Review Category: Games

The starter box for Warlord Game’s Doctor Who-themed skirmish game, Exterminate, features two pretty well-known things from the Whoniverse. Daleks and Cybermen.  It doesn’t, however, have the Doctor in it.  It has cards and rules for running the Doctor and his friends, but no actual Time Lord can be found in the box.

In a way, this sort of makes sense; the core game is pretty brutal and you really need to play it a couple of times to get the hang of it. Adding the Doctor and Companions can be a bit tricky. So far Warlord has only provided versions of the Doctor in metal, and each set has come with companions. This new expansion allows for the cross-over shenanigans of your dreams; multiple incarnations of the Doctor. Namely one, four and ten, which is a funny way to count.

The models themselves are made out of resin and are the same poses used in Gale Force 9’s Time of The Daleks game. One is posed neatly; he’s straightening his lapels and looking smug. Four is clowning around, hat in one hand with his arms open and ten is looking away from something, sonic screwdriver ready to go. Each is clearly posed from well-known shots of each character and resemble a 3D publicity photo rather than a piece for a skirmish game. However, the Doctor’s nonchalance turns out to be rather charming. The models are in resin and the detail is okay; those used to Warlord’s fine detail may be a little disappointed as these pieces aren’t quite as sharp. Still, they look great painted up.

Playing with these Time Lords at the Secret STARBURST Gaming Thunderdome revealed a totally different way of playing Exterminate. For a start, you’ve only got three models, compared to the hordes of Daleks, Cybermen and so on your opponent is likely to have. However, there isn’t a version of The Doctor that is underpowered. The First Doctor can talk so much that no one can shoot him (it’s called ‘Eloquent Speech’), the Fourth Doctor can recruit enemy units with the promise of a jelly baby and Ten can kill off two downed foes with his ‘Sorry, so sorry’ routine. The monster. The First Doctor doesn’t have a sonic screwdriver but does have a hypnotic ring that pretty much does the same thing (it stuns opponents).  We found that the three of them together lead to ‘cunning’ play which was a lot of fun. Planning and strategy triumphed over brute force in most of the games standard scenarios. A good addition to the game.

DOCTOR WHO EXTERMINATE: FIRST, FOURTH AND TENTH DOCTORS EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Doctor Who has a history of criminally under using some of its more interesting monsters and villains. For a show that covers all of space and time, it spends an awful amount of time in London (or more accurately, Cardiff pretending to be London).

The Draconians first appeared in 1973’s story A Frontier in Space, alongside the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, and The Master. They are an honour-based society with lots of formalities, long, flowing robes and a galactic royal family. They are grand in concept and though they only appeared once in the show, they’ve been a staple of the comics and other media pretty much since they first appeared. Their striking, humanoid/dragon-like look screams classic Doctor Who, so it’s not a surprise that Warlord Games wanted to sculpt these into models for their Doctor Who miniatures games.

These are unpainted fixed pose sculpts, of the style we’ve come to expect from Warlord. Draconians have funny shaped heads, big robes and skinny robes. The poses look fun to adjust if you’re so inclined. We get three poses – running away with a gun in hand,  standing still and pointing a weapon and a final ‘leader’ model who’s standing about looking all regal and smug. They look great; the facial expressions are spot on and the models are finally detailed. Fun to paint for those so inclined. The ‘noble’ model does limit the utility of building a big squad of them, but it is very cool.

Rules cards for Warlord’s Doctor Who Exterminate game are available online for those of us who want to play with these models rather than just put them on a shelf.  They are pretty decent infantry, swift-moving, tough enough and with decent ranged weapons. A squad should be able to take on a Dalek or two, though an all Draconian squad might not be the most flexible of units. A mix of ‘neutral’ alien races like the Ice Warriors or a team up with the Doctor makes for a more fun skirmish, especially as the Draconians are quite good at moving into the permission to whack baddies with their nifty energy weapons. They don’t really have any special rules but are a nice addition to an ever growing range.

DOCTOR WHO EXTERMINATE: DRACONIANS EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Doctor Who has a bit of a record when it comes to silly looking monsters. Even the utterly terrifying Daleks are essentially pepper-pots with an egg whisk attached and the show’s long history has an entire parade of amazing monster ideas that somehow failed in the execution stage. With over fifty years of ideas to page through, there are bound to be some howlers.

Warlord Games has the unenviable task of slowly but surely releasing miniature versions of these various terrors for their range of Into the Time Vortex Doctor Who games. Given that their plan seems to be ‘do everything eventually’, you can’t blame them for wanting to do some of the sillier monsters earlier on. Such as the Vervoids.

For those who missed them, The Vervoids were plant monsters who appeared 1986’s Terror of The Vervoids. They’re tall, humanoid plant creatures with plant/vine growths over a distinctly humanoid body.  Their heads are inspired by orchids and have large, bulbous ‘heads’, surrounded by paler ‘petals’. Quite frankly, they look extremely phallic and rather silly.

The Warlord Games models are, thankfully, supplied unpainted. We suggest you go for autumn colours if you have a maiden aunt who’s prone to fainting in shock at the sight of anything suggestive, or more accurately, perhaps prone to falling into fits of giggles. They are really well sculpted with just enough detail to come out rather lovely with good paints and a good brush, even if you’re of fairly average skill. They have a fixed pose and aren’t really made with heavy conversion in mind; these lovely set pieces to either look pretty on your shelf unpainted or to be used in a game with a splash of paint on.

These are pieces for a game, so let’s look at how they play in Warlord’s Doctor Who Miniatures game; specifically in Exterminate, their skirmish game. Rules-wise, they’re quite a vicious unit. Sneak and Entangle traits make them ideal for slowing down even the agilest of opponents (which includes most companions) and though they aren’t likely to beat up a lot of Daleks, they’re decent enough in a fight. Their most interesting trait is ‘transform’, which lets you spawn new units. A sticky fate for any companion who decides to take them on it a fight.

DOCTOR WHO EXTERMINATE: VERVOIDS EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Sometimes, the simplest ideas turn out to be the best ones. A game where all you need to do is jump might sound like it would be too basic to be anything worthwhile, but Super One More Jump very much proves the idea that less can indeed be more.

Starting life as plain old regular One More Jump on mobiles, developers SMG Games have expanded on the original with a couple of extra modes and slapped the Super tag onto it for its release on the Nintendo Switch. Players control a tiny smiling cube that propels itself forwards automatically, with your only job being to jump at the appropriate time to navigate your way to the finish marker. White platforms are good, but straying from these or crashing into obstacles results in an instant restart.

The game’s 96 levels are organised into sets of 12, with each set containing increasingly tricky obstacles and different game mechanics to get to grips with. Each individual screen can take anything from a few seconds to a minute or so to complete, and when you start factoring in things like corners, moving platforms, gravity and rebound blocks it can all get rather tense indeed.

Diamonds can be collected along the way – it isn’t necessary to get every single one of them, but they can be used to unlock different characters and backgrounds, and a certain amount are needed before you can move on to the next set of levels. And if you do manage to collect all three diamonds, you’ll unlock a few modifiers for that particular level. “Mirror” sees everything reversed, “Night” darkens most of the screen apart from a spotlight around your character, and ‘Rotation’ slowly turns the whole screen 360 degrees while you’re playing.

Outside of the regular game, Super One More Jump includes several other modes to keep things interesting. “Endless” challenges players to keep going for as long as possible, while “Circuit” tracks how many times you can go around a fixed screen with changing obstacles without crashing. There’s another mysterious mode that requires completion of 90 levels and we’re nowhere near unlocking that one yet – we’ve got as far as level 58 and things are already starting to get a little too frantic!

Multiplayer fans are catered for nicely as well, with a two-player endless mode and a super fun two to four player co-op where each person is assigned a colour and can only jump when the character is on their corresponding platform.

With all that content and a stupidly low price, you’d be silly not to add this to your collection. It’s certainly the best fiver we’ve spent on the eShop so far.

SUPER ONE MORE JUMP / DEVELOPER: SMG STUDIO / PLATFORM: SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Never Stop Sneakin’ is a rare thing indeed. Attempting to emulate a game of the PSX era, it retains the blocky graphics, colourful visual cues and top-down design of a game from that time. It’s also the single best Metal Gear Solid parody ever devised, right down to the time paradoxes and vampires.

You play as a member of the world’s most elite stealth operatives: The Department of Sneakin’. Your job now is to stop Amadeus Guildenstern, who has managed to kidnap every American President who ever lived. All at the same time.

The mention of a stealth game likely brings to mind tense moments of hiding in lockers and mapping the patrol route of guards. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as the game instead opts to focus instead on a high speed and simplified version of stealth combat. Because sound doesn’t carry nearly so far in other games, enemies rely much more heavily on line of sight, allowing you to perform Hotline Miami style rushes through facilities. The bonus of having a few inventory items, notably smoke bombs, activate automatically if caught which limits the typical frustration of the genre.

