Review Category: Games

No Man’s Sky remains one of those sad releases where the controversy overshadowed its capabilities. While it was by no means the groundbreaking release everyone was hoping for, the bold faced fabrications by its developer made the competent, if unremarkable, game seem like a disappointment. However, the game does still retain a small and extremely loyal following, and the Path Finder update has proven Hello Games is determined to stick to its promises from here on.

 

Veering towards the Mass Effect end of space exploration simulation, the game offers players the opportunity to traverse the landscape in a variety of vehicles. Each has their own benefits and strengths, and even the opportunity to customise them to the needs of each player. While this might seem redundant at first given the spacecraft on offer, the speed-boosters, terrain capabilities, lower costs and fuel consumption means they have a definite role to play in this game. It certainly helps that they can be left with the many outposts you can found on each world, removing the reliance you previously had on one or two ships at a time.

 

Many of the outposts added in Foundations still follow something of a Subnautica vibe, there is more to work with here. New items, upgrades and accessories allow you to make real use of the modular systems, and the welcome addition of new merchants means you’re going to be dumping far fewer resources than usual. These can even be shared online now, giving some slight degree of crossover between players. It’s a push towards giving the setting a much more lived-in sense, with more options and ideas, and even the ships have seen a few minor upgrades favouring certain professions.

 

However, many of these are merely building upon the core aspects of the game rather than fixing its innate flaws. While vehicles might speed up exploration and bases are a very useful bonus, crafting still remains an irritatingly unintuitive system, and progress is still frustratingly slow. While the step forwards towards new ideas is welcome, they’re hard to enjoy when the old ones clearly still need some work.

 

No Man’s Sky still doesn’t live up to its hype despite the Path Finder elements, but they are a big step in the right direction. This finally adds some much needed flesh to its bones, and combined with the elements Foundations added to the game, if offers more of the exploration people wanted from the start. If you have held off on No Man’s Sky because of its negativity, now is the time to give it another chance.

 

NO MAN’S SKY – PATH FINDER UPDATE / DEVELOPER& PUBLISHER: HELLO GAMES / PLATFORMS: PC, PLAYSTATION 4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Ask anyone what the Legend of Zelda series is about, even if they have not played it, and you will receive the same answer. They will discuss the same story structure, same puzzle orientated dungeoneering mechanics and, for all the times the series has innovated, the same basic essentials. While it has never been afraid to experiment, Zelda has always stuck to a single winning formula, and Breath of the Wild is the first to truly break from that. However, while such an act of attempting to reinvent the wheel normally results in disaster, this is one of those rare occasions where it has paid off. So much so that, at long last, it might take Ocarina of Time’s place as the series’ definitive game. Set in Hyrule once more, the game follows Link after he awakens from a deep slumber, only to discover that the fantasy realm has taken a distinctly post-apocalyptic turn. With only a woman’s mysterious voice and a hooded old man to guide him, he must reclaim his memories and annihilate the nightmare which has brought his home to ruin.

 

Above all else, Breath of the Wild’s big selling point lies in its broad open world. While every Zelda game has featured a vast, expansive plain to explore, this one takes things to a whole new level, introducing ideas and concepts which make it truly seem alive. Rather than simply raiding chests, you now craft or steal many items, and rather than awaiting for the tutorial to outline the task before you, you’re instead left to your own devices. There is no single right answer to approaching any obstacle, and the game offers so many varied items that you can easily accomplish a task in a dozen different ways. Enduring freezing temperatures can be accomplished by doing anything from brewing potions or consuming the right meal to simply having the right clothing.

 

Unlike other examples such as Skyrim, however, there are few warnings and little real structure to the story. Anyone brave enough to face down Ganon from the moment the tutorial ends can run off to try and fight him, and there is no exact sequence in which any power needs to be attained. You can also run headlong into locations which can easily kill you though, as the game rewards those who pay attention to fine details and environmental hints. This, of course, means that there is an incredible level of replay value to the game, and you will often find yourself going back to almost any area of the map to uncover new hidden treasures. That or to vindictively reduce a previously troubling foe to paste for personal satisfaction, either is possible.

 

While much of the essential story is still told through its characters, many points rely upon visual suggestions, with ruins, towns and NPCs all offering slight hints of a greater tale. Or, in some cases, warning you of an impending trap should you keep an eye out for them. This is especially notable given how much of the world keeps changing and the sheer variety of random encounters which can show up, constantly shifting and switching about at every other minute. It serves as much as a reminder to stay on your toes as making the world seem like a sprawling, moving kingdom, with a lauded history which has never been fully recorded.

 

The only notable failing on any part of the game lies in an extremely irritating trio of flaws stemming from performance issues. Despite an otherwise stable experience, delving into tall grass will cause your frame-rate to abruptly drop like a stone at times, as with a few other intensive experiences. This makes certain battles extremely hard to fight on some occasions, and you can easily end up shattering a sword or losing a life by mistiming a counter. This would only be an irritation in of itself, but the busywork of the crafting system and low durability of almost all items means you’ll be coming back to these places time and time again.

 

Despite a few niggling issues, Breath of the Wild is nevertheless a triumph of creative design and game development as a whole. By setting an entirely new watermark for the franchise and with hundreds of hours of gameplay on offer, it alone is reason enough to buy a Switch here and now.

 

LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD / DEVELOPER: NINTENDO EPD / PUBLISHER: NINTENDO / PLATFORMS: NINTENDO SWITCH / DATE: OUT NOW 

While consoles ultimately live and die based upon their killer apps, you always need the smaller releases to keep the ball rolling. You know the kind, the sort of lesser known and often gimmicky titles to hold an audience’s interest between the likes of Mario, Samus or Link showing up with their mega-hits. This is what Fast RMX seeks to be more than anything else, as it’s flashy, direct and with brief tracks, but constantly engaging, exciting and extremely flashy at every turn.

 

The premise is simple: There’s a track, you have a high speed jet car, and you need to finish first. There’s little else to it, and by the time you see the glowing neon coloured strips in the road, you’ll probably realise this is effectively F-Zero lite. With that said, while it may be wearing its influences on its sleeve, it has put such inspiration to very good use. While speed is essential, precision and muscle memory are core to winning any race, as you need to remember the layouts of split-second turns and speed boosts at the drop of a hat.

 

The choice of tracks and racers is also extremely varied, even from the outset. Some extremely brief and enclosed jungle races force you to risk death over and over again, while the more open air tracks concentrate more upon timed jumps and controlled breaking. These aren’t just minor colour swaps either, as many feature entirely unique visuals and sections, such as Independence Day style UFOs or fast moving cargo crates capable of ruining your day.

 

The main failing of Fast RMX lies in its longevity. It can be easy to burn out on the game and, despite their obvious diversity, the core essentials on each track always remain unchanged. Even now many of the online lobbies are largely empty as a result of this, meaning you’ll have a hard time playing anyone outside of local multiplayer meet-ups.

 

Still, combined with the fact each half of the Switch’s controller can serve as a mini-controller for this title (thus meaning you can have couch co-op ready and on offer from the moment of purchase), all this makes Fast RMX an excellent purchase alongside Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Those hungering for an excellent party game should consider grabbing this one at the first opportunity.

 

FAST RMX / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: SHIN’EN MULTIMEDIA / PLATFORMS: NINTENDO SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The TV show Star Wars Rebels has been a massive boon to the Star Wars X-Wing game. The regular show features a great many space battles with new and novel enemies and expands the Star Wars universe in a way that the books and comics can’t. One of the stand out scenes in show involves the Rebel’s stealing an Imperial TIE and the crew’s resident graffiti artist, Sabine, deciding to give it a rather startling new paint job.

Obviously this had to be turned into a playable model, and the result is rather striking. It’s a lovely model. It’s a basic TIE Fighter and they’ve always been quite nice and highly detailed pieces. The addition of an orange ‘phoenix’ art just adds to the joy of the piece. Of course, the fact that this means that Rebels can now use TIEs has caused some moaning amongst those who collect and play Imperial forces, but given that the Imperials get some of the nicest ships in the game, they can do with learning to share a little.

Rules wise, well, this is a TIE Fighter. A highly mobile and very breakable ship can easily sneak behind its foe and go pew-pew until the enemy explodes. The manoeuvre dial is unchanged, except it has a Rebel logo on it rather than the Imperial one. It’s the extra cards that make it fun. For a start, the ‘Title: Sabine’s Masterpiece’ allows you to load the ship with some lovely illicit equipment and extra crew. This means you can cram a dead-mans switch into your breakable TIE, and also somehow add an extra person into that tiny cockpit (Rebels it seems, have no regard for health & safety).

This person may well be Captain Rex, veteran Clone Wars trooper now turned Rebel. He’s rather nifty in the sense that he adds an extra focus token if you miss your target. Which is a potential ‘get out of death free’ card. You can also add the modification Captured TIE, which means less TIE pilots with a lower skill can’t target you (because they think you’re on their side). You can also have drop-out Jedi Ashoka Tano as a pilot, who’s a high-speed cheerleader who gives her allies bonus actions.

Mostly this is a theme filled, fun expansion for the game. Number crunchers may whinge, but if you’re interested in creative play and generating new strategies (and happen to play Rebels) then this is a great addition.

SABINE’S TIE FIGHTER EXPANSION PACK / PUBLISHER: FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The board game version of popular alien punching video game XCOM is a step beyond the original franchise. Whereas the computer game puts you into the core of the action, the board game puts you in the role of senior manager types. It’s a co-op game in which you frantically work together, desperately trying to plug together enough resources and troops to prevent an alien invasion. It’s also famous for the use of a special ‘timing’ app that turns the game into a fun but stressful experience.

 

Everyone who plays XCOM for the first time loses, but after a while you and your friends become a well-oiled machine, balancing time and resources and pushing the alien menace back to the brink. Or at least you find yourself losing less. Of course, this means it’s time to add an expansion to stop the game from becoming a little too familiar.

 

Evolution adds a bunch of new mechanics to the game (and there’s a button on the app to let it know that you’ve gotten the expansion). Firstly, it introduces the threat of the EXALT, humans who are interfering with the Earth’s defence for their own ends. This changes the theme of the game slightly and makes it more likely that thing your team has worked to gain may be quickly undone (unless you work swiftly). It also means that the Central Officer has a lot more to do as he scans for internal threats and clears EXALT tokens as they build across the board. This piles the pressure on the Central Officer, making it more fun to play. The Commander gets more crisis cards, and now things can break on the base. It’s more of the same trouble, but the variety is nice.

 

The big bonus is the addition of MELD and the ability to spawn Cyborg soldiers (provided the Science team is on the ball). These come with lovely MEC soldier models which look great and they really do pack a punch, if certain situations. If you can get the things into play, they’re a real boon to the struggle and give you more things to do.

 

Which you’ll need, as Evolution ups the difficulty level to a significant amount. The game has never been easy, but this add on turns the whole thing into a mad scramble. More stuff, more problems, cool mech suits and lots of shouting. Sounds like a good XCOM game to us.

 

XCOM THE BOARD GAME – EVOLUTION / DESIGNER: SAMUEL BAILEY / PUBLISHER: FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

The Force Awakens added a great deal of delicious things to the now growing Star Wars canon. One of the almost incidental things it did was replace the old Lambda ‘Flying School Bus’ shuttle from Empire Strikes Back and Return of The Jedi. The Lambda is all right, but it’s basically a squat and awkward looking thing and it’s black/white design makes it look like a Stormtrooper’s transit van. In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren arrives in a darker, scarier sort of ship. The Upsilon-Class Shuttle is a terrifying space bat, bristling with weapons and the promise of death.

The Upsilon-Class Shuttle expansion for Star Wars X-Wing introduces this horror into the game. The model itself is very, very black with only a few spots of white paint for landing lights etc. This actually draws the eye to the fine detail on the model. The wings move up and down (which is nice) and the whole thing is an awkward and weird shape, which means you’re going to have to fork out for a new storage solution for the thing or else keep it in its original packaging if you want to take it anywhere (such as to tournaments). It is an eye-catching model and looks great on the shelf. Rules wise, it’s worth remembering that this is still a shuttle. That means it can stop dead in the middle of a warzone, which is handy if there are TIE fighters all over the place. That’s pretty much its one trick though, the thing moves across the board slowly and without grace.

 

The expansion comes with a bunch of nifty cards and add-ons. You can field the ship as being piloted by Kylo Ren (he’s a decent pilot) or simply have him on board (though the crew upgrade card means you could put him on another ship if you fancied). Ren’s power is if you hit an opponent you can directly affect the enemy crew. Theme wise, you’re basically force choking your enemies at range in the middle of a dog fight. Which is rather cool.

You also get Hux added to the mix, who comes with his own ability that means you can hit harder provided you get a good hit in. Basically Hux likes to twist the knife, which is handy against bigger ships like the Jumpmaster or The Millennium Falcon. Other cards basically allow you to set up the shuttle as a control centre for disrupting enemy tactics. Nice, but remember the shuttle won’t be out-flying any fighters. It will be the prettiest death machine in the stars, however.

UPSILON-CLASS SHUTTLE EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: FANTASY FLIGHT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game is a war game with three factions based on a franchise that only really focuses on two. This means that though the Rebel and Empire sides tend to have lots of choice when it comes to ships, the third group, Scum and Villainy, tends to grab anything that’s going. This is strangely appropriate.

 

Case in point, The QuadJumper. This is the ship in the movie The Force Awakens that Finn and Rey are running towards just before it explodes and they instead detour to a more recognisable ship. It’s the ship that belongs to Unkar Plutt, that awful scavenger who tries to buy BB8 from Rey for a bumper pack of space Pot Noodles and then tries to steal the poor droid.

You do have to wonder what Rey was thinking, however, and The QuadJumper isn’t a fighter nor is it as cool as the ship Rey ends up in. It’s a Space Tug, the equivalent of a cosmic Volvo, used for hauling stuff round. The model that comes in the expansion is, as usual, very nice. We have a brown and tan fighter sized space ship with absolutely huge engines both fore and aft, some nice weathering and a great, if slightly comic, ship design.

Rules wise, it’s not a speedy ship, despite the engines. At fifteen points with no shields and lots of hull, you may wonder what it’s for. Well, it can also drop bombs and move backwards. This is in fact, the perfect ship for the tactical player. Much like the way the Plutt and friends were an obstacle for Rey, this spaceship is a flying roadblock. It pretty much exists to get in the way of your opponents more valuable ships and stop them in their tracks, bumping into hi-tech fighters and stopping talon-rolls and k-turns if their tracks. And dropping Thermal Detonators all over the place, which is always good for a giggle.

The pilots available all have tricks that slow down and disrupt your opponent (except for the Gunrunner, which is the low level, thrill free version). Extra kit includes a scavenger crane (which lets you re-equip some discarded kit) and a tractor beam (which lets you make your opponent very vulnerable to attack). The QuadJumper is great fun to play; one or two backing up a more shooty ship (such as Boba Fett’s Firespray) is a lot of fun to field. It’s a great tactical addition to the game and worth a look for any strategic scum out there.

QUADJUMPER EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: FANTASY FLIGHT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Conceived as a spiritual successor to acclaimed RPG Planescape: Torment, Tides of Numenera was originally scheduled for release well over two years ago, but is only now seeing the light of day. Fortunately, its extended development time has been well spent.

 

Set on Earth in the distant future, the rise and fall of numerous great civilisations has left the planet in a quasi-medieval state, accompanied by pieces of sufficiently advanced technology strewn everywhere. A human known as the Changing God used this tech to cheat death by the periodic transfer of consciousness between a succession of new bodies, each discarded husk afterwards becoming a sentient person in its own right. You play as the Last Castoff – the most recent of these accidental immortals – and in your journey to unravel the mystery of your very existence you gradually uncover meaning and answers behind the question at the core of the story’s development: What does one life matter?

 

Much like its antecedent, Tides of Numenera is very heavy in text, with advancement in the story coming from lengthy dialogue tree interactions with other characters and the world around you, the detailed writing drawing you in as much as the surreal science fantasy setting. Almost every exchange with even the most minor character further develops the sprawling and mutable world, gradually weaving a tapestry of captivating storytelling as expansive as it is intricate.

 

Even more so than Planescape, the game goes out of its way to avoid combat, opting for a conversation-driven approach to confrontation and usually giving several options besides attacking. What battles do break out are turn-based, where each character is allowed only one move and one action per round, requiring far more strategic thinking than rushing in swinging swords and slinging spells. Only a handful of these altercations are unavoidable, and even rarer are situations where all-out fighting is the only way to resolve them; far more rewarding is talking, puzzling or manoeuvring your way out of danger. It’s even possible – albeit difficult – to get through the whole game without actually killing anyone.

 

Should combat (or a myriad of other circumstances) result in you dying, your consciousness is temporarily sent into the Castoff’s Labyrinth, a metaphysical maze existing within your mind that gradually expands as the game progresses, successive areas and fathoms opening up to provide further story, quests and abilities.

 

The Tides of the title are aspects of human personality grouped into five colour-coded assortments that constantly alter throughout the game dependent on your choices and behaviour, indicating what kind of person you’ve become. They bear some superficial similarity to D&D’s alignment system but with far greater nuance than a single point plotted on a dual axis, and have varying influence over how characters can react to you. As you progress through the game and advance in capability, it’s even possible to learn to manipulate them like a psychic aura ready to do your bidding, but at the cost of certain powerful entities taking a severe dislike to you doing so.

 

Most situations can be handled in any one of a number of different ways, sometimes achieving the same result by alternative routes, other times having vastly variable outcomes. Some innocuous choices might give you surprise allies later on, while others return to haunt you with unforeseen enemies. Some decisions might be the selfless thing to do, but end up limiting later options or blocking off certain pathways entirely. Even the companions joining you affect what quests and areas you can access, and such is the game’s expansive nature it’s impossible to experience all it has to offer with a single play through. With there being very few instances where a choice leads to Game Over, you can play the game through without ever reloading, and thus better explore the consequences of your actions. The decisions you make are never wrong, only different, and it’s this emphasis on open choice that makes the story that much more compelling and affords the game significant replay value.

 

Even more meticulously plotted and endlessly inventive than its predecessor, Torment: Tides of Numenera has certainly been a long time coming, but it has been more than worth the wait.

 

TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA / DEVELOPER: INXILE ENTERTAINMENT / PUBLISHER: TECHLAND PUBLISHING / PLATFORM: PC, MAC, LINUX, PS4, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Despite a poor showing with the last Killzone release, Guerrilla Games have gone the extra mile to make up for Shadow Fall’s failings with Horizon: Zero Dawn. Blending together a variety of mechanics and concepts from Far Cry to Tomb Raider, the world presented here is one of post-apocalyptic survival amid robotic animals. Rather than taking the Fallout route, this game tries to be bright, colourful and vibrant as it can, while showing shades of a world lost.

 

The story surrounds several tribes of humans who have endured a cataclysmic event which brought the planet to ruin. Now living in a techno-barbaric state, their feuds and discoveries of ancient relics have repeatedly shifted the balance of power in the land. The latest of these is being used by the villain to potentially hold dominion over the planet. This is largely just a framework for the characters to work off of, and balances a substantial number of side-quests against it. In this regard it is a success, as the protagonist, Aloy’s, upbeat sarcasm never fails to be endearing no matter the situation.

 

What really keeps things fresh, however, is how it adapts a number of past ideas. While the game does sadly stick to quite a few of the old tropes people are becoming burned out on (yes, there are radio towers), the game tries to present them in a new way. The bigger foes are often more of a puzzle to take down than a mere enemy, requiring you to break through their defences and bring them low. No single one shares the same flaws or weaknesses, which can often catch you off guard whilst exploring. Furthermore, the old staple of hacking is given a makeover, permitting you to do anything from hijack a foe as your mount, to turn one robot against others.

 

Obviously this is helped substantially with how the game captures the sense of exploration and sheer wonder of an alien location. It clearly tries to sidestep many of the more common or expected elements found in more recent open world titles without directly reinventing the wheel. For the most part this succeeds, thanks to the odd juxtaposition of technology and primal energy, and you might often find yourself pausing just to admire the view. Especially when it comes to the ruins.

 

Horizon: Zero Dawn adds a breath of fresh air to an oversaturated genre, and proves to be the best release of its kind since Witcher 3. Set aside a few hundred hours to get lost in this new world, as you will not want to miss this one.

 

HORIZON: ZERO DAWN / DEVELOPER: GUERRILLA GAMES PUBLISHER: SONY / PLATFORMS: PS4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Semispheres is a stealth puzzle game. The player uses the two analogue sticks, and front shoulder buttons to control two small orbs. The left side of the controller moves the orange orb, and the right side operates the blue orb. Both orbs exist in separated areas but have to work together to reach the goal. The goal of the game is to have both orbs reach the circle that serves as the exit of the level If they get spotted by one of the enemies they will be sent back to where the point at which they started the level. Players start by simple moving the orbs but as the game progresses more complex power ups will be unlocked, such as having them switch from one section to another.

 

Semispheres is a game in which players will learn how the different power ups work as the game progresses. Even the later puzzles require the player to come up with new ways at looking at the game in order to succeed. Some puzzles even require the orbs to get caught by the enemy in order to progress further; something that you do not usually see in puzzle or stealth games. Having to control two bodies at the same time with the analogue sticks may seem counterintuitive at first, but mostly you will only have to move one at a time. The few occasions that require synchronous movement come at a point at which the player has had enough practice with the controls to make it a reasonable task to achieve.

 

Semispheres isn’t a long game, depending on whether or not you get stuck it should take anywhere from 2 to 4 hours to complete. In theory the game has a level select mode but this only allows you to play other levels currently available. It does not allow for backtracking. Once the game is completed it resets. So if you want to replay a level you will have to replay the game up to that point.

 

There is a story to the game, sort of. The game is separated into 13 chapters of 4 or 5 levels. Upon completion each chapter will reward the player with a comic that fits together with the others to form a story. There is no dialogue, with the art having to convey all the meaning by itself. For what it is, it is a good story. It is a fairly basic story of friendship between a boy and his robot that continues into adulthood. It is a story that is well put together, but it doesn’t seem to have much of a connection to anything that actually happens in the game. Do the orbs represent the boy and his robot? Is it supposed to connect with the theme of cooperation present in the game’s mechanics? The game doesn’t bring up a reason for it to be included that really ties in with the rest of the experience.

 

The aesthetic of the game on the other hand meshes perfectly with the core ideas of the game. The level hub is reminiscent of a kaleidoscope. The levels, and the orbs are made using gentle cores, and the music is a soft hum that will fade into the back of your mind as you play. This is a peaceful game, best suited for those times you want to play something relaxing.

 

The core mechanics at the heart of Semispheres are sound, and the aesthetics blend with those mechanics perfectly. The problem is that they just aren’t supported by enough content. It is too easy to breeze through this game. Even if you want to revisit it, arbitrary restrictions make it more inconvenient to do so than it should. These factors let down what could have been an amazing experience. It is still a worthwhile take on an interesting concept, but it could have been better.

 

SEMISPHERES / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: VIVID HELIX / PLATFORMS: PC, PS4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW