Developed by: Alientrap Games Inc.
Published by: Alientrap Games Inc.
Out now
Reviewed on: 26th May, 2011.
Presentation: Stunningly beautiful, especially given its independent origins. The graphics display a complex and rich alien world that has been rendered by hand so lovingly that the visuals sometimes make it hard to see the gameplay. The effects and music are likewise really well done and I cannot criticise the immaculate presentation of the game.
Atmosphere: The atmosphere is akin to other indie games centred of a strange alien environment such as CreaVures or Aquaria, except with a much more aggressive approach to dealing with problems. It has an FPS influence in the controls and is a lot more combat-focussed.
Control and Mechanics: A gamepad can be used in a way similar to a dual-stick shooter, but normally a keyboard mouse combination typical of mainstream FPS games is used.
Who should buy this: Those who want a beautiful, well-made and very robust side-scrolling shooter with a lot of gameplay options and game modes. Those who like both FPS and 2D platform games and want some combination of the two. Those who don’t mind sudden increases in difficulty.
Who should avoid it: Those who don’t like the FPS control system. Those who want more innovation in their games. Those who want something that stays more casual.
If I have to give a score: A beautiful, well thought-out game that does nothing new but has everything it takes from elsewhere polished to a sheen and will provide a lot of replay value 3/4.
Review
Capsized is, on one level, the same sort of game as Plain Sight in that it is a good indie game that I don’t think will get continued long-term play. Most people will pick this up and really enjoy it, because it’s a great game, but put it down after a few months of play. It was a shame when this happened to Plain Sight because that was being expanded after release and has nothing to offer casual players except mediocre bots. Capsized has a sizable single-player element that saves it from this unfortunate fate.
The premise is simple enough: you have crash landed on an alien world with only your space suit and a basic laser gun to protect you from the beautiful, but hostile, environment as you attempt to save your crew mates and search for an escape. The first thing you’ll notice about the game beyond the clichéd premise is the world really is beautiful. It’s hand-drawn and high-resolution, and it really pays off. One criticism I’ve seen in other reviews is that the beautiful green haze of the world makes it harder to see the action as it’s going on, but I’ve found this criticism odd. True, sometimes it is very hard to see where the enemies are, but they are creatures from this alien environment, native to it; your character bumbles in so contrasted to the rest of the world. This strikes me as an intended feature, not a bug and I don’t really fault it for that.
Besides the visuals, the music really does deserve praise too. It has a sense of mystery and wonder to it and the overall effect seems to capture something of the spirit of 16-bit era games from the Amiga. This helps evoke the overall sense of the sublime, but terrifying, experience of a beautiful alien world.
What really counts, though, is gameplay and the game stands solidly there. There is nothing new here, no innovative mechanics, your character moves about to tough-to-reach ledges via tricks like a jetpack or a grappling hook that can also be used to pull obstacles; you are ambushed by enemies and fight them off via a selection of futuristic weapons like short-range, area affect weapons or sniping laser beams.
The main campaign follows through a set of levels about finding and rescuing crew before finding out how to escape. It’s not too interesting a plot, but it serves the function of offering a nail upon which to hang gameplay. The game itself is immensely enjoyable and offers a variety of different challenges and levels for you to traverse.
Beyond that, there are several extra gameplay modes that extend the life of the game. True to the FPS influence, there are multiplayer modes and bot matches as well as others, including single-player modes.
My main criticism of the game comes from the relative simplicity of the enemy AI in this game. Neither the bot matches nor the main game were particularly advanced in their use of AI, alien enemies would often stand there blasting at where I was as I finding a way to sneak attack and the bots didn’t offer any real challenge compared to human opponents. More than that, some traps in the game were just downright unfair and couldn’t be realistically detected before already eating at your life bar. Besides that, there was also the controls which would benefit from compatibility with a wider variety of controllers (but as this is also an Xbox 360 game, it doesn’t surprise me) and to be a bit more responsive.