The gameplay itself is ultimately repetitive, but it downplays this problem via randomly generated designs a-la roguelikes. You can keep returning to the same level only to find entirely new traps, guard patrols and turrets put in your path, each of which is broken up by a boss fight. Unfortunately, this is the game’s greatest strength and weakness. These qualities will help to make it appeal to many fans usually averse to the genre, but the fact it is streamlined to the point of simplicity will be a turnoff for many old hands at stealth games. The problem is only enhanced thanks to how the character performs many actions without prompts. This is fine for split-second reactions, but in other situations it almost seems as if the game is playing itself.

Another definite hit or miss element is how everything revolves around these runs through enemy areas, with little offered beyond this quality. Building up your base is a simplistic affair which ties so heavily into raiding enemy facilities that it becomes and end-game grind to grab the final few bits required. By this point you have learned the ins and outs of its tricks, so it simply seems to add on another few hours, stalling you before the end.

Gamers who never experienced the PSX and N64 generation will likely not see the appeal of this experience, but to those who did this is a brilliant love letter to the era. It parodies everything possible about the genre and style of the game while showing affection for everything that worked during this era.

NEVER STOP SNEAKIN’ / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: HUMBLE HEARTS LLC. / PLATFORM: PC, NINTENDO SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The tragedy of Battlezone II: Combat Commander was a lesson the industry never fully learned from. It was a successor to a popular release, hyped and had more than enough enthusiastic fans looking forward to seeing this new chapter in the story. Unfortunately, the poorly optimised and bug riddled mess it arrived as quickly turned away customers while it was still on the shelf. This re-release is set to fix that, with enhanced graphics, retooled optimisation and open support for Steam Workshop to keep the modding community alive.

The story follows a first contact war between the human International Space Defense Force (ISDF) and a mysterious enemy force known as the Scion. Fighting their way across several worlds, the ISDF begin to suspect that there is more to this war than they first suspected.

Playing out as a “Halo meets Command and Conquer” experience, it blends together FPS and RTS mechanics to create quick base building and rapid engagements. The player can engage enemy vehicles on foot or in a single unit, while also gradually building up squadrons of tanks or bombers. While this would typically be an awkward system, the inherent simplicity and direct tech-tree makes this remarkably easy to use. Elements of gameplay are present to favour each playstyle. FPS players can arrive with sniper rifles to shoot out cockpits and steal vehicles, while RTS fanatics can control the entire area in a top-down view from a single station.

Many of the units in question have been built with hard counters in mind, but prove to be flexible enough that a skilled player can personally overwhelm several AI units. The Scouts are lightweight, fast and fragile as you would expect, but the addition of rockets can allow skilled players to overwhelm more powerful vehicles. This makes for an interesting experience where you cannot rely on a single genre playstyle.

The main shortcoming of the game, above all else, unfortunately lies in its campaign. The story itself is well presented and well voice acted, but its execution is notably flaw. Along with the big twist being forecast well ahead of time, much of it relies upon you knowing the exact backstory of the previous game. Furthermore, over half of the campaign scenarios are glorified tutorial levels and lack the freedom which benefits the RTS aspects of the game.

Battlezone: Combat Commander was ahead of its time, and despite the campaign’s flaws it nevertheless provides no end of entertainment. Even today it remains one of the best examples ever made of how to blend two very different genres. If you missed Battlezone 2 when it was first released, definitely consider buying this re-release in the weeks to come.

BATTLEZONE: COMBAT COMMANDER / DEVELOPER: BIG BOAT INTERACTIVE / PUBLISHER: REBELLION / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s astounding to think that in a month which saw the release of Metal Gear Survive, something worse could be inflicted on another revered franchise. Hunt Down The Freeman is every bad cliche, every poor concept, every terrible design choice it is possible to make in a fan game. While only loosely connected to the Half-Life franchise, it somehow manages to get bare basics of style, story presentation and even mechanics utterly wrong. You could give a developer ten years, tell them to create the perfect bad game, and it would still fall short of the abomination we have here.

The story follows Mitchell McTotally-Not-Geralt-of-Rivia Shepard, as he attempts to hunt down Gordon Freeman for killing his squad and almost slaying him. After the G-Man opts to use him to hunt down and murder Gordon, he begins to stalk the hero of the Half-Life series and always seems to be one step behind him. Or at least that’s what the trailer would tell you. Unfortunately, the trailer is a lie. As are the screenshots, and any promotional information surrounding this game.

To start off with, this is nearly unplayable. On the day of its launch the game would repeatedly crash, and even following multiple patches it still retains multiple unfinished textures, missing assets and bugs which break the game. You can honestly lose your entire arsenal of weapons between loading screens if you are unlucky, leaving you with no way to fight back against the next mob of enemies. Many areas have also been lifted wholesale from other games, notably the infinitely better Black Mesa, but also Payday 2 and even Garry’s Mod. Yet, despite taking work from other sources, it somehow manages to completely misuse them; churning out large open levels with no sense of direction and invisible walls blocking your every path.

The gunplay itself is horrendous, something hardly helped by extremely poor hit detection and some of the worst sound design ever to be used in a game. Your combat knife uses the crowbar sound effect from Half-Life 2, and guns can even fall completely silent if you fire them for too long.

The few new enemies the game presents provoke laughter more than they do fear, as each is a badly mismatched combination of parts taken from cut Half-Life 2 enemies. The only time you will ever feel challenged by Hunt Down The Freeman is when it attempts to use volume as a replacement for good design. You will constantly find yourself in corridor fights, with next to no ammo and facing infinitely respawning hordes of zombies.

If you are desperate for a Half-Life fix, just go buy Black Mesa. The only thing of value you will find in this is a perfect example of how not to design games.

HUNT DOWN THE FREEMAN / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: ROYAL RUDIUS ENTERTAINMENT / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The last few years have seen no shortage of open-world fantasy successes, with the likes of Witcher III, Dragon Age: Inquisition and even Skyrim breaking the usual genre stigma. Yet, all of these emphasise the fantasy part of the experience, with magic and monsters a-plenty. Described as ‘Dungeons & no Dragons’ by its developer, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is set to subvert this.

Set in Bohemia, you play as Skalitz, a blacksmith’s son who lost everything to an invading army. Pledging your service to Lord Radzig Kobyla, your task is to rise through the ranks and avenge your parents’ murder.

The game’s greatest strength stems from its depth. While it features branching quest-lines along with avoiding the usual chosen one cliches, there is an astounding attention to detail. Your appearance and actions significantly influence social interactions. Show up to a fist fight armed with a sword and people are going to recognise that, as will those who see you carrying a bloody weapon. This isn’t simply a good-bad ratio, as there are a few beneficial outcomes born of this.

The game is littered with small moments which helps truly bring it to life. Dark clothing will hide you at night, and this isn’t simply judged by some artificial stat. Keeping food for too long will cause it to spoil, while sleeping might allow you to save your game but will raise your hunger upon awakening. You will often find yourself caught out on moments other games instinctively let slide for genre conventions or ease of storytelling.

The combat, however, can easily be divided into two halves. Melee engagements are notably clunky, rough and costly. This fits with the setting and there are moments of the AI displaying surprising brilliance. The same, sadly, cannot be said of their competence in the face of bowmen, and you can easily find yourself winning engagements at range.

Furthermore, there are a substantial number of bugs and glitches still found within Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You might find yourself bumping into characters who fail to register your presence, or even cannot fight back despite the established situation. Clipping is hardly uncommon, and the only thing which offsets these issues is the fact that Warhorse Studios is releasing regular post-release patches.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is undeniably janky, and yet its willingness to subvert traditional genre expectations is commendable. It’s comparable to the original Witcher, where the experience is flawed and yet its ideas have an undeniable charm. If you can forgive a few performance problems, this is a great game with an emphasis on realism. Definitely give it a look, but consider just what irritates you the most about open world games before purchasing this one.

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: WARHORSE STUDIOS / PLATFORM: PC, PLAYSTATION 4, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Metal Gear Survive accomplishes the one thing no Metal Gear game has ever managed before. It’s boring. Banal, generic and surprisingly unremarkable, the combination of zombies with survival elements is as well handled as you might expect. The sad thing is, were it not for the Fox Engine, the mechanics could be mistaken for any of the thousands of unfinished zombie games in Steam Early Access.

The story is adjacently connected to Metal Gear lore, specifically The Phantom Pain. In the wake of the previous game’s events, you are dropped into a parallel dimension known as Dite where zombies are crawling about. Also, yes, nanomachines are responsible for this somehow.

The story has plenty of shout-outs to Metal Gear lore but they rarely amount to more than flavour text. Even the appearance of a Metal Gear is the sort of shallow fan-pandering which sees Pyramid Head showing up in most Silent Hill games. Equally, the plot lacks the over-the-top stories with surprisingly poignant moments which helped past games stand out. So, if you’re in this for the plot you’re all out of luck, even if you ignore the multiple holes in it.

Things are just as bad with the mechanics. Let’s be clear here: The zombie AI is brain-dead. Quite often they can be found trying to attack you through walls or tricked by simply standing on a higher elevation. They’re not only near-blind but even their sheer weight of numbers is rarely a threat, to the point where you can all but ignore stealth. In fact, despite the heavy emphasis on melee engagements, the zombies are seemingly programmed to ignore stun-locks after a time simply so they can hit you.

Combat itself is a bland slog thanks to poor hitbox detection and long wind-up animations. No matter which weapon you are using, they will feel weak thanks to each being limited to a two-action combo. If you think guns might save you, they even manage to get this wrong. Despite re-using almost everything from The Phantom Pain, it’s not only clunky but generally inept against most foes. This could have been used to create Dark Souls style battles, but with AI this bad it inspires frustration over developing new tactics. In fact, the closest thing you will get to enjoyment stems from avoiding combat entirely, and simply summoning in barricades or gun-turrets to do your work for you.

Even Survive’s greatest accomplishment, a genuinely well-designed progression system, is hindered by a near-glacial grind and cliched zombie game perks. Most of these are only mildly helpful, as they do little to stop the game constantly pestering you to maintain your food and water stamina bars. This is as far from Subnautica’s balanced system as it’s possible to get, as the bar drops by the second but it requires consuming whole animals and multiple gallon jugs of water to max out each one. You can honestly kill and consume four sheep in a row and chow down on them, and it might not be enough to fully satisfy the protagonist.

Much like Hatred before it, were it not for the controversy surrounding its development, this is the sort of by-the-numbers release which would arrive and then be ignored by almost everyone. However, what turns this from a flawed creation worthy of being forgotten into a disaster is the industry trends it has embraced.

Microtransactions are rife throughout the game. While it doesn’t push them nearly so much as Star Wars: Battlefront II, it clear that Konami expects people to drop more than a few quid extra onto this game in order to complete it. Along with vital facilities such as expanded food production, these extend into ludicrous areas such as multiple save files. Then, on top of this, you have the old sin of ‘always online’ requirement to play the game. I will simply say that Diablo III looked practically functional on launch by comparison.

Were it not for the Metal Gear label being slapped on, no one would likely care about Survive. There are a few exceptionally rare, quite fleeting, moments where Yuji Korekado’s talent as a visual director shines through and the Fox Engine is still a solid basis for a game. However, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a game built on outdated industry trends, and is chasing fads which are long dead by this point.

If you honestly need to play an open-world sandbox Metal Gear game just go and buy Metal Gear Solid V instead. You’re not going to miss anything with this train wreck.

METAL GEAR SURVIVE / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT / PLATFORM: PC, PLAYSTATION 4, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Fluxx is one of the great card games that straddles the line between the devoted gamer and everyone else. It’s an easy to access game with simple rules that, once you get the hang of it, can become a game you’ll play again and again. Every fan of traditional games is familiar with it (and most have a copy) and it’s a very common ‘gateway’ game to introduce non-gamers to the joy of card games.

For the few of you who don’t know it, Fluxx is a card game where the actual rules change as you draw cards. They are (broadly) five card types: Creepers, Keepers, Goals, Actions, and New Rules. Goals set a win condition, usually ‘have x types of keepers in your hand’. Creepers modify this, making it harder to win. Actions do stuff like draw an extra card or reverse the order of play. New Rules increase hand size, or the number of cards you can draw and so on.

The Doctor Who-themed variant does pretty much what you’d expect it to. The goals are typically ‘collect a Doctor and their appropriate companions’, though they are some creeper-based win conditions that involve gathering the Master and his TARDIS or having lots and lots of Daleks. All the recognisable stuff is here: sonic screwdrivers, long scarves, robot dogs and so on. The game even attempts to future itself slightly by having a ‘Future Doctor’ card. Rules include stuff like the Blinovitch Limitation (which reduces identical cards and so on). The chaotic, constantly shifting nature of the game makes it feel like it’s designed for Doctor Who, but anyone who knows Fluxx will realise that they’ve just picked a very appropriate licence for the game.

The usual criticisms of Fluxx apply: It can be a little bland as this is a game that can fit almost any theme. Gameplay is chaotic and that will frustrate the strategic and logical thinkers amongst you. Play length is unpredictable but usually quite short. The art is nice enough; nothing terribly special or distracting but everything is recognisable for what it is. This is a fun game to pick up and to keep handy for gatherings of friends. Guaranteed to go down well wherever geeks gather, regardless of where you are in Time and Space.

DOCTOR WHO FLUXX / DESIGNER: ANDREW LOONEY / PUBLISHER:  LOONEY LABS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW