PC

Review – Battlefield 1 (PC, PS4, Xbox One)

by Ramen Junkie.

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2016 – EA DICE – Single Player/ Online Mutiplayer

The Good

Visuals are top notch and dense
World evolves and changes as the battle continues
Massive miltiplayer battles that really feel like a war.

The Bad

Dense visuals can be extremely confusing most of the time
Leveling process is extremely slow
Price (Game, Micro Transactions, DLC, etc)

Note, I generally try to use my own screen shots but despite my best efforts with several tools, I couldn’t get this game to TAKE screen shots. Chock that into the negatives if you want. These shots are pretty indicative of what things look like, if anything, they are too sparse.

tl;dr Review

This isn’t the first Battlefield Game and it won’t be the last. It is the first one that I’ve personally played however. This sort of title isn’t really my type of game but I’ve found that I ended up enjoying it a lot and really stuck with it despite it’s flaws.

Most of these flaws are in the level progression, which is extremely frustrating and slow on all fronts. Also, being an EA title, it’s kind of ridiculous how expensive this game is in order to get the “complete experience”.

It’s a lot of fun though and definitely a different play experience than the types of FPS games I generally play (think, TF2). It’s much more grounded in a realism aspect, there isn’t any kooky power ups or super abilities, and you die pretty quickly if you get shot. The game is pretty much built around the idea of dying a lot, the opening tutorial style missions says this right off the bat. The line is “You aren’t expected to survive”.

The battles also feel huge, despite the massive open areas of each map. You will almost always be surrounded by fellow soldiers with gunfire and explosions all around. It’s easy to get lost and killed without even seeing the enemy.

It’s not likely a game that will appeal to everyone given it’s frantic nature but it’s a lot of fun to be sure.

In Depth

I want to start off with the problems, which are things that could be patched and fixed but reading around online about the history with other titles from the same folks, it’s not likely to happen.

The biggest annoyance is how slow progression is on all fronts. Your account has an overall level and rank which progresses the quickest, you gain points for how you perform throughout each round. I can tell you from experience that you don’t have to be the best shot and get the most kills to progress this rank. I’m pretty terrible at killing the enemy and often have a Kill/Death ratio in the range of 1/10+. I also still finish in the top ten players on the team often, since points are also earned for how much team work you do. Kill assists, Medic healing, and control point capturing all help push up your score and rank.

As near as I can tell, this rank is mostly just good for earning money to unlock weapons.

There are also 4 classes, Assault, Medic, Support, Scout. Each class has it’s own rank up system. This system feels like it runs extremely slow and has the most impact on gameplay. After fifteen hours of play across all classes, I only managed to level up one class to Rank 1. I believe there is a maximum of Rank 10 on the classes. Ranking classes allows you to unlock (via in game currency) new weapons and equipment to expand how you can play your classes. Based on my experience, the new weapons work much better than the earlier ones. I may or may not be an awful shot, but I find I often will unload 4 shotgun blasts into an enemy without a kill only to get killed in one shot in return.

This actually makes things kind of discouraging for new players getting into the game. Dying is part of the game, but dying constantly despite what seems like a good effort starts to get discouraging. Leveling up classes seems to be done by getting kills and such with the classes, which means it’s slowed even more when you are fighting stronger enemies with weaker weapons.

I don’t expect to be Rank 10 after a week of play, but it would be nice to see SOME progress.

Then there are the medals. It’s not super clear within the game how Medals work and they don’t seem to really affect gameplay other than being a nice fun side mission to work towards. Essentially, they are like achievements, only not (he game has it’s own separate achievements). A different set of 5 medals become available each week. They involve things like “Get 10 kills with the shotgun”. Each medal has 3 stages.

Problem One, you must select which of the 5 medals you want to work towards before a match. If you select an Assault based Medal, you can’t earn the Medic medal just by switching classes, which is pretty lame. The 3 stages also need to be earned in order, which is also lame, since many of the later stages are tricky enough to earn. For example, the above metal will have the stages, “10 kills with shotgun”, “5 headshots with shotgun”, “5 kills in one life”. Killing ten people with headshots in one life with the shotgun, will only earn the first stage.

This is the biggest issue, because it really discourages newer players from getting into the game. It encourages older players to always be more powerful which only results in a constant stream of death which just drives people away.

This isn’t helped with how confusing things can get, especially early on. The maps are huge, there are enemies running everywhere and friendly players running everywhere. There is a constant stream of noise and explosions, and the terrain changes drastically as the battle rolls on. This is really both a plus and a negative actually. It makes the game harder, but it also makes things way more interesting and it’s a nice realism effect. War, especially this kind of on the ground war, is confusing and bloody and overwhelming.

Rolling into the positives, I really do like the crazyness of everything as much as I hate it. Many of the buildings and structure can be damaged, so as more tank fire and canon fire rains down on the maps, the builds fall apart or get destroyed, walls will be missing sections, there will be huge craters to hide inside dotting the landscape. You can take a tank and drive it through a small house and a wall and it will leave a permanent huge hole. You can bombard a building with cannon fire and it will start to collapse revealing the structure and any enemies inside. You can pummel a checkpoint from a one of the giant airships into a flat wasteland removing all cover for anyone trying to capture it.

This all makes the game pretty graphics intensive, though it’s worth mentioning even on under powered hardware it seems to run pretty well. I get a warning that my video card is under the minimum but everything still runs fine and looks great.

The result is the battle feel HUGE. Though admittedly sometimes they are huge. Often there will be 64 players running around on a map making little ad hoc teams to drive tanks or defend or capture control points. Everyone has a place as well and though there are only 4 classes, you can select different sets of equipment for different play styles. For example, you can select trip mines and such as a Scout to try to snag enemies at choke points, or you can use the flare gun to help reveal enemy locations for your team mates. The Assault Class can use different grenades for dealing with troops or heavier artillery to deal with tanks and armored cars.

There are also the limited “other” classes. Such as piloting one of several types of planes across the battlefield, or jumping on a horse and running around shooting and swording people. Occasionally the losing team gets a massive overpowered bonus in the form of a massive battleship, a zeppelin or an armored train, these have gun emplacements which can be used by the players to decimate enemy locations. It adds a lot of variety, though it’s a shame some of it is behind the slow leveling gatekeeping mechanic.

You can also earn unlocks with “Battlepacks” which are your pretty standard fare micro transaction random loot boxes. You can earn them through regular gameplay or by purchasing them in the store. The gate keeping mechanism also kind of discourages low level players from purchasing these packs however. The weapons still have a Class level limitation, so you may find a good weapon drop and still be completely unable to use it. This is kind of a shame since, though it costs money, it would be a good way to help give newer players and edge if they so wanted if the weapons were instantly usable.

This leads into my last point, though it’s more a critique of modern gaming, especially EA. This game is really expensive. The base game is $60, the Deluxe version that contains some weapons and cosmetics is $80 and the Ultimate edition which includes all (eventual) DLC packs is $130. Now, the base game does go on and has been on sale, but that extra $50+ for the DLC isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

Review – Shadow Complex (PC, PS4, Xbox One)

Jan 3rd, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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2009, 2015 – Chair – 1 Player

The Good

Metroidvania games are pretty much awesome by default.
Interesting use of 2D and 3D
Fun gameplay and puzzles

The Bad

Not a lot of enemy variety.
Controls can be frustrating at times
Bosses are kind of a joke

tl;dr Review

I, like many others I gather, often have a pile of games from bundles that never end up getting played. Recently Shadow Complex appeared in a Humble Bundle and came recommended, so I opted to actually give it a shot. I was really surprised just how good it ended up being.

I was also surprised that it’s a Metroidvania style game, That is, it’s a side scrolling, room based platform game full of puzzles and upgrades and the repeated need to retread old ground with new abilities. These sorts of games, as a whole are pretty fun. And Shadow Complex is no exception. It’s also somewhat unique being a modern day sort of setting for such a game.

It’s not without it’s flaws though, the enemy soldiers get repetitive quick, there’s maybe a half dozen varieties. The bosses are all kind of same-ish giant mechs and aren’t particularly frequent. Some of them are extremely easy to pattern out and defeat as well, there’s one in particular which jets in a circle around the room that I found stupidly easy since it never once tried to enter the one corner of the room. All that was needed was to stand there and missile it each pass.

The controls are also a bit frustrating at times, particularly when you have to do several things at once, like multi jumping and grappling. The puzzles revolving around the speed run effect are also frustrating due to the dodgy controls while speeding along.

These negatives aren’t super bad though, particularly with the frequent save points. It’s a fun platform exploration game and worth checking out.

In Depth

So, like I said, platform exploration. Seeing this game was a modern era game with guns, I pretty much expected “FPS Shooter”. Which also translates to, pretty much completely unoriginal. I didn’t expect to really enjoy this game at all, but I was expecting a completely different game.

The basic plot follows Jason as he works to rescue his girlfriend Claire from a hidden base of radial soldiers. Jason and Claire are out camping and they stumble on an underground complex, hidden complex, a … Shadow Complex, if you will. Claire is kidnapped by soldiers and Jason sneaks into the complex to find her. Over the course of the game, the larger goals of the army are made clear, they intend to overthrow the US government. Knowing there isn’t much time, Jason works to take down the secret base and army. Along the way he finds a super powered soldier suit and upgrades it over time to gain new abilities which allow him to reach new areas of the complex.

The game also takes place in the same realms as a couple of novels written by Orson Scott Card, called Empire and Hidden Empire. These books are part of a universe owned by Chair who licensed the world to Card for the books.

I mentioned Metroidvania, this is a term that is commonly used for this style of game, it’s a combination of the names of the games Metroid and Castlevania, which both pioneered and made popular this style of game. Shadow Complex has a lot more in common with Metroid than Castlevania, but the same basic play style is the same. Honestly the similarities to Metroid are possibly part of it’s negatives as well. Many of the powers gained through the super suit are pretty much lifted right out of Super Metroid, the Missiles, The Speed Boost, the Grappling hook. Granted, there are all sorts of other examples of these abilities in games, and the speed boost works a bit differently with it’s running up walls and ceilings bit, the core mechanics are the same.

Probably the biggest problem of this game is getting around the map. One key component that makes a good Metroidvania title is that the map work. Generally speaking, this means some sort of central zone that easily access all or most of the other zones. It should easily access each one as you unlock new abilities as well. This makes traversing the map for return trips to collect power ups less of a trudge. Shadow Complex has a severe lack of this. Having to repeatedly complete the same simple puzzles to go back and collect some grenade upgrade gets really old the 4th or 5th time it’s done.

There’s also some dodgy points on the controls. Some of the more complex puzzles involve, for example, double dumping around platforms and grappling to walls while avoiding instant death bits. Sometimes while trying to aim the grapple it can be tricky to keep the direction of your jumps going the proper direction. More annoying is trying to time the speed run jumps and flips needed to solve some of the running puzzles. The speed moves too fast and the screen zooms in too much to always know what’s coming soon enough to make a proper jump. This often means failing, then trying again, then failing again because you passed the first bit but now there was a second bit you didn’t know about and didn’t have enough notice to properly react to it.

I’m not saying it should be a cake walk, just that you aren’t even given a chance to make it a cake walk. It doesn’t really hurt the game, but it can lead to some needless frustration.

One interesting aspect is the use of 3D in the 2D world. The whole game is a 2D platformer, Jason only exists in one plane, but the world around you is in 3D, enemies will attack from platforms in the distance, sometimes you will find gun emplacements that let you switch to a stationary 3D view. Your player will automatically shoot into the background when targeting enemies in the background. It does lead to some odd moments, like why you have to scale a set of spiral stairs by leaping from landing to landing instead of just, you know, walking up them (the stairs are in the background).

In the end, Shadow Complex was a surprise but of fun to be sure. I don’t stick around with games for long when it becomes clear I won’t enjoy them, but I played all the way through Shadow Complex once I started it.

Review – Back to the Future the Game (PC)

Dec 15th, 2012

by Ramen Junkie.

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Telltale is one of those companies that focuses on a single type of game. They are the absolute king of the “Slightly Overly Simple Un-losable Adventure Game” niche. They are also working very hard on becoming king of the “Somewhat Unlikely Licensed Based Slightly Overly Simple Un-losable Adventure Game” niche. They have Homestar Runner, Wallace & Grommit, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park and Law & Order, just to name, well, most of them. There is also Sam & Max but I believe that is an in house property. Back to the Future was the first real hit in this very focused genre of game, though it wasn’t their first try. A lot of that probably has to do with there not really being any decent games based on Back to the Future in the first place.

There is that shitty NES game, that crappy SNES game, that sort of okish Japanese SNES game. Does this movie series really even need a game? It certainly could use something. Back to the Future is suck a high point of movie popularity, it almost seems like a tragedy that the franchise hasn’t really gone anywhere beyond the films. Then again, maybe it’s closed little universe is part of what keeps it popular. The whole three part series from start to finish is pretty locked tight without too many holes. They actually do a fairly decent job at handling all of the time paradoxes created as well, something every Time Travel movie inevitably fails at (Time Traveler’s Wife does it alright I suppose).

Which was my first through when starting this game series. How will it fit into the time line? There is really only one place you could stick something in between the movies, the night after Marty returns from 1955, but that would be a stretch. They could set things after the movies but then the Delorean is trashed, so that’s no fun. Telltale decided to do the easy (and really best) combination, the game takes place after the movie series, but Doc has “built a new Delorean”… or something. Supposedly it’s explained but I didn’t catch it so I’m honestly not sure why the Delorean exists in this time period other than “The Delorean is awesome so it has to be there”. The Time Train is neat as well but it’s a little “frickin huge”.

The Game’s plot starts off with Marty discovering a driverless Delorean and a distress call from Doc trapped in 1931 Hill Valley. The plot itself spans 5 themed chapters that were each released as individual “games” over a series of months. This is sort of Telltale’s style. I don’t mind episodic games, but in Telltale’s case it’s actually kind of feels like an annoying way to milk interest out of a game for months. The total run time for all five episodes is something like twelve hours, which isn’t terrible for the price or anything, and at this point, it’s all available in one package.

The secondary effect of the episodic nature is that you have these pre schedule cleanouts in your inventory. For the most part, at least, you start out the next game with the assumption that you have Item X that you will need and you never have anything real useful taken from you.

Anyway, the plot itself, takes place primarily in 1931 Hill Valley and 1986 Hill Valley. Marty gets the distress call and heads off to rescue Doc which of course sets of an accidental chain of events that lead to unintended consequences. Time is kind of a messy thing like that. The story does a decent job of handling it’s Paradoxes though there are some things, for example, somehow George and Lorraine get together and have Marty no matter which warped instance of the future you might create. The only true issue I had with the plot occurs between Episode 2 and Episode 3. Slight spoiler space, the events cause a rather large shift in Doc Brown’s timeline. As they return from the past, Marty finds Doc has been displaced into his altered timeline self. Somehow, despite both being in the same Delorean, Marty is not also shifted. For that matter, it’s arguable that the Delorean itself wouldn’t have existed either. Even considering the whole fade from existence time lag thing the series uses as a gimmick, it doesn’t explain why Doc Brown immediately shifts yet Marty does not.

Anyway, the game does a good job of keeping the feel of the series, though it’s not quite as funny as the movie series. All of the major spaces are featured in various time lines, the School, the Clocktower square, Marty’s House, Doc’s Lab, that billboard in front of Hilldale even when Hilldale doesn’t exist yet. Like the movies, all of the major events in the history of Time revolve around a handful of locations, which actually works well since it IS something the movies did.

The presentation helps things out, a lot. It’s not a straight Delorean driving simulator, but it does work exceptionally well at making a game out of the Back to the Future concept. I mean, it’s certainly not some crappy shooter wannabe game with dual timers and bowling ball guns. The game follows a story driven Adventure model. You walk from place to place collecting items occasionally and talking to folks to find out where to go next. Each episode also features several “action” scene where you must do actions in a certain order and avoid bad guys while doing it. For example, at one point you must keep one of Doc’s experiments going by doing different actions such as lighting a burner or pushing a bellows based on the things that Doc yells to you from another room. Like, he may yell “you’re full of hot air” signaling the need to push the bellows. Another had you playing guitar against an opponent to see who rocks the most, you must move carefully to ensure that the opponent accidentally falls on himself.

The main problem with all of this, and the game in general, and problem is possibly a relative term, there is no way to fail. Ever. If you don’t push the proper science buttons you simply have to start the puzzle over a bit. If you don’t out rock the other guy, he wanders off until you challenge him again. Just as examples. If you get stuck trying to figure out where to go next there is even a hint system that by hint 3 will more or less just tell you where to go next. This can be good or bad depending on how much challenge you want in the game. Don’t come into this game expecting much challenge. The reality is, the driving force behind most adventure games is the narrative anyway.

Which, as I mentioned, is pretty good. In general, it’s a pretty decent game. It’s probably not really action packed enough for some people but then, it’s Back to the Future. It’s simple enough that anyone can play through it though you can skip the hints and get more of a challenge out of it if you’d like as well, which is a nice balance.

Review – Saints Row the Third DLC Part 1: Genki Bowl VII & Shark Attack Pack (PC)

Jun 5th, 2012

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’m pretty torn on the Downloadable content for Saints Row the Third here. On one hand, I really love this game, and more is good. On the other hand, a load of it is costumes that SHOULD have been built into the game to start with. At the very least they should run closer to a buck each and not the standard $2-$3. Yeah, yeah, $3 is not much but consider that at this point, buying all of the DLC will cost you MORE than the game itself. It adds up.

I did get some of the DLC off of a recent sale through GamersGate though, so I’ve been hitting the streets of Steelport once again. Specifically I picked up the Season Pass, which includes all three of the main mission based DLCs, the Explosive Pack, which was basically a spiffy Grenade launcher, and the real winner of all so far, the Shark Gun, which is a gun that summons a shark to obliterate your enemies.

… and then I was all BAM! SHARK!

I mean seriously, that one is awesome, I really can’t get enough of it.

Anyway, the meat here is the Season Pass, which includes extra missions from the three DLC packs, Genki Bowl VII, Ganstas in Space, and The Trouble with Clones. You can buy these individually but it’ll cost you about the same as the Season Pass and you won’t get the pretty neat looking NyteBlade car. Let’s see how they all stack up here…

Genkie Bowl VII

Murder Time Fun Time! Genki is basically a game show sort of mascot of the Saints Row series. He is a lime green and pink cat who gets off on slaughtering people. There are some Genki related missions in the main story, and Genki Bowl VII adds some additional missions of a similar nature. These missions are somewhat similar to some of the existing missions in the game but only the Apocalypse Genki is an EXACT replica, contrary to popular opinion. Apocalypse Genki is essentially just more of the indoor Genki levels where you must battle mascots in a maze, gain a specific level of money and escape alive. It does twist things up a bit, there are less fire and electrical traps and the environments are more jungle themed and nicer looking.

Sexy Kitten Yarngasm is comparable to the Tank Mayhem missions though it kind of feels more like a rampaging Katamari round that anything. The Tank missions are more focused on shooting than running things over, The Yarnball is a more designed to chase down the Genki trucks. Also, the yarnball has an area attack that works sort of like a Tank shot, except you only get so many of them and they have to be earned. These sort of seem like nitpicky differences but they are enough to make it feel like a different mission. Similarly, there’s the Super Ethical PR Opportunity, which is similar to the escort missions, though you gain score by fueling Genki’s desire for murder.

The most unique is the Sad Panda Skydiving events, which involved skydiving between buildings to take out swarms of Mascots. It’s actually a little confusing at first but it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it.

Of the three DLCs I’d still have to rank Genki Bowl the weakest depending on how much you enjoy Genki missions. I prefer the more story driven missions. The real benefit to this is probably the end prizes. You get three useless Homies, (Homies being useless in general), but you also get the Yarnball vehicle and Genki’s car, which still functions as it does during the escort missions and lets you drive around spewing fire all over the place.

Review – BIT.TRIP BEAT (PC)

Apr 23rd, 2011

by Ramen Junkie.

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Gaijin Games | Nov 2nd, 2010

What do you get when you take the simplicity of Pong, a game that involves hitting small square “balls” with a rectangular paddle, and add in some musical aspects, a bit of plot, and ramp up the play mechanics beyond a 2 player game of tennis? Whatever it would be, it’s probably pretty close to BIT.TRIP BEAT. Ok, really the only thing they really share in common is hitting balls with paddles and retro styling. The general premise here is that you must deflect a series of rhythmic balls back with your paddle. They are more or less in time with the beat making this a bit of a Rhythm game, though not really in the traditional, Dance Dance Revolution/Guitar Hero sense. It’s not as straight forward as it seems either. You’ll start out with straight flying balls in a regular fashion but the game quickly becomes more complex with balls that stop or fly in series and move at angles striking just off from one another. It can get pretty complex at times.

As you deflect more you build up a larger multiplier for your score. You also change from various modes depending on how well you’re doing, which actually ramps up the difficulty some. If you continue to do well, you’ll go from all of the balls producing melodic notes and producing flashing sparks down to a very bleak near death black screen with white dots, no background music and only simple beeping to signify that you’ve hit anything. Miss too much in this basic distraction free mode, and it’s Game Over. It’s generally a fun game, you’ve gotta be quick and the chip tune style music is well mixed. It’s a bit short unfortunately. There’s only a few stages and songs to play though each song is pretty long and consists of several “stages” in itself. The recent Valve Potato Themed ARG added a nice Glados themed tune in addition to the original songs.

There’s even some bosses. These bosses are large blocks of balls which come out and shoot parts of themselves at you. There’s a bit of a benefit here because the ball color tends to correspond to how it acts and knowing what a boss is made from can help anticipate how to react. For example, the boss pictured here has simple yellow straight shooting balls but it also has a lot of the orange “bounce” balls which require being juggled for 3 or 4 hops before they leave the area. The simple graphics are charmingly well done as well, though when things start to explode or the background gets a little bright it can make the game difficult to keep track of. This is part of the game’s difficulty though there are times when it feels like kind of a cheap shot at artificially increasing the difficulty. So in summary, BIT.TRIP BEAT is a decent musical retro styled game that should appeal to fans of twitch style rhythm based gameplay. It could stand to be a bit longer but it’s a pretty solid and well made game otherwise.