Valfaris: Soon to be Everywhere, Rock Incoming

Posted on September 26, 2019 by geelw

Nice. Coming soon, a dose of hard metal for your daily supply, courtesy of Big Sugar and Steel Mantis Games (which, as Black Wolf Games bought the world SLAIN: Back from Hell for PC and consoles a few short years ago.

Welcome to Valfaris:

I played the PC demo on STEAM a while back and came away very impressed indeed. Now, it’s about ready for retail and digital in more polished form. When? Well, look out below, folks.

If the demo is any indication, this one’s going to be fun, tough side-scroller for the ages. See you down on the planet – I’ll be the one hiding out, but easy for enemies to spot.

-GW

The Red Solstice 2: Survivors Comes A-Calling For Volunteers

Posted on September 24, 2019 by geelw

Nice. Volunteers are needed to test out this great-looking real time tactical action game. You can sign up here. That’s a link to the currently PC-only version. Just keep those fingers crossed that a console port is in the works.

A tiny bit about the game is below as is the teaser trailer.

The Red Solstice 2: Survivors blends real-time tactical action with in-depth strategy and planning in a world where humanity’s last survivors are beset on every front. Join with your friends for up to 8-player co-op sessions in a tense struggle for survival in a squad-based shooter that mixes the action of Helldivers with the thoughtful strategy of games like X-COM.

There’s a nifty Space Hulk meets ALIENS vibe from this trailer that certainly has me intrigued. If you’re too busy to test but like what you see so far, feel free to wishlist the game on STEAM here. The developer notes it’ll be done when it’s done, so you might have enough free time to test it after all while you’re waiting.

-GW

NARCOS: Rise of The Cartels Trailers Have You Choosing Sides

Posted on September 24, 2019 by geelw

I’m grinning a little too much because NARCOS: Rise of The Cartels isn’t the Grand Theft Auto V clone some expected from Curve Digital and developer Kuju Games. Nope, this one’s going the turn-based strategy route much like the XCOM series or the underappreciated Falling Skies: The Game from 2014. This is a good thing for me because I prefer to slow things down a tad these days and stuff that’s turn-based fits right up the alley here. Sure, it’s not the visual feast some expect, but this means it’ll be a perfect fit on consoles as well as PC. I’ll certainly be playing it to enjoy its merits and will have few issues unless the AI isn’t up to snuff.

Fans of this sort of game should keep an eye peeled, I say (or some drug lord will peel one for you, ow).

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-GW

Review: Space Cows (Switch)

Posted on September 21, 2019 by geelw

What are you doing to that cow, man? Oh, never mind…

Ha. I remember a little game called Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure that got a few major censorship issues way back in 1994 on the Sega Genesis because it was deemed too crude until a few odd edits were made. Walkabout Games’ hilarious Space Cows ($12.99) laughs at the very idea of censors as it farts at every chance and is pretty funny and weird for a hardcore twin-stick shooter. Let’s just say expect psychics will come into play somewhat and you’ll need to work within the game’s control scheme if you want to fully enjoy the ride.

As Best Regards, a farmer who’s cows have been swiped by aliens, it’s all up to you to get then back with a handy toilet plunger as your main weapon and a bit of gassy propulsion to keep you aloft. Don’t try to pretend this makes any sort of sense, though. Other than the well-implemented physics system that makes the game tougher, this isn’t exactly rocket science.

Or is it? (roll trailer, please):

That said, between the main game proper and the wealth of short mini-games, there’s a heck of a lot happening here and your sense of humor needs to be tempered with a sense of understanding that the game is doing it’s darndest to offend at every turn (which is a good thing). The 20 levels take a bit of work to complete, but expert players can expect around three or so hours to complete everything. Still, with three play modes, only the best of the best will experience every difficulty level.

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Review: Everdark Tower (Switch)

Posted on September 21, 2019 by geelw

Collins’ powerful skills make mechanical foes no trouble.

The second in Kemco’s quick play RPG series, Everdark Tower ($4.99) is a tougher game overall in terms of most battles and the inclusion of puzzle elements, yet still an easy time for veteran players. Granted the game is, like Archlion Saga before it, made to cater to novice players new to the genre. That said, expect to lose a few battles until you level up and unlock skills that make most fights in the final chapters somewhat of a cakewalk.

While the game is meant to (and can be) completed in about three hours, there’s one puzzle in Chapter Two that’s somewhat of a head-scratcher that pads out the running time a few minutes or more unless you look up how to solve it. Even then, it’s a weird bit of business because the helpful fairy that you can use to solve a puzzle earlier is nowhere to be found, leaving you high and dry unless you know the solution. I more or less stumbled on the solution after about half an hour of trying, but your time will vary (hey, I’m older and slower than most people!).

Well, most of the puzzles are easy-peasy stuff.

