Rewind Review: Journey

With it’s PS4 update recently released, I thought I would take a literal journey back to one of my favourite Playstation 3 titles of all time,  Journey.  Brought to us by the astonishing minds at Thatgamecompany, creators of Flower and Flow, Journey left quite the lasting impression on me.

It’s beautiful right?

Not unlike Thatgamecompany’s previous efforts, Journey is as much an interactive piece of art as it is a game.  The game drops you into control of your nameless, speechless hooded figure amongst an endless seeming desert, your only real indication of what to do is a short opening sequence showing a falling star crashing into a distant mountain.  With that single action and not a peep of dialogue, the game has already set you on a course to discover exactly what that star was.

Resting in the beautifully detailed sand dunes, and I mean beautiful, the distant mountain shines to give you a focal point to lead your epic quest.  The 3d environment is gorgeous, and seems to go on forever, and you can choose to explore freely at your whim, or plot a direct course for the moment if you so choose.  Movement through the world is smooth as ice.  Your character treks through the sand leaving footprints as signs of his passage, swooping down drifts of sand and trudging up hills.

No caption required

As you explore through this dusty region you discover long forgotten ruins of some ancient society.  Here you will learn the ability to jump, collecting pieces of cloth that lengthen your scarf, allowing you not only jump but glide at points to reach higher areas, or cover large gaps.  You’ll have to solve simple puzzles as you proceed from here to find your way forward, or to free up the magical cloth pieces trapped around the area.

As you continue to explore the world you’ll find new areas.  These areas may be filled with vegetation, or be cavernous areas deep below the earth.  Ancient cities can be found along your Journey as well.  All of these areas have their own features, and points of interests.  Every area leaves glimpses of what seems to be the remnants of a long lost civilisation.  Stones remarking as tombstones, empty buildings, all you give you the feel that these lands used to be filled with life and people, but some strange occurrence transpired to leave it in it’s barren state.

Quiet moment of reflection

As you pass from one to another, you are shown small glimpses of the game’s story through short cut scenes.  These cutscenes make you nothing but more curious to continue, showing you small pieces of this beautiful world’s history and story through hieroglyphic like scenes.

To go along with the beautiful look and feel of Journey comes the amazing soundtrack.  The subtle instrumental tracks flow in the background.  Each area’s music ads gravitas and emotion to your situation.  As you proceed farther into the story and the trek begins to get harder, and harder on your character, this stunning mix of music and visuals helps you to feel everything your character is enduring as if you too were there with him.

Though Journey is primarily a solitary story, there is still a multiplayer aspect to the game.  This is done through an entirely unique approach as each journey you start is open to anyone else who happens to also be journeying to potentially encounter you along the way.  This can happen randomly at any point of the game as you just happen to stumble across someone else.  Though you can use a type of emote to draw attention to yourself when another player is around, there is no chat, or any other type of communication, nor can you identify the person traveling with you by more than a randomized symbol they are represented by.  This creates a truly unique interaction, as you can choose to try and communicate somehow with the other player to help them find the right path, or to seek assistance if you are stuck.  There are also benefits to sticking with someone else as you if you stay close together you gain speed and jumping ability, and can also resist some of the wear of the later areas.

making friends

Each journey is unique, and you can replay as often as you like.  There are several different routes that you can take to your goal, and several hidden gems to find along the way.  Each time you play you may encounter one other player, several or none.  These sometimes fleeting moments of interaction with others adds even more emotion to the game as certain points of the story are extremely heartfelt, and the sight of another person potentially experiencing the same emotions on their journey is quite an unheard of feeling in most modern gaming.

The game’s ending wrenches you from the lowest emotional state, and does a remarkable job of literally launching you and your character on a voyage you will never forget.  This full ark of emotions and senses is so hard to find outside of more grounded places like theatre or a live music event, and is completely welcome within a gaming experiencing.

Can’t show enough of this brilliant game.

Journey looks gorgeous on both PS3 or PS4, regardless of what system you have, so no harm in grabbing the PS3 version to just experience this one in a kind piece of gaming art.  Not taking the time to play this game however would truly be something to regret later on.  Journey remains one of the best games to ever be released on PS3, and is sure to remain one of the better games on it’s new release with the PS4.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s Rewind Review, and be sure to comment and like below and let me know about your Journey.

