I played a bunch of the 2D Grand Theft Auto games back in the day for two reasons, 1. Rockstar Games was called DMA Productions back then, which are my initials so I was pretty jazzed about that at age ten, 2. When you died in GTA London, it said “You’re Brown Bread!” and that tickled me at the time. American Fugitive has neither of these things going for it. so good luck, game.

What It Is

American Fugitive is a crime drama about a man framed for his own father’s murder. He escapes prison to seek revenge, and finds himself on a crime caper along the similar lines of a Rockstar game. American Fugitive emulates the over-head camera of the original games, but forgoes the overhead perspective for more of an isometric angle. I would say this is the right decision, because even with this little compromise the player viewpoint can be an issue.

Moving around on foot is completely fine, but driving can be tricky. You can only see so far ahead, so drive fast at your own risk. Whenever the game put me behind the wheel of a fast car, problems occurred. It was like walking on eggshells, holding back on speeding up for fear that an oncoming car was just beyond the edge of the screen. The game works a lot better when on foot but this is the GTA fan club, so there’s plenty of mandatory driving to do.

What You Do

On foot you’ll be doing a lot of punching. shooting, breaking and entering. Combat isn’t much to write home about, twin-stick shooting with the standard bevy of weaponry. There’s an old-school, arcade-y feel to the game. You can just shoot and punch your way through the world without worry of consequences. Your biggest issue will likely be your wanted level. Again it’s all familiar, you gain stars when you are seen committing crimes.

The more severe the crime, the more stars and more cops. You can drive your car into a garage to respray it or if you’re on foot you can change your clothes. If at all possible, avoid gaining stars when you want to start a mission. I spent a painfully long time standing outside the home of a mission giver while I waited for my wanted level to subside. I had no car and being as far from a clothes shop as possible meant it really wasn’t worth my time to travel.

How It’s Different

The unique hook of American Fugitive is the breaking and entering system. You can break into just about any property, and doing so triggers the break-in mini-game. For example, there is an early mission to retrieve a necklace from a particular house. You approach the house and first thing to do is check the windows. You can check each window, which will tell you which room is inside and if there is anyone in there. When you have a window you like. You smash it and break in.

This brings up a floor-plan map of the house. You start in the room you broke into, and are given the option to search the room or move to another one. Searching takes time but if you’re here to rob the place this is what you’ve got to do. You search the room, and move to the next. Repeat until you are done. Two things to be aware of, breaking in may alert someone and a countdown will indicate how long you have until police arrive. Also, there may be someone home. If you encounter a person you will be given options to interact with them; attack them, tie them up or let them be. So long as you get out before the police show up, you should be good.

How it’s The Same

I would argue there’s a cardinal rule to making a nostalgia game, which is you really shouldn’t make the same mistakes when they’ve long since been solved. The plot of American Fugitive follows a man framed for his own father’s murder, escaping from prison to track down the real killer. That is your introduction to the game, however within ten minutes you’ll find yourself stealing cars and crushing them, or repainting them. You’ll spend quite a while doing random, pointless mission for a man who tells you he’s doing his best to track down the killer while you do his busy work. You move from one mission giver to another, and spend about seventy percent of your time doing filler missions to pad out the game. This game could stand to trim some of the fat.

In Conclusion

The last ten years or so have shown us that games don’t need to continue innovating on absolutely every aspect. For a long time games had to have most modern graphics and gameplay to succeed, but eventually that slowed down. Now games can look and play almost however they want and so long as they have a decent hook, they can succeed. A game like American Fugitive can be great, and in many ways it does succeed.

This game has appeal, but those few wrinkles that have long since been ironed out of gaming stand out like sore thumbs. I think there is value in the nostalgia here, this era of Grand Theft Auto games hasn’t seen as much revisiting as other classic games. That said, I just can’t truly recommend this game. If you really need a bit of classic GTA, this game might scratch that itch. Otherwise, I’d advise to give this one a miss.

Stay tuned to GamEir, and if you’re interested, converse with us on Twitter (@gam_eir), Facebook (@GamEir), and Instagram (@GamEir). Check out our videos on Twitch (GamEir) and YouTube (GamEir) and we’ll give you all the latest content!

The post A Review in Progress: American Fugitive appeared first on GamEir.

There’s a sweet spot in video games today that I really like, where the artistry of independent development meets big budget production. Recently that little slice of the industry has begun to expand, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice from Ninja Theory has a lot to do with that. There’s a market for mid-budget games from world-class developers, where great stories and beautiful art can shine. A Plague Tale: Innocence is exactly this kind of game.

Having watched the trailers or pre-release footage, you might have put together a picture of what this game is. We all do it, you see a new game and your gamer sense kicks in. At face value, this might look like another dour adventure game with some tacked on mechanics, but A Plague Tale: Innocence is so much more than it lets on.

A tale of a loss of innocence

On the surface, A Plague Tale: Innocence is a story-focused adventure game made up of stealth and action scenes, all set pieces with clear guidance. Player freedom is limited for dramatic, scripted scenarios. Your hand is held a lot through the first few chapters, but as you progress through the game more and more freedom is afforded to you. This is what I mean when I say this game is more than it appears because you’d be forgiven if you wrote A Plague Tale: Innocence off as another walking simulator.

The early stages are heavily focused on stealth, but as the game progresses the focus shifts more towards combat. As Amicia, you are armed with a sling and as many rocks as you can find. During the first few chapters, you are encouraged to use rocks and pots to distract enemies, allowing you to sneak around them.

The crack of the sling is loud, so it can’t be used to silently take down guards. In fact, the game implies using the sling is a last resort. Shots are slow to line up, and it can only take down guards without helmets. You’re a teenage girl, not a trained killer.

This is where I want to talk about one of the strengths of this game, how it amps up as it progresses. As I’ve said, the game prioritizes stealth early on and gives you little recourse in a fight. However, there is a gradual shift as the game goes on from stealth to combat.

Essentially, from non-lethal to fully lethal. I mean, you play as a young woman thrust into an unthinkably horrible situation. She’s not prepared, but she has to learn quickly in order to survive. Throughout the game you gain new tools, alchemical creations to dissolve enemy helmets or attract plague rats. At no point does this game tell you when to start killing people, it simply puts enemies in your way and it’s up to you when

your survival becomes more important than theirs. I can guarantee you, there’s no way to get through this game without taking lives. Your only choice is how many. There’s no incentive to go one way or the other, no Big Boss rating for beating the game with no kills. You will have to do some unpleasant things in this game, it’s up to you how far you take it.

I have played a lot of games that play off the morality of killing, that gives you the choice. Not one of them has implemented that idea as fluidly, as integrally as A Plague Tale: Innocence has. This game strips back the layers of video game nonsense and gives you the messy truth; simply do or do not. You’re not going to get a shiny medal for choosing correctly, you don’t get the good ending for being a moral crusader. The only weight to your actions is the weight on your conscience, and it’s sublime.

A Plot of Innocence

Let’s talk plot. Amicia De Rune is the daughter of a French knight, circa 1340. France in the 14th century means two things, the plague, and the Inquisition. Throughout this game, you are tasked by both. When the Inquisition shows up at the De Rune estate, things go south in a hurry. Amicia barely makes it out alive with her little brother Hugo in tow.

The newly orphaned siblings must now make sense of life when their home is destroyed and the world they are thrust into is hostile, to say the least. Townspeople in the first settlement they encounter are suspicious and confrontational.

The plague is taking lives by the dozens, so two outsiders strolling into town are treated as an infection to be stamped out. These poor kids really cannot catch a break! Though things will eventually get a little better for our heroes as they make friends with other outcasts, they still must endure hardship after hardship in an unforgiving adventure. A Plague Tale: Innocence earns its subtitle, telling a moving story of a teenage girl forced to into immense responsibility and a little boy who clings to his childhood in a world rapidly tearing it away from him.

The game isn’t a total bummer, though. The De Runes do make some good friends along the way, starting with Lucas. Lucas is an apprentice alchemist, he gives you a lot of the formulas you need to craft your various concoctions.

He’s basically your Q-branch. There are Mellie and Arthur, twin thieves who are handy when a door needs unlocking. Then there’s Rodric, son of a blacksmith. He tends to be the muscle of the group. What brings these characters together is loss, grief, and strife. They have all lost those who once protected them, and barely have the time to register their own pain before the harsh reality comes for them too. The only relief they have in their situation is each other, their monumental struggle is really only possible through solidarity and co-operation.

I almost forgot about the rats! Oh boy, there are a lot of rats. Too many rats, you might say. Being the namesake of the game, the plague is a key factor in this story. Wherever you go, the plague is prevalent. Rats fill each and every patch of darkness and devour anything foolish enough to enter that darkness. During the day they are rarely seen but at night they are everywhere. Your only means to combat the rats is light, swinging torches and lighting fires will keep them at bay.

The game is interspersed with light (get it?) puzzle sections in which you must traverse an area while avoiding becoming a midnight snack. I’ll warn you now, the rat swarms are unpleasant to behold. If you are in any way squeamish about these kinds of things, might need to avoid this one. One thing to note, always be wary of the rats at night. Even when you’re nowhere near any rats, standing in a dark area while a rat has a clear path to you and they might just take it. More than once I was eaten by some overzealous rats who decided to trek halfway across the room to get me.

