Source: Early Access Purchase
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access 1, Early Access 2

Future Racing, it seems, is firmly back. And it’s international. Even without the mechanical and visual polish that Formula Fusion shows, it’s to the game’s credit that one of the better teams in the game is not American, or Australian, or British… It’s from the Middle East. Galaxy racing, from the Jazirat Al’Arab (the Arabian Peninsula.)

It is then, perhaps a shame that the game’s still a bit of a resource hog, doesn’t explain its powerups all too clearly, and has some later tracks that make even a hardcore Future Racing fan like me reach for the airbrakes. Both of them.

Formula Fusion, by R8 Games, is, in its way, very traditional Future Racing: There’s a campaign, which unlocks tracks in the rest of the game, there are different craft with different strengths and weaknesses (In the areas of Engine (speed), Handling, Anti-Gravity (Not fully explained, but it seems to deal with pitch adaptation and air control), and Defense), weapons and defensive systems, and other unlocks through in-game currency.

It’s actually quite interesting to note how R8 have meddled with the formula, because, on the whole, it’s an improvement. By winning currency in game, you can unlock modifiers for your craft, tuning it to your liking (I like to turn as much as I can as high as I can), adding variation to your weaponry, and unlocking tracks without necessarily having to play through campaign mode. Similarly, within the races themselves, while familiar features abound (Speed boost pads, weapon and shield energy pickups, airbrake turning, and the necessity of good pitch control on faster speed classes), combat is mostly de-emphasised, and some of the nastiest kit a racer can deploy with their weapon charge is actually on the defensive end. One in particular that sticks out is the Flashbang, which, when deployed against you, obscures your vision of the track for just a second, maybe two… But even on the slowest speed class, this can lead to hitting a wall, another racer, or missing a vital speed boost pad. Weapons also need to be charged with weapon pickups, and you get very few uses of a weapon unless you’re actively looking to power up your weapons… In which case you’re missing those vital boost pads. Which you can hit two of at once. And each one you get charges a turbo boost itself.

Visually and aurally, the game is a distinct pleasure, with some great tunes, solid sound effects, clear visuals (especially when motion blur gets turned off), and, as with the early Wipeout games, The Designers Republic give the UX, advertisements, and team logos (among other things) their signature, highly recognisable flair. The game is mostly clear, interface wise, but this, alas, is a good segue into some of the bad points of Formula Fusion.

See, for all its good points, for all that the tournament does allow you to mostly get through without playing the more difficult tracks, the more difficult tracks are very difficult indeed. For all that Atlas Torres is a high octane track, with lots of lovely airtime that pleases my black little heart, it’s also a track that you first encounter on the FF3000 circuit, aka “The third highest speed class in the game, and no god-damn joke” , and it is also a track with an absolutely silly amount of hard turns. As in “Airbrake now, or forever explode in the sky” hard. The cards for improving various craft elements, as well, seem to imply some extra effect, but if there’s any beyond improving, for example, the handling in reality, it’s somewhat difficult to tell. Similarly, despite the “Boost charged” voice clip, you can, in fact, use your boost at any time, it’s just it’s best if you wait until it’s fully charged. Finally, the game is a bit of a resource hog, to the point where even my moderately beefy system needs a run up to get reasonable loading times and silky smooth framerate, rather than a somewhat painful startup and the occasional stutter.

Still, if you want to see some solid Future Racing with the emphasis more on the racing end of things (While still having enough “combat” to please your average combat racer), then you definitely can’t go far wrong with Formula Fusion. R8 has quite obviously learned some lessons from their past projects (Yes, the Wipeout games), and, flaws aside, it’s definitely worth the price they’re asking if you can run it.

The Mad Welshman is happy so many folks love Anti-Gravity racing. It brings folks from all walks of life, and walls on all walks of life, together!

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £3.99
Where to Get It: Steam

You’ll notice the “Experimental” in the title here, and this is for a very simple reason: Sin Castle has not yet been translated into English, and I was curious to see if it was as accessible as it seemed from the video. Could it, in short, be played without knowledge of the language?

In short? Yes… And no. Now let’s get into the long, unpacking where it does well, and where it fails (Sometimes regardless of language.)

To give a brief summary of the game and what I understand of its story, it’s a puzzle game with roleplaying game elements where you click on things to interact with them, and use items to get ahead in what will be your main interaction, clicking on monsters to kill them (While they do their level best to kill you too.) The eight levels are themed on the Tree of Knowledge (Which started this whole Sin mess, if you believe some interpretations of the Christian Bible) and the Seven Deadly Sins of Christianity (Sloth, Greed, Envy, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, and Pride. Not in that order.)

After only four hours of what can best be described as “Bumblefucking my way through”, I have reached what is either Greed or Envy. The level graphic could, to be fair, mean either, but I’m tending toward envy, as equipping good items seems to raise enemy stats. Each level, as you might have guessed from this, has a somewhat thematic set of gimmicks. And sadly, it’s these gimmicks that make the game harder if you don’t speak the lingo, and at times bring the game down regardless.

Let’s take the first chapter, the Tree of Knowledge, and its two main gimmicks to start with. One gates progress, while the other simply makes things more difficult at the end. Let’s start with the one that makes it more difficult to beat the level: Some of the enemies (Demons of some variety, I’m guessing) have a two-faced symbol on them. There are two items you get fairly early on: A stocks (of the “Put someone in the stocks!” variety) and a Rod of Asclepius (Symbol of healing and medicine.) Kill the monsters with the two-face symbol without using the right one of these two on them (And it is not always the Rod, unsurprisingly), and they buff the Tree’s draconian guardians, with a worst case scenario of making the final three guardians tedious, and the last one nigh impossible to defeat. Use the right symbol, and a blue winged shield will appear, presumably saying it’s fine to kill them. Wrong one, and you might as well not kill that enemy.

This is an interesting gimmick, but the language barrier makes this one a bit trial and error, as does, for example, the gimmicks of three of the four boss monsters in the second level, Gluttony. The other gimmick of the first level, however, is…

…Look, you can’t kill certain monsters (As you don’t have the right weapons) until you beat the Serpent of the Garden in Rock-Paper-Scissors. Except it’s Sword (Quicker than axe, breaks on shield), Shield (Blocks sword, axe breaks shield), and Axe. And, unless you went fully Hitpoints on your stats, you have, at worst, 2 incorrect answers before you die and start again, compared to the Serpent’s 5. To say I am not enchanted with this is an understatement along the lines of “The Atlantic is a bit damp.” I am also less than amused with how certain monsters are a matter of slooooooowly out damaging them, waiting for your regeneration to hit safe levels before hitting them for just more than they can regenerate in the same time, and… It takes a few blows to see, on average, if you’re actually doing anything with said creatures.

You can, for a certain (rising) fee, respec your character, or attain silver and gold keys you might be running low on or out of, and you do slowly get money on a timer, but these both feel, not so much balancing out, but padding. Especially as both price and timer on the keys go up as you attain more. Each Sin’s level is self contained, starting you at Level 1, no stats, no keys, and some levels, yes, have less keys than others. It can be frustrating at times.

Overall, though, this is an interesting concept, it does some interesting things, and it has a cool and good aesthetic to it with what appears to be good colourblind awareness, nice music, and okay sounds. It’s just the execution could use a little polish.

The Mad Welshman knows a fair bit about Sin. Kind of comes with the territory of being a moustache twirling villain, really…

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £1.59
Where To Get It: Steam

Sometimes, it’s nice to take a break and look at a puzzle game. A nice, simple… Ah.

History2048 is, in a sense, nice and simple. It’s a sliding block puzzle, in which you move all the blocks in a 4×4 grid (appearing randomly on empty squares) in one of four directions, and if two tiles match, they form “better” tiles (Furthest row first.) It’s called History 2048 because the puzzle it’s based on, the 2048 puzzle, is based on 2’s complement counting. So the tiles are, technically, 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128… So on up till the extremely difficult to reach 2048. And beyond.

But just numbers has been done before! It’s visually unappealing! So… History. From the discovery of fire (1), hunting of mammoth (2), up to things like the ride of Attila’s Mongol Horde (512) and the commonly attributed era to which Le Morte D’elle Arthur (King Arthur’s legends, 1024, and where my best-tile score sits), the game uses low poly 3d graphics fairly well to make a simple board that nonetheless is pleasing to the eyeballs. No music, but simple blips, blops, and splooshes, along with the occasional twinkle, mark the road onward.

So, you slide, and you slide, and the splooshy blops make it look like you’re winning, but… That campfire. Right in the corner. Behind the roman coliseum. To get it, you’re going to have to change the direction of your play, and that… Oh, damn, now there’s a mammoth blocking it!

In summary, History2048 is nice on the eyes, okay on the ears, less than 2 quid, and the only niggle I can think of is that you have to quit via the window button. Which is obviously an appaling pro- h, no it isn’t. So the game’s just fine. Give it a go if you like simple to play, hard to master puzzles.

The Mad Welshman now has a top score of 13440. Feel free to tweet at him if you top that or, even better, beat the game.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £22.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Humble Store

Real Time Strategy in space has always been a tough proposition. Mainly because space is big, and the early game of any such endeavour can, done “realistically”, have all the fun of watching paint dry, while the mid to late game can be plagued with doing a thing wrong, then not realising for a good hour (or until it’s too late, whichever comes sooner.) Dawn of Andromeda, sadly, is no different in this, despite a potentially interesting main campaign.

Let’s talk about that campaign narrative a little, because honestly, it’s a feature I see very little of in the old 4X (eXpand, eXplore, eXploit, eXterminate) genre these days, and one involving multiple alien races in a grand tapestry of war, tragedy, and shenanigans? Sign me u-

Oh. Oh wait. I can’t find that mercenary I just hired and sent to kill a bounty for my current best friends, the Sython (Who the Terran Empire totally isn’t going to go to a long, expensive war with several times over the next few millennia before somebody else screws it all up.) Wait, I found him again, and… Wait, I lost a survey ship? When did I? Oh, while I was watching this guy half a galaxy away. Meanwhile, I’m debating which of the more far flung colony worlds I should try expanding to, in the hope I can actually defend them.

What I’m getting at here, folks, is that Dawn of Andromeda is not the friendliest of games. There are three game speeds (not counting pause), and while they’re marked “Slow”, “Normal”, and “Fast”, I have different names for them: “Can actually see a fight happening”, “Can watch bars slowly tick up”, and “The speed I go at while I’m waiting for things to happen.” Pause is pretty much my default state while I try to work out what the hell is going on with my scouts and survey ships and, in one particular case, watching a bounty slowly, but surely, escape the guy I’d just hired to take it.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot to take in, adding to the “A lot of the time you will be paused.” Understanding an alien race enough to talk to them is a research project, taking time away from your research. Adding to a world’s power requires an infrastructure investment, which will cost you some money a turn until it’s done. You have an approval rating, which will cause rebellions if it’s low, and goes up and down based on… Factors. Decent living conditions help, as does an assigned councillor who isn’t an asshole. It’s not very colour blind friendly, to the point where, zoomed in to a point where I have two ships chasing each other in my field of view, I can’t actually see the things without straining my eyes (Drag selecting will only select the ship I directly control.)

It tries to help, really it does. It has “Zoom in here” icons in the planet tables, fleet tables, anomaly tables… But the main screen is a mess. The UI isn’t the friendliest. Ships can chase each other for a long time without fights happening, and ships attacking from the front will move toward said fast ship, then tail along behind it, losing it like the other poor bastards chasing it in the first place. Providing you have the foresight (and opportunity) to pull such a maneuver off in the first place.

I’m sure the game has some interesting things in it. I’m sure it has something, some potential. But I’m finding frustration in even the easiest of scenarios (Where I am informed, and tentatively agree, that even finding the alien worlds may well eat up the whole 2 years allotted for “survival”), boredom from the sparse universe, and quickly realising that it amounts to “Build lots of ships, point them at whatever enemy while holding your own worlds safe”, despite its other trappings. As I am occasionally forced to say, the game resists being played.

The Mad Welshman accepts that Space is big. But surely it’s more interesting than this?