Check out last week’s Rewind Review.

Early Access Review: The Bug Butcher

Do you like fast, addicting and extremely challenging arcade shooters like we had in the 80’s?  Then The Bug Butcher is definitely one to check out.  Currently available on Steam Early Access, The Bug Butcher is developed by the indie team at Awfully Nice Studios.

The Bug Butcher is a classic arcade style shoot up action game that challenges you to blow up bizarre alien bugs.  The developers have been putting a ton of work into the cartoon art style and terribly funny dialogue.

You first meet our hero as he arrives at a giant factory of sorts, where horrible alien space bugs have taken over the plant.  Running through the first few tutorial levels has you meet one of the factory workers, who appears to look a little like a talking Gameboy.  The dialogue and story are clever and funny, and the exposition provided by your guide is often scoffed about by the protagonist, due to it’s completely satirical nature.

These first few moments set you up for the initial extremely addicting gameplay.  Dropping you through one room at a time, you must fire your gun upwards as the alien bugs drop from the ceiling and other areas, and bounce around the screen.  Each bug has unique skills and properties and you have to adapt to each as they fall from above.  Killing them earns you coins, and a score multiplier to rack up the points after each kill.  Every level has three to four waves of creatures before you can proceed to the next level, and of course, there is a time limit applied that you must beat.  As you are only able to shoot straight up, and can’t jump, each shot has to be well timed as you avoid your bouncing enemies.

As the levels progress you’re given a variety of powerups to use, that either increase your speed, power of your gun or give you temporary new weapons that cause mass destruction across the screen. These weapons can range from homing rockets, to a powerful laser that disintegrates everything, a gatling gun that fires at a high rate but needs to be charged, or a electric gun that on a successful hit jumps to other foes.  After enough kills you’ll also gain a special attack with a variety of effects.  You can fire off more rockets, freeze everything on the screen, or even gain temporary invincibility and speed.  You’ll need to use them all if you’re going to survive the later levels.

Eww, slime. Gross.

Difficulty ramps up fast in The Bug Butcher.  Every level introduces new enemies.  Some are explained but others come out as a surprise and you’ll have to quickly react to their new abilities and patterns.  At some points there are so many different foes on the screen it becomes almost impossible to survive as you try to dodge and take out the most dangerous enemies first.  Gameplay is broken up even more with elevator levels that take away some of your weapon drops, or other levels with various moving platforms or force fields that redirect your enemies bouncing and can either be a boon or a burden depending on what  you are dealing with at each moment.

The soundtrack keeps up with the action throughout, and gets your blood flowing.  The up beat electronic music really brings me back to my retro roots, and hours spent at the arcade, or in similar games on late consoles.  The music really keeps you on pace and meshes well with the chaos on the screen.

And this is just the first zone.

Throughout all these busy levels, the gameplay doesn’t miss a beat.  I rarely saw my FPS drop below 60 regardless of how many enemies were on the screen.  It remained smooth and fast, aiding in the overly addictive nature of the game.  Frustrating death after frustrating death couldn’t keep me from giving it one more go, or trying out the next level.  Each successful level rewards you with a star rating, and comparison to your steam friends and the overal rankings.  You’ll also get new weapon drops as you go, as the game is really good at introducing something new with almost every level.

With competitive local multiplayer support planned, players are sure to have tense competitive battles with their friends shortly.  We can only hope that developer Awfully Nice Studios also has online multiplayer planned in a later update to really create a gem of fun gaming here.  The Bug Butcher is currently available on Steam for $10.99.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment below and let me know if you have had a chance to play The Bug Butcher yet.  Follow the developer @_AwfullyNice_ on Twitter for more updates.

Check out another great indie review: Subnautica.

 

Review: Game of Thrones Episode 5

Welcome to Game of Thrones, episode 5, or “I’m Glad I am not a Forrester”.  The penultimate episode of Telltale Games 6 part series, episode 5 starts off slow, but quickly escalates into the best episode so far.