There are no spoilers in this tale

It’s hard to talk much about the later game without giving away some spoilers that I really recommend you see for yourself. Seriously, this game goes places. Pretty early on you’ll catch on that there’s something a bit supernatural going on here, what with the alchemy and so on. The Inquisition is after young Hugo for a reason, an unusual reason at that. You’ll have to go see the Grand Inquisitor yourself to find out what that is.

That pretty much says it though, I want you to go experience this for yourself. I had decently high expectations for this game and it exceeded them on almost all fronts. It looks and sounds amazing. The stealth is a bit by the numbers but it serves its purpose well.

Crafting in your tale

The upgrade and crafting system was something I thought would feel tacked on and out of place, but it doesn’t at all. This game is a lot more action, a lot more involved than your typical artsy think piece. Someone should show this to David Cage, maybe he’ll put more video game in his video games from now on. It certainly has more emotion than anything he’s made. Seriously, A Plague Tale: Innocence is a hell of a journey with some lovable characters who will break your heart if you let them. Give it a go. 

Stay tuned to GamEir, and if you’re interested, converse with us on Twitter (@gam_eir), Facebook (@GamEir), and Instagram (@GamEir). Check out our videos on Twitch (GamEir) and YouTube (GamEir) and we’ll give you all the latest content!

The post A Review In Progress: A Plague Tale: Innocence appeared first on GamEir.

If you asked me a week ago what the best game of 2019 that involved a katana is, obviously that would be Sekiro. Now that I’ve played Katana Zero, I have to reassess that statement. That should say a lot.

What It’s Like

Katana Zero is a 2D action platformer with slick pixel graphics and a perfect thumping soundtrack. Heard it all before, yeah? Well if we continue with the descriptors, we can add that Katana Zero is a game where you play as a psychopathic hitman. In each level, you are sent to kill people and you must clear each room in one life or start over. You have a sword (hence katana) and the ability to slow down time, sweet moves ensue. Does this all sound familiar? Like, every indie game ever but mostly Hotline Miami? Well maybe a lesser reviewer would say something like that, but frankly, I’m struggling to disagree.

Katana Zero feels very similar to many of the games we’ve seen in recent years, but that is by no means a bad thing. A game that takes what’s good and refines it into something better is always welcome, and I can’t think of a better description for Katana Zero than that.

Why It’s Better

I singled out Hotline Miami for a reason, the inspiration is undeniable. Katana Zero is a trippy tale of murder, conspiracy, and crime. You play as a samurai in a neo-noir world, a contract killer who kills at the behest of his psychiatrist. His reward is medicine, not money. Now we shan’t get into spoilers, but I’m sure you’ve clocked that there’s something suspect about a psychiatrist sending a patient out to murder people, and I promise you it’s even more insane than you think it is. Katana Zero will entice you in with slick gameplay, but it will hook you and keep you with its wild story. Again I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are two things I really want to bring up.

Firstly, there are some exceptional pixel animations in this game. The action looks great but I’m talking about the cutscenes, I really loved all the little animations of characters interacting and emoting. A lot of personality comes across through these little animations, really helps the writing shine. Secondly, you play as a psychopathic killer with time powers so naturally your perspective on reality is tenuous. This game is not afraid to break its own rules, think that bit at the end of MGS 2 where the game goes nuts, but for an entire game.

Is Sword-Feel a Thing?

As well as being as mad as a bag of spiders, Katana Zero is mechanically tight. Each level is a tactics puzzle in which you must take out all of your enemies to progress, without taking a single hit. Getting hit sends you right back to the beginning to try again. Again think Hotline Miami but with time powers, so all your deaths are canon! To help you manage all the chaos you can slow down time, and you need this ability more often than not. I often forgot about it because I’m an idiot, but in some situations it becomes crucial. Slicing your way through goons with precision takes reflexes, and your time control gives you the edge you need to stay ahead. Sending a bullet back to its sender is pretty sweet too.

One thing you can’t do is mash your way through this game. That was a habit I had to break, for the type of game this is I instinctively found myself trying to slash like a madman. Your attacks have to be deliberate, if you mistime or miss your mark, you’re probably dead. One slice, one kill. Keep it that way and you’ll succeed.

The Final Cut

Katana Zero is dark, brutal, funny and heartbreaking all in one solid package of samurai slow-mo action. It’s out now on Steam and the Switch, and it is a must buy for indie fans. Don’t sleep on Katana Zero, it’s worth your time.

The post A Review in Progress: Katana Zero appeared first on GamEir.