These are all minor criticisms, though. For the very low price it is being sold at on Steam, this is a solid game that offers a vast, stunning world and more than repays the original investment in fun and may even merit a return for the occasional evening of gaming. A solid shooter platformer with a beautiful visual layout.
Capsized is out now and available on Steam for £5.99
Developed by: Re-Logic
Published by: Re-Logic
Out now
Reviewed on: 20th May, 2011.
Presentation: Simple 2D sprites very much in the style of early SNES games. The music is more advanced, but still points back to the days of the late 16-bit console war era.
Atmosphere: Very similar to Minecraft in this regard, but with more of an emphasis on dungeon crawling and exploration than on building or crafting. It’s another indie game with a distinct retro feel to it to boot.
Control and Mechanics: Mouse for interaction, keyboard for movement. It’s made more complicated by the fact that, as with Minecraft, you can’t actually bind a mouse button to jump (which I always do in FPS games) as those are reserved for interaction-based functions. I was also disappointed by the lack of mass crafting options (have to repeatedly click to make hundreds of bottles from glass rather than ctrl-click to make ten or something).
UPDATE: Mass crafting has been added in version 1.0.2: simply by holding the right mouse button on the object you wish to craft, it will craft rapidly until you run out of resources.
Who should buy this: Anyone who loved a lot of the building and exploring ethos of Minecraft while lamenting the glacial progress and thin on the ground updates. Anyone who wants more variety and regular updates than Minecraft offered. Those who preferred the exploration and dungeoneering over the building aspects of Minecraft.
Who should avoid it: Those who dislike sandbox-style games. Those who dislike the 2D nature of the game. Those who preferred the ability to create impressive structures in Minecraft over the exploration and dungeoneering.
If I have to give a score: It’s lacking a few things Minecraft has, but it does deliver on many of the things MC should have had ages ago and it promises continual free updates and has a strong spirit of sandbox adventure, building and crafting. I recommend it before Minecraft. 3/4
Review
I really need to start with, despite all the assurances otherwise, I cannot but believe this game is following in Minecraft’s footsteps. I really wish Re-Logic would admit that; not because I believe their game represents any sort of theft, but because I already see in this basic first release of Terraria much more love, attention and a better grasp of game design than I’ve seen from Mojang. A friend of mine once said that Notch wasn’t a real game designer, that he stumbled on a good idea that worked, but didn’t really have the ethic or creativity to make a truly great sandbox game. I don’t really want to start any fires, but I believe he’s right and I also think that Re-Logic do have a much stronger grasp of their game and what they intend to do with it. With that said, this review will effectively take the form of a comparison of these two games.
I will put it bluntly, I would recommend this before I recommend Minecraft to someone. Not because I think Minecraft is a bad game, I love the game, it’s just I burnt out on it very quickly. I bought it during the alpha phase and it was cheap, lots of fun and had the promise of free content updates. Nothing much got added but then the beta rolled around and…
… Nothing much got added. Not only that, but I got this sense that Notch got a bit greedy. For people buying during the beta, there was no longer the promise that all future content would be free. Not that they were missing out on much, because now the full game appears to rolling up in a few months and very little has changed from that game I played in mid-2010.
My rant about Minecraft could fill an article itself, but I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to talk about Terraria. It’s just hard to talk about it without drawing the inevitable comparisons that are there to make. What essentially makes Terraria a better game at this point is the fact that I believe Re-Logic on the point of free content updates.
But why is it such an important thing to get content updates? Well, it helps keep the game feeling fresh and alive. Sure, I can build my own town in Minecraft, but where are the people to populate it? Terraria has an NPC system in place already and that can easily be expanded to add more people later. I started building a vast underground fortress in Minecraft but gave up when I released I couldn’t give any real function to all but a few of the hundreds of rooms I had planned. Sure, Minecraft has dungeon crawling within it, but where are the boss monsters or the secrets? Terraria’s 2D nature does make building more limited and if Notch really knuckled down then Minecraft could really become a great game beyond what Terraria could achieve, but he won’t and it won’t. Terraria could fall into this pattern too, and if so I would recant a lot of this, but Minecraft has already fallen foul of that.