Episode 5 drops us right back into Forrester lands where we get to enjoy, a long, slow, and sometimes literally torturing opening sequence, with actual torture!  There’s a great deal of gruesomeness here, but I didn’t really feel like my choices were impacting too much what happened.  Though most of what happened still felt quite important, the end to this sequence was slightly cliched.  This scene did really grow the cruelty and sadistic nature of our primary nemesis however, Ramsay Snow, leading up to what I hope will be a great final encounter in episode 6.

Nope, I saved just before this…

In the next scene we find ourselves back in King’s Landing, where we get to meet up with Mira Forrester again, though her part in this episode is small, she does get to interact with fan favourite characters like Tyrion the most which is always fun.  The dialogue here doesn’t’ quite live up the TV show’s standard, but it’s still pretty solid.  This scene is quite short, and continues the somewhat slow pace of Game of Thrones Episode 5.

This episode doesn’t really pick up until we get to play through Asher’s scenes.  The bulk of episode 5 really happens when either he, or his brother Rodrik are on screen.  I have no problem with this at all, they are both the most likeable characters in the story so far.  It’s not until you take control of Asher or Rodrik that you really feel you are making a major change in the story and that your choices matter, and boy do they matter.

How to kill a man?

Asher and Rodrik’s scenes both really remind me of TellTale game’s The Walking Dead series, where every scene ends with the choice of who will live and who will die.  Now that we are so close to the end of this series these choices truly weigh heavily with each click of the mouse.

As Asher you get to finally recruit a grand ole’ group of ruthless killers to join your cause and protect your family.  How you do this is a lot of fun in game, and involves the heaviest amount of action and quick time events in the episode.  Rodrik’s story revolves around the choices he has made as a leader, and how they have reflected and changed him.  The interesting component here is how both characters are learning about how to lead their people from entirely different perspectives, with the culminating ending really putting you under pressure to decide the Forrester family’s fate.

This episode does lack a little bit of action this time around.  Most of the scenes played out here are dialogue heavy and you really only get two great scenes of action throughout the experience.  Spending a good deal of time just watching and waiting for your chance to add input to the game is sometimes a drag, but luckily most of the dialogue is great, and I sometimes forgot I was playing a game and just sat back and watched.  I often had to rush back into place when the game suddenly asked me to answer an important question or engage in a quick time event.

Ewww, creeepy

Sluggishness aside, this is still one of the best episodes so far in the Game of Thrones series.  The happenings are heavy and often, and the choices both make sense and are extremely difficult to choose quickly.  A few scenes here feel somewhat disconnected from the rest of the story, but are still very solid on their own merits, it will be interesting to see how these stories are intertwined with only a couple of hours of gameplay left to go in the final, episode 6 of Game of Thrones.

As always, thanks for reading and be sure to let me know about your experience with episode 5 down in the comment section below.

If you need a refresher, you can check out my episode 4 review here.

 

 

Mini Reviews: NewGrounds

Www.newgrounds.com is an exciting and entertaining hub of innovative gaming, videos and audio.  With so much free content to check out, it’s a great source for incredible entertainment.  Join me as I quickly review a few great new games found on NewGrounds.

 

There is no Game

Like the title implies, this is no game.  This is an experience.  A great satirical point and click adventure, This is no Game’s narrator taunts you thoroughly as you try to figure out what to do next.  As you click around the screen searching for something to do, the game keeps throwing surprises at you.  As you discover more, your heavily accented host shows more and more disdain for your desire to find the game within the lack of a game.  The clever humour, and absurdity of it all, is charming and fun.  The few short puzzles are not much of a challenge, but the taunting from the narrator is often worth not figuring out the puzzles for awhile, just to see what he will say next.

 

Hero Simulator

An endless earner, Hero Simulator has you building up the next generation of hero to take over from their father after 200 years of service.  As with most endless earners, you start off small and quickly go big.  Hero Simulator is set apart slightly however by the sheer amount of earning choices, and the save feature that allows you to earn while offline from the game as well.  Closing the screen and and coming back several hours later will surprise you with a bounty of resources to spend.  There’s also an extra level of strategy here as random discounts, and bonuses will generate that allow you to buy items on a discount, or invest cash with less risk of losing.  These small features add a very addictive nature to the game as you keep popping your head back in to make sure you aren’t missing any great deals.