If I were a lazy writer, I could say that She Remembered Caterpillars is basically Thomas Was Alone and leave it at that. I’m not a lazy writer, just a lazy person. Maybe my jokes are lazy, but that’s it. My point is that this game reminded me of one of my favourite games of all time due to it’s nuance and artistry and that made me very happy. Allow me to convey the reasons why!

She Remembered Caterpillars is a puzzle game by Jumpsuit Entertainment. It’s been available on Steam for a couple of years but just recently made it’s way to the Switch. This is how it crossed my desk and entered my life, and I’m very happy about it. Like most great puzzle games SRC hands you some simple mechanics and ramps up the difficulty as you progress. In each level you control several walking fungi with faces and must get each one to a target. Your characters are limited in where they can go based on their colour, red can only cross red bridges but cannot pass through red blockers, so on and so forth.

The first few levels have you move around a few red and blue dudes before introducing the ability to combine them. Mix a red with a blue to get purple, and the same rules apply. However, purple can cross either red or blue bridges but cannot go through red or blue blockers. Just as you’re getting used to this crazy new world, they throw a yellow one at you and all hell breaks loose.

The progression of the puzzles is a strong point for the game. Whenever the game simplifies itself to introduce new mechanics it quickly goes right back to bending your brain. None of the forty levels feel like padding, each level makes the best of the game’s mechanics. I can confirm with no shame that I was thoroughly stumped for a lot of this game, and it was good. Like, I could feel my brain growing kind of good. This is another great game to have on the go, ideal for the Switch.

For a game about fungus, She Remembered Caterpillars is gorgeous. The animations of the characters and puzzle parts are wonderful, the backgrounds are brilliant and I love the music so very much. The whole package is very pleasantly presented. Much like Thomas Was Alone there is an over-arching story told between chapters. It’s a bit confusing and mostly just implied but it adds to the ethereal feel of the game. For a puzzle game with a pretty basic system of mechanics, pretty art and a nice ambience is very welcome.

Overall, I really like She Remembered Caterpillars. It’s a pretty little puzzler that’s well designed and very engaging. For anyone looking for a puzzle game, I cannot recommend this one enough.

The post A Review in Progress: She Remembered Caterpillars (Switch Edition) appeared first on GamEir.

OMG Zombies is a party I am very much late to, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Originally a PSP game, OMG Zombies has been through a couple of iterations on Playstation handhelds and then on Steam. Just recently it came to the Switch, adding another handy little title for the console.

ZOMG!

OMG Zombies is a puzzle game about killing massive hordes of zombies. It has a look and feel to it reminiscent of flash games on Newgrounds back in the day. You know which day I’m talking about. The game is very grey, a murky black and white only to be cut right through with the red of blood. Plot isn’t much of a factor here; there’s a zombie outbreak, you are Police shooty man who’s out to re-kill the undead and get the heck out of Dodge. The game is book-ended by little comic strips to set up and close out the story. It’s a nice little touch and makes good use of the game’s art style.

Time To Make A Mess

The gameplay couldn’t be simpler in OMG Zombies. In each level you have dozens of zombies to kill, and only a couple of bullets to do it with. Luckily you don’t have to do any Wanted-style bullet bending, because these zombies are prone to explode upon death. You start off with groups of standard zombies, who cause a chain reaction of explosions when they die. The challenge is to take out as many zombies as you can with your limited bullets. The more you get, the more money you make. As you progress through the levels you encounter more zombie types; big boys make big booms, cops shoot their guns when they die, zombie ladies take off running before they explode, electro zombies zap each other and there are gross zombies that disintegrate into a puddle of acid when they die. As such, the thing to do is try to maximise the effectiveness of each zombie type and try to make the biggest combo possible.

Never Judge A Book By It’s Cover

It’s at this point I should refer back to my earlier point, about being late to the party. You see, after playing the game for a while I started to think it was only okay. I wasn’t overly impressed with it but for five quid I can’t fault it. However, a cursory glance at the general response to this game showed me that there are a lot of people who really love this little zombie shooter. I saw it as a neat little distraction, but review scores across the board told a different story. So, I went back in with an investigatory mindset. I figured I must have missed something, and I quickly discovered that I did.

You’ll notice earlier on I mentioned money. By achieving certain scores on each level, you receive money. With that, you can buy upgrades to both your gun and the zombies themselves. In my initial play time I ran through the levels, and before long I was struggling. As the game became more challenging, I couldn’t quite get the big scores and I wasn’t making any money.

Going back to the game, I see the loop clearly. When you have the money for upgrades, it’s time to go back and mop up those couple of levels that didn’t work out so well the first time. Getting higher scores on previous levels nets plenty more money for further upgrades and so the cycle continues. Have to say though, it’s a pretty addictive cycle. It’s extremely satisfying going back to levels that didn’t go so well the first time only to rinse it with your new upgrades.

