Chalgyr's Game Room
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The end of summer is here and it is time for the annual titles to rain on us from the gaming Gods. No different than many other popular yearly franchises, the official FIA Formula One World Championship flagship title, F1 2016 is now available and back with even more Formula One goodness. Chalk full of exciting tracks, a robust career mode, and the new Formation Lap / manual starts feature, F1 2016 promises to be the most complete F1 experience ever. Spoiler Alert ... F1 2016 delivers on that promise.
Verdun is a port of the PC game that released about a year and a half ago, and it does a nice job of bringing some strategy elements to a traditionally action-oriented genre. Verdun is not going to be for everyone, but it is an interesting take on trench warfare and provides something unique when compared to other war themed shooters.
It would be easy to look at Obliteracers and dismiss it as a Mario Kart clone, but you would be doing the game and yourself a disservice if you enjoy combat karting games. Obliteracers brings enough new to the table to stand on its own merits. Admittedly some aspects of the game work better than others, but the online modes are a riot and the game has an addictive quality that is impossible to ignore.
Solar Shifter EX is a solid shooting game more often than not with excellent visuals but a camera system that does the title no favors in the end. The experience is a decent one for fans of the shmup genre, but Solar Shifter EX is nowhere close to being one of the best shooters have to offer.
MeiQ: The Labyrinth of Death is an awesome Dungeon Crawling RPG that is great to sit down to for hours at a time either on the Vita or the PSTV. With fun and quirky characters to awesome customization systems there’s more than enough fun to go around the multiple dungeons that these Machina Mages will needs to explore with their Guardians in order to restart the planet’s core.
Zombasie is loads of fun, regardless of what some of your clan members think. It has loads of quests that don’t run out causing you to exit and re-load the same areas over and over. Instead things feel more organic and as time goes by things become tougher as the world levels around you, the Zombie threat becomes more serious, and that moment of absolute dread is always potentially around the corner. As much as I’ve loved a lot of the other Hack and Slashes, none have been able to provide that on-going feeling of progress that Zombasite can provide. Never having to “quit and reload”, never “running out of things”, those are huge additions to this style. The time spend in Early Access was time well spent and Soldak Entertainment have aced this one.
The Huntsman: Winter's Curse has some interesting ideas, and I can appreciate that it blends RPG elements with a unique card battling system that compliment the visual novel-like story. None of these elements are particularly deep, but they are enjoyable enough to want to see the game through, even when a handful of smaller bugs do make it harder to complete the game properly.
Alone With You does a really nice job with its narrative, but the actual gameplay mechanics start to wear a little thin by the time the game wraps up. It is a callback to older style adventure games, which I have always had a soft spot for, and Alone With You is no different. It is a good entry into the genre and shows an impressive understanding of what it takes to weave a compelling narrative despite a handful of shortcomings.
So now that we’ve covered the game aspects, what has changed in the PC port? Well, the first major aspect I noticed was that save times are basically instant, which is glorious, and I feel like the load times got a little shorter. There are a few frame rate drops during cutscenes, but nothing that I would call a serious flaw. All the DLC is nicely organized as well, which is nice. As a game, overall it earns a seal of approval. As a port, I would say it’s definitely a solid transition.
Despite its faults Riptide has some good things going for it: the animations are pretty good, the vehicle models look very attractive, and so indeed is the entire game. Heck, the game even manages to keep your attention for about an hour before mundane sets in. It's a good looking racer; I just wish it were nearly as good technically.
It was hard not to immediately draw comparisons to Limbo when I started off in control of a young boy named Hue, who lived in a monochromatic world who basically starts off the game with the ability to jump around with little context as to who he is or why he is there. The Limbo comparison one is meant with only the best intentions, as that was a game I absolutely loved when I first played it.
Trails of Cold Steel gets off to a slow start in order to find its bearings but once it gets going it delivers a solid experience. While taking a different direction from Sky which centered on Estelle and her journey, Rean and the rest of his class’ journey was just as enjoyable. With the second chapter coming out next week, there really isn’t much time to wait in order to continue on this newer tale of the Legend of Heroes.
Attack on Titan surprised me. I am more used to licensed properties, especially those in the anime world, being sub-par at best. Shingeki no Kyojin destroyed that expectation, stomped it into oblivion, then chewed on the remains. Serious, intense, fast, and incredibly challenging at times, Attack on Titan really shines when you are swinging from one side of a map to the other in the hopes of rescuing a comrade in distress. Though the Epilogue introduces a horrible looking and frankly dumb new titan, it still provides some good after-action, well, action.
We’ve all been sitting here for long enough today. Everyone rise, stretch out your legs, and head on to your duties and we will resume this later as I contemplate what to do about the writers of this autobiography. The adventure was rough in the beginning while figuring out exactly how to manage my resources and my peoples but never was it frustrating. Ordering the people around could take some getting used to but once formations and sorting by rank was possible everything went along smoothly. It really was a beautiful experience and I’m glad to have relived it. What is this Wee they speak of though? Between that, the Pea Sea, and this “A” and “B” nonsense there were will a lot to talk about for the second printing.
Tom VS The Armies of Hell is an awesome Action Adventure Twin Stick experience. While not being overly long, it offers a few difficulty levels to explore. With robust game mechanics, amazingly hilarious dark humored dialog, this trip to hell is worth the possibility of dying a few times over while trying to get out of it.
Multiplayer felt flat, primarily due to missing the charm of sharing in and adventure that either one of us (my buddy) or I made, which is what a big part of the allure of D&D is; living the games that your friends and you build. Picking up someone else's adventure and running through it can be enjoyable and Sword Coast Legends is certainly that. If you have recently finished Divinity: Original Sin or Wasteland 2 and are looking for some rock-solid console RPG goodness then Sword Coast Legends can certainly scratch that itch. Not quite on par with Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2 of old in terms of campaign creation or single-player story, but still an incredibly welcome trip through a classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure from the comfort of your couch. Sword Coast Legends on PlayStation 4 is a faithful adaptation of a solid D&D throwback.
Dungeon Punks is a fun Brawler that offers plenty of gameplay and a hilarious storyline that only goes from bad to worse for Captain Firelle and her crew of hired misfits. If you’ve been needing to beat up on lots of bad guys or show a friend who’s boss? Dungeon Punks has you covered!
Obliteracers, while fun, seems shallow in a handful of departments; for one, there is the fact that there are about 10 or so weapons, which all get really old, really fast (most matches devolve into trying to "push" racers off of the map). Another is that there is no real "race" in the game as these are essentially linear, track based arena-style matches.
The Muv-Luv series of visual novels have been around since 2003 and have a fairly massive following. In fact, the sequel to the first Muv-Luv (consisting of Muv-Luv Extra and Muv-Luv Unlimited), called Muv-Luv Alternative, received an interesting anime adaptation, called Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse. Now, I was first introduced to Muv-Luv via the Total Eclipse anime, and I loved it; while many anime aficionados may scoff at Total Eclipse, I found it to be quite interesting, compelling, engaging, and just genuinely great.
Batman: The Telltale Series - Episode 1: Realm of Shadows allayed any concerns I had about how a character usually shown in video games as an action-packed superhero would be handled in a more story-driven format. I am happy to report that it was handled quite well overall, due in large part to a solid presentation (the visuals fit the comic book source material far better than they do The Walking Dead) and excellent voice acting (led by veterans Troy Baker and Laura Bailey), some new gameplay mechanics and a story that I am invested in.