 

Tiny Treasure

Tiny Treasure is a really clever side scrolling adventure.  You take control of two knights as they venture into fields and caves to find treasure.  You must surpass a bunch of jumping puzzles by using both characters to help you past each obstacle.  A click of the space bar takes control of one or the other knight, who’s corresponding coloured blocks become transparent, allowing that character to pass through them.  It’s up to you to switch back and forth between each character and figure out each increasingly difficult pattern to make it to the next area.  The blend of puzzle solving along with accurate jumping skills is challenging and addictive.

 

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to like and comment below, let me know if you have tried any of these games.

Check out this great channel review, The Neo Nerd

Rewind Review: The Legend of Dragoon

Rpg’s were my thing growing up, and The Legend of Dragoon was an exceptional one.  Released in 2000 for the classic Playstation, The Legend of Dragoon is full on innovations, both rewarding, challenging, and sometimes puzzling.

I have the power!!!!

The Legend of Dragoon takes you to a fantastic world, where dragons exist, and of course much political drama ensues, Endiness.  Broken up into various nations defined by their varying climates you start your quest in the temperate jungle of Serdia.  You take control of Dart, a young adventuring returning home after unsuccessfully searching for the creature that killed his parents and destroyed his birth home.  Quite coincidentally his new home is then destroyed and sets him on a quest to save his friend who was captured during it’s destruction.

The story unfolds traditionally here, as you explore new regions, you meet new companions that help you along the way, or require your help.  The story is quite long and expansive, and stays relatively linear throughout, but there is still a fair amount to explore as you go.

Designed during the early years of 3D Rpg, The Legend of Dragoon, mixed 2D backdrops with 3D characters creating a very interesting look.  The backgrounds are detailed and well drawn, and the 3D characters, though somewhat pixilated are still bright and pop out at you.  Battles take place in a more 3D environment, against also 3D pixelated enemies.  There are various cinematic camera swoops and close ups during the action to help keep you entertained as you play through the turn based battles.

Full of life, yet not quite alive

These battles feature all of the usual RPG features, though The Legend of Dragoon does set itself apart with it’s Additions feature.  Additions are basically timed combos that are initiated whenever you choose to a physical attack.  Hitting the correct quick time buttons with the right timing results in not only increased damage, but potentially different status affects, as well as building up you ‘sp’ bar.  As you explore more of the world this sp bar comes of more and more importance.

Wait for it…

Each character eventually finds themselves attuned with a particular dragon spirit.  As your sp bar builds during battle, this gives you the ability to transform into a Dragoon, and use various special abilities unique to each dragon.  This adds a great deal of power to your attacks and magic, but limits your defensive options, so a balanced attack is still prudent.  The Additions feature remains active as you use your Dragoon’s attacks to add critical damage to your targets.  This style of combat adds a load of interaction and difficulty to each battle especially later on when the enemies hit hard.

Though the random, non-boss battles do get repetitive after awhile, what with grinding for more levels, and items, the overall story holds enough charm and heartbreak for you to ignore this.  For the time, this massive 4 disk game gave enough content and story to compete with the then juggernaut of Rpg’s Final Fantasy a run.  In the end however, it didn’t bring enough innovation to truly become more than a very solid Rpg during the age of awesome Rpg’s.

Thanks once again for reading, and be sure to comment, like and share below.  Let me know about your experience with The Legend of Dragoon!

Check out last week’s Rewind Review

Subnautica: Early Access Review

Tired of punching trees and looking for rocks to build a campfire?  Then Subnautica is the survival game for you.  Subnautica throws you into a vast ocean full of dangers and mystery and tasks you with not only surviving, but finding out what went wrong to get you stranded there.

Well it could be worse…

As seemingly the sole survivor of your terraforming mission after an explosion sends your craft on a collision course into a planet with an endless ocean, Subnautica’s first objective is survival.  Like most survival games, you must quickly find resources to help you stay alive in the game’s varied environments.  The trick with Subnautica is that all of these environments are submerged which adds a unique twist to the genre.  Not only are you managing the usual things like thirst and hunger, you are also limited at first by your capability to carry an air supply below the surface.  This adds an extra layer of danger to your chances as each dive could be your last if you don’t time everything right.

Subnautica does a good job early on with making things seem both familiar but very alien all at once.  Set in the far future with advanced technology that can craft items in seconds with a fabricator, you are still made quite familiar with the basic components needed to craft these high tech items.  Throughout the ocean environments you will find various of these resources strewn about on the ocean floor, lime deposits holding various metals and minerals, salt deposits, corral, and other useful flora, and of course fish.

The beautiful sunset…

The animals of the ocean are where the alien concept of the planet first shows it’s colours.  The fauna of the planet are incredibly diverse and alien like.  They vary from small and fast fish, and uniquely useful Airsacks, which are very useful early on, and quite harmless, to large predators you need to avoid, to small exploding fish, to massive whale like creatures so big and slow corral has formed on their backs.  The fauna AI ranges from passive, to very aggressive, and the day and night cycle affects this nature as well.  Fishing for small fish at night for example may have you find several sleeping and easy to catch.

Once basic survival is covered, advanced resources like titanium and silicone will allow you to build both structures and vehicles.  As most materials can be very rare, with enough patience you can build underwater craft, and even submarines to help you search the ocean bottom.  Surviving long term means manufacturing parts to build your own underwater base via  a network of tube parts that you can connect together, and even draw oxygen to from the surface.   Later equipment even allows you to terraform the environment to you liking, or dig holes through ocean floor.

All the while in the distance stands the ship you arrived in, the Aurora, where the yet to be completed end game seemingly will exist.  Surrounded by radiation, and protected by massive mutated squid like creatures, the Aurora plays an integral part in the gameplay.  Not only is the ship filled with various high tech components to be grabbed once you have the right tools to do so, but it also affects the nearby environment.  The various radiation leaks in the craft result in regular explosions, which litter the ocean with components and larger explorable pieces of the Aurora where various components can be found.  It also seems like a bad idea to be too close to the Aurora when one of these explosions occurs.

Oh, my bad, things can get worse

It looks like we still have a bit of a wait to see what mysterious affect brought down the Aurora, but there is still enough here in Subnautica to keep most people busy for several hours.  The potential for some type of end game in the survival genre is always a welcome feature as it sets goals for the player to reach, rather than have them simply build bigger and better structures to ease their survival.  Thought the environments are well built and colorful, they do sometimes still lack some life, as several areas are not well filled with lifeforms.  Generally each area has but a handful of fish floating around at any time, and I have yet to encounter huge school of fish, or any bottom dwelling creatures crawling around to add variety.  These will all hopefully be things we see added in upcoming updates.

Crafting in style

Available now in Early Access, Subnautica adds a fresher flavour to the somewhat overfull survival genre.  With colorful graphics and environments, and a unique survival protocol taking place almost entirely underwater, this game is a  lot of fun.  Though the game still lacks some content, regular features are added, and with a potential end game in store there is a lot to explore here.

Want more?  Check out Stranded Deep!  Don’t forget to comment and like below, let me know what you thought of Subnautica. 

Fractured Space: Early Access Review

Welcome to space.  Fractured Space.  Where massive capital ships duke it out over vast, asteroid filled maps.  This tactical shooter is all about controlling these regions and taking out the other team before they can.

The first thing that will strike you about Fractured Space is the amazingly detailed ships.  Each ship in the available three classes has an incomparable amount of detail.  The lighting effects are especially good showcasing the ships precise design.  Each ship is entirely unique, and easily recognised from a distance.

These ships are gorgeous

Of the three classes of ship there are large carriers equipped with a potential variety of fighters, fast support cruisers which can repair other ships, hunters which have a blink ability to outmaneuver the other ships.  Each class, of course, has it’s own set of unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses to help you get an advantage over the other ships.  Though these differences help each ship seem even more unique than their appearance, the actual abilities aren’t that unique from other similar games.

gameplay is similar to other recent beta’s like World of Warships.  Teams start off on opposite sides of the map, and must race to control various flags or bases across the map.  Each base captured adds experience for the controlling team, and gives you a place to retreat for cover and repairs.  As you defeat enemies, or take over more bases, experienced gained advances you in level, and returning to a base upgrades your hit points and shields.   Battle continues until one team can capture the opposing team’s home base.

These explosions are really dynamic

These battles are usually fairly quick affairs.  The fights are often decided by rock, paper, scissor, as each class suits taking down another if piloted well.  You need to be slightly ambidextrous to work with the default controls as well when they require much mutli-pressing buttons with one hand or the other.  Once you get past this though, the short battles are still fun, but don’t always feel that tactical as you are generally just spamming the attack button and waiting for your special abilities to refresh.  Though taking advantage of positioning does help some, the map is fairly open and generic.  Ducking in and out of cover, or around asteroids doesn’t happen often, and battles quickly become more about numbers and accuracy.

After each battle, you gain experience used to obtain higher tiered ships and purchase new abilities for your current ships.  These new ships add a bit more strategy to the combat with stealth features, long range attacks and the such which opens up new strategies and play styles.

Tech Tree!

Fractured Space is still in development, and I am sure these minor gripes will be worked out in time.  Varied maps and effects would be great, but the overall gameplay is still quite good, and the ships themselves are really beautiful.  I am looking forward to coming back to this game upon release the see the new features and available ships.

As always, please comment and like below, let me know what you think of Fractured Space.

For my preview of World of Warships head here next!

 

Shining Force II: Rewind Review

Welcome back to Review Rewind!  This week we are going way back to a classic, and a game ranked among many people’s favourites, including my own, Shining Force II.  Brought to us from Japan in 1993 Shining Force II is the indirect sequel to the 1992 Shining Force game.  This somewhat unheard of, better-than-the-original sequel is a tactical RPG.

Squirtle?

Taking place in the fantastical world of Granseal, Shining Force II is filled with knights, mages, monsters and most every other basic trope to this genre.  The story starts off when a thief, Slade, accidentally releases an ancient demon after stealing two magical stones that kept it sealed for centuries.  Some of the demon’s power escapes, inhabiting the main character’s King.  You and the city’s wise man Astral, manage to free the king, only to discover the ancient demon has been released and is quickly gaining power.  Various shenanigans ensue, and you basically, kinda, accidentally get your town destroyed trying to seal the demon away and have to sail far off to an unknown land.

From this point, the story unfolds through straight forward dialogue boxes, some open world adventuring, and of course, many, many tactical battles.  These battles take place on a 2D, top down grid map.  Your units of varying types, races and abilities duke it out in a turned based system.  Every unit has up to 3 possible abilities to choose from depending on their class and restricted movement each turn.  Each unit gets to uses their abilities once per turn, and gains experience points each time to help them advance through levels.  Each action takes place in forced perspective, hand drawn animations, which add some charm to otherwise average looking graphics.

Each battle forces you to take advantage of both terrain, and your characters’ various abilities.  These battles can be long, though generally they aren’t overly challenging.  This changes of course if you happen to lose a particular character integral to your strategy, but a quick reload of the game lets you start over.  Your fallen allies can be raised by priests in towns for a small fee.  Priests will also save your game, promote your characters, or cure curses that incur when you equip powerful cursed items.

Gotta praise to be raised and drop a dime in the box too!

Shining Force II is filled with dozens of characters to collect, including several hidden characters.  As they gain experience and levels, their stats and abilities expand.  Once they reach level 20 you have the option to advance them to a new, more powerful class.  Some characters have options on what classes to evolve into if you can find the right item to activate it.  Some of the best characters are found hidden throughout the world, while others you must be very patient with until they can be promoted, and start with terrible stats, creating a mini challenge in each battle to get them experience without losing the battle, or getting them killed each time.

There are a vast array of items and weapons to find, buy and equip.  Each class has their own  specific types of weapons that they can equip, along with armor and special items which increase various stats, like speed, luck, or attack.  Though the best weapons are found hidden near the end of the game, you will spend a lot of time shelling out thousands of the game’s currency to upgrade weapons and armor at each town you progress to.