In Conclusion

OMG Zombies is the definition of a little game. You don’t have to put much time into it to get the gist, but there’s plenty of impetus to keep coming back for more fun. It would feel right at home on your phone, albeit with a whole host of micro-transactions sucking the life right out of the game.

Honestly that might be the most impressive thing about this game, it’s a great example of what an addictive mobile game would be like if it wasn’t designed to annoy you into spending your money. If you want to sit down and grind out the upgrades in this game you can, and without artificial barriers. At it’s price of a fiver I cannot recommend OMG Zombies enough. An ideal game for the Switch user on the go, if you have five minutes to spare or a whole afternoon.

The post A Review in Progress: OMG Zombies (Switch Edition) appeared first on GamEir.

After twenty plus years of professional gaming, I must have fragged millions of worthless noobs in my career. That said even I, a professional gamer and slayer of men sometimes like a game that isn’t quite so violent from time to time. There’s something to be said for the comfort of a game like Stardew Valley, no-stress environments to unwind and relax in. Recently I was sent one such game to review, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. 

The game has been out for a while but it’s just now coming to Xbox One.  I gave it a play and I must say I had quite a good time with it. Why don’t we talk about it!

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is fundamentally a game of adventure, an open world game that invites you to explore. It begins with the player character on a ship bound for a mysterious island. When lightning strikes the ship it is wrecked on the shore and the player is let loose to find their way. From there you travel to a small village, meet the locals and begin your quest. The island has been plagued with clouds of purple mist called the Murk, a mire that is choking the life from the land. Around the island, you collect sprites, tiny creatures hiding all over who you need to clear the Murk. Each cloud you encounter requires a certain number of sprites to clear, and here is the main loop of the game. Follow the main quest, collect sprites, clear the Murk. There is plenty more to do than that, however.

While you always have the main quest to follow, there are plenty of side quests that you will pick up along the way. However, being quite a minimal game there isn’t a whole lot of variety to these side quests. In each area, there will be farms for you to build and people to keep happy, but the majority of the side content tends to be fetch quests for NPCs. While the gameplay isn’t particularly interesting here, there is plenty of dialogue from the people you meet. This little island has plenty of people with something to tell you, my particular favourite is the lady who’s ambition it is to become the greatest comedian ever and will share her new jokes with you as you meet her around the island.

While the game features crafting mechanics and the aforementioned farm building systems, these are fairly thin. You’re not here to become a farmer or a trader. These things are surplus to your story, a reason to keep you in one area for more than a few minutes. Your real goal in Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is exploration. Only through exploring the map for yourself will you track down more of those vital sprites. This game takes some cues from Breath of the Wild, including “borrowing” the opening few minutes. like in BotW you are given a gorgeous landscape the explore, you have an ultimate goal but you must go explore the island in order to achieve it.

This game really is stunning by the way, the island is a joy to explore. Like BotW it nails that open world vibe of seeing things off in the distance and being drawn to them. This little island manages to contain a host of different biomes, grasslands, desert, mountains, and rivers. My personal favourite is the northern coast, a frozen area of snow and ice where the rocky coast is a deep emerald green. Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a treat for the eyes.

It’s hard to say much more on this kind of game without taking away from the experience of playing it. The main hook of Yonder is the joy of exploring, and it lands that well. In the realm of relaxing good times, there are some gems. Those games we turn to when life is stressful enough and frankly we don’t need a game we have to think about.

Like Stardew or Harvest Moon, just a good time in a game where you can’t lose. In my opinion, Yonder is a strong addition to this category. I wouldn’t personally see it as a game I would come back to regularly as the other games mentioned, but for its duration, it is plenty of fun. Most of all, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a beautiful world to escape to when the real one is getting you down.

The post A Review in Progress: Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles appeared first on GamEir.

Is it racist that I find myself only able to call this game Tiny Metaru? Technically that is what it’s called, it’s a Japanese game and the announcer says it like that. It’s like how you have to say Resident Evil in the voice whenever you start up a Resident Evil game. You know, the voice you just did in your head. Have I made it clear enough that I don’t have a whole lot to say about Tiny Metal?

What Tiny Metal is, is a turn-based military strategy game where you take territory and send your units into battle. What it does is very little to advance the state of strategy gaming. That’s not to say this is a bad game, far from it. It’s perfectly enjoyable, the kind of game that definitely appeals to a demographic who I imagine have the utmost love for this little darling. I quite enjoyed my time with Tiny Metal, much as you might with a mobile game you play for five or ten minutes at a time. What I liked was the battle system and the flow therein.