As with Archlion Saga, health is pooled and based on equipped gear, so the best gear you can get will help. The enemies starting in Chapter Three onward can be a hassle, but aren’t impossible to defeat with skills your team will acquire (or using stars to restart if you’re beaten). The game isn’t complicated at all save for that aforementioned puzzle, but search where you can when you can as there are a few items off the pathway you’re (optionally) meant to follow.

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Review: AI: The Somniun Files (PS4)

Posted on September 18, 2019 by geelw

Get a clue, Date. Bet a cluuuuuuue.

Brilliant. Spike Chunsoft keeps it perfectly weird at all times with AI: The Somnium Files ($59.99), a visual novel/adventure that’s one of the best games of this type to date in terms of accessibility. Granted, it opens with a disturbing crime scene, but that gory mystery to solve (and a few others as the game goes on) becomes the starting point for Kaname Date’s adventures and every investigator needs a good mystery, right? Of course, Date soon realizes this case has ties to his past (you’ll see) and with some assistance from Aiba, his trusted partner who resides in his left eye socket (you’ll see), things get more or less cleared up (the AI’s have it, heh).

The victim, her husband, and whip-smart young daughter all have connections to Date and Date’s oddball (eyeball?) relationship with Aiba is part of the game’s pull. She’s necessary to solve a few puzzles both in the real world and the Sonmium dreamscapes you’ll dip into. Her real form is an oddly cute tiny cyclops bear thing, but in dreamscapes she takes on a more humanoid shape partly because she thinks Date’s tastes lean toward pretty women. His do, but Aiba’s form appearing outside of dreams is too distracting for him at certain points.

Brainnnns. Expect to see a few odd dreams for Aiba to mess around in.

Gameplay combines a bit of thinking with plus trial and error in the timed Aiba segments, plus traditional point and click sections where Date investigates plot elements and clues. The latter are untimed sections where camera movement is confined to whichever location Date happens to be in while Aiba’s sections are limited to six minutes. Retrying Aiba’s more freeform portions can be done either from auto-saves, from certain spots by adding or subtracting time or by retrying if you get stuck on solutions and time expires.

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Review: Injection π23 ‘No name, no number’ (PS4)

Posted on September 5, 2019 by geelw

Kid: “Hey, mom What’s for lunch!” Mom: “Why, the corridors of the MIND, child…”

Injection PS4 While it’s technically imperfect and a bit unpolished, Abramelin Games has a pretty frightening survival horror game for PS4 owners in Injection π23 ‘No name, no number’ ($9.99). That ten bucks gets you a pure passion project (made over the course of five years) in the form of a multimedia game experience featuring puzzles guaranteed to test your brain cells, unsettling monsters to avoid or fight (in that order) and plenty of horrific nightmare fuel imagery. It’s noted before you start to to wear headphones and play in the dark, but I opted out of the headphone use part after trying this for the first hour and needing to remove them because I was kind of freaking out a wee bit too much (the sound design is pretty damn intense).

You play as a rather troubled man living alone with his dog in Villanueva de Tapia (a village in Málaga, Spain). When his pet runs off, he’s seemingly struck by a truck while giving chase and regains consciousness only to find himself in a twisted variation of the village and yes, still needing to find that dog. In pure survival horror fashion, you get disturbing visuals, locked doors that require opening in one way or another, and as noted, the aforementioned monsters. You’ll also discover a mystery about missing townspeople, murders and torture rituals with a religious angle and more depravity. The mix of Unity engine assets, enhanced live action video clips and appropriately timed jump scares keep things tense throughout where when things do quiet down, there’s still the sense that something’s going to happen. Let’s just say Villanueva de Tapia’s tourism numbers will either rise or decline after this game gets more notice, although my take is it’ll increase if horror fans are curious enough to see how scary a spot it is in real life.

A little walk in the woods to clear the head isn’t going to help much when you’re too scared to take another step.

Exploration will be the first key to your survival, as the game places all sorts of clues to what needs to be done but doesn’t highlight where you need to search. One of the great things the game does right off the bat is allow for four camera angles to choose from on the fly, similar to Riverhill Soft’s Doctor Hauzer and OverBlood games. This freedom lets you explore how you want from classic Resident Evil style, two different third-person mode and first-person, although you can expect that first-person mode to deliver those creep-tastically ugly monsters in your face as they try to eat your face off. Plan accordingly, but expect to do a bit of jumping in fear on occasion when you’re surprised.

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Review: CRYSTAR (PS4)

Posted on August 28, 2019 by geelw

“Brilliantly depressing” is how I’d describe CRYSTAR ($59.99), Gemdrops Inc. and FURYU Corporation’s new Action/RPG published by Spike Chunsoft, but let’s not get too far ahead of things.

Rei Hatada and her little sister Mirai are pulled by a strange being into an odd dimension called Purgatory where violent creatures soon appear to attack the two. Rei manages to unleash a hidden power that gives her a powerful weapon and fancy costume, but she accidentally kills her kid sister during one battle. As she cries at losing her sibling, two oddly garbed female demon twins appear and make her an offer she can’t refuse. Become an Executor for the twins and kill enough demons in Purgatory in order to gather enough Idea (tears) to save Mirai’s soul before it descends too deep and gets reborn as a completely different person. You get one guess as to Rei’s decision.

Thus, the downward spiral begins in a game that will hit home hard for some players thanks to its assorted mostly gloomy thematic elements and a story that has a few surprises tucked into its narrative. Thankfully, while a tad (okay, very) downbeat at times, the game is gorgeous to look at. Illustrator RIUICHI’s work was lovingly translated into 3D characters by Character Designer & Modeling Lead ntny and the game also features an outstanding score from composer Sakuzyo that’s worth a listen.

Wake up, time to cry. And you thought you had issues. Rei’s literally surrounded by her and her slain foes mental status, even during dungeon diving.

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Review: Omega Labyrinth Life (Switch)

Posted on August 26, 2019 by geelw

Tagline time: Come for the boobs, stay for the rock hard dungeons! How does that grab you? Er, on second thought, don’t answer that.

As a longtime fan of turn-based rogue-like dungeon crawlers on consoles since 1990’s Dragon Crystal on the Sega Master System (which I still own), I knew Matrix Corporation’s sexy, supremely goofy and at times straight up hilarious Omega Labyrinth Life ($59.99) would be right up my alley. While I can heartily recommend the game to like-minded crawler fans, that Mature rating means puritan types and those easily rattled by sexual content and rampant fan service need not apply. If you’re still interested and want to dive in head first to a new experience, you’re going to want to go on with an open mind to anime gals in saucy situations, a bit of gardening busywork in between dungeons and plenty of breast-related humor and optional mini-games definitely not for the kiddies.

Amusingly enough, the Switch version is content-wise, superior to the more censored PlayStation 4 version (which is still somewhat racy). There’s a plot here, but all you need to know is Hinata Akatsuki, new transfer student to Belles Fleurs Academy, finds herself in deep after she arrives and the school’s famed 100-year old flower garden suddenly dies. Initially, the blame is laid on her shoulders, but she sets off into the dungeons that have appeared under the property to figure out what’s going on and to prove her innocence. Hinata won’t go it alone, though. The Academy’s most promising students plus a few tiny but large-boobed fairies all end up as her co-adventurers during the game and for a few dozen hours it’s quite a bouncy ride on a few fronts.

It’s a good thing that gals here grow bigger boobs as they level up, as that allows some forward protection from slipping on hardwood floors. Allegedly.

For all the breast-themed stuff, rampant innuendo and bawdy humor galore, this is a pretty lightweight (but enjoyable) game on the story front. That said, the dungeons can be brutally hard after the initial tutorial maps. This is a great thing, as the random nature means every run past that point will deliver assorted challenges, monsters and items guaranteed to keep you on your toes. Leveling up increases your selected party members cup sizes (up to a Z-cup!), which go back to normal once a dungeon is cleared. Dying in a dungeon means you lose all your currently collected items unless you take out a bit of costly insurance on gear you’d like to re-buy once you’re above ground. There’s a wealth of stuff to discover and uncover (ahem), but we’ll put that ball in your court and let you have at it as you please.

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Review: SEGA AGES Space Harrier (Switch)

Posted on August 22, 2019 by geelw

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. GET READY!

Hell, even if I were to think I was born ready for it, back in 1985 seeing and playing Sega’s Space Harrier for the first time in an arcade was a total and unexpected blast. Granted, it wasn’t my first psuedo-3D sprite-based shooter (Willams’ still phenomenal BLASTER was an instant fave for me two years earlier), but Yu Suzuki’s even more instant classic made for a more lasting impression thanks to its more superbly detailed visuals, rock-solid 60fps gameplay and yes, a somewhat crushing difficulty level for beginners. Watching someone play any of the three cabinet version was thrilling enough. But as a player, if you lucked out and got one of the sit-down versions with that big flight stick and body-shaking tilt feature, it was pure gaming bliss that left you maybe a bit wobbly after a few too many replays. Ah, memories!

Still, Suzuki’s game was perhaps too well made, just like his other supremely reliable arcade hits some take for granted these days. This is a game that is flawless in execution, but might be seen by the more jaded gamers out there as “repetitive” because they don’t see the beauty past the lightning fast speed and brilliant use of color. Ever busy developer M2 has done another outstanding job in porting the game to Switch for the ongoing SEGA AGES project ($7.99 per title) in both its original form with a new stage select, optional visual filter and control additions and a new version of the game called KOMAINU Barrier Attack that adds infinite continues and two small stone lion statues to aid Harrier in his quest.