Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an action-adventure game that involves intergalactic battle, travelling across galaxies, and visiting a myriad of planets to fulfill certain objectives. There are several main characters in the game, but the way that the player chooses their character is unique as far as the Nintendo Switch goes.

I was provided with a starter pack for the purposes of this review. In that pack, I received a box that contained the game itself, an Arwing spaceship, two playable characters (the legendary Fox McCloud, and newcomer Mason Rana), and two weapons for the ship (Flamethrower and Frost Barrage). The starter pack also comes with a poster and a proprietary Joycon mount.

To play, you must equip your new Joycon mount with your Joycon controllers, as you would on the classic grip. Then, you choose your pilot. I chose Fox McCloud for most of my gameplay. Alumni of StarFox 64 academy will get a chuckle early on in the game when Peppy demands that you “Do a barrel roll!” during your first battle.

Once your pilot is equipped, it’s time to attach the ship. Whichever ship you choose is placed neatly over the pilot figure and snaps into place. Similarly, the weapons that you choose are snapped onto each wing. Everything can be removed and switched out any time during gameplay. Also, while my items were all tactile, real objects, there are digital version of every character, ship, and item that can be purchased in the eShop. And once you use a physical object, it is then stored as a digital object for future use (so you do have the option to play handheld after your first playthrough with every object).

From what I can gather, nearly every character that resides on the Equinox (the player’s mothership) is playable. However, I can say that I’m not a fan of locking characters behind paywalls, as is the case in most toys-to-life style games. There was one instance in the game where I came across an item box in the middle of space. My two weapons couldn’t open the item because they weren’t the right type of weapons. However, there was a weapon available for sale that I could have purchased to open the box then and there. I can only hope that the game’s overall story doesn’t rely on outside purchases to complete the game.

Aside from purchases, I did have a pretty great time with the game. Your character is essentially the ship. You travel by ship, you battle by ship, and you appear to communicate by ship. You can see your pilot’s face in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, but you never see your character outside of the space ship, aside from cut-scenes.

I explored a few planets, completed a few missions, and scanned a few of the resident species to see what I could discover. The carrying capacity of the ship was very limited, and I couldn’t exactly figure out where to access my inventory, which was a bit of a pain. Some of the items and plants that you find on different planets can be sold for cash or used to upgrade certain stations that you come across. Also, while the planets were fun to explore, a lot of them had similar layouts and animal compositions. I’m hopeful that they’ll start to vary more as the game goes on.

The most common enemy that you’ll battle throughout Starlink: Battle for Atlas is the Legion, run by an aggressive ruler named Grax. In the beginning of the game, Grax kidnaps the Equinox’s captain in order to further his campaign to strengthen the Legion. The Star Fox team, who had been on the hunt for Star Wolf, happen to stumble across this kidnapping as it’s happening and offer to help. Right from the get-go, Fox ingratiates himself with the Equinox’s team, and both factions decide to help one another.

All told, Starlink: Battle for Atlas seems like a fun game for kids. The ship building and customization is a fun activity to weave into a game, and it’s definitely something that I would have loved when I was a kid. The story-line also caters toward a younger audience, where some of the characters are set up as clear comic relief. The main antagonist, while a little spooky, is balanced by his cartoonish elements. I would recommend getting this game, just be wary of the add-ons and upgrade purchases, as I could see the price point ratcheting up rather quickly.

The Starter Pack for Starlink: Battle for Atlas is available on PS4, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch for €69.99 at Smyths Toys and other retailers.

The post A Review in Progress: Starlink: Battle for Atlas appeared first on GamEir.

Wherefor art thou, little glass bumblebee-thing?

No, seriously, where are you? I need to find four more of you to get to the next level.

My Brother Rabbit is the latest game from Polish developer Artifex Mundi, and boy oh boy. It’s something else.

The game begins with a series of stills, hand-drawn images showing a family with two young children, a boy and a girl. As the siblings are playing together looking at butterflies and flowers, the young girl is suddenly stricken with an unidentifiable illness. The next scene shows the girl sick in bed while her parents frantically watching over her.

Without warning, we’re thrust into the surreal realm of the children’s combined imagination. The star of the show is the titular Rabbit (the brother), an animated version of the stuffed toy the children often play with. The Rabbit’s purpose is to save his sick/sad flower friend (a representation of the sister).

The game then relinquishes control back to the player, and the hunt begins.

Where the Wild Things Aren’t

My Brother Rabbit is almost exclusively a hidden-object style game. In each scene, you can interact with nearly any object that you see. Not all objects will activate, but most will at least respond to your prodding with a little jiggle. When you interact with certain objects, the item will come to the foreground, then pop over to a bubble in the top right corner of a screen with a counter underneath. This indicates that you need to find several more of these objects throughout the area that you’re in.

An area can have multiple scenes in which items hide. For example, in the first area you begin in the Rabbit’s hut, but you are free to travel to the land just above his hut, as well as a few scenes over to the right. Keep an eye on your item in the bubble up top when you’re in any scene; if your item is coloured in, it means that item is somewhere on the screen. If it’s greyed out, you’ve already claimed all of those items for that particular scene.

In addition to hidden objects, there are also occasional puzzles that you’ll have to solve once you’ve collected all of the items for an area. A lot of these puzzles seemed to revolve around colour coordination, akin to solving a Rubik’s cube, though not nearly as time-consuming. And it did give me a bit of an ego-boost each time I correctly solved one.

Unfortunately, some of these objects are a bit too well hidden. It didn’t take long for me to get stuck, after a half hour or so of searching in vain. My Brother Rabbit is certainly a game that requires a patient player, or at least one who doesn’t mind randomly clicking throughout the screen in the vague hope that they’ll trigger an action (that’s me). And there are no hints at all if you find yourself stuck. Once I finally was able to move past my first quagmire, I inevitably became stuck again. And again. And on my third or fourth stop, I decided that it would be in the best interest of my own mental health and the health of those around me if I just stepped away from the console for a while.

The Land of Make-Believe

While fairly tedious, the game is gorgeous to look at. The scenery is outlandish, straight from the imagination of a whimsical child. The make-believe world and its rounded edges, colourful backdrops, and friendly characters also contrasts with the hand-drawn, sharp-edged depictions of reality we see in the beginning scenes.

My Brother Rabbit is an attempt by a child to understand and make sense of what’s happening to his sister. And not only is he trying to understand what’s happening, but he is actively “saving her” in his imagination. It portrays illness and suffering through the lens of a child, and the story unfolds in a way that is… well, childlike – good vs evil, hero vs villain.

The music, however, is quite lovely. It’s eerie, with shades of melancholy, and even jaunty at times, and really ties the whole mood of the game together neatly.

So, do you like Where’s Wally? Do you like Rubik’s cube-style puzzles? Then this might just be the game for you!

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The Gardens Between is a tranquil, introspective, immersive adventure puzzler developed by Melbourne devs, The Voxel Agents. In The Gardens Between, you follow two children (best friends, Arina and Frendt) as they traverse through a mysterious archipelago built from the scattered remains of their shared, jumbled memories. The meaning behind these mysterious islands becomes clear in due course – through the manipulation of time.

It is the gameplay of The Gardens Between that is profoundly unique in its execution. The game already boasts numerous awards and accolades, including Best Game, Most Innovative, and Excellence in Design. The story is told through a single shot, even from the very beginning – hitting the start button does not jar into a blank loading screen. Rather, you are immersed immediately, as the camera slowly zooms in on Arina and Frendt, playing together in the treehouse in their conjoined backyard- a sharp disconnect from the grey, urban surroundings.

The main objective of the game is to sail from island to island, then find and carry a light source from one end of each island to a pedestal at the other end. The light is carried in a lantern which Arina holds. It is Frendt who wields the ability to clear obstacles, open pathways, and find new light sources through his ability to manipulate objects in time.

The player quickly learns the mechanics of the game upon entering the first island, where there are a few, quick puzzles to solve. Arina and Frendt move upon their pre-determined paths once the player moves the joystick to the right (Right moves time forward, left moves it backward). Frendt is able to single out certain objects and move them backwards or forwards through time, while everything else in the world remains in stasis. This allows the two to progress through the island. For example, the path ahead may be blocked by a toppled dinosaur skeleton (the unravelled memory of their museum visit). By manipulating segments of time, the player can clear the path by putting the dinosaur skeleton back together, thus allowing Arina and Frendt to move to the next puzzle.

As the game progresses, the puzzles increase in difficulty. Time manipulation becomes much more precise, and later puzzles become much harder to solve as not all objects obey the natural flow of time. It also becomes necessary in certain areas to go back and forth through the level several times in order to sync all of the actions just right and unlock the memory.