Time to upgrade!

Though overall a simple story, Shining Force II’s plot is still filled with various plot twists and interesting events.  There are also several stand out characters, though the main character is certainly the exception here, as the fairly bland young man who grows up to be a hero.  Though there are many characters, generally mid way through the game you tend to stick to your favourite 12 and rarely switch them out unless a specific battle calls for it.

Fail….

Graphics aside, this game still holds up well to today’s gameplay standards.  This shows even more with the various remakes, and sequels that followed.  With a long story, and just enough difficulty, this game is still a great one to go back and play.  Be wary however of the old school mentality, this isn’t a drop in and drop out game, you need to set time aside to make it through some of the later battles, but generally it’s worth it!

 

As always, thanks for reading, and make sure to comment, share and like below!

When you are done reading this, make sure to check out this Rewind Review from a few weeks ago!

Skulls of The Shogun: Rewind Review

Another week, another Rewind Review!  This one just barely qualifies having been released way back in 2013! Back way before the flying cars, insta cleaning clothes, and weather control that Back to the Future II promised us this year.  Though it’s not as old as some of the other games I have featured so far, this is still a great game to pickup on play if you get the chance.

A 2D tactical RPG, Skulls of the Shogun takes inspiration from other classic games like Final Fantasy Tactics, and Advance Wars.  Taking place in a colorful cartoon world, Skulls of the Shogun takes this inspiration and rolls with it in all sorts of fun and intuitive ways.

Getting the lay of the land

Set in ancient Japan, you take the role of a recently deceased Shogun.  Killed by his own lieutenant during battle, he is relegated to the afterlife as a skeleton. Faced with waiting in line with thousands of other fallen soldiers to the end of time waiting to get into the afterlife, the general instead decides to take matters into his own hands and raises an army to push his way to his rightful reward.

The playful art style mixes well with the almost constant shade of humour in the game.  Dialogue and character choices are both funny, and light hearted.  The third wall is broken often as the characters question not only the game mechanics, but the player’s actions.  This cleverness tends to fade a little as the game proceeds, but not so much that it isn’t still funny at times.

You got that right buddy!

Each character class has a unique look and animations.  The only fault visually is occasionally the screen becomes crowded with units and objects and it can be difficult to pick out the object you want, though the game does try to assist with a pop up when several items are selected close together.

Each battle is a 1v1 turn based affair.  The game starts you out with very basic commands and units and does a good job of dishing out new elements with each new battle.  Every different unit comes with it’s own stats and abilities.  Infantry have solid defence and good knockback, but are slow and don’t deal that much damage.  Calvary have long movement range and high attack, but no knockback.  There are various other units like archers and magic casters to fill out the ranks.  Your general is also controllable in battle and gains new abilities as the story progresses.

I’m a beast!…. errr Demon…

Each of these units can be upgraded during any single battle in the unique manner of eating the skulls of fallen foes, even though as they will tell you themselves, it’s pretty gross.  Each skull adds hit points to your units including your general, and when 3 skulls are consumed your unit becomes a demon and gains an extra action each turn.  This extra action can be extremely useful in most battles.  Along the way you will also find various potions and power ups to assist you in winning.

On later maps you will also be tasked with some minor resource management.  Rice paddies can be conquered to give you rice to pay for new troops at barracks.  There are also other buildings to be conquered to give you access to more powerful units.  Rice paddies are limited, and each one including the other buildings can be conquered by the opposing force at any time.  Controlling the map becomes very important on these levels.

Just a little exposition

Each map has different objectives, and several can be won in different ways.  Defeating the enemy general, defeating all troops, or moving a unit to a specific marker may all be ways to win.  Several maps have multiple stages and differing objectives in each stage.  This with the overlapping humour keeps the game fresh and fun throughout.

This is a fun game with a long campaign, multiplayer options and a ton of laughs.  With a regular price of $10.99 on Steam it’s definitely a bargain, and will fill up hours of your time.  If you are a fan of strategy games, good humour and want a game that is easy to get into, this is a great one for you.

As always, if like this review, or have played the game, make sure to like and comment below, and be sure to follow me on Twitter!

Missed last weeks Rewind Review?  You can catch it here!

Lunar: The Silver Star : Rewind Review

Well it’s Thursday again, and where would we be without another Rewind Review!  This week we take a look back at a classic RPG, and one of my all time favourites.  Lunar: The Silver Star.  Though various remakes of this game have been release as recently as 2009 as Lunar Star Harmony, it’s the original version released in 1992 in Japan, and translated for North American audiences in 1993 for the Sega CD/Mega Drive that we’ll be looking at.

This game shares truly classic RPG values.  Start your adventure as a young man looking to escape his mundane life, only to forced to grow more powerful to save the world, and of course, get the girl.  Set in a fantasy world where magic and dragons exist the story begins with protagonist Alex, dreaming of adventure and becoming the next DragonMaster in his small home town.

Young romance, should go smoothly I am sure!

The characters immediately set them self apart in the opening sequences, as through the power of the Sega CD cutscenes are rendered in beautiful hand drawn Anime, with full voice overs.  This particular aspect set Lunar apart from most RPG’s of the time, as one of the earliest to appear on the newer medium of Compact Disc taking advantage of the space, and sound quality to really immerse you in the experience.  It’s nearly impossible to  not immediately fall for the various main characters during these quick introductory scenes.

The story in this game is a relatively simple one.  Your best friend Ramus convinces you it’s time to venture out on an epic quest for loot, and examine the nearby cave that’s rumoured to be the den of a long dead dragon.  Your accompanied on this adventure by Nall, a flying cat like creature with origins unknown and a sack full of sarcasm and irritability. You are also joined early on by Luna, Alex’s crush and also a character with a mysterious background as an orphan who has been raised side by side Alex.  Each character is endearing and unique, and the bright anime art style adds even more to each one’s personality.

Umm, cute outfit?!

The rest of the game takes place in a fairly unimpressive top down 2D view comparable to almost every other RPG of the time.  Though there are some extra areas and secrets to explore, for the most part your adventure is a linear experience.  You travel from locale to locale exploring each, and talking to the various characters in the towns you reach.  Most of the towns feel relatively small and empty as compared to modern rpg’s where there are dozens of people to talk to and things to examine.  The dungeons however feel large and can be quite challenging if you haven’t leveled your characters up enough before proceeding.

It’s beautiful out here… sorta

Combat takes place randomly throughout each dungeon.  Once the random timer goes down, the screen switches to a side view and battle commences.  Fights are turned based and you can choose from dozens of skills and magic of various types to wreck havoc on enemies, or heal fallen allies.  Each of your allies have areas of expertise.  Luna is a magic character with various healing and buff effects.  Later allies like Kyle use brute force to make maximum impact on enemies.  Alex is more all around, and after a certain point of the game can effectively use magic, or straight up slice enemies to death.

As you proceed through the game, characters level up through experience and are gifted better stats and abilities.  There is a solid inventory system and armour and weapons can be upgraded throughout the game to better equipment.  The biggest change however happens to Alex, whom the main quest has finding various pieces of the legendary Dragon Armour which give him massive defence boosts as well as various elemental powers based off of the Dragon protector for each.

Though the bosses can be tough, most of the random battles can be handled by the AI.  This is somewhat different in some areas that have specific monsters that are immune to various attacks, but otherwise it’s okay to just auto attack until everything is dead.

So you think you’re tough huh? In your shiny outfit

The simplicity of the gameplay and story, allows you to really enjoy the character interactions which all feel very genuine.  There is at least one character that you can connect with here no matter what your personality.  The charming anime and voice overs do nothing but add to this charm.

This charm helped spawn several sequels and remakes for Lunar: The Silver Star, but the original is what holds my memory.  I spent hours playing and replaying this classic on my Sega CD system.  Though the various remakes all have their added value, only the original holds my attention on replays.  I definitely suggest if you can get your hands on an original copy of Lunar: The Silver Star and are an RPG fan, do it!  You will not regret it.

Oh, and there was also this kick-ass intro!

For more Rewind Reviews don’t forget to check out Target Earth

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