Perhaps the biggest deviation is that you don’t pick a culture at the beginning and run with it. In Humankind, humanity itself is your civilisation. You begin every game as a nomadic tribe with no home and no plan. You’ll move your little troop of tribespeople around the world looking for food, animals to hunt, and curiosities to spur your fledgling nation into its first tentative steps. After establishing an outpost and then your first small city, you’ll be allowed to choose a culture.

Humankind: A civilisation sim with a difference

There’s a lot to choose from too. From the Zhou or the Egyptians, to the Assyrians or Phoenecians, and each has their own look and city style. While this doesn’t sound like such a departure, the beauty of Humankind is that you don’t have to stick with your choice. Each race and culture brings its own Civic ideals, potential religions, military units and aspirations. Once you earn enough “Era Stars”, you can transcend to the next era. And here’s where you can make a sharp right turn into any of the other cultures. Once you do this, the two combine, sometimes synergising in interesting ways.

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For example, your cities don’t only produce districts and buildings. They also research and instigate “Infrastructures”. These include national and cultural skills like fishing, debating, writing, and irrigation, or city improvements such as libraries, universities, barracks or various marketplaces. These in turn can lead to new innovations, city tiles, or even further infrastructures. City tiles include market quarters, makers quarters, farms, animal sanctuaries, defensive rally points for your armies, and a host of other essentials and, well, non-essentials.

You won’t have to worry about setting up harvest routes to gold or iron nodes, either. If you claim a territory with a potential mine or other gather point, you can set up an Artisan’s Quarter to make use of it. You can also “buy” resource nodes from your political allies. These nodes are indispensable once you have them, as they are required for creating and upgrading military units, or for researching certain infrastructures. Iron, saltpetre, incense, copper, horses, aluminium – these resources and more will become the driving goal behind a lot of your expansion.

World war fun

Of course, claiming and expanding territory leads to conflict. While you can set the enemy AI to passive if you want to, the default mode is the opposite. You’ll regularly be approached by other leaders, sometimes to form alliances, sometimes with ludicrous demands. Sometimes they just want to trade, or open a trade route through your territory. You can customise all of them, if you wish, right down to their looks and emblems. Unlike some civilisation sims, Humankind doesn’t beat you over the head with war. Now and then you’ll find yourself in direct conflict, and if you’re not careful, enemies will occupy your towns. If they take them, they also get the territory and any resources therein. Unless you’re confident of winning, it’s better to avoid warfare altogether.

Regardless, armies you use to explore, whether land-based or seafaring, will often end up fighting. Mercenary bands roam the lands, and will engage you on sight. Combat is fairly basic, a simple case of which side has greater numbers and unit strength. There’s an element of random number luck in there too, as sometimes you’ll go in with a far superior force and still lose. Despite the simplistic nature, battles for land or survival are still tense affairs. I’d advise not choosing “Instant Resolution” though, as the luck of the roll seems to be against you.

Modern warfare

Though, you can always choose to play multiplayer and face off against other people. Playing a few games pre-release I got lucky, as most people are roughly as clueless as I am. Give it a few months and there will be some very dangerous armchair generals around. The multiplayer looks and feels almost identical to the campaign, with one major caveat: other people are crafty bastards. While the AI follows routines based on programmed personalities, people don’t. Players will lie, concoct schemes behind your back, and enact unpredictable campaigns against you. It makes for a much more dynamic, but potentially more frustrating, experience.

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There’s a great deal to manage in Humankind, as you can imagine. Time doesn’t pass in years; instead, it’s based on turns. Each turn you can move all your units, select new infrastructures or buildings to work on. You can begin recruiting military units, conduct political meetings, and assign new technology research. Although the first game you launch into will be endless, any new game will have a set number of turns (up to 600) before the game “ends”. Victory conditions include winning the Space Race or being the last nation left standing atop an empire of subjugated people. Each new game allows you to set parameters such as world-size and geography, allowing for a unique starting point each time.

Heavy lies the head

City well-being is based on Stability, which can be affected by anything from natural events to war, or bad decisions on your part. As you advance you’ll unlock “Civics”, which are binary choices concerning rules, religion, law, and government. For example, do you want free speech or censored speech; do you want a multicultural society or something more inward-facing. Should your government share power with your churches, or impose national atheism?

These choices all compact, synergise, or conflict with one another, creating a truly unique nation with every playthrough. By the time you reach the late game eras, you’ll have something that functions despite any choices you make, but may not prosper if you made the wrong ones. You can use national games, festivals and religious holidays to appease your people, or rule with an iron fist to get results. Either way, these decisions are yours to make and will eventually lead you either to the stars or to ruin.

It’s toward the latter eras that things begin to make less sense. It’s possible to still have your people living in Tudor houses while your nearest neighbour is in skyscrapers. And despite building high-tech train stations, modern city blocks and even planes, there are still horses and carts trundling round your buildings. It’s distracting and very odd, but symptomatic of being able to research technology so haphazardly.

Humankind: It’s a beautiful world

Humankind looks lovely, though, and tiny details make a wealth of difference. Birds and wildlife wheel and frolic; minute people go about their business. The bright, colourful aesthetic and likeable narration combine to create a sense of something like whimsy. I did, however, hit a few snags. Sometimes on loading in, your cities will take several turns to become fully visible. And more than once the world leaders completely changed. Oh, and it has a tendency to eat your save games, which happened to me and cost me about three hours of expansion. Hopefully these will be ironed out at launch or soon after.

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Having played so many civ sims over the decades, it takes a special one to really get my attention. Recently the likes of Per Aspera and Imagine Earth have taken the kind of chances only indie games take, but Humankind seems to tread a line between those riskier ventures and the more established franchises like Sid Meier’s. Playing it is both deeply relaxing and yet mentally stimulating, requiring you to think and plan but not constantly hitting you with war and disaster. The option to sculpt a nation from so many real-world cultures is genuinely exciting. The creative scope is immense, and I’m sure people will forge incredible things once it launches.

Despite a handful of technical issues that should be patched out quickly, Humankind is an effortlessly enjoyable, truly innovative civilisation sim. There are some cracks in the shiny veneer, for sure, but on the whole it’s a great experience with almost endless replayability. Oh, and the theme music is absolutely stunning, too.

The post Humankind review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The story begins below the Penrose, in South Africa. Reporter Mark Leslie is especially wary of it as he suffered a tragedy when it arrived, but he channels that into curiosity. As the narrative opens we travel with Mark to his brother’s air tours company. Don Leslie is a former military pilot who now flies curious tourists up close to the Penrose.

Beautiful Desolation: A gorgeous, thoughtful adventure

During their excursion things go bad. A heated exchange with security sees Mark, Don and one of the aforementioned robotic guard dogs (aptly named Pooch), catapulted into the far future. They find themselves in a world of haunting, decayed beauty. This is where Beautiful Desolation gets its title from. It’s a world of bizarre, augmented creatures and scattered humans who seem, above all, to be simply trying to survive.

Mark’s primary objective is to work with Don and Pooch to get back home. This involves helping or hindering the people of this distant futurescape. Being a point-and-click adventure means a lot of exploration and inventiveness and collecting and combining various items to solve puzzles. It may look like a more invested RPG like, say, Disco Elysium, but Beautiful Desolation is not that. This is a linear story broken up only by long segments of dialogue, or well-drawn cutscenes that flesh out the story.

There’s lore and flavour text all over the place that helps piece together what’s going on, but the minute-to-minute gameplay is quite slow-paced. You’ll often need to go out looking for things that you won’t fully understand or be able to easily identify. Although, this would feel like more of a negative if the art style wasn’t so incredibly beautiful. The environments are dense for a Switch game, even if much of it is window dressing. You won’t be able to explore everywhere you can see, for instance. The story will funnel you along a linear route with occasional branches into other areas. But as you explore broken cities, decaying forests, and sprawling swampland, it’s hard not to be impressed by the level of detail.

Future Imperfect

Beautiful Desolation could use more signposting if anything. More than once I found myself getting a little bored and frustrated while looking for things I simply couldn’t find, only to happen upon them after a lot of backtracking and far too much trial and error. When you’ve sauntered through an area eight or nine times to find something you’ve never seen before, it begins to grate. You’d expect Mark or Don to offer some kind of insight at a certain point, but they’re as clueless as you are.

Anyone heading into Beautiful Desolation with preconceived notions may end up disappointed. It’s easy to look at screenshots and promotional art, and presume you’re getting something action-packed. Half the time you won’t understand the consequences of decisions you make until they happen. Ultimately the story is only ever really moving in one direction.

That being said, it’s an enjoyable story. The voice acting is pretty top-notch throughout, and the South African accents are an oddly refreshing element. It looks lovely, too, even if there’s often a little too much visual density when playing in handheld mode. The text is also pretty small, which could make this a difficult sell for some players. But if you want a fairly linear adventure game with a cool story, interesting world, and impressive visuals, Beautiful Desolation is worth checking out.

The post Beautiful Desolation review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Because mistakes, while costly, are how kings and queens and emperors learn to be better. When my first king died at the ripe old age of 65 leaving a small trail of enemies and broken hearts, his grandson took the throne and ruled the kingdom in a fairer, yet ultimately too timid, fashion. Where the first King, Murchad, was a hunter and a fighter, his grandson Felic was a thinker, a writer, and a man of mercy. Both are viable ways to rule – and both combined are but the tip of Crusader Kings III’s spear.

Having little to no knowledge of the series before this game I stared at the tutorial screen like a budgie trying to figure out quantum physics for a while before I decided to send it all to hell and learn by doing. I hurried through the rest of the tutorial and then set about making decisions, and within a few hours I began to understand the complexities of governing an ever-growing and ever-tumultuous kingdom.

Although you can’t create a kingdom from scratch, there are dozens of rulers to choose from when starting a new game, and an expansive, comprehensive suite of difficulty options to craft an experience that suits you. From the off you’ll choose a focus for your ruler, though, which will determine how they “level up”. For example if you choose to focus on Diplomacy you’ll advance through 3 skill trees that improve and unlock traits and strategies that help you circumnavigate conflict, unlocking extra options such as “Befriend” when dealing with other characters. The Martial focus improves the strength and prowess of your troops; Learning increases your book smarts, allowing you to outwit and beguile your peers and enemies. If you intend to be rich and prosperous, Stewardship is the focus for you, while Intrigue allows for all manner of skullduggery and espionage.

You then set out with a deceptively straightforward objective: rule everything. Time advances swiftly, and you’ll see your children born and grow up, then grow old, with the heirs becoming your player characters once the previous rulers die of old age, disease or foul play. You must govern every aspect of the kingdom itself, including taxes placed on vassals, which settlements to upgrade or improve, how much of a standing army you’ll need to keep and maintain. And in between, you have more intimate matters to attend to, such as organising feasts or calling hunts, making friends, avoiding treachery and growing your dynasty.

A small Council of advisors is selected from your Vassals, family members and courtiers, each primarily concerned with one of the five focuses, and where possible you’ll need to select Council members with traits that match their role. For example, your Spymaster needs to be well-versed in Intrigue, or any attempts made by you to gather information, subvert the enemy or even murder a rival will fail and you’ll be exposed. Likewise, a poor Steward will bankrupt you and have you begging the Church for funds to get you through the year.

There’s so much to learn that you would expect it to overwhelm, but thanks to a constantly changing list of immediate objectives and regular advice it soon becomes quite intuitive – but it’s still easy to make mistakes. Your children need educating, and you will need to find suitable tutors; your offsrping, family members and Knights will need to be married to form alliances and bring dowries. Wars are costly but sometimes unavoidable, and sieges can last for years and drain your coffers dry. But it’s in the minutiae that I found Crusader Kings III’s heart. Naming your children, for example, and watching them grow into fine adults. Deftly manoeuvring around a murder plot, or overthrowing a coup before it can come to fruition. Making a friend for life who will step in and loan you money or relieve your stress by taking you away for a trip or coming to your aid in times of war.

Each character – every single one, and there are thousands – has traits and needs, desires and dislikes. Many have armed consorts of their own, and most have secrets. If you find these secrets either by fair means or foul, you’ll unlock a “Hook”, which can be used in your favour to extort gold or blackmail them to do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to. You can pair spouses by their personalities, appeal to another ruler’s ego, ply them with gifts, or befriend, romance, seduce or murder them. Titles are yours to bestow and revoke, although you risk upsetting at least one other character whenever you do this – and the threat of invasion is ever-present.

My kingdom of Munster seemed prosperous during my second generation. I had sent troops to fight in the Crusades and been handsomely rewarded, had a list of strong alliances, my son had overcome consumption and a petty nature to become an honourable knight and general. But then an invader from northern Europe came over with four times the fighting men and raided up and down my coast, destroying my armies and seizing two of my cities. And then, as I desperately concocted plans to murder him in his court, he promptly died of natural causes and his successor withdrew his troops, leaving my kingdom in a sudden and tentative peace.

War is a complex beast in Crusader Kings III. In order to wage it you’ll need a claim, which is given – at least in the Christian kingdoms – by the Church. The Pope, in this case, must approve of your claim and allow you to go to war, at which point you’ll besiege the cities of your new enemy or meet them in the field. The conflict is played out with a basic animation on the world map with a slider to determine army strength, but it’s still tense each time to know there’s always so much riding on it. And when the war is won, you’ll need to install Vassals to govern your new constituency, which can then choose to betray you themselves.

Religion plays a huge role, too, and depends on which part of the world you’re in. Regardless of where you are, though, your faith will determine many things. From Council members to the treasury, to whether or not you’re called to fight in a holy war or whether you can simply chuck it all in for a few years and go on a pilgrimage – religion is important. With enough influence and renown you can denounce your current faith and install your own, deciding which tenets and doctrines matter and ignoring the often over-bearing influence of the historical religions.

To call Crusader Kings III “big” would be incredibly reductive. This is a game seemingly without walls, wherein you can scheme and govern and duggery various skulls on an endless loop of successes and failures. It will take considerable time for newcomers to understand its systems, while veterans will only need to contend with the changes to established mechanics and the greater depth given to certain systems. But it’s also a hugely compelling game – you’ll constantly have so many fingers in so many pies, will be forever watching so many schemes and conflicts unfold, and you’ll spend so much time sleeping with one eye open that you’ll barely notice the grey creeping into your hair. When a long-trusted councillor dies, or someone you thought was a friend turns on you out of greed, or when you win a hard-fought victory – that’s where Crusader Kings III shines.

Aesthetically it’s a good looking game, with detailed character models and mostly accurate maps of ancient kingdoms – I even found my home town circa 1066, which was interesting. Some of the characters look very much alike, and the animations on the world map are a little basic, but they do what they need to do. With the option to wage war with or against friends and strangers in expansive online campaigns there’s also potentially hundreds of hours of courtly intrigue to be had, and though there are occasional dips in the pace when you’re enjoying a few years of peace, most of the time you’ll be too busy to notice the passage of time.

Crusader Kings III is an excellent kingdom management game, more intimate but no less intricate than the likes of Civilisation VI, it’s as unforgiving a simulation as you’re going to find while still being more fun than you’d expect it to be. It’s not an easy game to get to grips with, and there are moments where you won’t be able to declare a war or prevent one and it won’t always be clear why – and there is an awful lot to read and understand – but Crusader Kings III is still arguably the best way to play out your Game of Thrones fantasies without actually harming your family members.

The post Crusader Kings III review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

This is where we find out that Helheim Hassle differs from other puzzle games with a few platforming aspects. As Bjørn is immortal, and thanks to a resurrection process not going as it should, you’re able to take apart each limb, and his head, and move them around independently to complete various puzzles.

It’s a fun mechanic and you can spend a fair bit of time trying out different body combinations in an attempt to figure out what they can do together. For example, two legs means you can move faster and jump higher, but when you add a leg and arm together you’ll move a little slower but you can now climb.

At some point you come across pressure pads that will tell you which body part needs to stay on it, like your head, while others will have an empty square meaning it can be any body part. It’s at this point you’ll need to figure out which body part you might not need to complete the puzzle. It’s easy enough to figure out but you might get a curveball thrown at you and find out there’s a voice activated part at the very end and you’ve left your head at the start. Helheim Hassle is full of puzzles, so many of them optional, that you’ll be kept busy for a good while. The story puzzles will keep you occupied for around 5 hours or so but the clean up to 100% will keep you going.

Talking of the story, Bjørn is making his way to Helheim but accompanying him along the way is his skeleton pal Pesto, who works for none other than Satan. Pesto is tagging along as she needs to get to Hel to pick up a sword for Satan, as you do. The story primarily focuses on Norse mythology but as you progress you will come across “cameos” from other mythologies.

As Helheim Hassle deals mostly with Norse themes, the big man Odin himself appears, but as the antagonist. He’s portrayed as an arrogant god more than anything, and is a bit of a bam if I’m honest. I don’t want to ruin too much but he’s no Anthony Hopkins Odin that’s for sure.

The humour you’ll come across in Helheim Hassle however, is spot on. With the exception of one Draugr joke being dragged out it’s really amusing, with more references than you’ll know what to do with. The re-imaging of some mythological characters is a good laugh and even if you’re not up on your gods they work well on their own merits too.

The humour even seeps into skipped scenes. If you decide to skip a scene you’ll often get a character comment in some way about the skip. One scene in particular is where you see Odin speaking to someone, and if you choose to skip to the end and Odin is in another area with other people and he’ll mention that he’s magically made it there somehow.

As good as everything is so far I did come across a major issue unfortunately. This only happened once and may not happen to everyone but it was still quite an issue. After about an hour’s worth of play I reached a building that I had to go into but the prompt to enter the building never appeared. I tried going back and forth from different areas to rebooting the game but nothing worked. I had to restart the game from a new save to be able to progress. Now this did only happen once, and luckily very early on, but the risk of that happening at the end game is a worry.

It’s not all bad though as I’ve mentioned the story and humour are fantastic. Add to this the amazing artwork throughout each area and you’re onto a winner. Every scene looks fantastic and you can tell a lot of work has gone into making it look that good.

I mentioned before that there is a tonne of stuff to do and post-game is no different. Throughout your journey to Hel you’ll come across characters that give you side quests and there are a lot of them, some of them are also pretty well hidden. On the plus side these are not required to finish the game but you also don’t need to finish them before the last section, as you can mop them up once the main story has been completed.

Along with these puzzles are a fair few collectibles which unlock new items and puzzles. There are 10 varieties of berries, totalling 10 of each, gold coins, soul coins and letters to try to find if you’re a fan of completing a game to its fullest. To give you a helping hand the map does show you what is left to find, and how many of each. Sometimes if the items, usually berries, chests and letters, are visible they’ll also be shown where you can find them.

If you’re looking for a puzzle game with a difference then Helheim Hassle is most absolutely worth playing. There is so much to do you’ll be hard pressed to be bored with this. If you’re a fan of Norse mythology then it’s worth having a look to see the changes that have been made to some of the more well-known Norse gods and creatures

The post Helheim Hassle review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

You have 26 levels spanning across 4 different time periods with the objective to find everything on your list. The eras covered are the Stone Age, Ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages & The Old West, each with a little something specific to that time period. For example, in the Middle Ages you may even come across Merlin and a young King Arthur.

Each level gets bigger in size with more things going on to make finding each item that little bit harder. There’s also a light story element in each time period which adds a little something extra to take in while you’re on your search.

Luckily you don’t need to find everything on your list to progress to the next level. There is a feature in the options menu to turn this on so that you need to find everything if you’re looking for an extra challenge. There are achievements/trophies for finding everything though so if you’re looking to rack up those numbers this might be something you want to switch on. Each item does come with its own clue, which really helps in the bigger levels. Sometimes they’ll be helpful and mention a certain area, like a farm for example, while other times they’ll be a little more obscure.

I did have a couple of issues with Hidden Through Time but nothing that massively took away from any enjoyment. The first was a framerate issue on the bigger levels. Zooming all the way out will cause it to drop and moving across the screen gets pretty janky. This is sorted by zooming in, which you’ll likely need to do to properly find things, but if you’re trying to just have a look around it can get annoying.

Lastly is the progress not matching with the achievements. I did manage to find everything and clear all the objectives for each world but the achievements didn’t pop up and show as unlocked as of writing this. Personally, it’s not much of an issue for me but I know there are some people who do achievement/trophy hunting and something like this will be a problem. This issue may be fixed on launch, and might only be specific to Xbox, but as it stands they don’t link up regardless of rebooting or trying levels again.

Speaking of retrying levels, you do have the option to either reset levels either individually or wipe progress completely and start again. With over 200 items to find you’ll have a hard time remembering exactly where everything is which adds a decent amount of replayability to the story option.

Hidden Through Time also comes with an Online option where players can create and upload their own levels. There were only a few maps that I could try out but what I did play through was really good. I can see there being plenty more post-launch so there should be something new to try every now and then.

The Map Editor for creating these levels is decent. Everything you come across in the story mode is available in the Editor and items from different time periods can be mixed and matched to create a fantastical level. You could have dinosaurs chasing cowboys or knights facing off against someone from the Stone Age if it takes your fancy.

The Editor does feel like it’s more aimed towards PC players as using a controller isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s not to say it’s overly difficult but a mouse would be better suited for editing like this. It could just be me and others won’t have any issue with a controller but it’s not something I’d hold against the game.

I also noticed that the music for Hidden Through Time can feel a little repetitive and reminiscent of lift/elevator music. However, when you get right into it, it’s a perfect fit for this type of game. Eventually it melts away and becomes the best companion for the gameplay as it’s not distracting in any way. It’s actually kind of nice.

Hidden Through Time is a simple and relaxing experience that will see you lose a lot of time to it but in a good way. It never feels like a chore attempting to find items and this might be down in part to how lovely and bright the whole game looks and feels. If you’re looking for something out of the norm and very Where’s Wally/Waldo esque then this is definitely worth your time.

The post Hidden Through Time Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

As the game progresses, you start to learn a lot about all the villagers and what happened to the town of Mutazione. 100 years ago, a meteor called ‘Moon Dragon’ crashed into the tropical holiday resort, and as a result certain mutations began to occur. This caused humans to mutate and new flora to grow unlike anything anyone had seen before. In the present day, Kai travels to Mutazione to care for her dying grandfather. As she learns more about the impact his poor health has on the community, she also learns about the history of the resort, how the balance of life and death is constantly swayed by certain incidents, and what she can do to help.

It’s an exploration of myriad human emotions and actions in Mutazione. Why love is both tragic and essential, how death isn’t the end of life, and what’s really important when it comes to families and friendship. The story is told via speech bubbles and conversations where Kai will often join in and you’ll have to choose her responses, but there’re also times when you’ll be allowed to listen. As you make friends and fit in, you become familiar with Mutazione and all its nooks and crannys. There’s Allin’s bathhouse, Mori’s little restaurant, Spike’s bar, and Tung’s shipyard, as well as a mysterious temple and the wilderness.

You’ll visit and re-visit, go searching for different characters and plants that’ll help you get through the story. There’s a journal which you’ll constantly check to find out who you need to talk to next or where you’ll need to go, but most of the time you’ll find what you need to do just by exploring. Throughout Mutazione you’ll learn of the importance of nature, and how growing certain plants will provide properties to help out the wide range of mutants, humans, and creatures that live there.

Early on, your grandfather shows you how to grow your own garden using his drum, a specific melody, and a range of seeds that’ll only grow when exposed to certain songs. There’re seven gardens in total, and as you play through the story different characters will share new songs with you, and collecting seeds from every plant you see will mean these gardens will grow faster. Sometimes you’re given seeds, but most of the time you have to find them for yourself. These cathartic moments where you’re sat in your garden, listening to the melody and watching it grow make Mutazione an entirely different game to the one you expect at first, and it’s refreshing if a little dull the more you make.

Occasionally, the clues in your journal are ambiguous so listening to every conversation carefully is hugely important. At one stage I had to find Miu, but after spending about 20 minutes searching every area of the map I was stumped. I thought the game was broken (mainly because earlier I had to restart due to a garden’s logo remaining in the centre of the screen long after it should’ve disappeared), but I finally remembered that she told me her house was next to my garden, as earlier I had asked her if the new plants obstructed her view of the town.

The familiarity of Mutazione and the challenges all the characters face reminded me of Night in the Woods, and how everyone is struggling in one way or another, and the mysterious creature that followed me around and threaded the main story together wasn’t quite as important as the friends I was making. It’s a beautiful game that allows you to enjoy the main plot whilst building genuine relationships with the well-written characters.

During a BBQ, I was sat around with everyone, talking about life and friends, and in that moment I felt accepted by them all. As Spike was preparing the food, Miu asked me if I had anyone back home who I loved. Casually, I mentioned that their was a girl on the swim team who I wrote letters to, and in turn she wrote them back. There was no judgment passed – no prejudice – and it was simply accepted as fact. Mutazione is filled with outsiders, but nobody is left to feel alone, regardless of who they love or who they are.

Mutazione is a game that builds up relationships within a community you instantly feel a part of. The main story is secondary to the real drama and the heart of the town, but it’s necessary. It’s extremely well-written, and the hand-drawn environments are beautifully designed. Die Gute Fabrik has crafted a sweet, powerful fairy tale that delves into the human psyche and allows you to reside there for five hours or so.

The post Mutazione review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Agent A is a puzzle game similar to Fireproof Games’ The Room series. Granted it’s considerably less spooky, but moving from place to place, piecing together the narrative and interacting with objects to solve puzzles is instantly familiar. Anyone who’s played a room escape game or even a point and click adventure will be well versed enough to understand just what Agent A is asking of them.

The game has been on iOS and Android for a while as an episodic series and finds its way to home consoles just as the fifth and final episode comes out. You play as Agent A and are infiltrating the home of a spy by the name of Ruby La Rouge. Even for a spy Ruby’s house is inundated with gadgets, gizmos and obtuse mechanisms which would surely confuse and frustrate a resident let alone a guest to the property. Accessing Ruby’s postbox alone requires you to solve five puzzles beforehand, a bit of an issue for anyone just to get your hands on your mail.

Stepping away from the frankly silly idea of someone deliberately scuppering a comfortable home life to ensure the frustrations of visitors, puzzling in Agent A does have a natural flow to it. A solution grants items or clues to something else and normally links to something you noticed earlier, so now you know you can go back and solve what you couldn’t before. This is where feedback comes in, just a line of dialogue here, a noise a visual cue, all of these are implemented to make sure that when you solve something, then you know.

That’s not to say that Agent A is a challenging game though. I managed to get through the game in a pretty short time because the puzzles are pretty simple, provided you ensure you click on pretty much everything and obtain all the clues. There was one puzzle in chapter five that caused me considerable consternation due to a lack of feedback when I solved it, it’s probably my own fault really, but without that all important notification I wound up lost for nearly an hour. Thankfully that was the only time this happened and it was right at the end of the game too, if it had come sooner I’d probably have been less annoyed.

You won’t feel quite like a secret agent as you try to untangle Ruby’s web of doohickeys, but the game’s got a neat Art Deco vibe to it which lends the cutscenes a nice charm. Couple this with the suitably 80s spy soundtrack and you have a game that echoes classic spy films admirably. There’s one inconsistency between chapters two and three where the sound bugs out and goes a bit crackly, but I didn’t notice this anywhere else. I was also playing on Switch so it might just be localised to that console.

Speaking of Switch it should be noted that the game does allow for the same touch screen implementation of the iOS and Android versions, however I played the entire game with the joycon controls as I just found them to be much more friendly to use. PC will obviously use a mouse, but the joypad interface is easy enough to use so PS4 and Xbox One players won’t lose out with their versions. For this you have a reticule that you move about the screen, point at something and press a button to interact. Items you pick up are added to a translucent menu bar on the right hand side of the screen ready to be used should the situation call for it. The reticule moves at a decent lick and if the item can be interacted with you’ll either pick it up or get a comment from Agent A, so you’ll always know if something can be ‘used’ so to speak.

If you’re someone who finds the Room games a bit too creepy then this is a great game to play if you’re into narrative puzzle adventures. Agent A is not too taxing while also providing a decent work out for your grey matter. You’ll want to ensure you’re taking screenshots to refer back to later just to ease the burden on the old memory, but overall you’ll never have the feeling that you’re brute forcing any of the solutions and Yak & Co. should be commended for that. Agent A won’t leave you shaken or stirred but will provide you with a few head scratching moments – but in a good way.

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A darkness has descended on the world, and not only is it a key element of the final story, it impacts gameplay in a welcome addition to proceedings. If you’ve played the previous two games, you can carry your save files over so that your choices will impact the finale, but new players can also jump in. I’d suggest going right back to the start an investing time into the trilogy as it’ll make the final impact mean so much more. I won’t be discussing story points in depth here (for obvious reasons), but like its predecessors, The Banner Saga 3 follows the stories of two different parties: Rook, Oddleif and friends (or Alette depending on your choices) are in the last human city of Aberrang, doing their best to defend it from the Dredge, whilst Juno, Iver, and their party are travelling through a mysterious evil known as The Darkness. Choices are just as hard as they have ever been, so make sure you make every one with complete conviction or it could impact your story greatly. You may choose to welcome in new travelers to bolster your army, or give up supplies to help the less fortunate, but remember you’re struggling to survive as well so even the littlest choice can affect things drastically.

The gameplay is split between making these choices, battles, and managing your party. Battles have improved massively, making the already tense encounters even harsher on the player. You will feel more pressure thanks to the new Wave system, a mechanic that now draws out battles to last much longer. If you enter into a fight, you must dispatch a range of enemies within a certain time, but if you’re not successful new enemies will appear without giving you much of a chance to recuperate. Once a wave is completed and you managed to do it in the alotted time, you can choose to flee, but one of the joys of continuing is that a special item will become available once you have finished all the waves. Between each wave, you can swap out party members if they become injured meaning you’re not entirely without hope, but this is the joy of The Banner Saga: overcoming the odds when everything is stacked against you.

In terms of the stats and abilities, this remains the same. You have Health, Armour, Willpower, Exersion, and Break. Many of the Varl have high armour and Break attributes, meaning they can to a lot of damage as well as take it. I always used the Varl to move in close and provided power and defence on the front line, allowing some of the archers and mages to attack from further back. The choice of tactics are entirely down to you, and moving your players across the battlefield in the right way will work out after a few trial and error scenarios. The gameplay is so good in The Banner Saga that every battle feels like it is the last. They are intense, draining, and unique you never feel like they are repetitive or easy. Juno is finally playable, and her presence on the battlefield makes the fights she involved in very different from the others.

Unlike when another character perishes, Juno becomes a ghost. When play returns to her turn, she must harness this dark energy (almost ready to talk about The Darkness!) to build her armour and health back up. What makes this interesting is you can return whenever you want as long as you have collected some of the dark energy. Collecting more will build up your health and armour to a more dominant range, but you risk the chance of the whole party dying. Collecting a little will bring her back (as long as you return to the body), but the chances of you dying again are higher. It’s yet another addition that makes the game feel that bit more developed, and later on who involvement will become important so learning what works best for you is a lesson you need to learn early on.

Perhaps the biggest addition to the series is The Darkness. As well as it being integral to the story, it also makes certain battles much more of a challenge. Essentially, The Darkness is turning familiar races and characters into purple, enraged beings that have heightened attributes to which you must fight against with more proven methods (think Zombies, but much more powerful). No race is safe, and when first encountering enemies imbued with this evil entity, you’ll both be in awe and terrified. Harnessing individual heroes’ special abilities will become integral, and going into combat with the plan of simply using brute strength is a recipe of disaster. You will learn to dread these battles because they are possibly the hardest of all, but those seeking the ultimate challenge will thrive on them.

