Video Games

Review – Saints Row the Third (PC, Xbox360, PS3)

by Ramen Junkie.

2 comments

2011 – Volition – 1 Player (Campaign) Multiplayer (Online)
PC, PS3, Xbox360

The Good

Loads of fun Gameplay
Reminiscent of classic GTA
Amazing custom character creation with voices and interactions not just “faceless”

The Bad

The missions are kind of just a repetition of a handful of mini games
Kooky level may be too much for some people’s taste.

In Depth

Saints Row really has a comeback story behind it. The first game is apparently rather terrible. the second game is better but not great. It’s already saddled with being a “GTA knockoff” by default no matter what it does. Somewhere Volition has managed to get something really right because Saints Row the Third seems to be quite a hit among gamers. So much of a hit that THQ had decided to focus more on games like Saints Row over things like it’s failing Wii Tablet thing (U-Draw).

This thing is pretty long and image heavy, so you’ll have to click through to get the whole thing.

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Review – American Truck Simulator (PC)

Feb 28th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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The Good

Strong Developer Support
Sprawling environment to explore
Straightforward Gameplay

The Bad

Free drive could be more flexible
No official online multiplayer
Repetitive gameplay

There are a lot of Simulation games out there covering a crazy array of subjects from Farming to Forklift driving. To some extent, some laws regarding video game content in some European countries can be blamed for this trend. It’s also nice to be able to do even simple things that you can’t normally do. A lot of these simulation titles are flat out garbage, with mediocre graphics and very little realism in terms of game play, the few that are decent though really tend to be shinning stars to some extend in the gaming world.

Two of the best example of good Simulation titles are the Farming Simulator and the Euro Truck Simulator titles. What really sets these games apart is the depth they go to simulating not just the basic aspect of doing some job, but also the nuance of running the entire business. Euro Truck Simulator is particularly popular due to just how much of Europe has been recreated in a virtual environment for players to cruise around in delivering their cargo. The creators of Euro Truck Simulator have set their sites on recreating a second continent for Truck Driving, with American Truck Simulator. They have stated that their plan is to do all of the United States in various DLC packs (I’m not sure if they are including Hawaii and Alaska). The base game includes California, Nevada and New Mexico. It’s not a 1:1 experience or anything but the basic idea is there, which is great.

This plan has been put on hold a bit however since the developers are currently working to rescale the world they have created to allow for more accurate interchanges and a better feeling of long range driving. Essentially, they are remaking what they have already put out to make the entire experience better, which just goes to show how dedicated they are to their cause.

There are a ton of little details to help complicate the experience that contribute to the Simulation experience. A low powered truck won’t be able to effectively pull a super heavy load. Over time, you will run out of gas unless you stop to refuel your fuel. You also will grow tired, which causes you to briefly “black out”, unless you stop at a designated rest area to sleep. You lose points (money) for running into other vehicles and walls, if you speed and get caught by the cops you get a ticket, though it’s often possible to speed and not get caught, especially on “the back roads”. When you arrive at the destination you get a chance to earn bonus experience by just dropping off the trailer, or executing a perfect back in maneuver.

The real enjoyment of this game comes from it’s laid back gameplay. There isn’t any real pressure, you aren’t racing against a bunch of other vehicles or having to worry about who will shoot you as you cruise around the world delivering various cargo trailers. Once you’ve earned enough money to buy your own truck you can even free drive at your own leisure.

The free drive mode is nice, though it kind of feels like it could be better. While free driving, you don’t carry a trailer, which kind of makes the Truck part of the game a little less fun. You also still have to worry about the game’s mechanics, such as speeding tickets, refueling, and paying for repairs. This can all add up pretty quick if you are a poor driver. It would be nice to be able to turn all of the game off and just goof around in this expansive world.

It also takes a while to “unlock” free drive mode as well, since you’ll have to save up a hefty chunk of change in order to buy even a cheap truck. Over time though as you earn money you can buy bigger and nicer trucks, as well as trick them out with custom paint and gear. You can eventually start hiring other drivers to run jobs for your company as well, to earn some passive income.

All of this is a little moot though since there isn’t a built in way to play online. There are 3rd party methods but it would be nice to have an official way to cruise around the US with your friends, or even see strangers cruising around in their fancy trucks. I imagine there would be issues with griefing where other players just run around trying to wreck people.

It’s also possible that I’m expecting too much out of this title, it is a Simulation game, it’s not “GTA with Semis”. Also don’t take too much stake in these complaints, they are issues that could be better, but the basic idea and game is pretty fun and it’s a good low pressure experience. If the developers stick to their plan to do the entire US, it could definitely turn into something really interesting, as you could virtually cruise from Los Angeles to New York.

Review – Fez (PC, PS3, XBox 360, PS4, Vita)

Feb 21st, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

2012 – Polytron Corporation – 1 Player
* Review is based on the PC Release

The Good

Neat and well executed 3D rotation Gimmick
Interesting and reasonably complex puzzles

The Bad

Some of the puzzles are a little too complex and not obvious that they are even there.
Drives to be a community experience but the community has kind of dried up.
Navigating around the world is tricky and can get confusing.

Review

Fez is a platform game centered around a 3D rotation gimmick. The core game play is simple platform mechanics. Walk around, jump and climb, with moving platforms and such thrown in. There aren’t a lot of enemies to contend with which doesn’t really matter because dying has no consequence anyway. The trick is, that Gomez, your character has been bestowed with the Magic Fez (or whatever) and can rotate the world 90 degrees left and right. This changes the layering of some objects allowing previously inaccessible paths to be accessible. The object is to collect these cube things. There isn’t much of an actual story.

It’s something that kind of has to be seen to really be understood but the general idea is, that say, there is a platform floating off to the right that you can’t jump to. Rotating the world may bring that platform in front of your current platform. You can then jump to it as if it’s in the same 2D plane. You can then rotate the world back and you will have no cross the gap that was previously not crossable.

Keeping track of the 3D environment can be tricky if the player is poor at spacial logic. The other puzzles all tend to revolve around learning (read Googling a key) for the multiple in game alphabets. These are little symbols that show up from time to time. Sometimes they look like Tetris pieces instructing the player to enter a certain button sequence, sometimes they are little riddles that you must answer. They are basically cryptogram puzzles. I probably would have figured it out eventually but I didn’t even know these factors were a “thing” until i went searching for answers online, which is kind of a problem of game design. It’s not a bad idea, it’s just not presented in a way that is overly intuitive to the player.

This is also a problem with the in game map. I went through almost the entire first half of the game before even knowing there was a map. a map that not only makes navigating the 3Dish world much easier but tells me when I have cleared out an area. You might think “how can you blame your own stupidity on the game?” Because it’s, once again, poor design. I played most of this game using a controller with at least a dozen buttons. Not one of the buttons was mapped to the map. Both the right shoulder buttons were mapped the same and both the left shoulder buttons were mapped the same, yet I had to press escape on the keyboard to open the map. In a game with such redundancy in it’s controls I would expect something as almost necessary as a map to at least be on the Start or Select button, it was not. This is likely not an issue on console versions of the game which don’t have a keyboard.

The game itself also has a few bugs, at least one pretty substantial one that I uncovered (though I am sure I am not the first). One of the puzzles involves cubes which only shot up on certain time intervals, the longest of which is every 48 hours. Firstly, any puzzle which requires player intervention at such a specific time period is pretty shoddy to begin with. This can be “circumvented” by futzing with the time settings of your PC (or console). Doing this seemed to screw up my save file though. I ended up resetting my play time. Not a huge deal. I did however seem to reset several cubes that I had collected, sort of. The map showed them uncollected and I could rediscover them, but at some point I had collected “everything” and could still get more cubes. It didn’t increment my cube counter though. and I could complete the game as if I had everything.

I believe in my searching for clue to complete the puzzles I read that you can collect all of the cubes in one play through but finishing the game once unlocks a FPS view mode which is required to see several hidden codes. It also unlocks a flight mode which basically turns the game into “easy mode”.

Completing the game a second time unlocks a Red and Blue 3D view (which can be disabled). I am not real sure how effective this mode is as I don’t have any 3D glasses floating around to test it with.

Anyway, it’s an interesting game. If you like the idea of combining cryptographic text puzzles with a platformer in a slightly confusing 3D environment then by all means give this game a go. Frankly, I probably enjoyed this game less than i should have. I don’t have the time or patience for this sort of puzzler so I ruined half the fun by just looking up the answers. I did find the 3D rotation gimmick enjoyable though.

Review – Gunman Clive (3DS)

Feb 14th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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The Good

Quick classic style gameplay
Interesting and different art style
Game becomes more complex than it initially feels

The Bad

Game can be frustratingly “cheap” in it’s difficulty
Not an overly long game with not a ton of replay value
Some mechanics such as the weapons could be a little more refined

In Depth

Gunman Clive is a game that harkens back to a simpler time of gaming. There isn’t a super deep story going on and the levels are all relatively short. It’s very “arcadish” at it’s core, with it’s time tracking and death tracking, that is to day, the idea is more to beat your high scores, than experience some deep endless story or gameplay. This isn’t a bad thing mind you, and there’s more going on here than it initially seems.

The basic plot is that you are a cowboy in the west and your girlfriend, or wife or whatever has been kidnapped. You chase out, armed with your trusty side arm to rescue her. The basic controls and gameplay remind me a lot of the old Mega Man titles. Not for crazy power ups or level selection, but just the basic jumping and shooting only straight ahead sort of mechanics. The levels themselves are much more classic platform shooter, something akin to a Contra game, especially with the power ups you collect along the way. The game starts out simple enough, there are opposing cowboys to shoot down, sometimes there’s rabbits or birds swopping in. As the plot advances along though it becomes apparent there’s a lot more behind the scenes as you travel through levels with more and more crazy technology and eventually head off into space battling aliens.

The game is divided into several themed “worlds” with 5 or so levels in each world. Each world can be completed in around a minute once you get the hang of things, though chances are you’ll spend longer on each level working it out. Each time you die you simply return to the start of the level to try again, there are no lives here. As the levels advance, things get more and more complex. Enemy cowboys start hiding behind things for example, and later you encounter robot cannons and various environmental hazards such as spikes and electrical beams.

At the end of each world is a huge boss. The bosses are all pretty interesting and varied in their mechanics and design, I particularly liked the giant transforming train robot at the end of the Train world. All in all the difficulty across the board is pretty simple, a lot of the puzzles and traps though fall into the category of trial an error. You play through learning the proper timing of everything until you manage to get through to the end. The most annoying aspects involve the enemies constantly respawning if you slide their spawn location on and off the screen. Also annoying is that sometimes enemies drop new weapons which are worse than the one you have, except you can’t avoid picking up the inferior weapon.

Probably the main gimmick of this title is the neat art style used throughout, The entire game is rendered in this sort of yellow and gray hand drawn motif. It looks pretty cool without being super distracting. Despite it’s simpler art design, there’s a lot of fun complexity going on, especially in the bosses and as the world progresses into the later worlds.

Gunman Clive isn’t a super complex title, but it’s a fun little indie game platformer. It’s not the most replayable game though unless you are into score challenges. There is a “Play as a chicken” mode that unlocks after completing the game though.

Review – From Dust (PC, PS3, Xbox360)

Feb 7th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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2011 – Ubisoft – One Player

The Good

Interesting Gimmick where you manipulate the world using literal God Power
Eventually there is a sandbox mode, which is neat.

The Bad

The gimmick is way more limited than it is made out to be and the world tends to “right” itself
The above makes a lot of the levels frustrating since you try to do X but it just sort of fails…
By the time you unlock the Sandbox, you’ll hate the game play.

In Depth

Ok, I tried… I really tried. If possible, I try to complete a game before I do a review of it. This means being late to the game most of the time but it also means I get to experience all that the game has to offer, which is the way it should be. There are exceptions for various reasons, some games don’t have a real ending, some are repetitious enough that it’s clear nothing more is going to be gained by continuing onward.

Others become so frustrating and irritating I just can’t being myself to finish it no matter how hard I want to. From Dust is one of the latter set there. (more…)