Review Category: Games

Browsing through visual novels is akin to navigating a minefield at times. Often you’re forced to pick your way through dire cliché ridden failures to find a few surprising gems hidden away among them. Beyond Eden thankfully falls into the latter category, as it makes a few revisions to the normal formula. You’re not simply attempting to woo the affections of a lover, but also destroy their family in a Victorian era revenge plot.

The character you play as, Alex, is effectively a villain from the outset. Many of his early decisions are cruel and manipulative, which leaves you with the difficult task of navigating your way around many social encounters. However, the politicking never goes too far and, after a point, you are given the choice between actively pursuing your revenge or a more passive route, which might leave you in a position of power. It’s a difficult yet well-handled choice thanks to several key dialogues, and is further enhanced by the artistic stylings of the game. These build towards an archaic yet emotive atmosphere befitting the setting.

The game also offers a surprising level of replay value thanks to each route retaining two-sup routes to reflect how you behave in each relationship. Some can naturally end quite badly, while others will lead to more than a few unexpected outcomes in key situations. It’s a fun bonus, which helps to elevate the tediousness of replaying certain scenes over and over again while you try to explore another relationship. With that being said however, it is clear that it limited the more traditional strengths found in these games.

A key failing of Beyond Eden is a distinct lack of choice and control over several routes, which creates a sense of feeling as if you are being railroaded along a certain story. This becomes increasingly obvious with a few key endings, which often seem to end in tragedy despite your best efforts. A few would have been fine, but several are so misleading you end up asking yourself how you could predict that. Plus, and it has to be said, one romance option is far younger than your character, which is a very uncomfortable aspect despite the strong plot. Yes, this is a result of its Korean origins and you don’t have to follow that route, but that hardly helps.

With all that being said though, Beyond Eden is a surprisingly engaging experience. Between the murder plots, family conspiracies and some very well executed twists in the romance options, there’s a great deal to like here. If you can stomach a few excessive anime-esque moments for a good story, set some cash aside for this one.

BEYOND EDEN / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: STUDIO PIEPLUS / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Doctor Who has had more than its fair share of special guests over the years, and many of those could easily be part of their own spin-off show. One such is example is the Woman Who Lived, played by Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams. The character appeared on the show in multiple incarnations; first as a mortal and then as a functionally immortal being working as a foil and counterpoint to The Doctor. Warlord Games’ Woman Who Lived set features three incarnations of the same character in tiny pewter model form.

The first model is of Ashildr, a Viking girl in plain dress. It’s a pretty enough model; the character looks like they’re in a slight grump with their arms crossed and the face is nicely sculpted. The pose evokes someone who is young and energetic. The second model, the Knightmare, is the Highway Women version of the character. The pose is fun (she’s wielding a pistol) and though a domino mask obscures much of the character’s face, it’s easily recognisable. The final model (let’s call them Me), is meant to be an older, wiser version. The clothing is more conservative, the pose more reserved. They do seem older in demeanour, rather than appearance. The models are well cast and have been sculpted with painting in mind; hobbyists will have no problems working with the pieces.

The box does not come with any cards or counters for the Doctor Who Exterminate Into the Time Vortex game. We understand that a full expansion of the rules is coming, though most gamers have been spoilt in recent years by getting everything in one box.  We do question the utility of having three versions of the same character however. The miniatures game that these pieces are a part of tends to make characters like this single champions that team up. For example The Doctor and Companions rather than hordes (such as The Cybermen). Though a horde of immortal Maisie Williams might be fun for a while, or a team-up of all three, the game requires variety and utility in most scenarios. This means you’re getting to play with one model from the set of three at any one time. We’ll be intrigued to see how this is handled when the rules come out. In the mean time, the models are rather lovely.

THE WOMAN WHO LIVED SET / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It was with some concern that we opened the Vashta Nerada expansion for Warlord Game’s Doctor Who: Into The Time Vortex game. After all, the Vashta Nerada are essentially shadow creatures that consume all flesh, and that’s not the sort of thing you want to take out of a box.

Luckily, what we got was three rather nice looking metal figures of skeletons in space suit, rather than the entire Starburst offices getting devoured by shadows that melt the flesh. As we’ve come to expect, these come in a set of three models, all with slightly different poses. They are very neatly done; each pose is appropriately frightening and they’re as screen accurate as 38mm scale model of a shambling skeleton in space suit can be. They’re supplied unpainted, but this is pretty easy to do as they’re bleached bone skeletons in white space suits. Glow in the dark paint for the skulls is recommended, for that extra spooky effect.