One thing that has set The Banner Saga apart from everything else is the art style and the music. Once again, the Sleeping Beauty/early Disney look of the world and its characters is present, but the artists have upped their game, especially when you’re encountering The Darkness. The colours are bold and the way they bring such a dangerous world to life is breathtaking. Not only are the visuals beautiful, but the new orchestral score from Austin Wintory makes every second of The Banner Saga 3 so engaging. From the tense battles to the bleak and sorrowful goodbyes, and the final moments of the story when you feel it all about to end, the music acts as the main storyteller, weaving such a gorgeous score within the moments you find yourself so wrapped up in.

The Banner Saga 3 is a fitting end to a magnificent trilogy. You will no doubt travel through a whirlwind of emotions and exhiliration, all whilst appreciating the differences Stoic has made to the gameplay. New characters such as the witch known as Alfrun is a huge addition to battles, using Strength of Will (a new ability) to restore the health of your party – another first for the series. I didn’t want the trilogy to end, but if anything it has left me positive that whatever Stoic do next, I’ll be there ready to lap it up. If you’ve never played the series before, now is the perfect time to do so. My only advice would be to make sure you’re sat next to a big box of tissues as tears will flow.

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You play as Zee, an adorable little boy who, while playing in a park finds a squirrel that he decides to follow, and by doing so accidentally falls into a portal and is transported to another world. This new world consists of two halves, a normal, every day scene and an upside-down realm that doesn’t always mirror the other half. Each of the seventy or so levels has the same objective – help Zee to navigate the space to exit out of the portal, and hopefully to help him find his way home again.

The game takes you to a variety of locations. You start in the park and travel via a suburban area to an amusement park and a beach. Each of the locations serve only as a background to the puzzle though and offer nothing by way of solution other than as a gorgeous hand crafted space to work in. Samsara is a very pretty game with a soft, hand painted feel to the backdrops. The mirrored, or rather upside-down world, echoes the real one but with a shadowy, purple hue. At times it feels like the world underneath is the reflection of the world above, as if mirrored in a pool of water, but it never quite feels right. There is a sense of unease about the underneath world that unfortunately isn’t expanded on.

There isn’t much by way of a story to Zee, or rather nothing is made explicit. It’s clear that Zee has fallen through to an alternate reality, and in that other dimension is another boy who resembles a shadowy version of Zee, or perhaps he is Zee, but he has been fractured in some way. As you progress further into the game you encounter levels where as well as guiding Zee to the portal you must also help his shadowy counterpart to his own portal as well. Each boy has a different, specific effect on the environment that in later levels you need to exploit so that their movements assist the other one to escape. It isn’t enough in these levels that our Zee escapes, his shadow must do also.

To solve puzzles you are given very limited tools that comprise of a small number of shapes that have different properties as you progress through. In the beginning you have objects that are simply placed in the world either in the top-side or upside-down worlds that create platforms and steps for the boys to cross via. If you place an object in the upside-down, it will mirror in the top-side world, conversely, placing that same object in the real world will not reflect in the shadowy world. Solving puzzles then, becomes a mixture of experimenting by placing and rotating objects in each half of the world to find the best fit. Later levels follow the same principles, however, the objects take on different properties, for example much of the late game puzzles use objects seemingly forged from a substance like gold that when placed in the underside space will shift up in the over-world as if repulsed by a force like that of two magnets opposing each other.

There are some really interesting ideas at work in Samsara. The different properties that each shape has as you move through the game, combined with the effect each boy has on the environment make for some reasonably challenging puzzles as you progress, but nothing was particularly difficult. Of the seventy or so puzzles that Samsara throws at you, there were only one or two that had me momentarily stumped and even then it was only for ten minutes or so. I am not saying that I wanted to be stumped for hours, but I was hoping for a little more consistent challenge, and I think therein lies the problem. For all of the nice ideas that Samsara presents to you, it never really evolves them as you progress. There are some puzzles that add complexity by placing teleportals that transfer Zee and his shadow to other places in the puzzle, but you are still only placing the objects in the world to create ramps and sometimes barriers to change the boy’s direction, you never have to think too many steps ahead to solve it. This is perhaps in part with the very generous system that retains all your object placements should you fail – each puzzle becomes a process of trial and error until the solution presents itself.

Although Samsara isn’t a huge game, the sheer amount of puzzles you solve makes it feel like it slightly overstays its welcome, something I think is amplified a little by the lack of variety. Once you have completed all seventy-seven levels you can go back through them all, but this time inverting them. The solutions are more or less the same, of course, however, you make much more use of the reflection technique that the under-world offers you.

For all of my criticisms of Samsara, I did enjoy what I played. The world was a nice space to inhabit, and I liked the duality of the two Zee’s and the challenges to get both of them through their respective portals. I did feel a little fatigued towards the end as the puzzles don’t really vary that much other than adding in a little gravity bending properties, and a teleport here and there. Samsara is a pleasant puzzle game, but it ultimately fails to provide any moment of real achievement at having solved something particularly mind-bending.

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When they announced Season Two, I wasn’t that interested, and even though The Riddler was set to be in it, my time with Telltale was wearing thin. Nonetheless, I played it anyway, and I’m so damn glad I did. Holy shark repellent, Batman! This is everything I wanted it to be and more. The Enigma not only tells a great story, it incorporates some fantastic dialogue and even better gameplay. You finally feel like Batman – like Bruce Wayne, and the thrill ride doesn’t stop from the second you start until the credits roll. We see a fresh take on Edward Nygma, the introduction of Amanda Waller, and the return of John Doe aka The Clown Prince of Crime (before any clowning).

The basic premise of Episode One sees Batman trying to foil the plans of The Riddler. It’s been a long time since Edward has been in Gotham, and things have changed. Bruce isn’t aware of the destruction Mr Nigma did the last time he was there; in a nice turn of events, he was prominent in the days of Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s father. This time around, The Riddler is a psychotic quiz master who’d probably put Jigsaw from the Saw franchise to shame. My God, he’s sadistic. It’s a side of his character I’ve never really seen before, and I found it fascinating. He’s normally pulling the strings on camera, well away from the streets of Gotham, and would rather punish those he deems unworthy from the comfort of his own home, or base of operations. There is blood, and plenty of it. We’ve not seen anyone this sadistic, yet, and having the Riddler be so violent and creative makes perfect sense.

Telltale Games has an upper hand when drinking from the pool of DC because there’s no huge comic book canon to look to, and they’re creating a completely new adventure without treading on anyone’s toes. They’ve been ruthless here, and violence and death are becoming common. People die, and it’s savage. I love the way they’ve turned Thomas Wayne into somewhat of a criminal, thus giving many citizens of Gotham clear reservations about Bruce’s standpoint as the wealthiest man in the city, and whether they can trust him or not. In The Enigma, they do something rather shocking, and it could change everything. The introduction of Tiffany Fox (Lucius’ daughter) is a smart move, as it seems likely she may play an important role in Season Two, and maybe even don the cowl of Batgirl like in Future’s End story arc from the comics, along with Amanda Waller. She’s responsible for the Suicide Squad, so it’ll be very exciting to see if there’s a hint of their appearance later down the line.

Controlling both Batman and Bruce feels very natural, and the combat feels wonderful. There are times when you can also choose how to attack someone; two options will pop up with certain moves, and by pressing Q or E, a different attack will be launched. It’s a nice idea, and it also adds to the freedom and choice you have in battle; Soccer Kick or Anchor Punch, Round House or Body Slam – you decide. The links are back as well, but they feel more important this time round. Also, they’re pretty easy to solve – something that felt laborious in Season One.

If you can remember back in the previous season, Bruce got thrown into Arkham Asylum, and in there he met a rather pale chap known as John Doe. Of course, he’ll be the foundation for what The Joker will be built on, but it’s interesting seeing just how he’ll be playing a role in this season. You have some choices to make regarding him, and from how the game ends, they seem much more important than I had originally thought when I made them. He’s kind of loveable, a bit simple – a shell of the evil clown we all know and love, but most of all he’s in awe of Bruce. He seems to think a lot of him, and some of the decisions you make play quite a role in his development as a serial killer.

There’s a great balance of puzzles, investigations, combat, and story progression. I wasn’t bored for a second playing Episode One of The Enemy Within, and I’m really happy about the direction they’ve gone in. Telltale Games make fantastic adventures, but it’s been a while since I’ve been blown away by them. This is just what the series needed if it’s to be successful, and after an exciting reveal at the end, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

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As with both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward’s questlines, Stormblood’s story is fantastic. This time, it’s all about taking back the city of Ala Mhigo from the Garlean Empire after a lengthy twenty-year reign and as you’d expect, it’s jam packed full of themes such as war, freedom-fighting and righteousness. Unlike the previous two main story scenarios, I found myself eager to power through the quests as I absolutely needed to know what happens next, like a good book you can’t put down. Side quests are a different story however and are more of the same slog as before, being mainly fetch-quests and having to kill certain types of monster which was disappointing as I was hoping for a switch-up there.

Accompanying the fresh storyline are a handful of new places to explore. From the vast blue depths of The Ruby Sea, to the far-reaching grasslands of The Azim Steppe, the added areas bring something new to the game visually and if you compare them to the villages and cities from A Realm Reborn, it almost looks like a completely different game. Like with Heavensward, you are able to use flying mounts in these new areas and if you’re someone who appreciates views from above, I heartily recommend you view what Stormblood has to offer from the clouds because it truly is beautiful. If skies aren’t for you, though, diving and swimming have also been added and let me tell you this: it’s amazing. You can even use your flying mounts underwater which absolutely blew my mind. I even participated in races underwater with friends just to test out the diving and it was endless fun.

The main thing the expansion brought that I was slightly apprehensive about was changes to existing combat moves. Before, you could share moves between classes willy-nilly, but now, you’re given a preset list of cross-class ones that suit the class you’re playing as. While this change works perfectly and is actually quite useful, I can’t help but miss being able to use Cure as a tank to heal myself, especially if I was stuck with a slow healer in a dungeon. Job gauges have also been added for each class, providing a visual guide for certain moves and is a very welcomed addition in terms of resource management. There are also two new classes: Red Mage and Samurai, both DPS respectively and both very fun, although I didn’t reach for them over my main class.

Something I’ve seen fans get very excited about is the level cap increase from 60 to 70. Whilst playing, there was a constant buzz about how players were going to spend their time levelling, whether it be through raids or PVP, and it even turned into a bit of a competition for some to see who could reach level 70 first. I spent a lot of my time farming the new dungeons for XP and if you’re worried they won’t match up to previous dungeons. Don’t fret – they’re even better as they add even more mechanics and gimmicks. For example, one of my favourite Stormblood boss fights saw the return of a summon from Final Fantasy VI who literally tries to kill you with kindness and it’s nostalgic yet funny moments like that which made my grinding experience so much more enjoyable.

I can safely say that Stormblood has reignited my love for Final Fantasy XIV for what seems like the long run. It made me remember why I liked it so much in the first place and has left me pining for it like a lost puppy every time I log off. Despite the fact I wasn’t too happy with the lack of side quest variety and the changes to the combat moves, the storyline and the sheer beauty of the new areas more than made up for it. I can easily say that Stormblood is one of the best games I’ve played this year and if you’ve yet to buy the expansion, I highly recommend that you do.

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After the first episode, I felt like I was done with Telltale, at least for a while. Too much of anything isn’t always a good thing, and the episodic formula has started to feel stale. I’ve played so many Telltale Games that they’re becoming less of a treat and more of a chore, however, Under Pressure is a much better entry, and features some great character development. One of the best voice actors in the business, Nolan North, gets to shine in this episode, bringing Rocket Raccoon’s past to the forefront and nailing his brand of surliness and arrogance, but bringing out his softer and more vulnerable side onto the screen.

After Star Lord’s death, and subsequent revival at the end of Tangled Up in Blue, the true power of the Eternity Forge is beginning to become more apparent, and with that, the team try to uncover what it can really do. The problem is, the Cree want it back, and are in hot pursuit of the gang. We get to see more of Yandu, and his southern American twang is a welcomed return, with Mark Barbolak sounding just like Michael Rooker from the movies. Nebula is also in Under Pressure, and her love/hate relationship with the Guardians is an important part of the episode. No characters are here for the sake of it, and the story Telltale is telling is formulating at a great pace.

My favourite character in Guardians of the Galaxy is Rocket Raccoon, and we find out more about his time being tested on at an undisclosed medical facility. I’m so used to seeing Rocket as a no bullshit kinda guy that has skin as thick as Thanos’ skull, but when you see the hope in his eyes – the hope that the Eternity Forge might be able to resurrect someone very special to him, it becomes rather moving. Let’s put it this way, I didn’t expect to get so emotional during an interaction between a raccoon and an otter.

Elsewhere, Drax has a few one-liners that fall flat, and Gamora is as grumpy as ever. I’ve warmed to these two characters the least, and it feels like Drax’s jokes are being forced – not as naturally delivered as Dave Bautista’s performance in the movies. Gamora’s role in the team is to be negative and crap all over Peter’s decisions, which doesn’t do anything to help me like her. She wasn’t as bad in episode one, and I’m kind of annoyed she’s turned into the negative voice that she has. Hopefully she’ll come around and end up being the unsung hero of the series.

Under Pressure is rather quiet on the action front right until the very end, when there’s an awesome action scene set against one of the best glam rock songs of the 70s. It works really well, and I couldn’t help but sing along as Peter and the gang went all out, blowing holes in the Cree. The soundtrack has been really good so far, and hearing the next song has become something I look forward to with each new episode.

Knowing what the Eternity Forge can do, I’m excited to see where Telltale goes with it. Which character’s will we see come back to life? I’m guessing Thanos will be back, but I also wonder if Peter’s mum will feature, especially as she’s been in the bizarre (and often dull) flashbacks. It’s also interesting to wonder if other members of the Guardians will feature as Rocket did. We know Drax lost family at the hands of Thanos and Ronin, so could we see a Drax-centric episode?

Under Pressure was a great follow-up, and I’m now looking forward to future episodes. The narrative has picked up, and the right amount of time is being given to every character. Let’s hope Telltale can keep up the momentum, and regardless of the poor facial animations and dodgy eye movements, turn this into one of the best series’ the dev has put out.

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After the explosive events of Syberia 2, Kate finds herself rescued from near death in the frozen wilderness by the Youkol, a nomadic tribe trying to find their way across eastern Europe with their snow ostriches as part of an ancestral migration. She wakes up in hospital and offers to help the tribe and its ostriches, not realising that they’re being stalked by a mercenary military commander who will stop at nothing to upset the apple cart. The storyline stays true to its roots and matches the eccentricity and personality of its predecessors – something long-time fans will no doubt love and enjoy.

Despite this, it picks up from where Syberia 2 left off and it’s one of those narratives that assumes you’ve played the other titles in the series beforehand. This is usually to be expected, but when there’s a 13-year gap between games and a possibility that newcomers might buy the game assuming they’ll be shown a summary of previous events, a little bit of background information wouldn’t go amiss, even if it was just a wall of text shoved away in a menu somewhere.

In terms of gameplay, Syberia 3 is a third person point-and-click with a style somewhat similar to that of a Telltale game: simply move Kate with the left stick and interact with the surroundings using the face buttons. There are a plethora of different environments to be explored throughout, from an amusement park, to a ship and an ancient temple, and each offer their own unique challenges and puzzles you must solve in order to progress. Exploring the varied locations is enjoyable for the most part but sometimes navigating an area to find an item can prove difficult since some areas are particularly large, making the object you’re trying to find a needle in a ridiculously oversized haystack.

If it’s one thing the series is known for, it’s its variety of challenging puzzles, but Syberia 3 sadly falls short on that front. Most require almost no thinking at all and mainly consist of finding certain objects throughout the environments and piecing them together or operating machinery. If you do struggle with a puzzle, there is an option to enable extra hints that help you solve them, but it’s difficult to see anybody ever needing to use them since they’re a walk in the park. But as unimpressive as they may be, be warned – they’re also paired with clunky controls and a serious lack of precision which results in a very tedious time.

The main thing that casts a giant dampener over the whole experience, though, is the visuals. Oh God, the visuals. If you’re a fan of chugging frame rates that stutter every few seconds then good for you because you’re in for a real treat with this one. With an average of 25 frames-per-second that dips to 10fps more times than I’d like to count, it’s simply one of the worst performing games I’ve seen in a long time.