In each mission you are given a starting group of troops, and the order of the day. This is almost always to dominate the map and take out all enemy units, maybe also take the enemy base if they have one nearby. You don’t build structures, in fact you have no impact on the map layout at all. Rather than a base, you must send your troops in to take over cities and factories. Cities give you resources, factories are where you build troops. This expands to things like air pads and communication towers where you call in hero units, but never gets too complicated. Same with the units, you have varying degrees of infantry, armour and air. Each unit type has strengths and weaknesses, and they’re all pretty by the book. This is where the game falls off a bit, not once did I feel like anything new was being added to the genre. Everything in Tiny Metal has been done before. Again, this isn’t a bad thing. The wheel has not been reinvented, but if you really like wheels then this one rolls like the rest of them. If gameplay isn’t where this game stands out, what has it got? An interesting plot, a subtext on the futility of war, great art design?

No, not really. The plot is a made up country shot down a plane with the leader of another country in it, so that country declares war on the first country. Also the leader of the first country is a samurai. Also it was all the doings of a weapons dealer who is also a clown. I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure if that’s all correct. The game has Japanese-only voice over, which is totally fine. Plenty of Japanese games are subtitled and still tell their stories well. It might be somewhat down to translation, but Tiny Metal doesn’t tell it’s story very well. Even from a mechanical standpoint, the subtitles tend to come and go so fast you need to speed read to keep up. You can set them to stay up until you hit a button, but for some reason that option kept resetting itself every time I turned the game off. Every time I came back to the game I’d end up playing through a chapter with the words flying past me at a million miles an hour. I’m pretty sure I missed major chunks of the plot as a result.

The story and the art of Tiny Metal are very anime. Early on, you’re introduced to Wolfram. She is the leader of the White Fang mercenary outfit who join you in your conquest along the way. Naturally, she is depicted as what appears to be a child in full military gear including a sniper rifle that’s almost as big as her. Another character, Dante is an old friend of our hero leader Nathan. No real comment on the art for these two, but Dante sure does get all hot and bothered when he meets Wolfram. A woman? On the battlefield? She should be protected, something so delicate and beautiful must be mamoru’ed for all time. The gameplay of Tiny Metal may not be moving us forward, but the plot and the writing are definitely moving us backward.

When a small child offers you advice on how to conduct your army, you take it.

Tiny Metal is not a great game, but it isn’t offensively bad either. The gameplay is engaging enough, the little battles are nice to watch. Aside from some dodgy dialogue, the plot is largely okay. It’s very run-of-the-mill stuff, it does it’s job and that’s about it. The price point of €24.99 is a bit much in my opinion. At time of writing the Steam version is €9.99, which I would argue is a more suitable price for this game. The game is also available on Switch and PS4, but my recommendation would be to wait for a sale on either of those platforms before picking this one up. I recommend this game at a tenner, not at twenty five.

The post A Review in Progress: Tiny Metal appeared first on GamEir.

If anything has been in vogue in gaming over the last five years, it’s been retro-style platformers. Pixel art never really goes out of style, we’re always in the market for some 8 to 16-bit goodness. We’ve had some modern classics like Shovel Knight and The Messenger, but also a plethora of games of mixed quality. A quick search through Steam will return dozens of retro style games, and with respect to all the hard-working developers out there, we really don’t need many more. Speaking of The Messenger, if you haven’t played it I highly recommend it. It’s absolutely exceptional, but I bring it up to make a point. When I first saw The Messenger, I brushed it off as just another nostalgia game. A Ninja Gaiden clone hoping to cash in on the fuzzy feeling fans get when they see their favourite game brought back. Once I played it, I realised The Messenger is one of those quality games like Shovel Knight. This is the thing, you put out a nostalgia game in a flooded market and people roll their eyes. That’s pretty much what I did when I was sent Ravva and the Cyclops Curse to review. Was my judgment premature? Let’s find out!

Ravva and the Cyclops Curse is about as pure a NES-talgia game as you’ll get. The game is simple in its design, lot’s of primary colours and straight forward sprites. You play as Ravva, the young child of a summoner. In the introduction, a cyclops places a curse on the mother and it is up to you to journey across the land to break the curse. Almost identical to Shovel Knight, Ravva and the Cyclops Curse has a storyboard intro and an over-world map for you to cross. Ravva is a more linear game, you play through all ten stages in order. No backtracking, no collectibles, no upgrades. As the child of a summoner, you get to summon spirits of your own. Being a little lad yourself, you get cutesy versions of each of the bigger spirits. This is where your main gameplay mechanic comes from, each summoned spirit gives you a different ability.

Aside from your basic straight shot, you have an angled multi-shot, freeze attack, bombs and an ability that reveals invisible items. There’s a good variety, and quickly swapping between abilities does most of the work to keep the gameplay interesting. That said, the gameplay isn’t very interesting. You use these various abilities to traverse quite generic platformer levels. There is little variety in the environment and even less in the enemies. All the monsters look very similar, the same colour palette over a couple of different designs. The biggest issue here is the amount of damage they take. You very often find yourself pumping shots into waves of enemies, who spawn almost quicker than you can kill them. Easily the worst part of this game is the amount of time spent repetitively shooting monsters. It takes too long, it just isn’t fun.

My initial feeling on this game was that it would fade into the background with its thousands of counterparts. Having finished it, I only mostly agree with that assessment. Ravva and the Cyclops Curse is fairly generic, but it’s also very cheap. It doesn’t break any new ground, and I wouldn’t say it modernises or perfects any of its old school ideas. The one vibe I got from this game is it’s potential as a game for younger players. Maybe you’ve got a younger sibling, cousin or child and you want to introduce them to classic games. The game has a kid mode that gives you infinite lives, so it seems the developer intended this one for a young audience. All well and good, but it’s a hard argument to pick this over Mario. Ravva and the Cyclops Curse is cute, but it’s no classic.

The post A Review in Progress: Ravva and the Cyclops Curse appeared first on GamEir.

The Resident Evil 2 Remake has had a long history in the fan community. When the original game was remade for the Gamecube, it received new life. Not only becoming the definitive way to experience the first game (unless you REALLY want that sweet bad voice acting) but standing as a testament to what can be accomplished when you take that style of game and throw a new coat of paint on it. Naturally, the Resi community clamoured for a similar remaster of Resident Evil 2, a favourite of many fans.

This remake was long rumoured to be on the cards until it was made official; we do it, said Capcom in 2015. Little was said until E3 last year when we finally got to see what was in store. Resident Evil 2 was to be a remake on a whole other level, not simply the original game with updated visuals. The story of Leon S. Kennedy and his unfortunate first day on the job is getting all new visuals, mechanics and gameplay. A truly modern Resident Evil game to tell a classic tale. Plenty of promising talk, but the best way to know a game’s worth is to play it yourself. Conveniently we can do just that with this handy dandy new demo!

With only thirty minutes of game time, I did my level best to see as much of the demo as I could. Inadvertently, I finished the demo with time to spare. Luckily, the timer only drops in game. I took this opportunity to fiddle with the settings, and I bring this up only because I have never seen a game with such depth in it’s options. Most PC games let you customise your graphical settings to your heart’s content, but Resident Evil 2 gives you a running tally of just how much of your memory is being used. This is a seriously useful feature, letting you adjust settings and see the effect in real time, rather than hoping for the best when you load into the game. On the topic of graphics, RE2 looks spectacular.

Built on the same tech as RE7 and DMC5, this game is all of what you would expect a video game in 2019 to look like. Of particular note are the lighting and facial animations, but top to bottom this is one of the best looking games out there. Mechanically RE2 Remake falls somewhere in the midst of the 4-6 style, leaning more towards six. No tank controls here, but action man you are not. Leon and Claire are not the zombie killing masters they would later become, this is Leon’s first day on the job and he is as green as the sweet, precious herbs. Bullets are about as sparse as they were in the original, and early on you get a knife from Marvin. The classic tactic still works, incapacitate the zombies and knife them until they stop moving. What’s changed is that knives are now finite, they break after a certain amount of use. I love this, it really adds to the survival aspect of the game. With all the changes to the formula over the years, it seems with this remake Capcom are not only going back to what made Resident Evil great in the first place, but making new and interesting decisions to expand on their ideas. As refreshing as Resident Evil 7 was, as a fan of the series I’m looking at Resident Evil 2 Remake and seeing serious promise for the future of the franchise. If Resident Evil 8 takes it’s cues from this game, I’ll be a happy gamer.

After Resident Evil 6, the series was in a pretty low place in the eyes of fans. What had once been the seminal horror franchise had become just another action shooter. This evolution was a bit of a catch 22 for Capcom, they couldn’t make the same game over and over again, but expanding on the series only took it further from what made it popular, what the fans wanted. Dead Space saw a similar fate. Only with time and good will could Capcom get a chance to reclaim their glory, and with Resi 7 they did it. Resident Evil had new life as something different, but where to go from there? Well, it’s been a long time since the hay day of this series and there’s a whole new generation who did not grow up with these games. Makes sense to bring things back to basics, for the possible benefit of launching the series further in the future. Nintendo just did the same with Pokémon Go, a way to bridge the gap for new players to see what the old games are like. Could this mean we see a Resident Evil 8 that harkens back to the classics? It’s possible, and I am hopeful.

If this demo and the rave reviews are anything to go by, Resident Evil 2 Remake is a must buy. The general consensus of the internet is that this game is the right way to do a remake, and that certainly looks to be the case. We’ll all be able to find out for ourselves starting this Friday.

The post Resident Evil 2 Remake Demo Impressions appeared first on GamEir.

Frankly I was surprised I even wanted to give this game a further look, but Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a pretty surprising game. After twenty hours I had just gotten started and I was excited to continue the adventure. Well, I’ve travelled the length and breadth of the Greek world. With over a hundred hours of game time, I’ve seen and done basically everything Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has to offer. Let us discuss.

So first off, I’d like to say I still agree with everything I said in my previous article. I took a look back over what I said, no big changes to make. That article was more of a standard review of the game, here I want to go a bit more in-depth on a few details. Let’s start with gameplay and how it progressed over the course of the game. Odyssey is an action game at heart, and with half-decent gear you can skill your way through just about every fight. This game is an RPG too, and it has some fun gear to pick up. For about three quarters of the game, I mostly just used whatever the highest level equipment I had.

Once I started to finish off some of the high level quests like hunting down cultists, I got some really interesting gear. My particular favourites were the Amazon set, which made Kassandra look like Wonder Woman but more importantly grants massive healing while attacking. With this, I didn’t need my healing ability any more. I could just hack away at enemies and my health would fly back up. It’s super powerful, but considering this is a very late-game get it’s pretty fair. I had a knife that did constant poison damage, a bow that always fired flaming arrows, a massive axe that did way more damage against bosses, and a plethora of other legendary weapons with all kinds of perks. Considering you can also engrave these weapons for extra abilities, there’s a lot of fun to be had. For no good reason, I made my poison blade do fire damage too. It didn’t really work but it was dumb and I loved it.

Overall I was surprisingly happy with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The move to an action RPG isn’t without issue but the overall job is well done. Especially considering the sizeable part of the assassin’s creed audience who’s cup of tea this usually isn’t, Ubisoft have made a lot of good decisions in this transition. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has loot, it has lots of numbers and it has a plot that can be altered quite drastically by your actions. It is by no means the best game under this banner, but a good entry level RPG for a wider audience. In my previous article I mentioned the option to spend money to boost your experience games. This is by far the most bothersome fly in Odyssey’s ointment. In the name of science, I decided about halfway through the game to lay my own money down and find out how much of a difference this makes.

I’m sad to report, it makes a significant difference. Before the boost, there were a lot of walls. The game would flow fairly well from quest to quest, but occasionally the difficulty would spike. I’ve seen others mention the moment you reach Athens and suddenly all your quests are several levels higher than you are. I had this problem too. It seems that unlike Origin, which had a nice and steady pace to it, Odyssey would have you perform some repetitive bland quests to gain the levels you need. However, this is an action game and when approached with a challenge my instinct was to “git gud” as I have been trained to do. Frankly, I was wasting my time. After paying my ten bucks, that never happened for me again. With the experience boost Odyssey suddenly felt like the smooth ride that Origin did the year previous. More so, I was consistently ahead of the curve and occasionally the levels of enemies would jump up to catch up with me. Personally, this practice worries me. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

For a finish, I’d like to switch up the discussion. Like many of you, all progress in any other game/show/life endeavour came to a grinding halt once Red Dead 2 released. I likely would’ve had this piece done weeks ago if Red Dead hadn’t kept me away for a few weeks. Playing these two games around the same time, as well as Spider-Man just previously had me thinking on the state of open world games today. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Red Dead Redemption 2 are great examples of two stark contrasts in how to design an open game, Red Dead is unapologetic in its realism while Odyssey is terrified it might offend you. Leave your horse behind in Red Dead? Tough luck. Need a ride in Odyssey? Just whistle and a horse shall magic up right in front of you. Even if you leave your ship docked at the entire other end of Greece, just pop to the nearest dock and have it come to you!

Not to say one way or the other is correct, but 2018 was a great year for exploring vast worlds. Spider-Man and Odyssey are both excellent examples of adventure games with all the mod-cons, plenty to see and do and the whole experience is very streamlined. Red Dead is intentional rough, but breaks new ground in that way Rockstar does. Going back to Odyssey after Red Dead, I genuinely felt like I had lost a significant feature when I couldn’t talk to absolutely everyone I met.

It was an interesting time, seeing the genre take strides forward but also tweak and refine what it’s already got. Essentially what I’m saying is if you enjoyed Red Dead 2 and would like a palate cleanser, Odyssey comes second only to Spider-Man. Good times all round.

The post A Review in Progress: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Review (Part 2) appeared first on GamEir.