drains your health. It is really quite difficult to manage your Stain Guage because once it’s full, you’re entering Berserk mode with no player input. This means it often kicks in near the end of fights with common enemies that really waste all the blood you’ve built up.

Taking the stage

Each chapter is done in stages which last between 5 and 10 minutes each but honestly feel like so much longer. Basic grunts won’t cause you any particular challenge beyond crowding you. There’s very little in the way of a challenge in the game. Boss fights last around 3 minutes each and are generally very disconnected from the story other than the fact that they’re zombies.

The background textures of almost every stage are awful. With some exceptions, the vast majority of the game is spent in grey, blurry corridors that offer nothing more than barriers to guide from A to B.

Graphic gratuity

While the games and media haven’t had much success in the West, it still boasts a strong cult following. Since the game is a complete rebuild of classic PS2 OneeChanbara games, you would expect there to be more attention to detail and care shown in the graphics outside of just fan-pleasing character design. Cel-shading does help to modernize the game and fits the anime style very well, but it still wouldn’t look out of place as a PS3 title. It’s clear that the vast majority of the design process was spent on the character design, and most of that time was spent getting the boob jiggle right.

Outside of these body parts though, there’s very little imagination to show. Your weapons are fairly basic, and clothing is either underwear with a hat or the usual Japanese school uniform.

What about the bad guys?

As for the enemies you face, there is little to no variation between them. Most of the undead are mottled, green-ish figures with a little gore added. Beyond that, enemy animations and attack patterns are fairly standard and offer little to help the visuals, mostly because each attack you make is followed by some light-up effects that take most of the focus away. This is actually a very welcome dose of colour and movement to an otherwise grey and dead setting, but a lack of variation gets stale pretty quickly. 

The swords are longer than the story

Onee Chanbara Origin has 25 chapters, each lasting less than ten minutes and boss battles can be finished in a matter of minutes. Even when I was feeling immersed and drawn in, it felt like a slog. The level layout is extremely linear and predictable. It all just feels like a game we’ve played a hundred times over, on a much older console.

While I appreciate the focus isn’t so much on horror as it is on campy fun, there are zero elements of horror despite the undead setting. All in all, you can complete the story on Normal in about 5 hours. You can return for harder modes, or you can enter Survival Mode once you’ve completed the game which will unlock an extra playable character. For me, though, I can see that once through the story is more than enough.

The real horror

Maybe if you are more familiar with the series -or prefer mindless murder combos and grinding- Onee Chanbara Origin’s length will work for you. For anyone else though, the €49.99 price tag is egregious. If you use the harder modes and survival, you can probably stretch out the length of gameplay, but with all features considered, you’re still getting less than 20 hours content for €49.99.

Costumes are around €3 each, and new levels are more expensive but don’t offer any dramatic changes from the base game. For a price like that, I would expect a lot more. Considering the strong cult following that was built from previous OneeChanbara titles, the lazy design and the fact it’s the 15th anniversary of the series, it really seems as though this game was just designed to drain their fans’ wallets rather than honouring a long-standing series.

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