They don’t come with rules or additional counters which is a little disappointing. After all, the Vashta Nerada are a very visually interesting sort of monster. On the other hand, painting shadows is potentially a nightmare and in theory you can represent the ‘unsuited’ version of this monster with some black cardboard, which simply isn’t as exciting. You could it theory paint some of the provided bases black to represent the crawling shadows, but that’s not what this is about. This is a box set containing one of Doctor Who’s most memorable a creepiest monsters. Warlord are likely to release scenarios for these horrors separately, it’ll be interesting to see how the Into The Vortex Skirmish game handles the all-devouring horrors.

Fans of sci-fi minis are well served here; corpses in space suits have been a thing since the ‘80s. Of all of Warlord’s recent Doctor Who models, these are ironically the most generic. You could easily use these as display pieces or in other science fiction skirmish games if you wanted. Eager hobbyists may also want to risk cutting them up to repose, which is pretty easy to do thanks to the way they are designed. Fun.

VASHTA NERADA – DOCTOR WHO INTO THE VORTEX EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Back in the ‘70s, the terrifying and unstoppable Daleks did have one notable limitation; the budget of the BBC. John Pertwee’s Doctor was probably well aware that in theory, the Daleks could not be stopped by stairs, but alas the BBC did not have the budget to have the pepper-pot dictators ascend. Worse, anything that required carrying or moving stuff was difficult, given that Dalek’s don’t really have hands. Enter the Ogrons, bestial humoids who did the fetching and carrying for the Dalek Empire. They also happen to be the subject of Warlord Games’ latest expansion for their Doctor Who miniatures game.

The set comes with three differently posed Ogrons. Each one resembles some sort ‘70s disco murder monkey monster with a Klingon style moustaches and a mullet that only a murderer would wear. They’re carefully detailed but in a way that isn’t too difficult to paint. The poses (and mould lines) are clean and required little prep work. In addition each wields one of those funky Ogron pistols and a patient hobbyist could easily adjust the pose or weapon if needs be.

They are very uniform in design as well. This works as they’re supposed to part of a discrete military unit within the Dalek Empire, but it does make them a little samey. Painting will be required if you want to mark one model out as the leader; they may have different poses but much like the Daleks, it’s hard to make them stand out from each other without a drop of paint. The sculpt is spot on, however. They could have stepped straight off of the TV screen.

These are welcome addition to a Dalek army. They’re not as iconic or as scary as Daleks but theoretically they’re more versatile. A lot of the scenarios in the Doctor Who Exterminate! Starter Set require you to sacrifice units and these primitive looking dudes are perfect for that.

OGRONS – DOCTOR WHO INTO THE TIME VORTEX EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Samus doesn’t speak, there are no minutes long cutscenes, Adam isn’t ordering your into lava zones unarmoured, and there’s no mention of “the baby” every five seconds. For anyone who suffered through Other M, consider that the short review saying that, yes, this is back to the Metroid we know and love. For everyone else, this is a remake in the best way possible.

Effectively re-envisioning the classic Game Boy release of Metroid II from the ground up, Samus Returns offers 2D gameplay of the best kind. It sticks close to the Metroidvania format of retracing your steps, using abilities to overcome certain areas and a multitude of weapons to annihilate bosses. At the same time however, that hasn’t stopped the creators from tweaking with the formula a little. The 2.5D presentation dramatically improves the experience, freeing up the game to offer surprisingly more dynamic combat. Jumping through levels and engaging in airborne battles is far smoother an experience because of this, and it’s helped by extremely responsive controls and more than a few creative uses of her equipment, such as the powerbomb boost.

The environments are as vast and sprawling as you would expect, but Samus Returns does a better job of hiding a few hidden doors and secrets. As such, even old hands of the franchise will find themselves challenged to pick out points of interest in the environment. These will not drag your progress to a screeching halt, but you might find yourself keeping a closer eye on the background.

Surprisingly, Yoshio Sakamoto’s presence here definitely benefitted the game’s direction. Having clearly taken a long hard look at what tanked Other M, Sakamoto focused upon more visual storytelling and badass moments while retaining the better boss-killing cutscenes that game utilised. So, you end up with moments like Samus riding dying Gamma Metroids to the ground while firing off missiles into their gullets.

The only notable flaws stem from a section towards the middle of the game where puzzle solving and navigation seems intended to pad out the experience. It’s a surprisingly long marathon before you get back to the truly fun moments, filled only with generic mooks of a limited variety. Another issue is how the difficulty curve spikes at odd points, with the Diggernaut proving to be one of the series’ most frustrating bosses thanks to a lack of checkpoints and emulating one of Echoes’ most irritating battles.

There are a few problems here, but it’s hardly enough to sink the game. It nevertheless still captures much of what made the classic series great. If you don’t have a 3DS, this is the game which justifies buying one simply to see Samus at her best.

METROID: SAMUS RETURNS / DEVELOPER: MERCURYSTEAM, NINTENDO EPD / PUBLISHER: NINTENDO / PLATFORM: NINTENDO 3DS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

This really was a rare perfect match. On the one side you have the minds behind Total War, and on the other a fantasy world of ratmen, elves and humanoid dinosaurs.

Sticking to the same engine as its predecessor, Total War: Warhammer II switches the action over to Lustria and Ulthuan. Along with opening the floodgates for new stories, this change completely reworks the nature of the map, often making you more reliant upon ports and sea trade. While the game itself lacks basic oceanic combat, it allows one region to more actively resupply another, while a wealth of encounters from Dead Sea Dragons to lost islands provides plenty of oceanic action. Better yet, the Chaos invasion of the previous game has been replaced by a race to control the great magical vortex. You’re always on a timer to reach the end, but it provides more structure to games and a much more direct end-game objective to focus upon.

The blending of RTS combat alongside turn based map management is as strong as ever. While at first each new army might seem like the same two with a different coat of paint (two animal hordes, two elf races) each quickly displays their differences on and off of the battlefield. High Elves in particular prove to be fun thanks to their mastery of diplomacy and their spy network, breaking up alliances or keep an eye on every port. Even without this, the wealth of unique units and monsters on every side makes them distinct from one another, with each forcing you to completely rethink your tactics to take advantage of their quirks.

Ironically, many of the game’s major faults stem from something its table top inspiration only recently shed: Obtuse systems and the sheer length of battles.

The ability to carefully manoeuvre troops and control their formations is detailed, but much of it is hidden away behind keyboard and mouse shortcuts the tutorials never bother to cover. This can make the act of controlling your armies annoying. Furthermore, there are a few too many ways battles can devolve into a war of sheer attrition once heavy infantry or shield walls show up. Moreover, while the user interface is a brilliant improvement over its predecessors, trying to keep track of every sub-objective and status update can be a chore. It’s easy to lose track of something essential and can leave you making otherwise obvious mistakes in the late game.

Total War: Warhammer 2 is problematic but it’s nevertheless another success story for Creative Assembly. It requires multiple replays to truly get used to it, but even without that the choice of armies, excellent lore and game-changing tactics are nevertheless successful additions. So, fans of the Old World, be sure to give this one a look.

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 2 / DEVELOPER: CREATIVE ASSEMBLY / PUBLISHER: SEGA / PLATFORM: PC, / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Divinity: Original Sin II can be best summerized as “Old thoughts, new ideas”. You have the freedom, harshness and difficult decision making worthy of an Ultima game, bereft of the grinding and mechanical frustrations of old. Plus you have a fantastic story to back that all up.

Set over one hundred years after the previous game, things have become progressively worse for the world. Demonic entities are being drawn to magic users, forcing the church to rapidly imprison anyone with the potential to cast spells. You are among them, but as you are dragged on board a prison ship, fate has something else in mind for you…

What is immediately the most striking quality of Divinity II is its treatment of roleplaying. Rather than simply offering a good or evil choice, or even a metagaming “perfect ending” mentality, you often have to go in with a single mindset. Many choices discard the most basic of good and evil options, with extremely well hidden consequences to certain actions. Because of this the game has boundless replay value, until you can run through the tutorial island over a dozen times, and still unearth something new. Even then, the way you exit or escape from certain domains often carries over to new areas. 

The very origins of your characters and how you communicate with others will completely alter how you see some companions. Rather than following the usual RPG approach of a unique storyline and a few extra choices, you have entirely new sagas and interactions on offer. People will often greet different races differently from one another, or will be provoked by certain actions if you are a specific race. Furthermore, some histories of your companions can only be learned by choosing one of several heroes as your protagonist at the start, as they will more freely open up to some people over others. Even the abilities have another layer to them over the usual “+1 Strength, +1 Dex…” modifiers, as the undead need to hide their faces in order to not be attacked on sight, while elves can gain the memories of others by consuming their flesh.

Even secondary modifiers and stats diverge from your usual stock RPG affair. You have some which allow you the usual bonuses in combat, but also others such as a fun one which turns you into Dr. Dolittle. This leads to fun situations such as trying to track down a stray rat to see if they can serve as a witness for a murder. These are also just the ones you can choose. Others will be awarded depending upon how you act around others, but are hidden away until you make the relevant choices. 

Still, some of you are likely wondering about the combat, and the simple answer is that it is fantastic. Many of the niggling issues which frustrated players in the prior game (notably the issue of mis-clicking certain commands) have disappeared without sacrificing its difficulty. While turn based in nature, Divinity II’s combat is very fast flowing and intense, often rivaling the Banner Saga in its costly nature and complexity. Every class has a few strengths but notable weaknesses, meaning you always need to craft careful plans to overcome them. Melee fighters will be very exposed to spells and affects, while ranged fighters and mages will often fall to a few decided swings of a great sword.

As you often have even less health than your foes, the use of the environment or chaining special abilities is always essential to winning battles. While most RPGs would leave this at attaining the high ground or exploding the odd oil barrel, Larian opted to take things to the next level. You can use bombs, abilities and spells to make a fire cover half an area to guard your group against assaults, then use your fighter’s attacks to open up a path for your brawlers to attack. Or you can even steal barrels of poison from certain places, and then set them up prior to a fight. It’s these extra creative tweaks which can completely rework the way in which you approach a difficult battle.

Yet, perhaps the strangest thing about Divinity II is how many of the game’s innate flaws often tie directly into its strengths. For example, while it offers a vast amount of tactical depth, this is yet another RPG which favours mages and rogues over tanks. This is in part due to the old issue of the skills of other classes overwhelming another, but largely due to the AI. Enemies are intelligent enough to know your armoured knight can take a few hits, so they’ll constantly focus their efforts upon murdering your spellcaster. In the same vein the combat is frequently an up-hill battle, and the game forces you to use anything at your disposal to keep going. On the one hand this makes victory all the sweeter, but on the other it seriously takes its toll on your heroes. You will often find yourself dropping every hard earned coin into expensive revival scrolls and healing items to bounce back from the last fight.

Even without going into the combat, the questing system itself seems to take two steps forwards and one back at every turn. The notepad style of tracking down certain details is good for certain singular quests. Because Divinity II thrives on a staggering number of ongoing plots, trying to juggle between certain ones can be a problem. Sometimes to the point where, quite unintentionally, you can kill off an interesting plotline because another’s objectives oppose it. Yes, that sounds easy to avoid, but it’s even easier to lose track of them or perform the act unintentionally. You can even end up killing an innocent man on the first island, because a possible party member needs to murder the actual culprit. It helps to reinforce the sense that all actions can have serious consequences, but you can end up thinking “How the hell was I supposed to know that?!” in response to certain outcomes. 

Yet, despite all of this, it’s difficult not to love every second of playing Divinity II. As closely associated as they are, the good often beats out the bad. With so much creativity on hand, the ability to almost tailor a campaign to your exact needs and even a co-op(!!!) mode, you can easily find yourself sinking hundreds of hours into this game. 

Ultimately, the experience of playing Larian Studios’ latest creation is akin to experiencing a modern Firaxis game. It will often be staggeringly difficult, sometimes seemingly unfair and you will have a laundry list of problems. Yet, because of the strength of its story, the depth of its mechanics and the sheer attention to detail, you can’t help but love every minute of playing it. Anyone hungering for a modern-day equivalent to Baldur’s Gate should look no further than Divinity: Original Sin 2. 

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN 2 / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: LARIAN STUDIOS / PLATFORM: PC, PLAYSTATION 4, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

ARK: Survival Evolved is a rare beast indeed. As one of many games jumping on the open world survival bandwagon, it would not have been a surprise to see it joining the likes of Rust in Early Access purgatory. Yet, here we are, three years down the line and we have a finished product. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to see that it needed a few months more work before its final release.

The game hinges upon the idea of you surviving amid a land of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a stone axe at first, your task is to tame the giant beasts about you and find a way to thrive in the dangerous land. It’s an engaging concept and one that the game plans out well. The ecosystem is extremely varied across the gorgeous landscape, with everything from giant insects to krakens littering the island.

While each can be tamed, you will often find yourself hunting them for essential resources as you slowly build up a personal encampment with high tech equipment. You are always forced to keep searching across the island and taking risks in order to survive, giving it a thrilling sense of genuine discovery. Combined with a very detailed crafting system this should have been a sure-fire win, until you try to run the game.

To put it simply – ARK: Survival Evolved is so badly optimised it makes Magicka look good by comparison. High end PCs will find themselves chugging along at the best of times, even when there is only a relatively small number of creatures on screen. Worse still, the creatures themselves are astonishingly half-done, with many retaining extremely basic animations and utterly brain-dead AI, reducing many creatures to simple attack beasts.

Even if you move beyond the PvE element into PvP the game is incredibly flawed. Little has been done to balance out any disparity between players, meaning that the strong will always stay on top. This has naturally led to rampant griefing, and you can simply expect to find yourself dying over and over again to someone who had a head start on you.

This is painful to write, as there is still a good game somewhere in here. It’s still a hunting fantasy with machine guns and the opportunity to tame gigantic prehistoric monsters. It’s just that with such a mishandled execution, for every moment you start to have serious fun, you are almost required to turn a blind eye to a dozen other issues. If you’re truly enamoured with the concept then give it a look, but otherwise pass this one up until the developers release a few more patches.

ARK: SURVIVAL EVOLVED / DEVELOPER: STUDIO WILDCARD, INSTINCT GAMES, EFECTO STUDIOS, VIRTUAL BASEMENT LLC  / PUBLISHER: STUDIO WILDCARD / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Combining the freedom of Wing Commander: Privateer with a setting that might as well be described as “Discworld as envisioned by Alan Moore”, Sunless Sea proved to be one of the surprise hits of 2015. While Failbetter’s success with Fallen London could never be denied, the shift in gears to a more mechanically heavy game was nevertheless a welcome surprise, offering a surprising level of narrative depth and freedom. Shifting away from the sea and towards the stars, Sunless Skies is set to expand upon this fantastic world further, with a few surprising changes.

While anyone who played Sunless Sea will immediately pick out a few very distinct similarities between the two games, Skies nevertheless alters and redefines a number of key points. In terms of its basic direction, the experience places a much greater emphasis upon exploration and free trading over calculated cargo runs and extremely careful resource management. While food, fuel and sanity are all factors you need to keep a close eye on, it is not nearly so unforgiving as you might expect. Your hawk has a much greater search radius to hunt for new lands around, while the safe areas themselves are more clearly defined, meaning you won’t run into a gigantic monster purely on accident. This isn’t to say that there are not risks involved, nor that you will not find things waiting there, ready to turn your flying sky-train into its latest meal, but you can more easily manage the risks you take.

Combat and interacting with the world as a whole has seen a substantial overhaul, as it sticks to the core principles defined by its predecessor, but reworks a few key points. Rather than focusing upon keeping an enemy within your lumbering vessel’s firing arcs or performing constant-turn fighting, Skies permits you to turn in place or even drift while in flight. This allows you to rapidly turn and nail a target at close range, and to switch back and forth between a primary and secondary forward weapon to wear down their defences. This makes engaging multiple opponents vastly easier while also shortening certain battles, thus lessening the risk of starving to death mid-dogfight.

The HUD is not so densely pressed in to a single key location, and the larger keys present on the lower half of the screen means it is much easier to quickly use ability while multitasking. What’s more, the scrolling text box has been replaced by having certain prompts and alerts simply appearing behind your vessel, making it easier to keep track of certain changes within the world or flavour text. While this might sound like a major point, as this can alert you of everything from nervousness of your crew to changes in port, it’s an essential part of playing skies. Making it more obvious allows you to take advantage of more opportunities found within the game.

This alteration to the game’s core design elements has also carried over to each port, where it is now much easier to freely navigate between locations or buildings. As you are not simply locked into a single point or place, it’s now faster to simply scroll between a few easily listed placed rather than navigating a maze of possible dialogue or choice options. Much like everything else here, the intent seems to have been to promote accessibility without compromising what made it a success in the first place.

Plus, on top of everything else here, Skies is a truly beautiful game. This shouldn’t be a surprise given Failbetter’s typically outstanding visual aesthetics and musical prompts, but the atmosphere built here is remarkable. It strikes a very difficult balance between wondrous exploration of the stars and constantly risking annihilation, making the clusters of floating rocks, clouds and stranger things still all the more otherworldly in nature.

While Sunless Skies certainly needs a great deal more development time before it fully refines its mechanics, you can see the skeleton of a fantastic game already present even in this early state. Fans of Failbetter should definitely keep an eye on this one, as should anyone who enjoyed Sunless Sea’s storytelling but perhaps took a few issues with its resource management. It’s a great start to what is certain to be a fantastic game.

SUNLESS SKIES (EARLY ACCESS) / DEVELOPER: FAILBETTER GAMES / PUBLISHER: FAILBETTER GAMES / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (EARLY ACCESS)