The only solace in this graphical nightmare is the system menu which runs at an oddly-smooth 60fps – not something most people care for. As if this wasn’t enough, the audio also skips frequently, the subtitles fail to match up at times and the lip-syncing is totally off for the most part. It’d be almost laughable if it wasn’t so frustrating because it isn’t a bad game – it’s just ruined by being a massive technical mess.

I really wanted to like the game but I couldn’t and found myself wanting to bang my head against my desk after just two hours. Woe is me for having to sit through all 13 hours of it. If you’re a fan of the Syberia games and can get past the stupidly easy puzzles and ridiculous graphical faults then you might like Syberia 3. I don’t think the game has any place for newcomers, though, since the only redeeming feature is the fantastic story, but without any recap element there’s only room for confusion and bewilderment unless you read up on the events of the previous games first. I can’t help but feel that the Syberia series was better off left in the past instead of giving it a send-off it really doesn’t deserve.

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The story focuses on the discovery of a mysterious artifact known as the Eternity Forge, and after a nicely constructed battle between the Guardians and Thanos (you really expected him not to feature?), it enters your possession. Episode One doesn’t start with a bang, but once you encounter the Mad Titan for the first time, the ambition in Telltale’s latest game is noticeable: button prompts are more dynamic, the environments are large and unique, the voice acting works very well (with a stellar performance by Nolan North as Rocket Raccoon) between the group, and there are very few frame rate issues – for the most part.

There are issues that have plagued many of Telltale Games’ game series, and they’re still here, even now. Eyes are poor – particularly Star Lord, and some of the facial animations don’t work well i.e. there are a few occasions where characters respond to dialogue by facial expressions, and it’s hard to read what they’re thinking (a certain elevator scene for one). It’s such a shame because it’s astounding what advancements have been made in scale, and seeing these old hindrances affect the results of hard work is so frustrating. I also had an occasion near the end when the game completely froze up, causing me to restart the game by closing the application.

Tonally, Tangled Up in Blue gets the Guardians spot on. There are many similarities with the movie and the comics, and that’s great because you want this iteration to feel familiar. Star Lord is still a loveable rogue, Drax is still bluntly literal, Gamora is still strong willed, Rocket Raccoon is still short-tempered, and Groot is still, well, Groot. The banter between the team is great, and the option to make Star Lord less lovable is interesting – some of the responses can make him look like a real dick, and at the best of times in the episode, the team’s relationship is tested.

Going back to the art style, some of the environments are incredibly detailed. Your ship (the Milano) has different chambers such as Peter’s room, and the main cockpit (where you can read through random emails, check the codex for info on characters and locations, and even make calls) is littered with computer terminals – even the view out into space is staggering. The soundtrack boasts great songs by ELO and Hall & Oates, and the way they are employed works extremely well, especially when we take a trip into Peter Quill’s past.

Like most first episodes, Tangled Up in Blue sets the scene for the rest of the series, but I’m struggling to see what it’s going to do differently. Maybe I’m missing the point, and it’s supposed to be fun, just like the movie, but I’m finding it harder and harder to get on with the same kind of game in a different setting. Telltale Games is a fantastic developer, and I’ll forever play their games because they’ve given me some great memories, but I’m getting fatigued by them. Nonetheless, Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series has started off with some good talking points, some new ways to incorporate the button prompts, and a great rapport between the voice actors that feels authentic.

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Thimbleweed Park starts with a murder investigation; a body is found in a river on the outskirts of the town, and as Agent Ray and Agent Reyes, you must piece together what happened by speaking to the citizens of Thimbleweed Park, and finding the clues that will hopefully solve the case. Simple, right? Well, like everything in Thimbleweed Park, nothing is as straightforward as it seems, and the dead body of Boris Schultz becomes the backdrop for a much bigger story.

You’ll end up controlling a total of five characters, each with their own stories and personalities; Agent Angela Ray is a jaded and cynical senior agent, whilst Agent Antonio Reyes has his own secrets, but is a more upbeat and fresh-faced agent. Delores Edmund is a videogame designer, and Franklin Edmund is her dead father, murdered and left to haunt the hotel in which he died. Then there’s Ransome the *bleeping* Clown, an entertainer who made his mark insulting his audience, until he becomes cursed to wear his clown make-up for all eternity (and also loses everything he has, including his movie deal, mistress and fancy house).

All five playable characters bring something different to the table, each with a checklist of objectives you must tick off, and finding ways to do these provide real diversity to the game. It’s also interesting how each character feels so unique, and how possible it is to relate to each one. You end up feeling quite close to these characters, and even Ransome has traits you can understand, despite being an obnoxious mother *bleeper*.

You start off as the two agents, but as the story unfolds, you learn about many of Thimbleweed’s inhabitants, including Leonard the Quickie Pal clerk, Willie the hobo, and the Pigeon Brothers, who are actually sisters (obviously). Every character has a unique personality, and you’ll end up talking to them a lot. There’re plenty of dialogue choices when speaking to any of them, and you learn plenty about them as a person, and also many of the town’s darkest secrets. Some of the threads go off on a tangent, but never feel inconsequential or redundant to the plot, rather adding to this huge web of vibrancy in the game’s characterisation.

There are always clues laced within the dialogue, and many of the puzzles you have to decipher can be solved by simply listening; all of Thimbleweed Park’s conundrums require logic, no matter how cruel it can be, and you’ll probably be stumped on more than one occasion. One guarantee I can give, is no matter how long you’ve struggled on a particular puzzle, the moment you solve it and realise how makes sense every time. You’ll normally kick yourself, give a little smile, and move on to the next one.

Items are everywhere, and many will be useless, but many will serve a purpose. You may pick up some eye drops that have magical properties, a teddy bear prototype, a speck of dust or even toilet paper, and finding out what will be useful again can be put down to reason. In true point and click fashion, you’ll use a plethora of items to solve a mystery, and no matter how stupid it may be in hindsight, it’ll feel perfectly logical at the time (note: you can’t stick a scary zombie mask in front of a CCTV camera because the gum isn’t strong enough, duh).

The scale of Thimbleweed Park’s pixelated world is very impressive; whether you’re in the main town, the sewers, at the circus, scoping out the Edmund Estate or wandering around the hotel, there’s so much detail involved. Not just in the design, but in the things you can interact with and the people you can talk to. It’s a gorgeous world, pixelated to perfection and varied enough to make the hundredth trip to a certain area feel seldom boring. You understand the gravitas Thimbleweed Park had when the pillow factory was the town’s main source of income, and you feel the struggle many employees have as neighbouring businesses shut down and go out of business.

There’re plenty of references to old videogames, typical tropes, and even small tributes to Terrible Toybox’s origins, such as the name of the game developers Delores works for, and a tentacle appearing in the crowd at Ransome’s fateful performances. It doesn’t take itself seriously, and the jokes are funny – never forced or awkward. The writing all round is excellent, and with the humour being top notch, it was surprising to see some genuinely emotional moments I wasn’t expecting.

The Xbox One version is much trickier to control, with a simple click, combine, drag and drop taking twice as much time using the analogue sticks, and using the buttons to select command options isn’t straightforward at all. Switching between characters is a lot easier, as pressing the triggers switches instantaneously. It still looks great, and has all the same qualities as the PC version, but it’s so much easier to play Thimbleweed Park with a mouse and keyboard.

Thimbleweed Park is a game this generation needs, not for quenching nostalgic needs, but to show us just how great point and click adventure games can be in the right hands. Even though some of the puzzles can have you ripping your hair out, the satisfaction of solving is second to none. Terrible Toybox has put together a delightful game, and it would be a real shame if you were to miss out on the mysteries of Thimbleweed Park.

The post Thimbleweed Park Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Deciding that I can’t wait too long by the water’s edge I set off circling the Southern edge of the lake and take notes of everything I see. Trees, small shrubs, rocks strewn every which way. Ahead of me is a create of fiery orange fur and a menacing look, and as I approach the beast rears up and gives chase. My fluffy white friend is lost in this encounter as I sprint further East past a stand of trees and the relative safety that it offered. Saddened by the loss of the rabbit, but accepting that this is an inevitable part of nature, I trudge forward determined to learn all there is about this world.

Ahead of me is a creature so white that it stood out like a rose in the desert plains, and as I approached it spoke to me without a sound. “What are you doing here?” was all it said. Then in a flurry of colour, the bright white creature disappears and leaves in its place a large glowing portal. I step inside.

That was my first two or three minutes of Future Unfolding and it was an extraordinary few minutes. Not since Journey on PS3 have I ever felt the sense of true exploration in a game. It sets you up in a beautiful world, looking down on it as if you were a divine entity while controlling your humanoid through a world of natural mystery.

Inexplicably, each new game that is started is randomly pieced together with transitions like the rooms of a dungeon crawling experience. Nature offers you puzzles and various tools at your disposal, but these you must figure out yourself. There will be certain trees, rocks, flowers that stand out and offer a mechanic for you to play with; however, none of these will be explained in the slightest. This game offers you exploration in the truest sense of the world. Not just to explore the world, but to explore the rules of this world and things that you can do with them.

For example, some trees will allow you to vault over obstacles or onto high ledges, there are plants that change trees into rocks and rocks into trees, animals that lend you the power of teleportation, and some that will just try to kill you.

The game sets you in this world with very little explanation, but through my time playing I found that finding spirit animals, such as the one above, often leads to opening portals that take you across the world to a far-off location. These animals also offer morsels of exposition about the world and history of the land – though this is something that I think is more for flavour than to add to any kind of overall narrative.

When I was first given this game to review, I was in the middle of another one so I installed it ready to go and gave it a quick play to test that the game worked before I came back to review it. This is something I usually do for 20 minutes, but ended up losing a few hours to the game. It pulled me in almost completely with its beauty.

The game sounds excellent, too. There’s a soundtrack of quietly soothing music of long gentle notes that serves as a calming influence. Coupling this with the attention to audio as you’re moving through shrubs or brushing past ferns and trees makes it rich without being overwhelming.

While I fell in love with this game instantly and sunk several hours to it, there is a certain amount you can play at one time. There’s no story to lead your through and hold your hand every step of the way, but that’s also part of the appeal. You can pick it up at any point and just lose yourself in the exploration of the world without much need for any overarching goal or narrative thread to pick back up after being away from it for a while. It’s just there, and it’s waiting for you to explore whenever you feel the need.

There is no ‘best way’ to play this, other than in a quiet room with your headphones firmly in place and nothing to distract you. It’s a not-so-gentle reminder that sometimes games can be used as a relaxing, meditative medium when you want to step away from the tension and drama of explosions and high-octane, edge-of-your-seat action.

It won’t be for everyone and the ‘Games as Art’ sentiment is hugely subjective, but if you’re looking for something like Journey without a narrative or a thread to follow through the world – where exploration is your only directive – then Future Unfolding is an excellent choice.

The post Future Unfolding Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

In Above The Law, you spend much of your time finding out why David ended up with the New Frontier, and concurrently learning about the hierarchy that keeps them together. Joan, Clint, David, and the Doctor all form the leadership of the New Frontier, but as the episode goes on, you start to see cracks in the foundations, leading you to question the morals and the reasoning of the group. They don’t seem all that fearsome – certainly not instilling that familiar discomfort as Negan would do, and so far there’s not an unpredictability within the ranks, other than that of Badger and Max – two thugs that caused the deaths of two characters from Ties That Bind.

Javi becomes much more interesting, here, and as the player you’re given much more of an opportunity to shape the person he’s becoming. Will he have the humility and control your team needs, or will he lose his shit and give into the rage building inside of him? There’s one choice in Above The Law that took its toll on me. At the time I was sure I was making the right call, but it felt wrong; I knew what had happened was immoral, but it was necessary for Javi, or in my head – in my thinking, it was 100% the right thing to do.

There’s a succinct moment with Clementine’s past, but it’s enough to know why she’s even further removed from her innocence and humanity. She’s starting to become one of the best characters from The Walking Dead canon, whether that’s the TV show, the comics or the games. There are so many layers, and when you’ve been through it all with her, you start to understand how she’s arrived at where she has. She gives a brief speech regarding her understanding of something Javi may or may not do depending on one of your choices, and it exemplifies why it’s sometimes necessary to take revenge – to kill with reckless abandon (providing long-time fans with a reference to something from Season Two). I suppose it all depends on what your morals are as a player, and Telltale has always been the master of pushing you to make the toughest decisions.

The post-apocalyptic love triangle that is Javi, Kate, and David becomes trickier in Above The Law, and as Javi you’re going to have to decide whether blood is thicker than water. It’s clear Javi has a soft spot for Kate, but that’s going to be explore much further. As for David and Javi’s relationship, there’s a fantastic chemistry between the two, and a light is shined upon the many traits of sibling compassion and rivalry. Learning more about David, you’re never sure what his deal is, and you’re constantly asking yourself if this guy is telling the truth about how he ended up with the New Frontier, amongst other burning questions.

Visually, Season 3 continues to push the boundaries of what Telltale’s new engine is capable of; there’s so much detail in the environments, and character expressions are constantly improving. They still haven’t got the eyes right, but it’s a huge improvement from the times Lee’s wandering peepers moved in the weirdest of ways.

Above The Law bridges the gap between Ties That Bind and the penultimate episode very well, and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here. There’s a very abrupt end, and I still feel like we haven’t seen enough of Clementine, but there’re two more episodes to go. Javi is growing as a leader and as a character, and whilst he may not be as interesting as Kenny or Lee, there are plenty of layers there that we’re on the cusp of removing. Telltale has found its feet, and the progression of the story is starting to take shape; it may not have the same level of engagement you’re used to, but there’s plenty in Above The Law that’ll make you want to keep playing.

The post The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 3: Above The Law Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Here we’re treated to the story of how Spectre Knight brought the Order of Knights over to the side of The Enchantress. You’ll choose levels from a Megaman-esque selection via the Dark Portal and battle through to each area’s chosen Knight guardian, knocking seven shades out of them to have them join your ranks. This is done through the main hub of the Tower of Fate where you can exchange money and skulls for an assortment of skills (bestowed upon you by Curios) and armour upgrades. As you take down the bosses they’ll join you in the main hub granting access to other areas within which you’ll find extra pick-ups to aid you.

Spectre Knight himself is a bit of a slow walker and doesn’t really have a nimble jump (it’ll only barely clear the majority of enemies), he can, however, clamber on walls and dash attack when in the air. While this is fiddly to begin with you’ll soon be chaining wall jumps with ease to get up to some of the high points or save yourself from death by hole. The mid-air dash attack is especially handy, as all enemies and much of the scenery can be ‘attacked’ to launch Spectre Knight across the screen like an unladen swallow. You’ll need to watch how you approach them though, as the wrong angle can send you plummeting to your doom rather than sailing gracefully to the next chain point or moderate safety of a ladder.

This dash attack is invaluable for getting around, but it’s all too easy to fall back on in combat; the majority of tougher enemies can be disposed of with relative ease using it, as a successful attack on something that doesn’t die will see Spectre launched back up into the air so he can perform the attack again and again and again. Repeat use of this can see even the hardest of enemies fall with merely a flesh wound; in fact many of the bosses I was able to ignore attack patterns completely and just use airborne assaults for the entire duration, add in the curio for healing and this becomes even easier.

In games like this though the bosses come second to level design and here Yacht Club Games’ work is exemplary. Every level is constructed to eke out every ounce of your ability just to get through to the next check point; they’re filled with secret nooks and crannies to find extra cash and secret rooms to test your climbing and dashing proficiency to claim extra spoils with which to upgrade with. While each level is doable with the basic abilities, you’ll certainly find some of the levels considerably easier if you venture elsewhere to improve yourself before taking them on.

If Shovel Knight reignited your love for 8-bit platforming, then Spectre of Torment is worthy of your time. It’s challenging without being unfair and even if you’re new to this sort of thing you don’t have to go and play the prior content first before taking this on; you might even find that this will give you reason to go back and play the rest afterwards. In pure 8-bit fashion the sprites pop with detail and the excellent chiptune music will have you tapping your feet as you drop to your doom again and again. Failure should always feel this good.

The post Shovel Knight: Spectre of Torment Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

There are three classes in the game: Jack, Glaive, and Nano. In the simplest terms, these are roughly your Fighter-Thief-Mage archetypes that focus on Might, Speed, or Intellect for their base stats and abilities. Having played through each of them, and the playstyles that I employed throughout the various forays through the first chapter, it became apparent that this was very much a stylistic choice of what you wanted to achieve in the long run. There is no right way, so the best advice anyone can give on this is to do things your way.

Torment is very much about doing things your way throughout. Progression through the game is largely on a narrative level. The familiar box at the bottom of the screen with sprawling text and options of your responses as you dig deeper into a conversation or situation become a warm blanket on the cold nights. Torment goes beyond other CRPGs in this sense, though, because not only is the dialogue being shown to you, you’re also getting descriptive details of what your character perceives from the speaker; actions, small movements and gestures, postures, facial expressions. These all work to give you a greater understanding of the tone and conversation flow. Developers inXile understand that language is not just about words spoken, but also how they’re spoken and body language. This part of the game I love! The result, however, is a text heavy game that will see you reading more than actually having direct input into your character. While this is something I’ve become accustomed to with the CRPG genre in general, newcomers may find this to be something of a barrier if the expectation was instant action and combat throughout.

The game encourages avoidance of conflict and violence more than most that I’ve seen over the years, and it’s hugely satisfying to defuse a volatile situation by applying the right level of attention to detail and a silver tongue. Riling up an angry mob witnessing an execution to rally against the act will require you to sweet-talk multiple people and employ different methods of persuasion, communicating with a beetle-like race called the sticha, and more situations like this will require you to understand the situation and choose your words wisely and act accordingly. Through the use of these types of conversations checking for ‘dice rolls’ on certain stats, you’re able to avoid combat completely and progress without even unsheathing your weapon.

There is definitely combat in the game and while avoiding it is intrinsically rewarding to the point of being encouraged, combat isn’t skimped on in the slightest. Combat is known as ‘Crisis’ and becomes a character turn-based system that offers a level of strategy to the game. It will often provide you with varying options of how to tackle the encounter, too. Throw out the rulebooks of RPGs you know and put yourself in the mindset of a tabletop game like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, because combat isn’t the only solution.

Crisis consists of either movement or action to maintain a balance. You can move into position within a set distance around you and then take an action. Additionally, you can trade an action for more movement so that you can travel further, but will be unable to trade movement for two attacks. Torment, as its namesake suggests, is utterly unforgiving and will test your combat abilities. It’s almost as if combat is something that inXile want you to do as a last resort and it can sometimes show in how challenging it is. The dice can sometimes feel like it’s constantly stacked against you, but to me this felt about right. You can shrug off some damage levelled against you and yours easily enough, but after the fifth time that hammer’s smashed your head, it’s going to make you a little sluggish. It should feel challenging, so I feel that this is a good balance.

There’s something else that adds extra levels to both combat and conversations, and that’s the Effort mechanic. You’re able to raise your character’s Effort each turn, allowing you to apply your Might, Speed, or Intellect to actions. Everything in the game works on chance, from persuasion attempts to swinging a weapon or casting a spell. Each of these has a base chance, so without applying any additional Effort to the action you will have a percentage chance of success – usually low at the beginning, but this is something that improves over time. Every point of Effort that you apply to an action takes away from your total stat pool for that activity. For instance, my first character was a Nano with very high Intellect of 8 or 9 that meant I could apply this in rolls to ensure a 100% chance of succeeding on my Intellectual actions. Once those stat pools are depleted, you will be unable to apply extra Effort to anything else using that stat until you rest and recuperate, meaning you’ll be fighting or trying to persuade people with only the base “No Effort” chances. It would be like shooting a bow at long distance without taking a second to aim and regulate your breathing; it’s probably going to miss.

This mechanic can become a gamble and has often left me clenching a fist while rolling the dice on a persuasion attempt, or when you finally come to battle and you’ve spent some of your energy on trying to persuade someone without avail. You’re now stuck in a conflict with fewer point available. Use it wisely!

Torment: Tides of Numenera leaves me craving more every time I save the game and turn it off. There’s an intrigue around every corner, there’s someone interesting to talk to everywhere you go and a few secrets that I’m sure I’ve missed despite how thoroughly I’ve pored over the text. The narrative and overarching story of The Changing God and the Castoffs that came before you is intriguing and quite a unique spin. It’s not about saving the world or any grand campaign of righteousness! It’s you and a lot of questions you want answered which is so intriguing in a market full of hero protagonists.

The PlayStation 4 version of the game is just as good, however, there were a fair amount of times when the game stuttered a little, or froze temporarily. These issues aren’t a constant occurance, but certainly worth mentioning if you’re mulling over which platform to get the game on. Ignoring this, and you’re blessed with the same incredible game, but it did get frustrating at times.

There are a few things that are not very clearly explained within the game in the version I played but these don’t seem to have a huge impact on the game. The titular mechanic of the game – the ‘Tides’ is still something that’s not clearly explained in the dialogues I’ve had with characters in the game. In fact, it’s brushed off very nonchalantly with a quick “You won’t need to worry about this, once you get out there this will just happen automatically.” Not exactly comforting when this line follows an ominous “You would die without this.” This left me a little confused, but it seems to react and shift colours with actions you take, and seems to be a mechanic akin to Mass Effect’s Renegade/Paragon system – except with no true explanation that I’ve found within the game.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is an absolute gem and could be the best CRPG of this era. At the very least it’s top 3!

The post Torment: Tides of Numenera Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to return to Clementine after the events of The Walking Dead Season Two, mainly because it had left such a hole in my heart. It had tore through every barrier I’d tried to put up after one of the characters I’d grown attached to died, and broken my soul watching other characters suffer with their own pain and loss. Waving goodbye to Kenny was the final straw, and as he walked away, I was sure I’d never be able to return to Telltale Games’ take on Robert Kirkman’s apocalyptic masterpiece. But here we are.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is the newest chapter in Clem’s story, and Ties That Bind: Part One and Two introduce us to an older, harder Clementine. It was great to see her after all this time, but she’s not the same girl we left at the end of Season Two. There’s clearly something different about her now, and there’s something unnerving about it. We learn quite a bit about what happened to her since we last saw her which makes things a bit clearer, but Clem is a shell of who she was–all of her innocence is gone, and the people she loved are a distant memory.

Telltale has decided to give her a back seat for now, at least in the first two episodes anyway, as Javier Garcia (or Javi) takes centre stage. He’s a likeable guy–the type of character you’ve got no problem following throughout–but he lacks the emotional depth of say, Lee or Kenny. It’s early days though, and as we learn more about his relationships with sister-in-law Kate, and his brother David, things will start to feel more personable.

At the start of Ties that Bind, there’s a brief back story which shows how Javi ended up on the road with his sister-in-law Kate and her two step-kids Gabe and Mariana, and it also gives you an idea how the beginning of the end of the world was for him. There’s also a nice set up of things to come between Javi and his brother, David. They’ve got a tumultuous relationship to say the least, and there’s plenty of mileage there.

Things really open up when Javi, Kate and her the kids come across a seemingly abandoned scrap yard. After bumping into another group of survivors, things go south pretty fast and they’re separated. It isn’t long before Javi bumps into Clementine, and if you have any bit of your heart left after playing the first two seasons, you’ll no doubt smile at her introduction. The two characters bond pretty quickly and throughout the entirety of the two episodes, you begin to see Clem regain some form of humanity.

This other group of survivors are The New Frontier, formerly a peaceful and decent group of people turned malicious and bitter by the events of the apocalypse. If you thought the Saviours were assholes, these shits certainly give them a run for their money. There’s an incident at the end of episode one that left my mouth wide open; I couldn’t believe what I saw, but I should’ve expected it. What was I thinking? Did I really think it’d be any different? If you forgot how brutal the previous two seasons were, this is a stark reminder of how cruel Telltale can be.

The writing is superb for both episodes, and the pacing is perfect. You’re always scared to move forward, you always feel uneasy. There are moments of shock, sadness, terror and anxiety, and it feels like you’ve never been away. It’ll be interesting to see where the story goes from here as there’re plenty of opportunities and many new and interesting characters that’ll no doubt drop like flies. There’s also an awesome inclusion of a popular TWD character in episode two, but I won’t ruin that for you here.

Other than Javi and Clem, many of the new characters are likeable and have lots to offer. Trigg is a brutish engineer from Prescott, and his former girlfriend Eleanor seems nice. Mariana is a sweet kid, in love with her walkman, praying for the day they find a candy bar or some new batteries, and Gabe is a kid wracked with rage and sorrow, never knowing how to handle what’s going on around him. The bad guys also have more than one layer, showing a glimmer of humanity as episode two draws to an end, and after everything they do throughout Ties that Bind, you still don’t know what you’re getting with them.

Both parts of The Ties That Bind Us are engaging, entertaining, and full of some heartbreaking moments. There was one instance of the game totally freezing for around twenty seconds without any previous issues, but other than that the game ran perfectly. It’s great to see Clem again, even if she’s not the same girl as we all fell in love with, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for her, for Javi and for the rest of the group.

The post The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 1: The Ties That Bind Us Part One and Two Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Episode Three follows Bruce after the unveiling of his family (or more specifically his parents) to be criminals, using their money for horrendous deeds and working with the mob for sordid reasons. The Children of Arkham are now out in force, and although they are a murderous band of terrorists, their message is one that seems to be confusing many of the civilians of Gotham. There are plenty of important story points that unfold as the episode progresses and they include some real corkers. It takes a horrendous amount of time for the narrative to gain traction, but when it does it’s full systems go.

I remember when Telltale introduced Oswald Cobblepot early on and really not liking the road they went down with his character, but after New World Order, the decision to make him a slimy businessman makes perfect sense. Vikki Vale’s character is more developed and her meeting with Batman sets everything into motion. Probably the star of New World Order is Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman; there’s always been a connection between her and Bruce, but this time it feels a lot more personal and honest. The two of them are shown in a vulnerable light – two heroes beaten and bruised, both in need of compassion, love and companionship. There is a really nice moment between the two that stands out as one of the best they’ve ever had, in print or on the screen,

In the first hour or so, you’re constantly wishing things would pick up. You spend a bit of time with R & D maestro Lucius Fox, but when it should be interesting to learn about a whole range of Batman’s tech, you can’t help but feel like it’s an opportunity wasted. It seems like Telltale are using plenty of filler moments in episode three instead of moving the story forward with the familiar charm, panic and pageantry we’re used to, and you’ll find yourself hoping the lack of originality and intrigue moves over.

As the story draws to a close, there’s a moment I never saw coming – a moment I guarantee you’ll never expect in a million years. A character you know and will’ve known for years breaks down limitations and takes leadership of the Children of Arkham; Telltale are doing away with tradition, history and common story elements to present a completely fresh take on Batman and his supporting cast of friends and villains. It’s such a shame it took so much of New World Order to find its feet and deliver a better story.

Episode three of Batman is overshadowed by such a lacklustre start, but as soon as the glimmers of a main villain starts to show, things get really good, and after a pretty hectic confrontation, a whole load of shit goes down to set up episode four incredibly well. Hopefully, the traditionally bad penultimate Telltale episode can have its curse broken and provide a fantastic platform for Batman as the series begins to draw to a close.

The post Batman: A Telltale Series – Episode Three: New World Order appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Armikrog is a claymation point-and-click adventure from the creators of Earthworm Jim, a combination which sounds great on paper, and it follows the story of an astronaut called Tommy and his weird dog Beak Beak, who’ve crash landed on a planet, I think, and now have to do something on it? Escape maybe? I’m not really sure, as it’s all just quite forgettable from the off-set. There might be something about Tommy’s home world coming to an end and his brother astronauts dying. I think. Maybe.

As I mentioned, Armikrog does get off to a perfect start, opening with a catchy theme song that gives off strong vibes of 90s Saturday morning cartoons, and I actually thought I was going to be in for a treat. The song sets a fun tone and makes it seem that Armikrog will be a mad, enjoyable ride, but that feeling quickly disappears, even if the music does consistently remain really good and quite unique.

With Armikrog being a throwback to the point and click adventures of old, it’s certainly reminiscent of classics like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango with the absurdity of the puzzles. But what Armikrog does is prove just how well those two and other classics were made, as even if you were never able to solve one of their puzzles, when you finally found out the answer it did (in the majority of cases) at least make a degree of sense. In Armikrog there is no rhyme, reason or logic to any of the puzzles, and if it wasn’t for a guide I’d still be on the very first one. It expects you to jump through hoops and be able to read the developers’ minds, because there are no clues on the screen as to how you get to the places where different puzzles are, let alone be able to actually solve them. Then even when I cheated to find out the answers to the puzzles, they were just so dull and uninspiring that it felt pointless even doing them, because there was very little reward in terms of story for doing so.

I’m all for developers looking into the past and being inspired by classic genres of old to create new things, we all love that nostalgia buzz, but advances in game design and theory really should be fused with the styles and genres of old. The puzzles in Armikrog are just plain bad, and there isn’t even an in-game hint system to help solve them.

One saving grace, along with the great soundtrack, is the wonderful art style that even gives Wallace and Gromit a run for its money. The claymation looks really good in Armikrog, and every character looks cool and different. The cutscenes are also really well done, as they have that nice stop motion look that’s satisfying to watch. The art styles often change too when you enter some specific rooms and tunnels and they help to keep things interesting and fresh. A really bright colour palette and lots of weird and imaginative creatures, like a bug with pincers that is also Abraham Lincoln, do make the world of Armikrog interesting to be in at least, it’s just a shame that the monotonous puzzles let it down.

Armikrog could have been really good, especially with the people behind it, but a complete lack of logic in the puzzles and the little reward for actually completing them made it frustrating to play. If you want to dive back into the past or you’re looking for a new point and click adventure that will get your nostalgia sensors tingling, then you may well get something out of this, but you should probably just go and play one of the classics instead.

The post Armikrog Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Things seem to be moving along at a much faster pace now that the stories are being told within one episode, and this feeling is helped on considerably with Access Denied being another short episode and with no late title sequence. The credits appear immediately with an extended montage of the gang running into and out of the various portals leading to strange worlds. Once we do get control again, our friends enter a new portal and the story begins.

I was disappointed with the last entry, A Portal to Mystery, as I felt that the fan element with the introduction of the YouTube “stars” detracted a little from the quality of the first few episodes. I am pleased to say that Access Denied is a better overall entry than the previous one with a fun storyline and some quite clever little jokes. However, I still feel that the smaller, self-contained stories are exposing the pointlessness of the decision-making process that characterises Telltale’s style. It is hard to feel anything about the choices you make because the story ploughs on regardless of the decisions you make. Despite this, Access Denied is still fun to play.

Our team begins their journey in a barren land, this time set in the Mesa biome, and we are quickly introduced to a mystery in the form of zombies in the daylight. Our friends find a village (again, beautifully detailed with lots of new ideas for buildings to try in your own Minecraft worlds) and it seems the villagers are themselves a form of zombie or automaton with strange redstone circuitry in the back of their heads. It is then down to our band of heroes to solve the mystery of why villagers are acting this way, fix it and then find their way out again to finally get home.

As with A Portal to Mystery, Access Denied has a number of nods to other genres of storytelling, and as mentioned before, some lovely little in-jokes about gaming in general. There is Ivor’s quip about getting out of trouble using “[…] the power of our imagination”, referencing the ‘make your own story’ nature of Minecraft itself; then there is the baddie that borrows heavily from the likes of Portal, as well as a delightful little skit on the forthcoming virtual reality functionality of games like Minecraft. It’s a pleasant little story, made charming by the animation and characters we’ve been with since the start, even if it doesn’t feel all that original.

Access Denied also does a good job of quickly building up the character of the mystery woman our friends find. The short runtime doesn’t allow a lot of room to do this, but there are some really interesting techniques that Telltale use to try to get as much information about her as possible without endless dialogue trees. It is moments like that where the game does stand out and it’s a shame that these additional episodes haven’t been given a bit more time to be more fully fleshed out as there is some talent on display. As it stands, Access Denied, as with those episodes before it, feels a little rushed.

The shorter run time means that there isn’t an awful lot of interactivity to be had — there is some mild problem solving, some crafting, a few fight sequences and thankfully not many conversation trees. The lack of this branching dialogue feels welcome as it allows for a smoother pace, but on the other hand, makes you feel a little short changed in the ‘game’ department.

Access Denied is a better episode than the previous one. The story, although not original, is fun with some strong character moments and a few decent action set pieces, but the length and lack of interactivity overall could make you question the value of these standalone episodes. Once again, I am sure that young fans will delight in what is on offer here but there is no escaping the feeling that Access Denied and previous episodes could have been much better had there been more time allocated to producing them.

The post Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 7: Access Denied Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The main premise in Quadrilateral Cowboy is hacking; you are a hacker who infiltrates and extracts for a handsome fee from whoever pays the most. You undertake various heists armed with a computer deck powered by 256k RAM, typing in commands and debugging various systems to achieve your goal. It looks old, clunky and useless but it’s the most useful tool in your arsenal. There are no enemies wielding machine guns and grenades — your only enemy is your imagination (and the occasional security turret).

There are so many lines of code you can use that it can take some time to try and program the correct ones. There’s a lot of trial and error too; each command can be separated by semi-colons so the possibilities for each line are endless. In one of the first few levels, you need to collect two red briefcases. To do so, you need to turn one of the security cameras off, go grab one of the briefcases and return the way you came. The only problem though is you can’t take your deck with you so you have to program a ‘wait’ between the two commands to deactivate the camera, grab the briefcase and deactivate the camera for a second time so you can get out.

This is an early mission, and they only get harder the further you progress. There’s a lot to learn but Quadrilateral Cowboy gives you plenty of support through the help of a detailed manual and computer help menus. You’ll end up hacking grates, alarms, lasers and more, meaning you need to really think about what you’re typing in but these guides make all the difference. As the game progresses, you’re introduced to new mechanics, such as a small robot you can manually control to get into various nooks and crannies and a rifle in a suitcase. They help to mix things up a bit and are nice additions to the standard command prompts you get accustomed to.

One of the more irritating things about Quadrilateral Cowboy is remembering to pick the deck up after using it (which is easier said than done). Whenever you need to use the deck, you’re required to lay it down, input the code and pick it up afterwards; if you leave it behind and a door or a grate shuts behind you, there is a chance you can’t go back to it, requiring a return to the beginning of the heist. There are other variables that make playthroughs annoying too; when you only have 3 seconds to turn something off, this can become testing, to say the least; you have to be fast and efficient just as much as you do a good hacker.

It may not be the most polished or crisp game you’ve seen, but it has a certain charm to its imperfections. The blocky and basic palette of the busy streets and tall buildings work, as do the cubic designs of you and your hacker buddies. The story isn’t really there, but there is exposition in the strangest of places; little stories or narrative segments that bring the fantastic work Brendan Chung has done come to life. The strange choice of music is great as well, helping to relax you after a tough heist job – ‘O Holy Night’ in French is something I never knew I wanted.

Quadrilateral Cowboy isn’t a big game in length, but it is full of new and interesting concepts that’ll have you playing for some time. Manoeuvring your character after using the deck can prove frustrating and even towards the end, you’ll still get caught out with this. There were also a few lagging issues, but nothing too affecting of my play through. All in all, Quadrilateral Cowboy is a challenging and smart puzzle game like nothing you’ll have seen before.

The post Quadrilateral Cowboy Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

It’s something I find quite annoying as at 19, I should be in the prime of my game playing ability. This is the time of my life in which my reactions should be the quickest they’ll ever be, my awareness should be at its most sensitive and my ability to kill fools and score goals should be at its peak. I should be at my apex. The best I will ever be. In fact, I probably am and that is a right scary thought. Despite this, I’m shite at games and Enter the Gungeon is no different.

I am very bad at this game. So bad that this review is coming a couple of days after the deadline. So bad that I’ve actually only managed to get past the first area twice. But that doesn’t mean I’m not having a great time. If anything, its difficult is actually what’s driving me on–willing me to continue to fight and improve. 

Enter the Gungeon isn’t anything particularly new or groundbreaking; it’s another entry into the lovely pixel art, top-down, twin-stick, rogue-like dungeon shooter genre that has been ever growing in recent years, but everything it does it does really, really well. It has everything you could possible want from a game like this: a deluge of different items, loads of colourful enemies that vary in appearance and how they try to kill you, precise and smooth movement and shooting, different classes to toy with and a countless variety of weapons.

The sheer amount of wacky and different guns that Enter the Gungeon offers is certainly one of its top selling points. Every time a new weapon is found or bought it’s a real excitement to see how much damage it deals, but that’s not what kept me playing despite being awful. No, what kept me playing was the excitement of, er, playing. When you enter one of the randomly generated rooms, you’re entering it for the first time with no idea what lies upon the other side. It’s tense. So when you walk through the darkness and into the room brimming with baddies, which all turn in your direction and open fire, it’s an adrenaline rush. Then you have to kill them all; running around into cover, rolling through bullets and getting up a table to use as cover just in time to avoid death. It’s thrilling. Not to mention blasting them all to bits.

Enter The Gungeon is has a similar set up to games like Spelunky: you enter then have to fight your way through until you find the exit to reach the next level. However, Enter the Gungeon differs in the sense that you have to kill a boss before you can descend further into the catacomb. This is where I found my troubles. Getting to the boss fight was never that difficult, it was just killing it. It took ages and God knows how many attempts to beat one, but the relief and joy when I finally managed to was tangible. I could see the progress that I had made, and had made all on my own through sheer determination. When the big seagull with a Gatling gun (known as Gatling Gull) finally fell, I let out a cheer and genuinely punched the air. It made me understand why people like Souls games.

What makes it testing is that when you die, you’re dead. Any items or guns you acquired are stripped away and you’re kicked straight back to the beginning. You’ll have to return to the very first area and fight your way back through to get to where you were. That’s why I don’t think Enter the Gungeon is hard per se, but harsh. It punishes you, especially me, for stupid mistakes and is completely unforgiving. You learn the hard way, and learn quickly too. It soon becomes apparent when it’s best to use your gun with infinite ammo, when to use better ammo-capped weapons, how many hits each enemy takes to go down, how to deal with different enemies and so on.

A lot of potential success can be decided by chance, however. Even though, as I said, the whole game is a learning curve, it does feel like your ability to progress and beat that boss does come down to how kind the randomly generated level is. Did you get a powerful weapon? Where you able to replenish all your health? Where the rooms easy? Did the store have good stock? All of these questions can significantly change the outcome of your run.

A big part of what makes it so easy to learn is that restarts are almost instant. When you die and the pretty book comes up to tell you how you did, pressing cross will instantly throw you back into the action. Even pressing the triangle button as the game loads lets you skip the menu screen and jump straight in. It’s something that’s understated but being able to immediately restart to try and rectify your mistakes and put your lessons into practise is a vital aspect of games like this.

There are some negative aspects, however. Maybe I’m just being a wuss about it but I do think the difficulty curve from the first dungeon and the first boss fight is very steep, and it could put a certain number of players off ever beating it. In the different rooms there tends to be loads of barrels, books and others thing you can destroy and open, but doing so is pointless as they never yield anything at all, which is a bit disappointing when random item drops could be so beneficial. One final thing, when you kill a boss it doesn’t stay dead: you could find your self facing it again at some point, which I found kind of undermined my previous celebrations.

Despite these minor complaints, Enter the Gungeon is a whole lot of fun, even for someone who often screamed “No!” at the screen upon another death. Even though it doesn’t offer anything brand new, everything is executed brilliantly well. It’s slick, smooth and bombastic to play with a deluge of weapons and randomly generated weapons to keep things interesting, and the feeling of success when a boss is finally brought down is wonderful.

The post Enter the Gungeon Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The first episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne did a great job of painting the bigger picture in regards to who Michonne really is, and it also managed to introduce new characters and settings we hadn’t seen before. Along with newcomers Randall, Norma and Sam, we get to see deeper into the psyche of the titular protagonist as she struggles to cope with the loss of her daughters, Elodie and Colette. If you thought you’d seen Michonne at her worst in Episode One, there are a few times in Give No Shelter where her sanity slips even further into the darkness and you’ll start to see a completely new side to her.

After the grisly events at the end of Episode One, Michonne, Sam and Pete find solace in the makeshift home of Sam’s father, but when everything (and I literally mean everything) goes to shit, Michonne has to make some important decisions that will affect the constantly diminishing group of survivors. There didn’t seem to be any huge decisions in Episode One where the repercussions were felt in any way, but there are some monumental decisions to make in Give No Shelter, and by the end you’ll be left wondering if you made the right choices.

The characters in Episode Two are given more of a presence, with Sam playing a much more important role than before. We learn a lot more about her and her family this time around and it helps to show why Sam is as confident and strong as she is. Even after watching her brother die at the end of Episode One, she realises there is still something to fight for in the messed up world of a zombie-infested America.

Not all the characters in Give No Shelter are as endearing as Sam, mind you. If you weren’t a fan of Randall before, I can guarantee you won’t be by the end of Episode Two. Where villains like Negan and the Governor both had a sense of control and respect, Randall doesn’t care about what he does or what he says to anyone. He’s a vile, despicable human being and you’ll hate him so much, which is a good thing really; it would be disappointing if he pulled a box of cookies out of his backpack and starting singing Katy Perry songs, wouldn’t it?

As gripping as the story is, you don’t really feel any closer to knowing where it’s heading. Penultimate episodes of any show or game tend to give some sort of focus for the finale, but you get the feeling there’s a chance the next episode will be rushed. It feels like a lot has to happen before Michonne joins Rick and the gang.

The story in Give No Shelter is nothing short of shocking or intense. In true The Walking Dead fashion, you can’t rest or relax at any point and thinking things can only get better is naïve. There is a moment towards the end that stunned me so much I failed to see the command prompt that popped up and I took a bullet to the head as a result. Moments like this make up most of Give No Shelter, especially as it reaches the closing moments. Zack Keller and Andrew Hansom have written a thrilling piece of drama and its director, Sean Manning, makes all the pieces fit together wonderfully.

Trying to make three episodes fit well within the comic book’s canon was always going to be a challenge, and if the final act pulls it off, The Walking Dead: Michonne should be as highly regarded as the two seasons preceding it. It’s such a shame that many of the issues letting down The Walking Dead return once more, feeling more prominent in this episode; lagging in some scenes was more frequent, and some of the dialogue stopped momentarily causing some frustration. Minus these problems, Give No Shelter is another great entry into a respectable and beloved series and you’d be smart to pick it up and continue the story of one of the best characters in the series.

The post The Walking Dead: Michonne – Episode Two: Give No Shelter Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Upon loading up the episode, I was surprised to see that a further three episodes had been planned for release after the finale, with presumably a new season pass for the remaining content on the way too. It seems that episode five is more of a new beginning than a conclusion to Jesse and his/her friends’ story. This may come as a bit of an annoyance to some people who will find that they will need to purchase and download more content should they wish to see the series to its actual conclusion. Thankfully though, Telltale seem to be aware of this and Order Up stands up well as a contained story all of its own.

Order Up picks up after the long break from the previous episode with our group of friends firmly rooted in their latest roles as the new Order of the Stone. It’s great to see that their confidence and acceptance into the wider community that they live in has been finally realised, having been built up as a key theme throughout previous episodes. To see the confidence in the team’s abilities and how the crowds in their home town treated them was a wonderful thing.

With the conclusion of the Wither Storm story arc in episode four, Order Up has a lot to do: it has to establish a new story arc for future episodes, as well as maintain a reasonably well contained plot. As such, we start with Jesse and friends already out on an adventure, visiting a jungle temple with unknown treasures inside. It’s clear that Telltale wanted to delineate this episode from the previous ones, with the title sequence appearing immediately rather than shortly after the completion of the first chapter––making it feel like something new was beginning.

Order Up hasn’t entirely abandoned the story threads from the earlier episodes with a few familiar faces popping up to provide links with what has happened before, including the main antagonist who provides a useful link to demonstrate how far our group has come from the earlier days.

While the writing in Order Up is the funniest it has been with some genuine laugh out loud moments, it is still nowhere near the heights reached with Tales from the Borderlands, but it is a significant improvement on previous episodes. Furthermore, our team of adventurers has been slimmed down a bit with Jesse’s team reduced to four again; dropping two familiar faces in favour of two surprising additions. The reduction in the roster of characters means that a little more time has been given to fleshing out the team members we aren’t too familiar with. One particular character may have been exaggerated a little, but I think younger fans will find his antics amusing.

Once again, the environments have been beautifully done with a fantastic city that got the creative building juices flowing again for my own Minecraft projects. It’s because of this that it’s a real shame that some of the technical issues that plagued earlier and indeed most Telltale Games’ products are still prevalent. The engine is still sluggish, and there are many occasions where the animation is behind the vocals and a couple of times the quicktime event prompts failed to load up in time. I even died during one particular point for a completely unknown reason which was frustrating, but this is indicative of Telltale in that I expect this sort of technical nonsense.

The story itself works as a standalone with a satisfying conclusion, and only at the very end does Order Up create any real desire for people to want to find out where Jesse and his/her team will be heading next. For some people, Order Up may well be all they need to finalise their experience with Minecraft: Story Mode, but for others the tease of where they might end up will be enough to continue their investment for three more episodes. It isn’t as strong an episode as the conclusion to the Wither Storm story was, but Order Up does a very good job of creating a fun and entertaining story as well as laying the groundwork for future adventures.

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Naturally enough, the subjects of this GoT spin-off are all in dire situations. Toward the end of The Sword in the Darkness, in a fit of rage, Gared had disposed of his father’s murderer atop the wall, Mira was trying to help her family from King’s Landing, Rodrik learned of a Forrester traitor and the exiled Asher had ended up in front of Daeneyrs Targaryen, mother of dragons. The most surprising takeaway this time round is that arguably the most interesting and dullest characters’ arcs of Game of Thrones so far stumble and flourish respectively.

After underdog Gared Tuttle had put an end to Britt’s life, it seemed like his tale of life at The Wall would continue to grip, but it sadly takes a dive. With Cotter and Finn by his side, the group go searching for the North Grove his uncle Duncan had told him about, and largely end up spinning their wheels. The former squire isn’t a major focal point in this episode and his inclusions feel insignificant — a stark contrast to what I’ve felt up to this point in the series.

Asher, however, was the black sheep of both the family and of every episode so far. Trying to gather an army of men to take on House Whitehill, Asher’s appearances have been groan-inducing thus far, but it’s actually a secondary character with Asher that steps to the forefront in Sons of Winter, and they make these sections far more intriguing. Fellow mercenary Beshka produces a revelatory tidbit on her past and while it’s questionable as to why Asher wouldn’t already know this, for us it gives a lot more weight to the task set to them by Daeneyrs.

Speaking of Khalessi and celebrity involvement, a common theme throughout has been that most male actors from the TV show have been lacklustre, while females have been real standouts. Emilia Clarke (Daeneyrs) doesn’t quite match up to those that have come before her, but it must be said that she is a vast improvement on the vocal stylings of Kit Harrington as Jon Snow.

Lady Margaery’s housemaiden, Mira, just so happens to be the most compelling of all the playable characters as it can be seen that King’s Landing is having an effect on the young woman. The ability to manipulate is a powerful one in the area of The Iron Throne and it’s clear that the once innocent Forrester realises that she needs to use everything at her disposal to help her family that are a great distance away. One particular sequence happens at King Tommen’s coronation, as Mira must eavesdrop on multiple conversations to obtain some very delicate information. Game of Thrones is pretty light on gameplay, so giving the power back to the one with the controller in their hands is a welcome one, and it works very well.

Rodrik’s stuggles at Ironrath reach their height as Gryff has appointed himself King of the proverbial castle and rules with an iron fist, expecting the head of House Forrester to give in to his every command. Similar to Mira’s acceptance of how things work in King’s Landing, Rodrik understands that to make an Ironrath omelette, you have to break a few Whitehill eggs. He has been pushed dangerously close to breaking point and there are a number of instances here where we see the now-crippled Lord say enough is enough.

Thankfully, Sons of Winter begins the process of getting things back on track. While Gared’s story is lacking here, there’s a sense of progression with the other three protagonists. And although the tension isn’t at the levels seen in episodes one or two, the fantastic closing moments can lead one to believe that Game of Thrones’ culmination could be an explosive one.

The post Game of Thrones: Episode Four – Sons of Winter Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Sym has pretensions of becoming something much more than it actually is.

It’s a dark, brooding, horror-tinged platformer with plenty of thematic subtext, and is a solid effort by a developer that clearly has aspirations of tackling a difficult subject matter through the medium of games.

That subject matter is social anxiety – and the various psychological fallout associated with the condition – and though there are moments in which you see the platforming gameplay and this theme begin to connect into a cohesive whole, Sym never manages to fully entwine the two in a satisfactory manner.

Couple that with an absence of the general kind of polish you find in the better indie platform games out there, and you’re left with an admirable (if flawed) examination of the human condition, that’s tacked on to a forgettable platformer, with some social sharing elements.

Sym’s art is low rent, perhaps deliberately so. The game opens with a cutscene that looks like its components were knocked together in a pirated version of Photoshop Elements, but its composition, conversely, is really quite striking and shows definite talent from the artist involved. The world of Sym is black and white… perhaps the black ink in the white pages of an angsty teenage sketchbook? There’s a frustration to the aesthetic, a deep desire to express loneliness and isolation, albeit without the tools to satisfactorily do so.

During play this sketchbook theory gains more weight. Our protagonist, Josh, is a teenage boy traversing sketchy worlds of his own creation, which he’s made to desperately try and avoid dealing with the everyday terror that is social anxiety. His movement animation splatters and splutters into life as you press an arrow key, and ceases the moment you lift your finger from it, running and jumping stiffly from platform to platform. It’s a binary experience: you are running or you are not running, and there’s little finesse to be found in this herky-jerky movement.

But in some ways that’s fine, because the 44 levels that comprise the single player story lack analogue nuance too, being as they are constructed out of block assets placed together by the developer, much like LEGO, to create something more than the sum of its parts.

You drop from a portal onto the stage, and must then get to a door to exit. Much like similar puzzle platformer Shift, you can flip between the black and white worlds, sinking through the floor and back up again to approach a stage from a fresh perspective. It’s an effective and often mind-bogglingly complex gameplay mechanic, especially in later stages where things get really tricky and time is of the essence. For example, walls might suddenly become chasms in the floor, or insurmountable obstacles might be the set of stairs to the exit you’re looking for.

Depending on which “world” you’re in, you’ll face different foes. Large insect-like creatures wander about stages to gobble you up, sharp blades will kill you upon contact, and even the plant life thinks you’re an easy meal. The former two adversaries are put to good use, with the creatures especially providing an unpredictable element. But the snapping plants feel like they’re only included to be cruel to the player. There were multiple times where I’d get to the end of a stage only to be chomped by a plant right by the door, and then I’d have to restart the whole level again. Maybe that’s a clever metaphor for the kind of agoraphobia that can develop from social anxiety, but in terms of gameplay it’s frustrating when they’re used like this, especially considering the high challenge most levels pose.

But this difficulty isn’t from the platforming itself. As noted, there isn’t a smoothness to the world navigation that would allow for a Super Meat Boy level of gameplay challenge. Instead it’s the fact that each area you’re plonked into is a little puzzle to unravel through experimentation, logic, and blind luck.

Special blocks will begin inverting their colour when triggered by a shift of polarity or by stepping on a switch, and knowing how the world will react to your movements becomes key to success. Each stage is quick to get through if you know what you’re doing, but most will take a while to figure out. Admittedly it would take less time if you could pan around each level and survey what lay ahead, but the sense of claustrophobia and anxiousness concerning the next leap you’re about to make wouldn’t be quite so palpable, I suppose.

But this is a rare example of where the theme marries up with the gameplay. For the most part the social anxiety element is only explored through vague or cryptic sentences written on the walls of each stage. It’s an almost superficial treatment of the subject, one where you see eyes watching you; but never feel as if you’re being scrutinized, where the soundtrack promises seclusion and chaos; but never stops droning on and loops the same tunes for hours on end. Sym is a game that tells you it’s about a terrible phobia, but doesn’t quite make good on that promise.

Actually there is another exception, and I think it might be the closest the game gets to brilliance. Sym comes with a level editor so you can construct your own stages, upload them to a public server, and have strangers play your levels. It has the potential to be a kind of group therapy, a safe space to make worlds for each other, instead of for ourselves, connecting with others rather than remaining solitary.

Making a level is wonderfully easy, with just a few clicks of the mouse allowing for pretty much anyone of any skill level to make their own world in minutes. But during its launch window Sym either doesn’t have a lot of stages available, or finding the good ones isn’t easy. The saving and uploading process is also a bit more fiddly than it needs to be.

So Sym might not be perfect then, but it’s a totally okay video game, and the fact that it’s ambitious gets it some brownie points too. This isn’t the new Braid, it’s not the next Limbo, but if you like puzzle platformers, and you’re prepared to be a little forgiving, then it might just tide you over until the next must-have atmospheric adventure is upon us.

The post Sym Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Three new careers are introduced in Get to Work: Doctor, Scientist, and Detective. Each have their own individual and expansive workplace to explore, introducing a wholly interactive experience that surpasses that of professions in Ambitions. Job performance is measured by completing career-related tasks such as delivering medication or visiting crime scenes. The higher the performance, the more money your Sim will take home, and the more experience they will gain towards a promotion.

The hospital is the home of the Doctor career where your Sims can work their way up the employment ladder: taking them from an orderly that makes beds and delivers food to a nurse, then onto a surgeon. The more promotions your Sims get, the more objects they can interact with around the hospital, from only being able to look after patients and carry out simple tests at the beginning of the career, to saving lives, examining symptoms, and delivering babies the further you climb, providing a true sense of achievement and excitement as you work towards your next promotion.

Scientists work from the Science Lab, a huge warehouse brimming with high-tech machinery of all sorts. The aim of the Science career is to achieve “breakthroughs” which allow you to build new inventions (always zanier than the last) as well as synthesize serums and genetically-modified seeds to grow strange new plants. By analyzing flora, studying slides under the microscope, tampering with chemicals, and discussing theories with your co-workers, Science Sims will gradually have more and more breakthroughs, allowing them to progress in the career faster.

Home of the detective career is the police station, complete with holding cells, interrogation rooms, crime scene investigation labs, and case rooms. As an officer of the law, your Sim will be given a new case every day to work through. From there, your Sim will deduct clues about the suspect which will be stored in their Detective’s notebook for later reference. Your Sim will be able to visit the crime scene to collect evidence, take photos, and get witness statements to help further identify the suspect. Once evidence has been analyzed and statements logged, your Sim can put out an All-Points Bulletin (APB) which transports them to a random lot where the suspect is said to have been spotted. Using the clues stored in their notepad, you must successfully identify the suspect and arrest them. Once in custody, your Sim is able to process the criminal: taking mugshots, fingerprints and comically interrogating them to get a confession. When it’s all out in the open, they’re locked behind bars and the streets are a little bit safer thanks to your help.

The new careers in Get to Work feel well thought out and provide plenty for you to explore, despite some overlap between certain aspects of the Doctor and Scientist paths. The vast array of objects introduced allow for a realistic feel within the workplace, as well as the possibility to build your own workplace if you so desire since the majority of these items are available in Buy/Build mode.

Also new is the ability to purchase and open your own retail store. The possibilities are endless, being able to sell virtually anything you want: from books; to furniture; to your own culinary creations. There is a limited number of pre-built retail lots to purchase (a measly four), but the ability to convert any residential lot into a retail lot is a smashing new feature which allows for creativity when designing your own business. However, despite it sounding like a stellar idea on paper, the retail system seems stripped back and appears to struggle when compared to previous incarnations, such as nine-year-old expansion Open for Business. There are no major innovations to sell products to customers: they just appear to wander around and depending on how happy they are and your level of interaction with them, will buy something. You are able to discuss their price range, enthuse about your store and the like, but it feels like it’s not doing much to influence their decision. A lot of them just seem to congregate around a single item (usually the least expensive, the cheapskates) and talk. Oh, and don’t expect any help from your “faithful” employees either, as no matter what job you assign them to, their slow reaction usually result in angry customers leaving in a cloud of dust. Queuing at the cash register is clearly so 2006, because employees will now use a tablet to let customers pay for goods which feels disjointed as they wander all over the shop trying to find paying customers.

With retail, there is also no real “leveling up” as such. Your business won’t grow and become popular like it did in previous games, instead the only thing that is remotely like expansion is the ability to purchase perks to get more employees, restock faster, and so on. There is no real motivation to continue with retail stores and it becomes tiring after a while. If you can get the right business going, it can be a lot of fun, but despite this, it still feels a bit hollow and hit or miss – paling in comparison to the system which made Open for Business so utterly compelling to play.

Although nine years old, Open for Business still provides the most entertaining retail store simulation in the series and if that’s what you’ve come to Get to Work for, don’t expect to be blown away. Replayability may be a concern in the future when all careers have been played through and have tired themselves out, but despite being let down by the retail mechanics of the game, the interactive careers are a welcome new addition to the series – introducing workplaces for the first time, a feature which has been in high demand for years. Get to Work does what it says on the tin by getting your Sims actively working, and it feels refreshing after the disappointing careers which were in the base game. The workplaces are well designed, entertaining to play around with and add a new dimension to The Sims which will provide hours of colourful gameplay to series fans and perhaps change opinions on The Sims 4 as a whole.

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Telltale’s decision to make their Game of Thrones adaptation a six-parter rather than the regular five episodes was, at first, an interesting one. It seemed like they didn’t want to become restricted to the format that they had popularised with the recent resurgence in episodic gaming. What The Sword in the Darkness shows us is that more isn’t always best when it comes to the team behind Tyrion’s digitised mug. This is the epitome of a transition episode. Now, let’s transition to the next paragraph, shall we?

At the end of episode two, the scattered Forresters are in turmoil: Mira was with Ser Damien in the gardens of King’s Landing in the dead of night and, depending on your choice, potentially killed him. Malcolm has reached Asher, but they soon find themselves on the run from the Lost Legion. House Forrester, along with an injured Rodrik, are mourning the death of Ethan and Gregor. Meanwhile, Gared Tuttle, who left for The Wall in episode one, is attempting to become a ranger in the Night’s Watch.

When relying on narrative, pacing is key, and aside from a few minor hiccups, Game of Thrones was shaping up nicely. Episode three has seen this series take one step forwards and two back. Over the course of the playthrough, things occur, sure, but not much happens.

The very beginning of The Sword in the Darkness sees Asher come face to face with a dragon – the first time we’ve seen one of these flying beasts. Yet it feels like a non-event until the very last scene of the episode. The Forrester outcast’s sections are dull and moving at an alarmingly slow pace. Though his task is arguably the most important of all the Forresters (obtain an army of men for a showdown with House Whitehill) his thread is the one that has been merely spinning its wheels. After episode two, I was intrigued to see more of Asher, as his inclusion was limited, but after only a short stint as the bad boy Forrester in this chapter again, it’s been proven that he’s the most redundant primary with the most paramount job of all.

The return of Rodrik in The Lost Lords was a genuine surprise, and his effort to rebuild a fallen Ironrath was revealed to be the crux of the whole series. Episode three shows more of Rodrik’s struggles with House Whitehill and the mental battle he has, to either keep the peace by bowing to the rival house, or lash out and let his anger fly out in the form of his fists. There is minor progression here and a shocking, yet predictable, revelation toward the tail-end of the Lord’s story. Mira’s conclusion in episode two had my imagination running wild as there were many possibilities for the Lady Margaery’s house-maiden, but it’s all much ado about nothing until, again, the episode’s close. There is some satisfaction to be had as Cersei makes a brief appearance, and in a fleeting moment Lena Headey shows her class once again – and Natalie Dormer as Lady Margaery is an absolute joy. Her ability to portray a calculated woman with a clear goal is as clear here as it is in the TV show.

The one area where there is more than a miniscule bit of development is with unlikely hero, Gared. In The Lost Lords, The depiction of The Wall was as good as you could imagine. A harsh environment, with even harsher individuals within The Night’s Watch. Gared’s scenes are by far the most interesting as it appears he holds the key to potentially righting the wrongs of the Whitehills. Also, while there is sufficient build up to Gared’s eventual duty to the Forresters, he also comes face-to-face with an issue that needs to be dealt with. The incredibly lacklustre Jon Snow from episode two features more this time around and is most certainly improved, which is needed to reinforce Gared as a character due to the amount of interactions they have. However, he does retain the award of least interested celeb, going by his performance.

If you’re reading this, I’d hazard a guess that you’ve played the other two episodes in the series and know how jarring the visuals are. TellTale are remaining true to their artistic direction, regardless of how it might look. Character models are adequate with laughably large mannerisms, while the backdrops retain their paint-like aesthetic. It’s not going to change and it’ll be terrible up until the conclusion of episode six, no doubt. Technically speaking, I didn’t experience any hiccups, except for one moment at the very beginning where a piece of dialogue began to repeat itself. Other than that, I had no issues.

Iron From Ice and The Lost Lords were compelling chapters in the narrative of this Game of Thrones thread. They built suspense for future events, whilst also providing some resolution to little subplots running in tandem with the overall story of House Forrester’s issues with House Whitehill. The celebrity cameos stood out as top tier moments and the foundation was being laid down for what could be a true great in Telltale’s catalogue. However, they’ve hit a creative roadblock. Certain characters are evolving much quicker than others, and for this to have as much punch as the TV show it’s based upon, it needs a stellar follow up to this average showing.

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Confession: I love The Sims – have done ever since they burst onto the scene as nothing but unrealistic polygons of humanity back in 2000. I’m that guy who stayed up until 4am every school night making sure my Sims were getting promoted, walking their dogs, having kids… and I blissfully forked out £25 every time a new expansion pack was released.

Having previously played the PC version of The Sims 4, I wiped my mind of all prior impressions to take a fresh look at the Mac incarnation. After playing for around fifteen hours, I wish I could take some of that precious time back and do something more useful with it: like sleeping, or playing The Sims 3.

My hope for The Sims 4 was that it would take me back to my fifteen-year-old Sims-obsessed self with a sense of nostalgia, while improving on the mechanics of a series that I have followed and loved for so long. This hope has been broken into a million pieces. Which not to say The Sims 4 fails on every level; it just appears to be seeking a newer and wider audience.

The Sims 4 is tailored to new players, not long-standing fans of the series. Gone are the days of an open-world map where Sims could travel freely from their home into town centres, being instead replaced with a Sims 2 like style of travel. Long loading screens make a not-so-welcome comeback – a step backwards instead of further developing the open-world aspect that made The Sims 3 feel so modern and powerful. Players of previous titles in the series will almost instantly pick up on the more sterile and somewhat muted atmosphere, especially when building and decorating. The much-loved design features of the Sims 3, which allowed you to customise furniture any way you wanted, have been stripped away and we’re left with only a few choices of colour schemes hand-picked by EA, not our own imaginations. Gone are the houndstooth toilets, tartan curtains and leopard print bed-sheets. You’re stuck with 50 shades of greyish-blue and you better like it.

Players of previous titles will also notice a lack of general content and selection. Perhaps it’s just the absence of numerous expansion packs that has the game feeling a bit empty. Even in the first days of The Sims 3, it felt a lot more complete and brimming with content. Game mechanics which gave the feel of a real-life simulator like weather, seasons (both previously introduced in expansions) and the toddler life stage have also been omitted, giving players the unnatural age transition from babies in cribs to walking, talking, tantrum-throwing children in the blink of an eye. Even family trees have been removed. Forgot who fathered your tribe of Sims, eight generations ago? Better log onto GenesReunited to track your ancestors, because The Sims 4 certainly won’t do it for you.

Weather became a key part of previous games and many players hoped to see these features introduced at a base game level. Although no-one necessarily likes rain, it eventually gets boring living in a neighbourhood of eternal sunshine (sorry Californians). Also, I feel like I’m beating a dead horse when discussing toddlers, but the life stage added a dimension of realism and was a valuable bonding period between parents and child Sims. Now my children grow up hating me ten years earlier than they usually would when I ground them for sneaking out after their curfew.

Also, the number of careers is dramatically lower than you’d hope. Core career paths such as the medical and law enforcement professions have been stripped away in favour of zanier choices like Tech Guru and Secret Agent. Sims must perform a “daily task” related to their chosen career, go to work in a “preferred mood” (inspired for writers, focused for scientists) as well as garnering relevant skills all to boost their job performance. Yikes, and you thought your life was bad.

Wants and lifetime wishes have been replaced with Whims and aspiration levels. The “Whims” that your Sims can get (one being mood-related, the other two just general) are uninspiring and there doesn’t seem to be any real motive behind fulfilling them considering how terribly mediocre all the aspiration rewards are. A new feature about aspirations is that they can be changed at any time, so your Sim could have the lifetime wish to be an artist one day but dream about being a green-fingered goddess the next. The majority of these aspirations are easy enough to complete but aren’t fulfilling, leaving the entire system feeling like a lazy last-minute addition.

However, despite the obvious omissions, there have been a few improvements to one of the game’s most important mechanics. Build Mode has come a long way (despite no design mode) with draggable walls and a simple room repositioning tool allowing you to build your dream house with a little less stress. The inclusion of a grid that allows objects to be placed virtually anywhere removes the OCD-inducing error of previous games where sofas, televisions and plethora of other furnishings had to be misaligned due to the restrictive floor grid. Alongside these improvements, an effective (if not slightly buggy) multi-tasking mechanic has finally been implemented so that your Sim can spend an hour on the pan and read a book at the same time. Groundbreaking.

Replacing the moodlet system of The Sims 3 are “emotions”, states of mood based on your Sims traits, certain tasks they do and situations they get themselves involved in. It sounds like an interesting idea on paper, and some of the emotions are certainly entertaining to play around with with varying amounts of success. Being inspired leads to better results and faster skill-building in areas such as writing, cooking, and music. Being energised gets your Sims pumped for exercise, and being Flirty helps your Sim make a connection with that special someone. It was difficult at first to stabilise my Sims’ mood as well as getting them into a preferable mood state to help them in their career. Eventually, it clicked that taking “thoughtful showers” gets them inspired, and making them view certain types of art (some of which emit an aura that boost a certain type of mood) can get them in the mood you’re looking for all day long. It all felt a bit too easily conquerable and becomes almost routine, feeling generally underwhelming despite it being labelled as a major innovation in the franchise.

Create-a-Sim (although a bit disjointed in terms of navigation) looks great and is more powerful than ever, with the ability to customise your Sims’ every detail by simply clicking and dragging. The level of customisation here is one of the strongest points of the game, and makes it possible to build anyone that your imagination comes up with. However, it seems that The Sims 4 doesn’t strive for realism as it has done in previous titles. The worlds and characters have become a lot more smoothed and sanded down, but it still gives the impression of a beautifully designed game that runs with its own style.

Elsewhere, the visuals are fluid and the outdoor areas are beautifully designed, although performance on Mac is slightly jittery despite running it on the most recent Macbook Pro, perhaps being made to perform better on an iMac.

The Sims 4 is going to feel like a shell of previous titles to recurring fans, but to new players of the series, it’s a great place to kick off your Sims adventure. The lack of content, the muted design schemes and the omission of several key features that made the series so monumentally successful in the past detract from this instalment’s overall impact. However, players who have never approached the series before will enjoy the simple UI, user-friendly build mode and diverse Create-A-Sim as tools to help them create unique Sims and sleek sprawling abodes. Perhaps with a few more game packs and expansions, it will feel a bit more substantial, but for a base game, I can’t help but feel like it has missed the mark and left fans out in the cold with lacklustre innovations, uninspiring gameplay and omissions at every turn.

The post The Sims 4 Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

It is no surprise therefore that a sequel was put together. After the success of the first title, we had already been treated to The Critter Chronicles – a seemingly fast-tracked prequel following the exploits of the strange pink, fluffy sidekick of Nate the adventurer – but that spin-off didn’t reach quite the same heights as its predecessor. The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is a proper follow-up, however, promising over twenty-five hours of playtime, more locations to explore than ever before and a return of the multi-character gameplay that allows players to hot-switch between the four heroes to approach puzzles in the order and method that they wish.

We are thrown immediately into the action, playing the part of reluctant hero Nate as he falls perilously through the air, with nothing but the impending arrival of the ground to look forward to. His is a simple introductory sequence and after a few brief clicks and a short tutorial, we are into the story proper. Things pick up pretty soon after the events of the first title – with the evil goblins defeated – but our group of four heroes (Ivo, Wilbur, Nate and Critter) has drifted apart. Playing as elf Ivo to begin with, we learn that a strange epidemic is spreading through the world of Man. She must escape the confines of her Elven home not only to provide aid to those in trouble, but also to avoid her mother and an unwanted arranged marriage. Sadly, there is very little in the way of re-cap from the previous game, so newcomers to the series will likely find themselves a little lost to begin with.

Its real strength isn’t its fantasy-by-numbers plot, but the interplay between our heroes and the little nods to different adventure franchises that are scattered throughout. The heroes all bicker between one another, and break the fourth wall on numerous occasions, and the dialogue is actually very snappy and well-written. The writers are aware of the formulaic nature of the fantasy adventure, and play on the many genre tropes as they occur. Every film, book or video game that has the faintest whiff of fantasy is cannon fodder here, and one such early example is a rack of swords taken as war trophies, which consists of He-Man’s Sword of Eternia, Cloud’s oversize blade from Final Fantasy 7 and a typically pixelated Minecraft sword. Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and more get similar treatment as you progress through the story. Some references may go over your head or not quite hit the mark, but they keep coming so thick and fast that there are more hits than misses. As previously stated – for a localized script, KING Art have done an impressive job.

The gameplay is kept pretty simple, with intuitive context-sensitive cursors and a spacebar hotspot locator, making navigating and interacting with the environment an easy affair. The puzzle design is strong however, and whilst the puzzles themselves aren’t simple, they are well thought out so that they at least contain a modicum of logic. There is no in-play hint system, but the puzzles on offer aren’t the obtuse, bang your head against a wall horrors that plague lesser point and click titles. Even if you do become stuck, the fact that you can choose to switch between your different heroes at times throughout means that you can always choose to tackle a different obstacle instead, or try to face the same one from a different perspective. Sadly there is no branching storyline or alternate route to take, but the multi-character gameplay at least gives the impression of freedom and choice.

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 has had a healthy visual upgrade over the last two games, with character models most noticeably being far more detailed and expressive than before. Strangely, both Ivo and Nate seem to have changed very dramatically visually, which results in a bit of a disconnect from their characters but is definitely an improvement. Backgrounds remain lush and heavily detailed, creating fantastic and believable worlds for the characters to inhabit. It should also be said that the voice acting throughout is spot-on, and the delivery from the actors certainly adds to the impact of the comedy. The musical score is suitably bombastic and dramatic for a fantasy epic – even though The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 has its tongue firmly in its cheek, even at the most serious moments in its story.

Games that profess to be funny rarely actually are, but KING Art seem to have found a successful formula in poking fun at the influences they also so obviously admire. The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is longer, prettier and has better pacing than previous titles in the series. Those who have already become enamoured with the band of mis-matched heroes will relish the chance to spend more time with them, and players who are new to the series will find a much more polished title that will draw them in with lavish visuals and witty dialogue. It may not present anything new to the genre, but it is an accomplished and immersive experience that all point and click fans should ensure they play.

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As the credits began to roll on Iron From Ice, my mouth was agape as Ramsay Snow drove a knife through Lord Ethan’s neck. With Ethan Forrester being one of the playable characters, regular video game logic would tell you that he’s invincible, but that moment showed that Telltale Games would be treating their video game just like the TV show and the books: everyone is expendable. The Lost Lords allows House Forrester to spread its wings a little more than the first episode as celeb cameos aren’t as frequent and the Ironwood saga is fleshed out even further.

With the Whitehills wreaking havoc in Ironrath, Lady Forrester’s brother has been sent to fetch Asher in Yunkai, in an effort to build a formidable force for the impending war. Mira, at King’s Landing serving Lady Margaery, is worried about her family’s well-being and Gared Tuttle is on his way to Castle Black after being sent there for murder. As is the case with all of Telltale Games’ titles, to go into anymore detail about The Lost Lords would be to quash the joy as the element of surprise would be lost. Like most interactive stories, Telltale’s Game of Thrones will live and die by its narrative and it’s certainly telling a compelling one.

With the likes of Lena Headey (Cersei) and Iwan Rheon (Ramsay) as standouts from episode one not showing up here, the likes of Gared, Mira, Talia and others must stand out from the crowd and aim to be as engrossing as the characters we know and love from the HBO series. In most cases, they do. There is a wonderful scene between Talia and another character early on, showing the effects the Whitehills have had on House Forrester, even before there has been any full-scale battle. Actress Molly Stone fantasically captures the childlike worry. Housemaid Mira is perfectly acceptable without progressing too much with regard character; some of that is due to the fact that her situation is similar to that seen in Iron From Ice, however, and we can expect to see more as the series progresses, I would think.

Our introduction to Asher is a memorable one. It’s clear that he is the tough, no-nonsense member of the family and a nice contrast to some of the more timid primaries. His involvement is minimal, though, and spending a bit more time getting to know the outcast of House Forrester would’ve added to the The Lost Lords. On the subject of outcasts, Gared Tuttle now faces a life with rapists, thieves, and murderers as part of the Night’s Watch. Arriving at Castle Black and having this sense of awe coming over you as you stare at The Wall is genuinely incredible. By far the most intriguing part of Episode Two are the sections where you control the former squire of Lord Gregor Forrester – and it’s the most gameplay heavy too. Getting to stroll around the brilliantly recreated grounds of Castle Black and practice your archery and sword-wielding skills is terrific and feels more involving than Telltale titles can tend to be at points. Now, even with the celebrity cameos being fewer this time around, there are still a few noteworthy inclusions such as Jon Snow, who is a member of the Night’s Watch. By leaps and bounds, Jon Snow is not only the weakest incorporated TV show character, he’s the weakest character of note in the whole ninety minutes to two hours. Actor Kit Harrington delivers his lines like a disinterested television superstar who has been contractually obliged to say a few words in a voice booth, which I can only speculate is exactly what happened.

In that same token, Peter Dinklage’s performance of Tyrion Lannister is much of the same, if a little bit more flat, while Lady Margaery is a constant reminder of Natalie Dormer’s ability. The actress is oozing with class and regularly outshines whoever she is on-screen with, even if it’s for a short period. There are a few other notables, including one male character that has some really nice scenes with others, but the hole left by Cersei and Ramsay feels insurmountable. There are some very gripping moments with those from The Lost Lords, but even the cream of the crop can’t reach the heights of bastard Ramsay or Queen Regent Cersei.

As was the case in Iron From Ice, The Lost Lords looks very rough at points. Characters will be seen to have a glow around them and more terrible than that are the backgrounds. They will divert your attention because of how pixelated and out-of-focus they are, when you should be concentrating on the dialogue and mannerisms of the characters. I’m sure they’re trying to make the backdrops have this glassy-like effect so that you will be engulfed in the story and not look at interiors of houses, but it’s backfired. When the scenery looks as it does, your eyes are naturally drawn to it because it stands out. I had hoped this design choice would’ve came and went with episode one, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

But Telltale understand George R.R. Martin’s work. They understand what HBO have done with said work. Currently, they’re crafting their own story within the confines of A Song of Fire and Ice’s lore and doing so very well. While the first episode’s highs were ever so slightly higher and visual issues remain a real sticking point, the foundation for a narrative that can stand on its own against the books and the TV show is here.

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It is no surprise then, that the game has received a high definition makeover. The current trend in adventure gaming seems to be for re-releasing and re-mastering genre classics, making them available both to long-time fans and to a whole new audience. This time thankfully, the original creative forces behind the game are behind the new version too, so at least the project was in good hands.

For those who don’t know the series, Gabriel Knight is a writer living in New Orleans. His murder-mystery fiction has never been a runaway success, so he lives and works out of St Georges’ books, the shop he owns. As he looks for inspiration for his latest novel in a series of Voodoo-related murders in the city, Gabriel becomes embroiled in the mystery himself, meeting many colourful friends and foes as a centuries-old battle between good and evil wages secretly in the Big Easy and across the world.

The story is easily the strongest aspect of each entry in the Gabriel Knight series. A lot of historical and cultural research obviously went into producing a tale that is at once believable and fantastical. There is a deep level of back-story and colour throughout the adventure, making every element feel important. Because the world is so authentic, Sins of the Fathers is far more capable of producing real moments of suspense and terror than many other games.

A few new sequences and puzzles have been created for the Anniversary Edition, but these are all relatively minor and manage to blend in with the rest of the game perfectly. Sadly, a few lines of dialogue and actions remain that might have been better off left out of the game – as a slightly-sexist sequence and some cringe-worthy flirting could have been updated to make the experience a little more bearable. A nice touch that is accessible throughout play is the Star button. This provides gamers with a peek at concept artwork, notes and behind-the-scenes interviews that give a fascinating insight into both the original development of the game and the re-mastering process.

Structured across ten days, players won’t find themselves floundering as they often might in other point and click titles. Here, there are set objectives that Gabriel needs to complete each day – marked out in his journal – and none of the tasks are especially obtuse. Sins of the Fathers is pretty logical in its puzzle design on the whole (aside from a frustrating mime puzzle early on in proceedings), meaning that you won’t end up having to use the rancid fish with the slippery clown, or some other similar ridiculous puzzle solution. If you do get stuck, you won’t find yourself banging your head against a wall for long.

The gameplay itself is also very intuitive. In a change from the original version, rather than having a list of eight or so actions that you can pick to use in each environment, a context-sensitive cursor has now been employed. Now when you click on an item, only the applicable actions will be available to you – rather than having to tediously try every single interaction until one finally works. The in-game journal also helps keep things streamlined. As well as listing objectives, as mentioned before, you can also re-read everything that Gabriel has so far discovered – which sometimes gives subtle hints on how to proceed. On top of that, a tiered hint system will give gentle help if requested.

The graphics have obviously been completely over-hauled for this re-mastered release. 2D pixel-based sprites are replaced with fully 3D character models and hand-painted backgrounds. Sadly, this isn’t entirely successful, as the animation is often a bit stiff, and the new backgrounds are somehow too colourful and lively – losing some of the grim tone that the original artwork had in spades. Maybe the art is now too polished, but it doesn’t feel as disturbing and seedy as the original art managed to.

The sound design also features the original music, entirely re-orchestrated by the original composer. This really helps add more ambience and emotion to almost every scene, and is very true to the initial recordings. The voiceover work in the original 1993 version featured famous names such as Tim Curry and Mark Hamill – but their performances were a bit hit and miss at times. Thankfully the new voices are mostly good, but the new voice of Gabriel is a bit patchy and doesn’t sell the Lothario character entirely well.

Although Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is still a great story, with some really gripping sequences and a great cast of characters, the Anniversary Edition doesn’t really add much to the experience. The art is certainly one of the most contentious areas, and few will be convinced by the new style and the lack of atmosphere. Many gameplay tweaks and refinements make this edition a more functional and forgiving experience than its predecessor, however, which will give it greater accessibility to the modern gamer. The story it tells is still very capable of capturing the imagination and immersing players in the darker side of New Orleans.

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