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £14.99 (Soundtrack £4.99)
Where To Get It: Steam, Humble Store, Itch.IO

“I don’t get it”, I said as I stared at the screenshots. “What does this have to do with gaming, per se? It looks like it’s inspired by Jet Set Radio Future, but doesn’t have any visible rollerblades or anything.” HOVER: Revolt of Gamers is, it must be said, a game with a somewhat confusing title. And it doesn’t help that there’s a fair amount you have to do before anything more is mentioned beyond “The Great Admin have banned fun” , which, also, seems like a very silly thing to try and ban. I have fun walking, for example, and singing, and, of course, there are many co-operative activities that are fun, at least some of which fall under the umbrella of “Necessary Procreation.”

“Jamie, stop worrying about the damn story. It’s not important! I want to know how it plays!”

Oh. Not so hot. I mean, the basics work alright, but when those basics get into the wild, it gets a little frustrating. The controls are, for the most part, pretty simple, even if non-french folk might want to be warned to check the control options, otherwise they’re using ZQSD for walking (AZERTY Keyboard is the default.) Jumping things are done with space, sneaky slidey grindy things are done with shift, and throwy scanny talky things are done with the left mouse button. Bam. The problem then arises when turning the mouse is how you turn, and A and D (on a UK keyboard, anyway) are more sort of… Tilts.

Air control, and indeed run control, then sort of depend on your mouse sensitivity being high, which doesn’t interact too well with, say, looking around, or if you get motion sick. Then again, the way the player created protagonists bounce around, I probably couldn’t recommend this to anyone with motion sickness anyway, especially with all the boost pads and bounce pads and grabbing onto things that maybe should not be grabbed onto. One example I noted while playing in the first area was clothes lines. Okay, I can sort of see you grinding on clothes lines… Sort of… But they are, last I checked, not reliable mantling points, per se. So in a sense, they get in the way of a clean line, which is, of course, the best way to do any sort of mission involving speed. Which many of the missions are, and indeed, keeping your speed high is the only way to destroy holosigns, which is a thing you have to do.

It doesn’t exactly help that the cluttered landscape of the hub, combined with a somewhat odd UX design, means you don’t always know where you’re going or what the hell you’re doing. I’ve failed delivery and Fuzz-running missions (Themselves a bit silly, because at least one involves giving someone’s pet a good walkies… On a magnetic tramway) simply because I didn’t notice where the damn item to pick up was due to the confusion. There’s a lot of bright colours, and they often conflict, so poor colourblind me was often acutely lost, even with the Crazy Taxi style arrow that tells you whether something you need to do is in front of, behind, to one side, or up or down, and takes its context from whatever you seem to be doing at the present time (be that capturing spy drones that just seem to be minding their own business, graffiti spraying over the seemingly rare Admin Propaganda posters, or some other things), or racing. This lack of clarity sometimes extends to missions, as friends and I had an interesting time trying to work out what the criteria for the “Do 20 tricks in under a minute and a half” mission was. It seems to be trick combos of more than 75 points, so I filled it out by jumping in different directions, bouncing off the ground with my neon moon boots, and holding the trick key in combination with various directions to pull off tricks, ala Tony Hawks or any other tricking game I’ve encountered.

That tricking mission ranked me up by 5, the highest I’d seen. Shame I had to hit 100 ranks total to get more story, and in less than an hour, I’d started to have trouble finding things to do that weren’t fuzz missions… At least some of which have gruelling time standards, as do most of the requirements for the medals. “8 seconds for gold on mantling several rooftops to deliver a ball” sounds easy until you realise each mantle’s about a second, and each throw’s about a second, so it’s basically “Don’t fuck up at all.” My first, blind time was 19s. No, there isn’t adjustable difficulty, why would you want adjustable difficulty? Don’t answer that, we both probably know if the question even has to be asked.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t good in the game, for, while the hub is extremely cluttered, I can’t really say it’s not pretty or aesthetically consistent. It is, in an anime-cyberpunk sort of way, and the character designs, similarly, are mostly kinda cool. The music is definitely a strong point, as Hideki Nakagama (yes, JSRF composer Hideki Nakagama) and Cédric Menendez bring some damn find beats. But the problem is that this is just two parts. The UX is cluttered, at least some of the missions amount to “Do it perfectly or fail”, even in the first part of the story, the missions lack variety, and the story is… Well, silly even for a videogame.

The Mad Welshman no Great Admin, out to ban fun (At least partly because such a thing would be extremely hard to enforce), but he sadly can’t recommend this game.

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