Review Category: Games

Space Hulk has rarely been a series with a consistent quality in any regard. For every victory there is a failure, or sometimes a botched concept will be given a second lease on life thanks to a remake. Sometimes this can work, as shown with Space Hulk: Ascension, but Deathwing’s Enhanced Edition falls short of the mark. It fixes many of the essential programming problems, and even offers a few new concepts. However, these are only secondary elements, and many of the core problems of the game are still evident in this release.

The story follows the Dark Angels’ First Company, an elite unit of Space Marines dispatched to carry out the chapter’s clandestine operations and high-risk situations. With the discovery of a massive mangled combination of various lost ships, they are dispatched to the vessel in order to recover a multitude of items. They just need to wipe out the massive infestation of Genestealers in their way.

The new additions, in this case, stem largely from some additional cosmetic choices, which makes many marines much more distinct as a result. These range from basic purity seals to full-scale reworking of plating, and the intricacies of these details make them a worthwhile reward. Furthermore, the presence of experience, renown and the like means you have much greater incentive to escape missions with a perfect score over merely rushing through them. Add to that the fact that the new special missions offer some much-needed replay value, and it seems at first as if the Enhanced Edition has perfected a very flawed experience. Then you start to play it.

The big problem with the game is that the Terminators lack the sheer power they are known for. These guys can be hurt from basic light gunfire, or even take heavy damage from being caught on the edge of a blast radius. Rather than shrugging off entire squad’s worth of gunfire, you’re lucky if you can last more than a minute in open combat without losing a limb. Furthermore, the melee weapons offer weak feedback to the player, making it difficult to pick out your exact position. This encourages the player to better use the – admittedly awesome – wide selection of ranged weapons, but the basic load-outs of these are remarkably weedy. It takes at least three direct hits to bring down even cannon fodder. When combined with some bizarre choices for spawn points, you can end up meeting with some extremely cheap deaths by enemies which effectively teleport in out of nowhere.

Even now, this enhanced edition of the game still suffers from a multitude of bugs, optimization issues, and framerate problems. Stuttering and freezing screens are quite commonplace, and it’s only worse when you opt to try to launch a co-op mission. This is only made notably worse thanks to some surprisingly ropy multiplayer coding, which unfortunately forces the game to frequently restart or boots people at random. This ends up undermining the game’s main appeal and makes it very difficult to justify buying without further patches.

The Enhanced Edition still retains the glorious scenery, SWAT-style squad commands and surprisingly interesting story of the original, but it simply doesn’t do enough to make it a worthwhile experience. Give it a look if you’re a Warhammer fanatic, but don’t expect much from it.

SPACE HULK: DEATHWING – ENHANCED EDITION / DEVELOPER: STREUM ON STUDIO / PUBLISHER: FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE / PLATFORM: PC, PLAYSTATION 4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

With Konami having officially having torpedoed its every single license in a fit of madness, it seems unlikely we will ever see a true Castelvania again. The last one was, after all, a glorified gambling machine which promoted itself on “erotic violence” and completely missed the mark on what made the series engaging. Enter Bloodstained, a spiritual successor to the franchise, offering the same gothic horror, Lovecraftian foes and mechanics as the originals. With Ritual of the Night still some way off, the developer has fulfilled one of its stretch goals early, in the form of its spin-off: Curse of the Moon.

While Ritual of the Night was set to modernise the looks of its inspiration, Curse of the Moon replicates it. This is a definitive effort to replicate the classics as closely as possible, from the mechanics to the visual stylings. It replicates many classic concepts and elements, but at the same time it does all it can to retain its own identity. The musical score, enemies and key weapons are more than just reskins of older creations, and even those which pay tribute to franchise icons typically have a twist to them. Keep that in mind when you bump into the bosses, otherwise you’re going to end up being hacked to pieces.

Many essential levels do hold a surprising number of secrets, and the wide roster of enemies ensures that no single engagement ever starts to feel samey. While a few certainly operate on the same basic premise as those of previous levels, they always have some mechanical surprise to them from fodder to airborne chargers.

Yet, with this being said, Bloodstained does still suffer from several key problems, the most prominent among these being the visuals. The levels are well designed, and feature a number of quite memorable setpieces, but it also suffers from colour choices born of that era. Many are dominated by a single prominent colour, making it surprisingly tedious to run through, while others are overly-detailed with a clash of sickly yellows and dark reds. This makes it very easy for enemies to blend into certain backgrounds and, combined with its staggering difficulty, you can end up simply trying to brute-force your way through levels.

Bloodstained is something which will appeal mostly to gamers of a certain generation or a certain inclination. It’s intentionally archaic, and the levels can be punishing past the point of insanity. Yet, as a game trying to recapture that age, it still does an excellent job and offers a true challenge. Give it a look if you’re an action platformer veteran, but more casual fans might want to steer clear of this one.

BLOODSTAINED: CURSE OF THE MOON / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER:
INTI CREATES CO., LTD. / PLATFORM: PC, SWITCH, VITA, XBOX ONE, 3DS, PLAYSTATION 4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Ever wondered how all those merchants in RPGs get their hands on so much good stuff? After an archaeological dig uncovers a series of mysterious dungeons, a small town is built nearby to house the countless adventurers who are brave enough to enter the caverns in search of treasures beyond their wildest dreams. Will is the youngest shopkeeper in town, having taken the reigns of his grandfather’s store. He dreams of becoming a hero, but how do you become a hero when you’ve got a shop to run?

Moonlighter is a game of two halves. By day, Will tends to the shop and manages his inventory, before heading out under the cover of darkness to partake in a spot of dungeon-delving. The whole thing can be a little difficult to get to grips with at first, with no real tutorial to speak of apart from a few bits of information given to us by an elderly resident. After an initial few minutes’ head-scratching, things become clear enough and the game opens up into a genuinely enjoyable loop of exploring, looting, selling and upgrading.

Any item collected inside the dungeons can be sold in your shop for whatever price you decide is fair. Everything has an optimum value that will be most acceptable to your customers, but this value changes based on the current supply and demand and it’s up to you to tinker with the prices until you find the sweet spot. The money you make is used to upgrade your shop (increasing the size to sell more stuff, for example), and also the town itself by employing additional workers who will provide yet another use for your loot and cash by selling and upgrading various useful potions, items and weapons.

Dungeons consist of random layouts of pre-defined rooms, similar to popular roguelites such as The Binding Of Isaac and Enter The Gungeon. Each dungeon is made up of three monster-filled floors, with a boss hiding at the end of the third floor. Most enemies drop loot, and your backpack tends to fill up pretty quickly. It’s possible to head back to town at any point if you need to drop off some items, but this costs money so it’s wise to keep some cash on you. Escaping is also sometimes a necessary option if you find yourself close to death, as falling in battle results in the loss of your current inventory.

We did encounter a couple of bugs during our time with the game, with the game even completely failing to load on a couple of stressful occasions. Nothing that can’t be solved by a quick reboot, but it does cause some unnecessary grief. Hopefully, issues like these can be ironed out in future updates.

Your overall enjoyment of Moonlighter will likely depend on whether you enjoy the shop management side of things, but we found it strangely calming and addictive in a Stardew Valley kind of way. With five dungeons to explore and the endlessly-addictive looting/selling loop, Moonlighter has the potential to keep you entertained for a long long time.

MOONLIGHTER / DEVELOPER: DIGITAL SUN / PUBLISHER: 11 BIT STUDIOS / PLATFORM: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Right then, who’s up for a procedurally generated 2D platformer? Don’t all raise your hands at once. Oh yes, one or two of you look like you might almost be half interested. OK then. What if we told you those cute little dinosaurs Bob and Lola have enjoyed a bit of sexytime and Lola has laid an egg? That’s nice for them, isn’t it? Dirty dinos. But the egg has been stolen and is being kept at the top of a mountain! Shall we help them? No? Anybody?

DragoDino lets players choose between controlling either Bob or Lola, before sending you on a mission to retrieve said love egg from the aforementioned mountaintop. There’s very little to distinguish between the two characters, other than Lola is heavier/slower and can take one extra hit before dying. Unfortunately, indistinguishable protagonists are the least of our worries.

The game is split into 10 stages, which in turn are divided into several sub-levels. Players need to reach the exit of each sub-level at the top of the screen in order to climb the mountain, but before you can do this you’ll need to collect three or four blue crystals which power up your jumping ability which for some reason resets at the start of each section. Crystals are found by defeating handily-marked enemies, which means there’s very little reason to bother tackling the majority of baddies on screen.

Bob and Lola aren’t very sturdy and will die after taking three hits. Dying sends you back to the bottom of the current stage, but it ends up being immensely difficult to tell where you are because each level is randomised. Sub-levels aren’t numbered and there’s no map, so it’s almost impossible to work out how far you’ve gone or how much further you need to go.

Everything is nice and cartoony but starts to all look the same very quickly. Enemies often blend into the background, leading to deaths that feel cheap rather than down to player error. It doesn’t help that the controls are quite floaty, which makes platforming more difficult than it should be. The glide mechanic can also be quite unresponsive, leaving you to fall to the floor when you were expecting to sail through the air to a hard to reach the platform.

On more than one occasion on we reached a point where the game generated some crystal-holding enemies on a higher platform than we were currently able to reach. With no option but to restart, we expected to be taken back to the beginning of that particular stage. Quite annoying, but not too much of a problem. But no! Exiting the game – something forced on us by the game’s own design – actually sent us all the way back to the start of the entire game! To add insult to injury, the loading times are outrageously long. For some reason, it can take 2-3 whole minutes to load a static map where all you’re able to do is press A to start the next level. And then we’re back to staring at another loading screen (completely black, save for an egg in the corner) for however long it takes this time.

It’s a shame that DragoDino demands certain things of the player but then fails to provide the necessary mechanics to make these possible. We’re not really sure who we could recommend this one to – you’d think it would appeal to younger players with its cartoony style, but frustrating controls and confusing layouts might be a bit too much for youngsters to contend with. At a push, you might be able to find some enjoyment here for half an hour or so, but there are many other games that are way more deserving of your time and money.

DRAGODINO / DEVELOPER: TEAL ROCKS STUDIO / PLATFORM: PC, PS4, SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Watracio Walpurgis is a vampire who is also an FBI agent. He’s also a Donald Trump-looking anthropomorphic eggplant, and he isn’t the world’s greatest driver. He crashes his car on Albatross Road – the highway to Flamingo’s Creek, a town that only appears in nightmares and can only be accessed on a particular day once every 25 years… If that sounds too silly for your liking, we should probably say right now that things only get weirder from here on in. We won’t think any less of you if you want to tap out before we go any further!

For those of you who are still with us, Baobabs Mausoleum is a sort of retro-inspired almost-but-not-quite point and click adventure game. Taking its cues from Twin Peaks, Monkey Island, and – apparently – Spongebob Squarepants, the journey to Flamingo’s Creek is filled with some of the most peculiar characters we’ve ever encountered. A smelly fisherman, a gang of abusive hide-and-seek loving beavers, and a one-eyed top-hatted stork are just a few of its more memorable inhabitants, and there’s a particularly surprising customer in the local diner…

As Watracio Walpurgis, players search the surrounding areas to discover useful items and info that will help him work out just what the hell is going on. The main bulk of the game plays out as a 2D top-down scroller, with the tiniest snippets of other genres thrown in here and there. What might happen when you find a pair of 3D glasses on the ground? Or when you find a game cartridge stashed away inside a treasure chest? One thing’s for sure, Baobabs certainly has a lot of tricks up its sleeve.

With graphics largely on a par with the higher end of the Game Boy Color’s capabilities, and text littered with horrendous spelling and grammar mistakes (probably due to English not being the native language of the developers at Celery Emblem), you’d be forgiven for thinking that Boababs Mausoleum might not be worthy of your attention. It’s all rather endearing though, and the dodgy writing definitely adds an undefinable something or other to the crazy quirkiness of the overall package.

In all honesty, nothing about Baobabs Mausoleum is anywhere even close to being perfect. Apart from maybe the weirdly gripping opening credits, with its incredible theme tune courtesy of the magnificent Messer Chups. An inspired choice indeed! Elsewhere though, ropey writing, shonky graphics and less-than-stellar gameplay mechanics should be more than enough reason to throw a game straight in the bin at the earliest opportunity. However! This particular universe is so completely ridiculous that we couldn’t help but enjoy everything Baobabs threw at us. The only real disappointment is the running time, as you’re likely to reach the closing credits within a couple of hours at the very most. It ends on a real cliffhanger though, and we’re totally on board for the next instalment. Episode 2 is already available on Steam for those who don’t want to wait for the console version, with a third act to follow whenever it’s ready…

BAOBABS MAUSOLEUM, EPISODE 1: OVNIFAGOS DON’T EAT FLAMINGOS / DEVELOPER: CELERY EMBLEM / PUBLISHER: ZEROUNO GAMES / PLATFORM: SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: MAY 24TH

Skaven are horrible ratmen which are pretty much a staple of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.  The vile little monsters have themes of poison and disease, and they look gloriously sinister. There are the sort of beastie that are most suited to Games Workshop’s  Warhammer Underworlds game. Sneaky, devious and filled with spite, you can easily imagine them lurking in the dark haunted parts of Shadespire, looking for their next victim.

Spiteclaw’s Swarm include 5 models and 60 cards. As usual, half the cardsare specific to the Skaven, and the rest can be used with any team. They’redesigned to be a ‘hit and run’ style squad, featuring the highest movement in the game. Unlike other sets, only two of these are ‘named’ characters – Spiteclaw himself, and Krrk the Almost-Trusted. The other three are Lurking, Hungering and Festering. This is because those can be brought back from death by Spiteclaw’s special ability. Basically the sneaky leader has hordes of ratty minions who appear as soon as one of their number is downed. This is a game changer, as a lot of Shadespire is about knocking your opponent about the board to achieve objectives. Having a foe that keeps coming back changes things up for the other teams.

Though they’re easy to take out, they are also pretty fast – you have to catch these horrors first. When they huddle together they can get tougher,and can also gang up on tougher foes to take out even the heavily armoured with lots and lots of swipes of their pestilent paws.

Thematically, they’re pretty much spot on. We especially like the way they lurk on one side of the board, appearing to lose then suddenly bursting across to the other side, capturing objectives and then pretty much turning the game on its head. Sneaky.  The models themselves are snap-fit and in brown plastic – your can pretty much use them straight away though you really need to read all the cards and figure out their tactics first. They require a bit of finesse and you’ll find your ratties outmatched if you don’t plan ahead. Go for the subtle and tactical route though, and you will have bags of fun with these monsters.

Shadespire is Games Workshop’s response to the plethora of easy to play but tactically deep miniatures games that have been hitting the market recently. There is a growing market for games that don’t require boxes and boxes of models and can be easily played in most places. It’s a spunky gameset in the high fantasy ‘Age of Sigmar’ world, but the core set focuses on ‘Holy Knights’ versus ‘Bloody Barbarians’. Though eye-catching, neither of these factions are the ones many readily associate with Warhammer fantasy. Crazy red-headed dwarves with a mad-gleam in their eyes and axes bigger than them, however? Yes please.

The Chosen Axes set for Shadespire features four bright orange plastic Fyreslayers (this is the new name for Troll Slayers). These manic looking warriors are a specific team; each has its own name and story, plus appropriate cards and rules. The game takes its back story seriously, being set in a miraculous city filled with magical glass, trapped souls and roving gangs of horrors. These dwarves heroically throw themselves into danger in order to atone for past sins.  In game terms, this means that they’re heavy hitters designed to keep the foe from fighting back.

They aren’t the fastest or strongest choices for Shadespire, but each hero hits hard and keeps hitting, designed in a way to slow your opponent down just long enough so you can hit them again.  One model is designed to be tough and control the board, but when the chips are down can be turned into a powerful enemy for a short while.  Another keeps enemies on the floor, and the other two do consistent high damage. This allows for a blunt strategy, which is often the way to go in Shadespire.

Half the cards provided can fit in pretty much any warband and the rest are specific to these dwarves.  There’s enough in the pack to make it worthwhile to collect them even if Fyreslayers aren’t your thing (more options are always more fun), but there’s nothing ‘crucial’ in here; you don’t need this pack to keep winning, but you might want to grab it because it’s entertaining.

The models click together easily (though you should always use glue) and look good unpainted. They’re Citadel miniatures so of course they look great painted regardless of actual skill (if you can drybrush then you can make the models look nice).  A nice addition to Shadespire and any Age of Sigmar collection.  Overall, a welcome addition to the game.

A SNES-inspired hack and slash explore ’em up with roguelike elements? Yes, please! Wizard of Legend casts players in the role of a wizard who has been invited to take part in the Chaos Trials – a series of maze-like rooms filled with baddies to beat up and items and spells to discover. It’s basically an excuse for running around a castle killing enemies with magic, which is fine by us.

As with many other roguelikes, the order of levels is randomised within each playthrough, as are the enemies and items you’ll find within. Players are able to equip up to six spells at once, chosen from your arsenal of previously-purchased attacks. Like the levels themselves, spells are based on the elements, such as earth, lightning, fire and ice. Each spell has a standard less-powerful attack that can later be upgraded later in the game. A variety of cloaks are available to give additional passive buffs to your abilities, and carrying relics can increase your chances even further. Using certain relics together can make them more powerful, but the game doesn’t explicitly tell you which ones to look out for. It’s all a matter of trial and error (and, of course, luck, depending on which items show up during each run), encouraging players to experiment with whatever might be available to them at any given time.

All of these spells and relics are gained by purchasing them from shops, using coins and crystals earned during battle. Coins can only be spent within the castle itself (you don’t keep hold of your money when you die, for some reason), whereas crystals are spent in the main plaza/hub area. Merchants offer a random selection of wares each time you visit, with only lower-tier basic spells available during the early parts of the game. There are no item descriptions so it’s difficult to know whether the thing you’re buying is actually going to be of any use, which can sometimes lead to the feeling of wasting your (in-game) money if you end up with an item you’re not interested in using. Again, it’s a nice idea to encourage experimentation, but it would be nice to be able to make an informed decision about your purchases rather than being forced to get whatever the game randomly decides to offer.

Despite its slick movement, responsive controls, and the huge variety of spells, Wizard of Legend is a really difficult game. Like, really difficult. After buying around a dozen new spells we ultimately settled on the ones we were given right at the beginning, and it took us several hours to even beat the first boss. Even then it was likely down to being lucky enough to get some weaker enemies and one of the easier bosses during that particular run. Not one for youngsters or the easily-frustrated then, but any roguelike fans with a penchant for a challenge will be right at home here. Two-player local co-op is available if you want to see if that makes things any easier…

As the debut release from a two-man development team, Wizard of Legend is quite remarkable indeed. It might be a bit on the tricky side, but the core gameplay and the lure of discovering new things during each run are enticing enough to keep us coming back for more. If this is a sign of things to come, Contingent99 could well be worth keeping an eye on in the future.

WIZARD OF LEGEND / DEVELOPER: CONTINGENT99 / PLATFORM: PC, PLAYSTATION 4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: MAY 15TH

Butch is an ex-drug dealer with a bit of a problem. He’s woken up in the boot of a crashed car with no idea how he got there, but a little bit of memory loss turns out to be the least of his worries. He’s in The Garage, a huge shopping complex that is currently under fire by unknown assailants. A news broadcast speculates that the attack might be the work of jealous competitors. This is day two of the siege, and ‘survivors’ are still making their way out of the wreckage. But they’re behaving strangely, attacking innocent civilians, and there are reports of cannibalism…

Garage is a top-down survival horror shooter, with players roaming the hallways dispatching the undead with a variety of weapons. The opening chapters serve as a tutorial, letting you know what sort of things the game will be expecting you to do. There are secret breakable walls, locked supply boxes with hidden passcodes, and we’re even introduced a bit of item crafting. Disappointingly, none of this really ever amounts to much. Secret areas are few and far between, and rarely seem to contain anything you wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere in the game. Opening locked boxes involves nothing more than keeping an eye out for numbers on the scenery, and trying the various combinations until one of them works. And crafting only comes into play when the game tasks you with finding certain items and taking them to a workbench before you can progress to the next chapter.

One thing we’re never told about is the ‘line of sight’ feature, which makes items and enemies invisible unless Butch has a clear view of them. This makes taking cover nigh on impossible, as enemies will often disappear the second you take cover behind a wall. They’re still moving around though, and nine times out of ten they’ll suddenly reappear right next to you and maul you to death in an instant. It’s frustrating that this was deemed to be an acceptable design decision. While you could argue that it adds a bit of ‘realism’ to the game, it also adds a less than welcome element of guesswork to the already-tricky combat.

On the plus side, Garage looks really nice, albeit a touch dark in places. The pixel art is suitably gory and unnerving, and the hand-drawn illustrations during cutscenes are undeniably well done. There’s also an almost ZX Spectrum-like hallucination sequence which turns everything to strobing neon outlines. It’s not often you get such a variety of art styles in a game of this kind, and we certainly appreciate the change from plain old pixel art.

A sinister soundtrack adds to the overall ‘80s VHS B-movie vibe and combines with the art and storyline to create a foreboding atmosphere that wouldn’t be out of place in a genuine video nasty. Secret experiments, zombies, monsters, huge outlandish bosses, all right up our street for sure. It’s a shame then that the gameplay doesn’t quite live up to expectations. Garage is enjoyable enough in its own way, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that more than a few opportunities were missed here. With some tweaks to the mechanics (tightening up the aiming in particular certainly wouldn’t hurt), and a little bit of balancing here and there, this could have been a real gem of a game. As it stands though, unfortunately, there are a few too many frustrations to make this a must-play title.

GARAGE / DEVELOPER: TINYBUILD GAMES / PUBLISHER: TINYBUILD GAMES / PLATFORM: SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A road trip from Florida to Canada sounds like a nice way to spend a couple of weeks, but what if you were forced into the journey to escape from the impending zombie apocalypse? In Death Road, the USA is overrun by flesh-eating monstrosities, but for whatever reason the undead have yet to breach the northern border. Canada is now the only known safe haven, and with only 15 days to get there we’d better get a move on!

DRTC is a game of two halves – part road trip text adventure, part exploration/looting zombie-hacking action/RPG. While you’re on the road, text boxes update you about what’s going on and offer various courses of action. This usually involves stopping off somewhere to gather supplies, because after all, you’re not going to get far without food or fuel or ammunition… These supply stops are where the real excitement happens, as you explore your surroundings and collect anything that might be useful while attempting to keep the approaching hordes at bay long enough to get back to your vehicle in one piece.

The entire game is randomly generated, from the options available on the road to the characters you encounter to the layout, weapons and supplies you might find when you pull over for a spot of looting. Even your starting character can be left to chance if you decide to let the game create one for you, but we’d recommend making your own custom character as it really adds something extra to the overall experience. Losing a pixelated version of yourself or an actual real life pal can be truly harrowing!

Every character has their own traits and abilities that make them better (or worse) at certain things like healing, using firearms, or interacting with other characters. Every decision you make (or, more likely, every situation the game randomly throws you into) has an effect on your chosen character’s traits and abilities, adding a layer of light RPG mechanics to the whole thing. Upgrade points can be collected during the game, allowing you to unlock further traits and skills that can be applied to any newly created characters in subsequent playthroughs.

Featuring a bouncy and memorable soundtrack alongside some colourful (during daylight hours, at least) almost cute-looking graphics, the randomly-generated nature of DRTC means that even if you do manage to get to Canada (we haven’t, yet) there’s always going to be plenty of reasons to go back for more. The game isn’t difficult, but it can often feel that your success is more down to the luck of the draw rather than your own skill. The humour in the writing prevents failure from getting too frustrating, as you’re quite likely to get a laugh out of whatever fiendish fate finishes you off. All in all, it’s rather good fun and an enjoyable way to spend an hour or two.

DEATH ROAD TO CANADA / DEVELOPER: ROCKETCAT GAMES / PUBLISHER: UKIYO PUBLISHING / PLATFORM: NINTENDO SWITCH, PS, PS4, XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW