Youtube Review: PlayDusty

This week’s Youtube Review brings us to the PlayDusty channel.  A solid channel dedicated to both playthroughs as well as reviews.  Based in Australia, the PlayDusty channel went live just under a year ago.

Still quite a small channel, PlayDusty features primarily multi-episode playthroughs.  These episodes are generally recorded from his twitch channel, and feature popular, if slightly older games like Demons Souls, Shadow of Mordor, and classics like Half-Life.  Though these games are a bit older, if the popularity of retrogaming has taught us anything about gaming, is what’s old is new.

PlayDusty does a pretty good job of keeping his audience engaged, though as the videos are cut from live stream, you do lose some quality that more edited playthroughs provide.  It can also be distracting when the commentary switches to someone off-screen whom you can no longer interact with.  Having a mix of edited let’s play among his streamed content would be a good step to remedy this and give viewers of the Youtube format more attention.

This aside, what first drew me to PlayDusty’s channel was his very well structured reviews, Will You Like.  Focused primarily on indie games, this immediately drew me in as a fellow reviewer of many indie games as well.  The reviews are extremely detailed and offer a great look into each game offering viewers an opinion on each game with the gameplay facts to help you make your own decision.  There’s a good variety of games to check out, and likely a few you have yet to even hear of, so it becomes a great source for potential hidden gems for the game collector out there.

The narration of each Will You Like is well scripted and delivered professionally.  A great deal of work has been put into this behind the scenes work to deliver this high quality and it shows.  After watching each episode I had a very good understanding of what to expect with each game, and if I may or may not like it, which is exactly what any good review should provide.

This is definitely a channel to watch if your are looking for precise, detailed reviews.  Though the rest of the content would probably be more enjoyable in it’s original live format.  The only other thing lacking here is more great reviews, which are hopefully on on-going focus for PlayDusty for which we can hope to see more of in the future.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment and like below. Be sure to follow me on Twitter for more great reviews.

Check out PlayDusty’s channel on Youtube, find him on Twitch, and of course follow him on Twitter.

Check out last week’s Youtube Review here.

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.

 

 

Rewind Review: Doom

With Doom being re-released, reimagined, remade, whatever in 2016, I thought it would be cool to take a look back at the original in this week’s Rewind Review.

Doom was originally released in 93, and is considered one of the early originators for both modern first person shooters (FPS) and horror games.  Assigned to a post on Mars after being not so nice to your commanding officer, you take the role of, well, Doomguy I guess, for the main character lacks an actual name.  A dull, leisurely duty on Mars is of course interrupted when the massive conglomerate UAC does some experiments deep inside Mars’ moon Phobos that go horribly wrong.  You of course, are sent to investigate and hilarity ensues.  I mean horror, horror ensues.

Come at me braaa!

From here on in, it’s an endless assault on your senses as you confronted by terror after terror, and you must proceed to kill them all as quickly as possible.  The gameplay is fairly simple, use your fists and guns to kill the demons as you explore the complicated maps, picking up new weapons, items, and precious key cards along the way.  This game was intense, even to today’s standards.  Monstrosities pop out at you from everywhere and grow increasingly more difficult to kill, and appear in more numbers as the game advances.

Set over 3 chapters, you will fight through Phobos, Deimos, and then Hell itself as you k ill countless demons.  Though you start off with fairly recognisable weapons like a trusty pistol, or sawed-off shotgun, later weapons become more unique and often copied in games to come.  Most notably the marine’s trusty saw which can cut creatures in half in seconds, and of course the BFG (Big F$%*ing Gun), both becoming series mainstays.

Hmm, this is a big f&*%ing gun!

One of the earliest games to be presented in pseudo-3D, the visual depth of Doom adds both visual uniqueness as much as it adds to the gameplay itself.  For the date of release the graphics themselves are great, and way over the top.  Each demon pops with blood and guts when shot or killed, or exploded.  Your character’s face is pictured in the HUD and acts as a visual cue of how badly hurt you are, a trick developer ID took from its first foray into the FPS world, Wolfenstein 3D (which you can play right now online here!) .  The sounds and music also fit right in as you explore increasingly more bizarre levels searching for the exit door.

Doom also introduced tons of new tech in it’s design.  It’s pseudo-3D environments added not only depth but height to their design.  This coupled with the stereo sound made for stellar gameplay allowing not only the player to hear noises all around, but for the A.I. to also hear the players distant gun shots and be drawn to them.  Doom also introduced online multiplayer and modding with it’s WADS feature, allowing players to alter gameplay and character models in the game, giving all new complexities at the time of it’s release.

Doom spawned a ton of sequels, clones, even a movie featuring The Rock.  With it’s later sequels being regarded as disappointing at the least, but still graphically amazing, it will be interesting to see if this next generation version will be able to compete with what was then next gen with the original Doom.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this weeks Rewind Review.  Be sure to let me know by liking or leaving a comment below, and check back often for more content!

Check out last week’s Review Rewind here!

 

Channel Review: Young Bones Gaming

It’s Tuesday once again, which means time to introduce once again a great, funny gaming channel to you all, Young Bones Gaming.  Featuring Calton, and Stahly, a huge variety of games, and a fair amount of sass, Young Bones Gaming is a load of fun.

Featuring both solo, and pairings in their videos, Calton and Stahly are able to mix up their content quite well to offer a lot of unique playthroughs.  From in character one-offs to on going themed series like Definitely Not Minecraft, Nightmare Fuel, and Gaming With a Consequence, there’s a lot of content here.  What is most surprising here is blend of styles all seem to work pretty well together, whether the guys are playing solo or together.  This expands their catalogue quite well to include a variety of content.  All of this content is pretty well edited and condensed for a funny experience.

Most of the Let’s plays here are one off’s but Young Bones Gaming’s recurring themes are a lot of fun.  I particularly enjoy their Definitely Not Minecraft series, where they play games that are generally inspired by Minecraft, but aren’t quite it.  It’s a smart little twist that not only drives more search traffic to their site but also helps them avoid going the route of many channels that are just re digested games over and over.

Be mindful though, these videos are PG-13 and contain a bit of language to watch out for.  Though this limits their audience some, I never found it over the top, or disruptive to the gaming or the humour.

With a fairly enganged audience, and very active comment sections, there’s a small but active community built here already.  I think the only thing they are really missing right now is more content.  Only releasing 1 or 2 videos a week, I can be easy to lose track of the channel as there won’t always be something new to check out when you go there.  Depending on your viewing habits this may or may not draw you away from the channel, but hopefully it doesn’t.

 

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and like below, let me know if you’ve checked out Young Bones Gaming!  Follow them on Twitter!

Check out last week’s review channel, The Neo Nerd

Weird Wizard Dave: Just Talk 07/19/2015

Check out this week’s Just Talk with Weird Wizard Dave as he examines the importance of balancing the time and effort put into video editing.  There’s a great deal of good insight here into the reception of edited let’s plays as opposed to unedited playthroughs.

Is the time commitment required to make awesome, tightly edited videos worth the potential extra views, or is better to leave less on the cutting room floor and present more raw videos, but perhaps more of them?

Check it out and make sure to like and comment below, let me know if you prefer edited let’s plays, or the uncut versions.

Subscribe to Weird Wizard’s channel, and make sure to follow him on Twitter.

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

Youtube Review: The Neo Nerd

Hello folks, and welcome to the first of many Youtube Reviews!  Every Tuesday tune in to see my thoughts and opinions on various up and coming (no pun intended) channels for you to check out.  This week I’d like to reintroduce you to a very familiar, but also one of my favourite channels currently, The Neo Nerd.

Having started out very similarly to me with a blog, The Neo Nerd expanded into a full youtube channel earlier this year, and has grown to over 700 subscribers as of the time of this post.

What originally drew me to The Neo Nerd’s channel was the amount of really absurd, bizzare games he had in his library of videos.  Everyone has seen a million different posts of Five Nights at Freddys, or Call of Duty and all the usual Youtube roulette of popular games, so these odd, strange games were an amazing find for me to watch and explore.  Steering away from a lot of mainstream games makes the channel unique and helps it stand apart from the rest.

This one for instance is a little odd….

After getting through the strange, you’ll also find a great deal of great games that he has played as well.  Though The Neo Nerd doesn’t focus on full playthroughs, not doing so means there is a lot of variety to the types of games you’ll find.  From the odd and quirky games like Facade (above) to awesome games like This War of Mine (one of my favourites), to epic survival games like Ark:Survival Evolved.  There’s going to be some game here that connects you the viewer, and The Neo Nerd.

Though the channel is still relatively young, there has been vast improvements to both audio and video quality from his early videos.  Opting for edited Let’s Plays, The Neo Nerd does a pretty consistent job of keeping the videos moving at a fast and humourous pace to keep the viewer invested and usually laughing.  He also consistently puts a lot of effort into the thumbnails, and opening sequence to each video.  For this relatively new channel, you’ll likely be wowed by his opening sequence, featuring the expanding universe and a solid musical track.

The thumnails are equally well rendered, and are sometimes funnier than the videos themselves, with The Neo Nerd’s face cropped very well into a screenshot of whatever game it may lead to.

Everybody poops, some more than others.

Throughout it all, The Neo Nerd does regular fan appreciation videos, filled with highlights, or that literally draw inspiration from his followers.  His Draw Your Tweets videos are easily the most genuine on the channel, and garner a good deal of interaction from his followers showing their appreciation for the entertainment he provides.  Continued commitment to the fan base should help to continue to grow the channel in the future.

That all said, the range of content, the amusing collaborations, and The Neo Nerd’s genuine commitment to his followers leads to an overall quite entertaining channel.  I am very interested to see where the channel goes over the next few months, and what steps The Neo Nerd will take to maintain a unique feel to the channel, as he has so far resisted the great urge to fall into the usual tropes of many other Youtube channels.  Here is looking forward to what may come.

Stay tuned next week when we will visit another channel, and as always, make sure to comment and like below. Let me know what you think of The Neo Nerd’s channel, or let me know other channels you’d like reviewed!

More Youtube: Weird Wizard Dave, My First Encounter

Rewind Review: Earthworm Jim

Who’s going to save Princess What’s-Her-Name from a bunch of power grabbing mutants and a flying cow?  None other than Earthworm Jim of course!  This side scrolling Sega Genesis classic is hard to forget for anyone who’s played it.  Inspired by other classic games like Sonic, and popular comics and toy lines like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this 1994 release is a bizarre but great blend of both.

Wait are we underground or not?

Imagine your life as a simple earth worm, eating dirt, and avoiding feet during a rain storm, when suddenly a super powered suit falls on you, giving you the power to save princesses and fend off wave after wave of crazy mutants.  That’s the plot in a nutshell.  There’s no deep seeded reflection, or violent beginnings here.  Just enough exposition and explanation to get us started on an adventure.

It’s the quirky nature of the game that really helps this game stand out.  The levels are comic like and colourful, and full of enemies.  Most of these levels have a stranger, eerie, alien like subterranean feel to them.  You’ll encounter mutant frogs, birds, and grannies along the way.  Yes, mutant grannies.  With a rogues gallery that includes the likes of Queen Slug-For-A-Butt, Psy-Crow, and Major Mucus, you can imagine some of the artistic leeway the developers were given here.

Have a cow man

Gameplay here is really similar to another classic of the previous era Bionic Commando.  Jim’s power suit gives him the ability to think and act like a human.  Besides the usual running and jumping, Earthworm Jim’s suit also happened to come with a handy gun that can fire off several rounds in quick succession.  When in a pinch, Jim can take advantage of his still elasticity worm body to whip across the screen and grapple from point to point.  If that doesn’t work, he can blow his head up into a balloon and float down to platforms, or use the buoyancy to float up through water.

This side scrolling adventure is broken up by various different levels.  Some levels are basically rail shooters, where you have to pilot Earthworm Jim around on obstacles on increasingly ridiculous devices as you fire at enemies along the way.  One level in particular has you protecting Peter Puppy, a seemingly harmless pup with Jekyll and Hyde tendencies that often get Jim in trouble if he should happen to run into harm’s way.  These different levels break up the pace well, and keep you doing different things along the way.

What do you mean you’ve never seen an earthworm in a super suit riding a hamster before?

Boss battles are common to encounter at the end of each level, and are pretty classic patterned events.  They are of course set aside by Earthworm Jim’s overly clever sense of humour, and completely over the top villains mentioned earlier.

Wait. Is this really fair?

Consider among one of the best games to ever come out during the 16-bit era, and one of the best characters ever, Earthworm Jim brought a lot to the table.  Though later sequels would eventually show a decline in character, charm and gameplay, the original game still stands as one of the best.  With it’s quirky sense of humour.  Literally down to earth protagonists, and smooth easy to get into gameplay it’s very hard to argue.

Thanks for reading, and as always leave a comment or like below, and let me know what you thought of Earthworm Jim.

Check out last week’s Rewind Review too!