Either way, the game starts you out at the dawn of day one on a generated world with a guide NPC to give you the basics, some basic tools (no tool degradation or chopping trees with you bare hands) and leaves you to it. You need to chop wood and/or mine you get the resources together for a shelter and weapons and quickly because, while the day produces the passive but still dangerous slimes, the night has zombies and demons that actively hunt you. Already, the Minecraft influence is clear, but as your power and village expands, you attract people who perform a variety of roles in your growing community. There are a few already and the game’s currency remains limited in usefulness but that is set to expand as more updates are released.
Terraria places a greater emphasis on dungeon raids and there are several styles of dungeons, each with their own tricks and traps. There are things like the deep hell areas that have special items and a wide range of interesting monsters to discover or the spreading corruption that produces abstract, demonic entities with names like the Eater of Worlds. Compare this, if you will, to Minecraft’s relatively empty and useless Nether that is always promised expanded usefulness but never gets more than minor alterations.
What Minecraft definitely has that Terraria cannot do is intrinsic to the medium of the game. Building monuments and great buildings in Minecraft is so much better because you have the extra dimension with which to work. I found a tower was all I really needed in Terraria because zombies never jumped up to the next floor to get me or my citizens when they broke the doors down (a rare event caused by the presence of a blood moon) and a set of houses alongside each other didn’t really work as well in the 2D format or even look as nice as my central tower.
That’s certainly why Terraria simply has less potential than Minecraft, it could never achieve what Minecraft could have done in the right hands, but it has so much more variety in terms of dungeon crawling and crafting. It even has a magic system which is something completely absent from Minecraft. It does generate smaller worlds but allows you to transfer characters from world to world in order to increase the variety. If you loved Minecraft for the exploration and discovery, you’ll find this game excels at those.
Overall, I would recommend this game to most people interested in the genre before Minecraft because of this increased variety in these areas. If someone wanted building and creating impressive structures, Minecraft does beat Terraria, but doesn’t compete with what some other games have to offer. Besides that, the updates on Terraria may surprise me with what the game is actually capable of achieving, but I would be happy with just increased content.
Terraria is out now and available via Steam for £5.99
Developed by: Big Sandwich Games
Published by: Big Sandwich Games
Out now
Reviewed on: 13th April, 2011.
Presentation: The graphics are simple, crisp and clean. It’s easy to see what is going on around you most of the time and what everything is. The music is nothing too amazing and I don’t think it fits the setting too well, but it is quite pleasant and does not get in the way.
Atmosphere: The atmosphere is somewhat light-hearted, with players controlling dragons trying to claim as large a hoard of gold as possible by terrorising the surrounding human settlements as well as backstabbing and thieving from each other.
Control and Mechanics: I thought the controls could do with a bit of improvement, personally. The controls are typical of dual-stick shooters (to which, in many ways, this game belongs), if you have a gamepad with two sticks that works then there’s no problem as long as you can use those sticks. However, without that, the keyboard/mouse control is not really suitable for someone with less dexterity in their keyboard hand and the mouse only control sacrifices some control that in multiplayer games will cost you. Their gamepad support is extremely limited with Xbox 360 controllers preferred (and I couldn’t get the emulation mode to work with any other pad I tried).
Who should buy this: Ultimately, those who like dual-stick shooter style games especially with the sort of multiplayer competitiveness found in a game like Galcon Fusion minus the long stand-offs. Those who like dual-stick shooters with a few interesting twists to the gameplay.
Who should avoid it: The game has a fair bit of variety to it for what it is so I would only really dissuade those who don’t like dual-stick style games, the backstabbing nature of online play or have difficulty due to the control’s lack of reconfigurability. Also, those who like the super reflex requirements and rapid thinking most dual-stick shooters require would best look at something like Bullet Candy or, better yet, Beat Hazard.
If I have to give a score: An enjoyable experience that stands out from the mass in its genre, has a lot of new ideas and doesn’t require the reflexes that they often require. 3/4
Review
It’s not hard recommending this game with confidence to the right sorts of people. It’s got a solid presentation with crisp graphics and a simple interface, and is simply lots of fun to play. This is especially true if you already have a group of friends with whom to play it but it does come with all the relationship-wrecking properties that all games encouraging ruthless, Machiavellian play have.
You control a dragon in an area of land where human settlements grows and these are your key to amassing the vast wealth you need to win. The aim of the game is just that: score as much as you can by amassing a hoard. The most basic way of doing this is go to a human settlement and burn it to the ground, reaping the gold from its destruction. Other alternatives are to steal that gold from other dragons as they are away from their hoard, terrorising settlements into giving you tributes, stealing gems from wizards or kidnapping princesses for ransom. All of these have their twists and problems and you’ll ultimately end up using a combination of them in order to achieve your goals.
It takes the form of a sort of dual-stick shooter: you use one stick (or alternative like a keyboard) to control your dragon’s movement and another (or the mouse) to control your fire attack. Also, as you gain sufficient gold you get to increase a variety of abilities like the duration of your fire breath, your speed, defence or the amount of gold you can carry before needing to return to your hoard.
Competing against you are other dragons, who can steal from you as well as attack you directly. Losing your health forces you back to your hoard, causing you to drop any gold you were carrying to be picked up by rival dragons or the wagons of the growing human settlements. Beyond this are knights who’ll attack if you get to near and attack your hoard to rescue princesses, thieves who’ll steal from your hoard, lowering your gold and destroying your score multiplier, archers defending their towns and wizard towers that rain magical energy on passing dragons.
Each single-player level offers three basic levels of success based on your hoard’s size when the time limit runs out. The single-player game does offer a steadily increasing difficulty and a fair bit of variety and replay value. This is good, because I imagine that it won’t be long before Hoard goes the same way as a multitude of other indie games and becomes increasingly difficult to play multiplayer due to the lack of players. This is better than a lot of others, I remember trying to review Crasher and found I really could not due to the lack of players as well as single-player content. Hoard successfully avoids this problem by offering a solid single-player experience to prop up the multiplayer.
If I have one overall criticism, it’s that I found the gamepad emulation did not work with any of the alternative gamepads I tried. This game really does require one of a small set of gamepads to work properly, principally the Xbox 360 controller and I find this lack of support for generic gamepads (which surely isn’t too hard as plenty of other games have it) is an unfortunate trend in a few indie games now. This is only a minor niggle really and as long as you have the required controller or don’t mind a keyboard/mouse combination (or a pure mouse control, but you’ll get beaten soundly in multiplayer) then this game has a lot of delights that should keep you entertained enough to more than justify the small price tag they demand.
Developed by: Blendo Games
Published by: Blendo Games
Out now
Reviewed on: 5th April, 2011.
Presentation: The plot is presented in a monochrome comicbook fashion with very simple graphics in the game itself. The people and zombies appear as golden and purple dots on a randomly generated city map. Graphically, it’s nothing too impressive, but it does seem to do the ethos of the game justice.
Atmosphere: The atmosphere seems very playful and surreal with oddball characters and scenarios presented in the comics that serve up the plot; however the gameplay itself is one of the harsh reality of seeing people as numbers on a scoreboard, killing ten civilians along with twenty zombies and leaving folk behind. It’s quite a dichotomy.
Control and Mechanics: Very simple, you select your city, place your troops and rescue zones, and use your mouse to set off weapons or move troops in-game. That’s it really, a fair bit of the action is automated.
Who should buy this: Those who like the idea of a zombie apocalypse that forces you to save what you can, how you can and threatens to overwhelm you. Those who like RTS elements with simple, point-and-click controls and a fairly intuitive GUI. Those who like effectively no-win scenarios.
Who should avoid it: Those who want more of a sliding scale difficulty and a better tutorial system. Those who want variety and depth to a game. Those who don’t want to feel they’re forced to treat people as numbers and are fighting against the inevitable. Those who want more plot or atmosphere.
If I have to give a score: I didn’t regret playing this game, but I saw nothing in it that would make me keep playing and it wasn’t really pulling me in, but certainly could be fun in brief bursts. 2/4
Review
I’m going against the trend by giving this a seemingly mediocre score, but it’s a game that has a very certain aesthetic ideal in mind. I’m not saying it’s a bad game per se, it’s just that I wouldn’t even think of recommending it to someone unless they specifically wanted what the game offers.
So, what does it offer? Well, it’s a very straightforward game experience. You are the head of a rescue operation in the middle of a zombie apocalypse in a fictional nation. Each territory on the map represents a city that contains a certain number of civilians. During the daytime, a certain number of zombie get in and start feasting on the living and its your job to get a certain number out with the resources you have at your disposal. These resources start as a single rescue helicopter, but expands to include combative mercenary units from gunners to ground troops to demolitions.
Simple enough, except that as night approaches, the zombies really hit hard and you quickly find the city overwhelmed. If you are clever and resourceful, you should have your rescue targets hit early on, but it gets worse. The game is always keeping score between your rescue efforts and the spreading infection and it’s very easy to fall behind. You end up wanting not just to rescue civilians but taking down as many of the approaching zombies as possible, to keep the infection numbers down.
This is where both the most fun and, interestingly, the most brutal parts of the game come to the fore. You can have all sorts of tools at your disposal up to a fully-fledged nuclear orbital platform. For the moment, let’s say you have a piece of dynamite you can detonate, killing twenty zombies. Sure, one human would die, but said person would die anyway because the zombies were there. Okay, how about if it was five people who could get away? Sometimes you have to make those tough choices, but it’s four zombies dead for every lost human and you’re well into your target. Sometimes, it’s worth nuking an area with more human than zombie casualties just because it limits infection.
You won’t pick up on the coldness of this most times, however. Games, like art, are presenting you with fictional spaces and the plights and horrors of these affect us because we suspend disbelief: these aren’t fictional characters, these are real beings with moral rights like ours and both games and art have tools to help our suspension of disbelief. Atom Zombie Smasher has none of this and even aids dehumanising the people by showing the zombies and their victims as coloured dots on the city map.
That’s all an aside, I don’t make the same requirements of games as I do of art and any musings on the human condition are secondary concerns to actually enjoying the game. It is a fun game, it’s just it lacks replay value and the struggle of lagging behind and catching up with the zombies’ score is occasionally irritating.
The cities are procedurally generated so no two cities are alike, but after a short time, you realise that the cities aren’t very varied anyway so procedural generation doesn’t really add much in the same way it adds to a lot of Netnack’s descendants. I rarely found that changes in the city’s design were causing changes in my fundamental tactics, just minor changes in where exactly I would place dynamite charges or place these or those units.
Other random element beside the shape of the cities are things like the order mercenary units are added to your army or the weather conditions. You will get missions where the daylight is gone almost as soon as you start and where the weather works for or against the zombies. These do alter your tactics far more radically, but they are sometimes too unpredictable beforehand and you end dealing with effects that you could not have really foreseen.
The bottom line is try the demo. If you want more of what you get from that, plus a few neat extra like multiplayer and modding (most game settings are open to player modification), you’ll enjoy Atom Zombie Smasher immensely. Don’t pick up the game expecting vast replay value, because the game goes through the same rotes very quickly and differentiation between games falls by the wayside.
Atom Zombie Smasher is out now. It is available on Windows, Mac and Linux and can be acquired via their website or major digital distribution platforms. Cost is £5.99 on Steam.
* Play.tm falsely reported two new Fallout: NV DLC packs on their way, but the report was denied by Bethesda.
* One more reason to see the PC as the natural home of the indie developer is that Nintendo stated a complete lack of interest in what it calls “garage devs.” Most think it is merely the Nintendo crying at the Apple Store eating so readily into handheld sales.
* NPD have stated that they are slowly adapting to the new era of digital distribution, after criticism that it couldn’t account for what is now 40% of the market and still growing.
* The new Stars Wars MMO from Bioware Austin, the Old Republic, has nearly 1.5 million beta-testers according to EA.
* For those with misgivings about the bugs in Dragon Age II, a patch has been released which most importantly fixes the busted save file problem.
* The final DLC for Mass Effect 2, called Arrival, will see the light of day on 29th March, across all platforms. This last DLC sees Shepherd to the edge of the known galaxy and will lead in to Mass Effect 3.
* Volition are saying the PC is worth investing in, despite the threat of piracy. I suppose that’s very easy to say given that they probably know as well as anyone that piracy dents sales very little.
* On the subject of piracy, Ubisoft showed themselves to be both dumb and hypocritical this week as it was discovered they had effectively “pirated” their own stuff after a Reddit user launched the accusation.
* Jagex, developers of RuneScape, have a deal with Hasbro to make a new Transformers-based MMO expected to be released sometime in 2012.
* Valve announced that they were hiring Doug Church. Church has an impressive 20-year long career that saw him work on projects like Thief: the Dark Project, System Shock and Ultima.
The Main News
The big story today is that the $400m Activision versus EA lawsuit got the go ahead and has been scheduled for May. The saga started after Activision counter-sued ex-Infinity Ward devs who accused Activision of firing them to avoid royalty payments. The suit exploded as 38 others at Infinity Ward then filed lawsuit against Activision. EA were added into this after Activision accused them on using unlawful practices to create this whole situation for Activision in the first place.
It, finally, gives me such great pleasure to announce that a game I loathed since I first heard its stupid, half-baked premise and saw the ridiculous and sometimes tasteless publicity stunts pulled for it has been released to utter disappointment of the part of reviewers. Homefront’s release to poor reviews left publisher THQ with falling stock by more than 20 percent. Reviews concentrated on how brief the single-player campaign was, as well as poor writing and voice acting, while speaking more favourably of the multiplayer aspect. If you’re are looking for a decent multiplayer game, however, you can do a lot better for a lot cheaper without having to go through an utterly implausible story. Even reading the reviews that are 80+ on Metacritic, they often point out the same problems as the lower reviews, but seem arbitrarily to tack on a good score as if to keep THQ happy.
Developed by: Joshua Nuernberger
Published by: Wadget Eye Games
Out now
Reviewed on: 14th March, 2011.
Presentation: The graphics are deliberately retro as are the interface and music. The graphics look and feel a lot like those found in point and click adventures like Beneath a Steel Sky or The Dig, which works very nicely for the retro ethos of the game, but does mean it inherits a few of the problems with older graphics like the sometimes difficult to see objects. That may just add retro cred for some folks, though.
Atmosphere: The game absorbs the atmosphere of its inspirations very well. It could have easily been released contemporary to the games mentioned above and it also captures a lot of the cyberpunk elements prevalent in the eighties to mid-nineties. The storyline does get a little stretched in terms of plausibility at points, but not by a huge amount.
Control and Mechanics: The mechanics are unusual by point and click standards. After a certain point in the game, you can click to switch between two different characters and play out each of their parallel stories. Each character has an inventory of up to eight items and the game is largely controlled by mouse alone, except in two situations (combat and crate movement) where WASD, control and space are used. These are separated, however, and the same hand could alternate between both as needed.
Who should buy this: Those who adore modern retro games, especially when they feel convincingly like an older game. Those who enjoy games with a cyberpunk ethos, especially with the deeper existential message often found in the genre. Those who just love a good point and click adventure with good puzzles and a great plot.
Who should avoid it: Those who aren’t interested in games with deliberately older graphics or don’t have any love for retro games. Those who want games to last a little longer or have more reply value.
If I have to give a score: The problems with this game are minor, it has been well-crafted and is a must-buy for any retro and/or point and click adventure fan who wants an engaging, existentialist story and engaging puzzles. 3/4.
Review
There’s something unusual about playing cyberpunk settings now. Fans of figures like William Gibson often point to his pre-empting a lot of technological changes that occurred over the course of the past thirty years. I cannot help but wonder if they are being a bit selective, it is the case that he pre-empted some technological changes, but his real interest has always been in the way people will react to these changes and how they will be affected by them.
We haven’t burnt out from any information overload, technology has not dehumanised us, corporations aren’t openly governing our lives, we’re not addicted to highly potent drugs with crippling withdrawal effects and the most capitalist of nations still have the most equal distribution of wealth. Technology continues to improve our lives, we live longer and our quality of life improves continually. In short, Gibson was wrong and the era of cyberpunk novels and films presented us with a future that will not be.
Which makes it all the more interesting playing Gemini Rue. Right round to the idea of an extensive influence of Japanese culture and economic practice, something which is certainly long past being taken seriously, the game emulates the feel and aesthetic of the cyberpunk-inspired future. This immediately gives the game a kind of retrofuturism that can be found in the Fallout games and it’s interesting to see this game with such evident self-awareness in an age where the next Deus Ex game looks more and more like it’s taking its fear of technology all too seriously, despite the failure of cyberpunk to present a realistic vision of the future.
The game itself is set in the distant star of Gemini, on a planet named Barracus, at least at first. We are introduced, first, to the character of Azriel Odin, waiting for a contact who never arrives at a station on a planet where rainfall is constant and the streets are haunted by the presence of a nigh-omnipresent criminal syndicate known as the Boryokudan. Azriel, we learn, is seeking this contact in order to find his long-lost brother whom he has not seen since this system’s war of independence from nearby systems and its decline as the influence of the Boryokudan spread.
On the other hand, we are introduced to a prisoner known as Delta-Six to his captors and as Charlie to his fellow prisoners. Delta-Six, at the start, is undergoing a complex memory erasing procedure after a failed escape attempt. Soon after the procedure, he is reintroduced to tests designed to make him a valuable citizen again and discovers that, with his memory gone, the other prisoners have conflicting agendas and interests in him, and warnings come from all sides not to trust anyone else or even anyone at all. Above all this are the tests his captors expect him to complete and the feared final exam, something about which he was quickly warned.
After a short period walking in both character’s shoes, you get the option to switch between the characters mostly at will and play through their parallel stories. It’s an interesting way of progressing the plot given most other point and click adventure games with multiple protagonists dictated when you were controlling one or the other character.
The central appeal of the game is the fact that is harkens back to an earlier age with its graphics. As can be seen in screenshots and the trailer, it is designed with point and click graphics from around the mid-nineties in mind. The game’s plot and challenges could have been successfully implemented with more modern graphics, but the design choice gives it the feel of an older classic from nearly twenty years ago. There are certainly modern retro games that feel like modern attempts to capture the spirit of older games, but Gemini Rue feels like it could just have easily have been pulled forward from that long ago as have been released recently.
The graphics do present a minor problem that might drive some away from the game. It’s very possible to miss an object that one needs to use midst the clutter of pixels that appear on the screen. Sometimes it’s very hard to see exactly what it is that you need on the screen and this is made more exasperating by the dirty and cluttered nature of the setting in Azriel’s story or the sterile, almost featureless, prison which houses Delta-Six.
Besides that, however, there are very few problems that get in the way of your enjoyment of the game. Sometimes the plot gets a little strange, like the idea of a system-spanning criminal syndicate (who represent the central antagonists of the game) operating essentially out of a single apartment block and the dialogue is occasionally off (like referring to star systems as “galaxies” as well as the odd misspelt word), but that does not break suspension of disbelief too much.
What can get a little annoying is some of the control mechanics. I found the game’s combat system to be a little primitive and an option to skip it entirely (some old adventure games with action-driven sequences like Heart of China had this option) would have been good. It’s really just about timing your moves and it gets quite tedious after a very short while. Further, while the inventory is never cluttered (as you can only have a maximum of eight items), you need to be able to right-click an object on the screen to access your inventory which is a minor irritation. Finally, and this really is my last gripe with the game, the save system is sometimes unusual and arbitrary where you can and can’t save. Also, dying in the game sends you to the last autosave even if your in-game save was more recent. This is something that could easily be patched out and I think it’s something the developers should do.
As I said, these are minor gripes in what is a great experience for lovers of classic point and click adventuring. The game draws you into a cyberpunk setting that looks and feels as if it could have been pulled from the era of the eighties when the great cyberpunk novels were being written. The puzzles themselves are sometimes quite hard and really make you stop and think but they are mostly accessible by logical thinking and require no head scratching trying to work out why the developer chose that solution. It’s a game that tries to get the player to ponder serious existential questions about the nature of things like personal identity and integrity while offering a wonderful and entertaining gameplay experience that you won’t forget any time soon. Another great example of what the modern indie movement is doing to keep the fires burning at the alter of one of the great genres in gaming history.
Gemini Rue is out now, available via Wadjet Eye Games’s website for £9.89.
* Introversion say that it’s unlikely they’ll work with Microsoft again after porting Darwinia and Multiwinia to XBLA.
* Microsoft admits that the mimicry of the console model in Games For Windows was flawed, but promises future improvement.
* A new GTA game is in the works under the codename of “RUSH.”
* Blizzard’s next MMO is already playable; at least, according to the company’s co-founder, Frank Pearce.
* Bungie is now claiming that its MMO reveal at GDC was a joke in response to rumours. Of course, it could simply be damage control.
* Valve’s new security technology, Steam Guard, is showcased with Gabe Newell revealing his Steam password as a show of confidence. The consensus is that this will turn out to be a silly move.
* On the Valve note, PC gamers may have to endure the pain of playing co-op Portal 2 with someone who doesn’t use a keyboard and mouse in FPS games.
* EA announce that they may focus more on the PC gaming market as increased PC revenue via digital distribution and the free-to-play model makes the platform more and more attractive.
* Call of Duty: Black Ops has become the best-selling game in US history, selling over 13.7 million units according to retail tracking firm NPD.
* A huge dichotomy has occurred between reviewer and user scores on Metacritic for Dragon Age II. Users have been complaining about a dumbing down of the game and the game has, at the time of writing, 278 negative reviews to 18 neutral and 84 positive.
Main news
So, great news for indie gaming fans. Serious Sam is being outsourced to create a series of indie titles set around the character. While I am no huge fan of the Serious Sam games, it’s always interesting to see what indie developers and fresh minds can make of larger IP. Warner Bros. is picking up action-RPG Bastion, the first game from indie studio Supergiant and one that features a dynamic narrative. Finally, there’s Hawken, a mech-based FPS indie title with extremely impressive graphics that will surely help ease the pain of Mechwarrior 5′s slip into vapourware. It will most likely be a downloadable title, according to developers.
Besides that, it seems indie smash hit, Angry Birds might be coming to Facebook in a “Collaborative” form, according to developers. This comes alongside news that the game made a profit in excess of $70m from a small budget of $140k. The move to Facebook is not unusual given other news that Rebellion have started a new social games division after the success of Facebook-based Evil Genius.