Constellations appear to be a running theme throughout the game. When an island is “solved”, the memory correlating to that island appears on the screen. That memory eventually morphs into a constellation. Here, you can also control the flow of time, but only to play the memory out. It is simply a brief snapshot into a moment. And that’s what our memories are – they feel timeless, and we play them out over again and again, but in reality, they’re only a few brief, enjoyable seconds.

The Gardens Between is an amalgamation of the bittersweet nostalgia and vivid imaginations of childhood. From the initial scene, it becomes clear that Arina and Frendt’s adventure is an escape from the mundanity of reality, where the melancholic rumble of thunder and trains persists. It also shows how much we rely on our friends, as the puzzles cannot be solved by one child alone.

Playing with time is part and parcel of nostalgia – always wishing we had more time, wishing that we’d known that we were in “the good old days” when we were living them. The Gardens Between takes a closer look at our childhood memories and literally dissects them, taking them apart, playing them backwards and forwards. And for anyone who enjoys a good puzzle game, there were so many moments when I thought, “I have no idea how to solve this,” only to suddenly see the answer appear.

If you enjoy atmospheric, thoughtful puzzle games, this is definitely the game for you. The Gardens Between releases September 20th on Nintendo Switch, Steam, and PS4.

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Hand of Fate 2 is, essentially, Dungeons and Dragons for Switch.

Hand of Fate 2 begins with you sitting at a table across from a masked man holding a deck of cards. After a brief opening monologue, the man asks you to choose either a male or a female card. This will be your character. You play as a warrior, with some limited customization options available to your looks (though I found it especially limiting when playing as the female character, with hair styles being limited to mohawk or… more different mohawk). There is a short tutorial in which you learn the nuances of the game and how your choices affect the outcome. Then, you can begin your adventure, all narrated by your friendly neighbourhood quest master, The Dealer.

Your quest master (Dungeon master, if you will), known only as The Dealer, is a deformed magician who keeps his face hidden. He offers colour commentary on your journey and the decisions you make along the way, along with a few amusing anecdotes about his own life. He’s also fond of magically twirling a deck of cards around the air.

The deck of cards is what your adventure is comprised of. On the table between yourself and the Dealer, a random amount of cards will lie face down. Your journey is created through the sequenced flipping of the cards one at a time, in any direction you choose. Each card is a random encounter or challenge of some sort. Some are campaign based, some are seemingly random, and some you can choose from your own deck to insert in the adventure. You’re rewarded with new cards for completing various challenges and at the end of campaigns. So before every new campaign, you have a bit of a choice when it comes to choosing your next adventure.

The campaigns are all text based and each card presents a new situation. The text statement will generally have multiple options to choose from. If, for example, you come across a damsel in distress, you can choose to either save her or ignore her. Why would you ignore her, you ask? Well, it could very well be a well-disguised ambush. And here is where the real flavour of Dungeons and Dragons comes through. In order to have a positive encounter with certain challenge cards, you often will need to roll some dice. The Dealer will present a target, say, you must roll a 14 within 2 dice rolls. Hitting or exceeding that target will mean a better outcome. In other cases, the Dealer will show you 4 cards with different outcomes on them (something like, Failure, Failure, Success, Huge Success). The cards will then be swiftly shuffled and you will need to pick one of the cards. That card will determine the outcome of the challenge.

In some cases, it becomes necessary to pick up the sword and shield and battle with the various enemies each campaign has to offer. When a challenge card choice leads to a fight, you are transported through a vibrant, psychedelic tunnel to a small fighting area. This part of the game operates like your average hack and slash, complete with a mage ally to help shield you from a few attacks. Controls are simple, and some enemies have unique capabilities that cause you to react in a certain way, or you have to use special attacks to weaken them. Once you’ve defeated all enemies, you are generally rewarded with some various goodies, like health, food, weapons, etc. If, however, you are killed during this encounter, you lose the campaign and will have to start all over again.

I guess that’s where I really struggled with the game, that permadeath seems especially vicious when you’ve progressed far in a campaign. And so much of what happens relies on chance and chance alone. The game can quickly spiral into misery if you keep rolling snake eyes or choosing the Huge Failure card. The only place that I see where skill is required is in those fighting segues. There might be an element of choosing the right dialogue option for a particular scenario, but I’d hardly call that skill. At the same time, you could be hitting a lucky streak where you roll 18’s and Huge Successes and feel like the game is the greatest. But I find that the mood change can happen on a dime.

I like this game, though and if you like adventure-RPG-card games narrated by a whimsical wizard, lots of chance, and a bit of hack and slash, then you’ll like this game too.

Hand of Fate 2 is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Steam, and now Nintendo Switch, for €24.99.

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Right up front, I need to clear the air. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this game, just going by the aesthetics alone. However, I quickly found it quite addicting, and after what I had imagined were a few minutes, I had actually sunk literal hours into the game. So, with that in mind, buckle up while I dish all about the bot-busting card battler, Insane Robots.

Insane Robots is, as its title would suggest, a game about robots that have gone insane, forced to battle one another in what are ominously referred to as “The Arenas”.  It was developed by Playniac and released in July 2018. You play as Franklin, a former chef robot who has conveniently lost his memory, but who is destined to be the saviour of robot-kind by destroying the evil robot leader, Kernel. At least, that’s what you’ve been told.

There is a brief tutorial in which you face off against two sentries. Basically, you move along a honeycomb-style map a few hexagons at a time. When you end up in a space next to an enemy, you have the option to battle that enemy. The winner of the battle is rewarded with cash that you can use in shops. There are other hidden treats around the maps as well, like cash drops, random encounters that can either help or hinder and shops that you can use to upgrade and heal. Each map is randomly generated too, so you don’t really know what to expect each time you play.

Once you and your enemy have finished hurling cutting insults at one another in auto-tuned bot voices, you’ll begin your battle. In battle mode, you face off against your opponent with four blocks surrounding you, two in front and two in back. Each of you will be dealt a few tokens (cards) that perform a certain function. The most important of these are attack and defence. When it’s your turn, you have a finite amount of time (represented by what I can only describe as a “pie icon”) to place the blocks strategically on the screen. With each subsequent turn in the battle, you are allotted more time to perform more actions. For example, if you want to play an attack token, that takes 1.. uhm.. pie piece. When you’re out of pie pieces, it becomes your opponent’s turn.

There are several facets of the card playing experience that consistently make battles interesting. I was constantly finding new power-ups in shops strewn throughout the maps, or during random exploration. The most popular tokens that I used were glitch and hack. Both of these can be used to either disrupt your opponent’s tokens by altering the values negatively or to enhance your own tokens by increasing the values to make your attacks or defence stronger. You can also swap tokens with your opponent, or lock a particularly good card (or bad card, for your opponent), so that it cannot be used for one turn.

There is an element of augmentation for your bots as well. When you come across shops in the different maps, you have the option to purchase an augmentation slot. You can then use money to add useful upgrades such as making defence tokens cost nothing to equip, or adding extra attack power each time you pull an attack token. Some augmentations can make traversing certain maps easier by blasting away mountains or skating over ice. As the game progresses, maps will become more hazardous, so these augments will become handier later on.

One of the biggest bonuses of this game was the incredible soundtrack. From the surfer rock tune blasting out in the main menu to the melancholic mountain melody, each arena has a distinct theme and mood. The arenas are varied enough as well, with one in the desert, one underwater, one in the snow, etc. Even the battle music is different in each arena, sort of a ramped-up version of the arena’s soundtrack.

There are over 40 robots in Insane Robots (not sure if you can play as all of them, some might only be enemies). By the time I finished playing, I had eight robots in my party, with my favourite being the cat robot (obviously), K1-tty. You can swap out robots after an arena session, as the robots each have different abilities. There’s also a multiplayer aspect to the game which I didn’t really get to delve into. However, if you’re interested, you can listen to the Creative Director, Rob Davis, talk about the multiplayer here.

Admittedly, the €19.99 price tag is a bit steep for a game of this caliber. However, if you do happen to get your hands on this game, I don’t doubt that you’ll end up putting more time into it than you thought, just as I did!

Insane Robots is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

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20XX is a roguelike 2D sidescroller and platformer that was released for PC in August 2017 and for Nintendo Switch now. It bears a very strong resemblance to Mega Man X, both in its aesthetics and gameplay. But can it live up to the near-perfect action platformer with the impeccable soundtrack from our childhood?

Let’s talk similarities. In 20XX, you play as a young girl named Nina clad in armour and brandishing a power blaster; not unlike our old hero, X. You also have the option of playing as a male character, Ace, who wields an electric sword instead. I opted for Nina, partially out of nostalgia, as she has the closest move set to X, but also because, hey, badass female lead in an action platformer? I’ll take it.

[As a side-note – growing up, I always thought Zero was a girl (it was hard to tell under all those pixels, and how on earth did he manage the upkeep of all that luscious blonde hair?). So even though I found out years later that Zero is not a girl, it was cool to have this super-awesome powerful girl to look up to at the time.]

The move set of Nina/Ace is very similar to X, from wall jumps to dashes. You can gain power-ups in each level, similar to Dr. Light’s cylindrical dispensary of goodies. The variety of power-ups is astounding in 20XX if a little overwhelming. You can improve how much damage you dole out, your blaster, your jumping abilities, and more, and in a multitude of ways. These abilities can be picked up in levels or in the interactive menu screen (more on that later).

Boss battles are similar to Mega Man X as well, with both the double boss door entry and the boss battle room being nearly identical to Mega Man X. Where the two differ however is in the bosses’ battle approach. Gone are the days of Chill Penguin and Boomer Kwanger, with their well-timed, random attacks that one had to calculate to avoid after careful observation. In their place is a coordinated bullet hell attack that seems to be identical across each boss. So while each boss may have different names, looks, and levels in which they reside, the boss battles become stale fairly quickly, with limited originality, apart from how each boss looks and what they shoot at you.

From there, the two games begin to veer off, with 20XX showing how much they’ve attempted to improve upon the fun challenges of Mega Man X. We’ll start with the interactive menu first. A little gimmicky, but it’s definitely a unique way to handle browsing through upgrades and levels. You start your journey here, and when you die, you return here to choose your next path and gather upgrades for your next run. You can also change characters here (Nina or Ace), and trade your loot in for various power-ups. Yes, the baddies drop loot in this game, which is similar to Mega Man X. But rather than 1ups and health, baddies in 20XX drop robot parts, which can be used as a form of currency to purchase upgrades. It sounds a bit like an iPhone app, but it’s not so bad once you start to figure it all out.

Let’s face it, The music in 20XX is good, but it can’t compare to the timeless beats of Mega Man X (Armored Armadillo, anyone?). It still has that 16-bit synth sound, but I’ll admit that none of the levels’ tunes really grabbed me for any length of time. Where the game does succeed Mega Man X is in graphics. For a 2D side-scroller, 20XX really has some gorgeous moments, especially any time you’re faced with an explosion.

20XX has made some improvements on the old franchise, for sure. You can play online co-op with a friend, you can take a break from a level and opt-in to a challenge, which could reward you with some excellent loot. Where the game noticeably lacks is in its story. Mega Man X expertly handled the dilemma of the conflicted hero. X does not see himself as a saviour, but rather as a sort of monster who has slain so many foes along his journey toward a resolution that he doesn’t even fully comprehend. 20XX has taken the depth and story out of Mega Man X and kept only the base mechanics of the game. There is no deeper story than: Robots Here Are Bad, Blast them. And there’s nothing really wrong with that. But it all depends on what drew us to Mega Man X in the first place, and whether those same draws will connect you to 20XX.

For a game funded by a Kickstarter though, it is impressive what has been accomplished, and the team at Batterystaple Games has certainly made a game that will satisfy those sweet pangs of nostalgia for us old Mega Man vets.

20XX is now available on the Nintendo Switch for €14.49 in the eShop. It’s also available on Steam, PS4, and Xbox.

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Do you want to play Adorable Dark Souls? Because Hollow Knight is Adorable Dark Souls.

Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania game set in a grim underworld filled with bug-like inhabitants. It was developed by Team Cherry for PC in 2017 and was (finally) released for Switch in a surprise announcement during a Nintendo Direct in June 2018.

You play as the titular Hollow Knight, a tiny bug-like creature with antennas that resemble bunny ears. You’re clad in a tattered shroud and wielding a large sword. Your name is not immediately known, though various people you encounter refer to you as Ghost, Little Whisper, The Knight, and other cute nicknames to suit your cute countenance. Your identity, quest, and reason for ravaging this dying world are unknown. You are given hints about your background and intentions as you progress, but ultimately much of the story will be a mystery until you near the end of the game.

Gameplay:

Let’s get right into it. This game was a joy to play. Hollow Knight is a deftly created Metroidvania that gives the player ultimate control over how they would like to play and where they would like to go. The way is not linear, and as if to set the tone for you from the start, your first main “world” is called the “Forgotten Crossroads”. As you drop into the abyss from above, without any map or compass to direct you, you can either go left or right. There’s no absolute right way to choose. The game is putting itself in your hands and letting you drive.

I say above, without a map, because maps are not pre-distributed. You must search the vacant darkness blindly for a time before you find the map maker for each “world”, a delightful little bug named Cornifer. When you do stumble upon Cornifer (often preceded by a distinct humming to let you know you’re on the right track), he will sell you his incomplete version of the world map for a small fee. It will be up to you to fill in his gaps. It’s a good idea to purchase a compass and quill from his wife in the world above (named Iselda). The compass shows your place on the map, and the quill will fill in the missing rooms you’ve discovered once you sit on your next bench.

Chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool.

An Ode to Benches:

Ah, benches. Your small reprieve in a world filled with unrelenting monsters. Here, you can rest, save your progress, and sit with some certainty that there is no immediate danger lurking nearby. Think the save rooms in Resident Evil or the fire pits in Dark Souls. You can also use benches to change out your charms, which are glowing items that you come across in each world; some are also available for purchase from certain vendors. Charms bestow small bonuses to your health, defense, battle, soul-power, basically anything that helps you to succeed. You can only have a small number of charms on you at any time, though there are up to 40 available to collect.

Benches are also used as a respawn location. When you die, you lose all of the currency you’ve collected and any soul power that you’ve accumulated during your progress. You start at the last bench you sat at, wherever that might have been (so it’s a good idea to sit on benches often, especially when in new territories). There’s nothing more soul-crushing than dying in a boss battle and realising that the last bench you sat on is two worlds away. However, your currency and soul power are not completely lost. Rather, they are contained in a hostile, dark version of yourself which resides in the place that you were killed. When you make it back to the room you died in, you face off against your “ghost”, and when you successfully slay it, you are given back your souls and currency. Unfortunately, If you’re killed along the way, your currency and soul power are lost forever. It’s all very Dark Souls.

Soul power and currency are both gained primarily through combat. Your soul power is used to both heal and to unleash powerful attacks. With each successful blow to an enemy, you gain soul power. Upon your enemy’s demise, they will drop currency, which can be used to purchase charms or various upgrades.

Final Thoughts:

I won’t lie. Some of the enemies in Hollow Knight are hard. And much like Dark Souls, every death is a lesson. Power-ups aren’t given to you at the beginning of the game. You must earn them, and fight your way through formidable enemies before you can proceed to harder stages. There is no hand-holding in Hollow Knight. You learn through trial and error. You pass over the same rooms over and over, combing through every nook and cranny to see what you might have missed. But you learn. The game is teaching you how to play it, what to look for, and how to find all of the hidden goodies you might have missed in the earlier worlds.

The platforming mechanics are downright fun, especially as you gain and build your jumping abilities. Once you learn certain power-ups, more areas become available to you. There are also plenty of tertiary characters and hidden bonuses locked away throughout the world. You just have to keep your eyes (and ears) open to find them. Speaking of ears, I haven’t even touched the soundtrack, but it is simply exquisite. Haunting, moving, and wonderfully moody. A real tone-setter for an already gorgeous game.

This is a great game, and well worth your time. You’re guaranteed to play through Hollow Knight multiple times, discovering new things each time you play. Team Cherry could easily charge more than the €14.99 price tag, so consider this game quite the bargain!

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I never played Spyro as a child, so the fervent nostalgia for this whimsical dragon was a bit lost on me. I did have many friends who held the game in high regard, and I know that they’re looking forward to Spyro Reignited Trilogy with much gusto.

First Impressions:

The mechanics of Spryo appear to be easily approachable, and quick to learn. Levels are fairly linear, with easily formidable, squishy enemies that go down in one or two hits. Spyro can glide from tall heights, boost to increase his speed, and shoot fire, similar to the original. My initial impressions aligned the new game closer with the likes of Super Mario Odyssey, or Yooka Laylee in terms of its adorable, sad-to-see-you-go baddies. The music, too, has an ethereal, mystical quality, juxtaposed with the jaunty upbeat tunes of the original series. It is the subtle backdrop of each world, setting a calm, peaceful mood to lull you into a lazy dream world.

The UI is fairly barebones, which is both great and irritating. Great because there’s no filler on the screen, so you as a player become truly immersed in the world without nagging menu items popping up on all sides. However, no-frills means no health bar and no way of knowing how you are progressing. An occasional pop-up occurs when you’ve collected a gem so that you know your total count. But when you’re hit by an enemy, there’s no way of knowing how many hit points you have left; there are no warning signs to let you know that Spyro’s next hit could be his last.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy appears to play rather smoothly, with a few flaws in the general gameplay creeping up around the fringes. Most notably, it seems that Spyro lacks any sort of ledge-grip ability. In this video, you can witness the dev attempting time after time to make a long jump, only to bash his head against the wall and plummet to his death each time. Spyro is mere inches from the tip of the ledge, but there appears to be no way for him to grab on and hoist himself up. This is a staple to so many titles, so it seems to be a glaring oversight if this point was missed, especially in a platformer.

Verdict:

I know that Spyro is a title beloved by many gamers past and present. And so I can imagine that this remaster is very exciting to many. Though I never played Spyro myself, I can see the appeal, and so I may even try this one on when it’s released. It seems to be a fun, simple platformer to be played at a relaxed pace. What more could one want?

How about you, lovely reader? Did you play Spyro as a tike growing up in the 90’s? If so, will you be getting this remaster? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

Spyro Reginited Trilogy will be released on 21^st September 2018 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at €39.99.

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Boy oh boy. The unfortunately titled Immortal Redneck is a roguelike dungeon crawler set in Egypt. You play as the titular Redneck, a snarky Good Ol’ Boy who’s found himself mysteriously mummified in the middle of three pyramids in the desert.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward – play through each level of the three pyramids, beat the bosses, and discover more about your character’s unique situation. If you’re a fan of roguelikes, you will most likely enjoy this game. I, sadly, am not the biggest fan. So this was admittedly a bit of a struggle for me.

Upon starting up the game on the Switch, your default view is set to use the tilt controls for your camera. This was an immediate big “NO” for me. Besides the fact that the motion controls on the Switch are reliable once in a fortnight (remember those Zelda shrines, everyone?), it only took a minute or two of attempting to use this feature before becoming quickly nauseated/annoyed. I do get why the feature exists – make the chaotic action quicker, maybe more accurate, in theory. Props to Crema for making the attempt though, and thanks even more for mercifully giving us the option to turn it off.

When you enter your first pyramid, you are given a brief tutorial and you are taught to use your first three weapons: a pistol, a shotgun, and dynamite. As you go through each room, the doors lock and enemies spawn. You must destroy each enemy in order for the doors to re-open. As you progress through each floor, the enemies increase in difficulty but tend to drop more valuable loot. Oh, and there are pots and vases everywhere in the rooms. Break them all you want, you’ll receive no ammo or coin (to be fair, the game does tell you this).

When you die, regardless of how much progress you’ve made, you must start from the beginning of the pyramid again. You do have a few moments while you’re outside to build your stats before your next attempt. There is a skill tree available where you can purchase upgrades to help you progress faster through the pyramids, giving you more powerful starting weapons, for example, or allowing you to acquire health when you kill an enemy. Also, when you enter the pyramid again, any gold that you had on hand is taken away. So it’s a good idea to get as many power-ups as possible before going back in because it’s all going to be taken anyway.

The enemies can be very frustrating, especially when you’re just starting out with little to no upgrades. Their targeting is terrifyingly accurate, almost to an unfair degree. As fast as your character is, these baddies always seem to be able to get a decent bead on you. Speaking of speed, your character moves at a fairly rapid pace and can climb on nearly anything. At first, you might doubt that you can reach certain areas, but be sure to give it a go anyway. Also, there’s no fall damage, which is always a huge bonus.

One of the biggest annoyances in Immortal Redneck for me was the lava located in some of the rooms. This annoyed me because lava does damage to you, but you might not think so straight away, so you could aimlessly walk into it and take a fair bit of damage. This gets trickier as you progress, with harmful items becoming harder to spot on certain floors. Be sure to keep an eye out for these, especially the spikes later in the game, which were nearly impossible for me to spot even when I knew they were there.

All told, Immortal Redneck was not for me. But it might be for you. If you like first-person shooters, roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, and you can get over the inane redneck banter, then, by all means, don’t let this review stop you. Go out right now and buy this game. If you don’t like any of the above mentioned, best give this one a wide berth.

Immortal Redneck is available on PS4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Steam for PC for €19.95.

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What is Love? Solo, don’t hurt me…

Solo is a self-described introspective puzzle game developed by Team Gotham. You will sail from archipelago to archipelago, taking selfies, petting animals, and solving puzzles as you simultaneously discover a bit about yourself along the way.

In Solo, you are a sailor on a journey to realise your innermost feelings on love and relationships. In the beginning, you may choose between a male, female, or non-binary character. Your love interest can similarly be male, female, non-binary, or any, which is a great inclusive, open-minded approach right from the beginning. You also choose between 3 characters, two of which are somewhat androgynous male and female body-types, and one male with a long white beard (who looks like a sailor).

The whole purpose of the game is to leisurely interact with NPCs throughout the “levels” and answer questions once you solve each puzzle. These questions are presented to you by “totems”. There are several totems sleeping in each level. You must find the lighthouse that corresponds to each totem and activate it. This will awaken the totem and prompt him to ask you a question about love and relationships. The game also prompts you from the beginning to be as honest as you can to get the most realistic experience from the game.

Based on your answers to the totems, your ghostly boyfriend/girlfriend, who tags along with you on your journey, will react accordingly. If you stated that you don’t believe true love can exist, your ghost lover will gently berate you. If you say that you believe love can last forever, they will be reticent to agree with you, claiming that “nothing lasts forever”. No matter what you say, it’s likely that your other half will make your choices difficult for you. Not that these decisions have any impact on the game so far, as far as I’m aware. I assume that the main goal of the game is to create a lover to suit your desires and needs, but also to show you that relationships are not always sunshine and rainbows.

As stated, the main point of the game is to solve puzzles on the various islands which rise from the ocean after you awaken each totem. These puzzles typically involve moving blocks around to allow you to interact with a lighthouse and then interact with the corresponding totem. The lighthouse and totem could be somewhere up high, or across a gap, so you will have to manipulate the blocks to help you reach your targets. You are given a parachute very early on in the game which helps you to traverse some of the bigger gaps. The intensity of the puzzle solving does ramp up pretty quickly, but there were almost none that posed any huge problem to solve.

Leisure Time

Once you’ve awakened the totems for one level, a big lighthouse will rise from the ocean. You must make your way there to unlock the next archipelago. However, the levels do not just consist of block-moving and truth-telling. A large part of the gaming experience comes from your interaction with the various creatures and NPCs residing on these islands. There are adorable animals playing around in the grass, most of which you can pet once you feed them. A bubble will appear above their head showing you what food they’d like to eat. Until you bring them that food, some animals won’t let you near them and will in fact actively run from you. But in a super adorable way.

Another way to pass the time is by pulling out your guitar and playing some tunes. Animals will flock to you no matter what you start playing, but there are certain songs that change your environment. Some songs will change the colour of the world from normal to sepia-toned. Some songs change the weather, or simply put other characters in a good mood. The guitar playing is very much akin to some of the Zelda games, so just think of it as whipping out your ocarina and blasting out Saria’s Song.

You can also take pictures (and selfies) of characters and creatures on the islands. Some NPCs will request that you take pictures of certain things, like a fish, or a bird. There are also gardens and flowers to water if you’re up for more diversion. These “mini-games” are easy to spot since any NPC that needs something will have their need in a bubble over their head (a picture of a shower for a flower that needs water, for example), similar to how the animals broadcast which food they’d like to eat.

Right when you download the game, Solo heavily recommends that you use a controller to play. I used a mouse and keyboard in the beginning but quickly switched over to a controller once I started playing. PC veterans may prefer a mouse, but that’s really just up to your own preference. The gameplay was frustrating at times, especially when it came to placing blocks (which is a huge part of the game) because the blocks did not always go in the intended places. Also, occasionally my game would glitch so that my main character would whip around wildly in every direction for a few seconds when I used my magic wand to place a block (magic wand is used to access any blocks that are out of reach). Usually, I could just wait this out, but there were a few times that this resulted in the game crashing for me.

Verdict?

Solo is a cute, relaxing game with little to no purpose besides solving a few puzzles. Sure, there are questions about love weaved into the mix, but they didn’t seem to impact the game much as far as I could tell. For what it’s worth, I think the game might be a bit too expensive compared to the actual amount of gameplay that you’ll get out of it, but if you’re looking for a fun little puzzler with no threats and adorable animals, then I would recommend playing Solo.

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