Source: Review Copy
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Release

It’s tough to be a drone operator sometimes. Especially when your equipment is less than stellar. Especially when you’re relying on them to keep you both supplied and alive. Especially when you have meaty sausage fingers like mine. “Turert… No, Turet… No… Oh, Sod.”

Red bad. Blocked door bad. That the ship stops responding to my door commands soon after? BAD.

But such is the life of the average salvager in Duskers, an intriguing game by Misfits Attic (Who you may remember for devilish action puzzler A Virus Named Tom) that nonetheless makes me hate my big ol’ ham hands. Because it involves text commands. In real time.

Duskers has apparently been in Early Access since early August, and it’s relatively easy to describe: You bimble around a procedurally generated universe absolutely chock full of dead, not-so-dead, and very much alive and dangerous shipwrecks, sending little drones to try and explore, survive, and salvage, despite a variety of threats. Including the fact that you can only directly control one drone at a time, and have to do quite a few things with typed console commands.

In a way, it’s similar to Deadnaut, in that you’re never going to have the full information, you’re often under equipped, and the threats ramp up quite quickly. Thankfully, just as Deadnaut has recently added difficulty options, Duskers has them also, allowing you to turn off certain threats, such as radiation, which, as you’d guess, makes rooms basically uninhabitable, and tends to spread, or vents. If you don’t get where the threat from an open vent is, you haven’t seen or read enough horror. I like that.

Others have come before, leaving their drones to be salvaged by us. Problem is, the things that destroyed them are very often still around.

What I’m not so sure about is the input scheme. Which is awkward, because it’s clear this is the core of the game. Without the quicker enemies, the radiation, and vents, the game is almost like a realtime puzzle. Generators only power certain parts of each ship or station you visit, doors may or may not work, and the slower threats are a case of “Spot, back away, work out how to lead them away from where you want to work.”

But, even with a useful autocomplete, you’re not always going to react quickly enough. As an example, there’s nothing that shares the ‘tu’ of turrets, so ‘tu [enter]’ is usually enough, but that “Not always” can be somewhat frustrating, rather than the challenging I think Misfits Attic are aiming for. Still, in the majority of runs I’ve had so far, I’ve at least been able to make a start on objectives the game offers, and I’m kind of impressed by other aspects of the game. For example, for something roughly 28% done, there’s that complexity from simple rules that I adore in many games. Let’s meet a few Drones and Ships, and give you some examples.

Toby is a sturdy wheeled ROV. He’s not very fast, but he can take a whalloping, and that’s not surprising, considering he’s my tow truck, for recovering ship upgrades, disabled (But not destroyed) drones, and other important features that are too big for my Gatherer to handle. But he’s by no means defenseless. See, Toby recently found a Trap module… Four anti-vehicular shaped charges with remote detonators. Well, to the victor go the spoils, said I, and he’s been a valuable member of the team ever since I worked out the blast radius of my explosive surprises. It’s a little irritating to time things properly on typing “trap boom”, then hitting enter, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of things, and Toby rarely fails.

I currently haven’t needed to press 1. Yet. But the fact it’s in there is slightly intimidating.

Jane, meanwhile, is a somewhat plainer model. Her specialty is smaller material and fuel for my ship. So, she’s plain, but indispensable. Even more so now that she can detect motion in adjacent rooms. It’s not perfect, as some rooms are shielded, but she often lets me know ahead of time if something nasty’s hiding in the next room. Considering that, two games out of three, her compatriots failed to have motion sensors, I’m happy.

Finally, there’s Vinnie. Vinnie’s not tough, despite a common association of the name Vinnie with grim jawed tough folks, but he’s useful, as he’s got a portable power interface. He’s the only one who can turn generators on and off, and without Vinnie, I’d probably be in serious trouble. He got a stealth module, which means he can hide in (relatively) plain sight for enough time to get him out of danger… So long as I have the scrap to keep his stealth module in good nick.

Meanwhile, my ship, the Maria Asumpta (A grand old lady) has survived long enough to pick up a pair of modules herself. The first is a Power Rerouter, allowing me to shift which rooms and their doors are powered through linked generators. It saves a lot of time, and keeps Vinnie safer. Meanwhile, a Long Range Scanner, while almost on the verge of breakage (And deteriorating as it goes) allows me to more comprehensively scan my local area, opening up more options for travel.

You will, it’s almost guaranteed, never have enough scrap to fix everything. Prioritisation is important.

Of course, since this could be called a Roguelike, resource scarcity and degradation of equipment are a distinct problem. I need scrap to repair and upgrade… Well, pretty much everything. I need fuel to explore my surroundings, and jump-core rods to properly get around. Meanwhile, apart from the whirr of my drones’ motors, all is deadly quiet. A little too quiet, sometimes.

But it’s still early days yet, it’s definitely interesting, and if you liked Deadnaut, you should give this a go. It’s got similar replayability, a somewhat interesting premise, and the game is clearly designed around its atmosphere and aesthetic. But be aware that quick and correct typing is important for play, so you may need to tone down the difficulty if, like me, you have clumsy typing fingers.

There are two supporting videos here. The first is the Halloween update vid, with a somewhat amusing stunt Misfits Attic pulled (Real-life Duskers), and the second is one of my run-throughs of a game, showing what I can. (Part 1 , Part 2)

The Mad Welshman glared at his nemesis, the keyboard. Tiny buttons… Big fingers. He was all alone in the universe, and the only tool for survival was his command line skills.

…Needless to say, he was somewhat tense.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £31.99 (£44.99 for Deluxe edition)
Where To Get It: Steam

This is one of those times where I genuinely wish I could say more than “The developers continue to support the game and continue to introduce nice things.” I want to like Sword Coast Legends. I already like its voice acting, its environments, and how heavily abstracting the 5E DnD system makes it more accessible.

But right now, that’s just a wish. Because it’s clearly not for me as it stands.

Hommett, a wizard who had been thrown out by the Harpells (A Bad Sign)… One of the many characters, with great voice acting, that… Just don’t grab me.

Sword Coast Legends, developed by N-Space, and published by Digital Extremes, just doesn’t grab me. It is improving, but it’s been almost two months since its release, and I fail to find the motivation to get very far, despite promises of an improved DM mode. And part of this, I feel, is that it’s quite clearly balanced towards a multiplayer experience. Dungeon Crawl mode, for example, has enemy groupings in its “Easy” dungeons that would quickly overwhelm a level 1 fighter, such as a pair of Level 2 Goblins supported by a pair of archers, and a shaman that keeps healing the bleeding lot of them. You don’t want to ask what happens to a level 1 mage, as the answer is nearly always a bitter frown and the word “squish” repeated in a deadpan tone, over and over. DM Mode is currently, and will remain until next month, a random dungeon generator where some monsters and simplistic quests can be added, and Story mode…

Look, I know that the Sword Coast is iconic. I know that Luskan is a hive of scum and villainy. I know that it’s right there, in the sodding title. But I’m somewhat tired of the Sword Coast itself, and I’m definitely tired of a plotline that can be summed up as “You might destroy the world you love because a great eeeeeeeevillll has chosen you to be its host!”

Luskan. Luskan never changes. Religion, Magic, Planar Politics… But Luskan. Luskan never changes.

An Ancient Evil, if Forgotten Realms material to date is any indication, threatens Northwest Faerun once a week. I’m honestly surprised anything gets done in the setting, the amount of Ancient (and Current) Evils that are hanging around. It doesn’t help that the main players are introduced pretty much in the prologue (A Drowish sorcerer, some do-gooders who may have been tricked, some fanatical worshippers of Helm who may also have been tricked, and, of course, the Ancient Evil itself, a demon from the darkest, yet fieriest pits of the Abyss.)

This is all a terrible shame, because honestly? You can see a lot of love went into this, and the fact that N-Space Games are continuing to improve things says a lot. The voice acting is pretty damn good, and it felt right… Even the Scouse dwarf Larethar Gulgrin, which fits his character very well. The environments are pretty, and clearly abstracting the mess that is the Dungeons & Dragons Feat/Skill system into a series of easy to understand, and well compartmentalised trees? That takes effort, and it does work. The music feels like it could have been transplanted into pretty much any high fantasy game and still worked is more a comment on the genre’s conventions than the quality of the music (Which is also fairly nice.)

But how you feel when playing it is important, and I felt… Like it was busywork. Even with the pause for tactics that makes fights easier, you’re still going to be using the Stabilise (Get People Up Because They Fell Down) command a fair bit, and the items… This game is filled with vendor trash. So. Much. Trash. I have lockets and statues of various deities and rings galore, beer bottles and wine bottles and Luskan Coffee of various types… And I have no idea what might become important, and what’s literally here for flavour. The only things that are truly important to me are weapons, armour, and magical items, and, thanks to a procedural treasure system, beyond fixed drops, I’m never quite sure whether something I grab will be of any use whatsoever. Sorting through it all felt a chore, even with some of the ease of use features in the inventory. Combat never felt real to me, even with grunts and clangs and flashy spells going ZAP and thwaaaaBOOM.

The abilities often have evocative names. That doesn’t always improve the experience.

This, honestly, is a damn shame, and, in the interests of fairness, I am going to give DM mode another chance when the improvements hit in December, because, as Neverwinter Nights proved, you can have a less than stellar story, and still be a game worth remembering because of its other features. Folks who are less critical of high fantasy’s foibles than I am may find this a more interesting game, but… It really does seem to be rubbing me up the wrong way, and that makes me sad for reasons I can’t entirely articulate.

The Mad Welshman examined the statue of Sune Firehair he had found in the Goblin caves. Even with her warm smile, her hair tastefully lined with amethysts and opals, she felt… Lost, somehow. Her gown was cracked, and dust had settled in her blazing hair. Undeniably beautiful. Undeniably precious. But, equally undeniably, another religious icon to place in his pack.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £29.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Oh, that poor old Van Helsing bloodline. They’ve been put into some pretty awful films, continuations of the Dracula storyline, lampooned… Oh, it’s tough to be a Van Helsing. However, this isn’t quite so true of the Van Helsing Jr in The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing series. And now, for slightly less than the original trilogy put together, we have the whole shebang in one package.

Katrina Is Not Impressed.JPG

I’ll mention a couple of things right off the bat. Firstly, this requires an online login to play, even in single player. I’m not entirely happy with that, but there it is. Secondly, I have not played the trilogy before this point. This is basically a fresh look at it.

So, if you’ve ever played the Torchlight or Diablo series, you’ll have the rough idea: Left click things till they die, occasionally hitting numbers, right click, or the heal button (Q), then left click their loot, make your numbers bigger, and go off to kill things. The devil, of course, is in the details, and there are definitely things that make Van Helsing unique, such as an upgradable companion (The irascible, vain, and selfish wraith Katrina), a crafting and upgrade system (using magical essences and the banging of three items of the same type together), hidden quests, and power-ups to your active and passive skills (called Auras.)

The thing is, it suffers a little bit from a somewhat erratic difficulty curve. For most of the first chapter, I happily murder nearly everything in sight, often killing entire groups in one blow (This is especially true of the Phlogistoneer, whose weapons are basically rockets and cannonballs), but when I got to a certain boss fight, suddenly, it went from “Ahahaha! Die… Dieeee!” to “Huh, I have to take the prie- sigh … The priest out first, run round like a blue arsed fly until my shields regen, kill the- Oh, sod, I died again.”

Did I… Did I just do that? I did just do that… LET’S DO IT AGAIN!

…Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I died twice (Once because I didn’t prioritise the healer, once because I didn’t run away fast enough.)

And from there, it was challenging all of a sudden, and has remained that way up till halfway through Chapter 2. I expect another sudden difficulty spike any minute now.

However, once I hit multiplayer with a friend, the game changed. We laughed, with one or the other of us making “Ohhhh”s and “Ahhhh”s as we showed each other the Hidden Fun Stuff in the game (For lo, there are hidden quests), and chuckling at the fact that, due to budget and time constraints, the voice acting for the first chapter is aimed at the Bounty Hunter class (originally the only one, now one of six.) It’s okay, though, they all wear silly hats, so we were fine with it, NeoCore.

It’s important to say, at this point, that the game is fun. The writing is silly and over the top at times, but presents some interesting ideas, and does so consistently (Turns out the original Van Helsing brokered a peace between man and monster, an interesting inversion of the way things usually go), while, if what I’m seeing and what I’ve been informed is correct, there’s been some major changes under the hood to mean that no one class feels less than interesting to play. It still retains the three chapter structure, and I enjoyed messing around with the crafting system.

Just like any ARPG, when you get swarmed, it can be a little tough to work out what’s going on.

Of course, it’s not without flaw, and some areas (Most especially in the crowded urban landscape of Chapter 2) could do with a bit of a readability pass, as I often thought I had found a clever way around things, only to find that no, actually, the path I’d taken became impassable only a short distance in, with nothing interesting to show for it. The ability tree for the main character also seems to encourage specialisation, as you’re not going to get your second tier abilities until Chapter 2 (Unless there’s something I missed), so spreading your points around seems an easy way to fatfinger your way to death. There’s also the N key, which zooms in to where your mouse pointer is because… Well, actually, we never figured that out. The angle doesn’t seem quite right for dramatic closeup.

Overall, though, I think ARPG fans would like this version, and it seems like an okay introduction for new players to the ARPG genre (Although I’d still say Torchlight is tops for that.) I shall leave you with the parable of the Big Red Button. So far, I have encountered two Big Red Buttons. You should all know what is said about Big Red Buttons, and it won’t surprise you to know that Katrina, bloodthirsty chancer that she is, wants to push said BRB because she wants to know what it does. One of these times, it ended in tragedy. Another, it ended in murderous glee. In a way, this sums up the experience very well, with both good and bad coming from the same… Shiny… Red…

I should also mention, at this point, that the voice acting can be quite good at times.

[PUSH BUTTON? Y/N >Y]

The Mad Welshman sweated as Katrina grinned. His finger hovered. Fate hung in the balance.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £3.99
Where To Get It: Gamersgate

Technically, this should be a Going Back, as Cursed Mountain originally released 6 years ago, on the Wii, but the PC Port has finally arrived, courtesy of its main publisher/developer, Deep Silver, only this past month. Was it worth the wait for mountain climbing, Buddhist hungry ghost shenanigans on PC? Well, only kind of.

But what could *do* such a thing? SUSPENSE!

You see, apart from the control scheme, and adjustable resolution, it’s a straight port. So saves are strictly checkpoint only, the graphics are much as they were on the Wii (Running at around 30 frames a second, it doesn’t look bad, per se, so much as slightly dated), and there are a couple of quirks that I find a little amusing, and occasionally frustrating. For example, you always attack in the camera’s direction, so sometimes, to break a pot nearby, you have to get out of the fixed camera zones the game has.

Of course, part of the problem is that the game was designed with the Wii in mind, so there are things that you’re going to be missing out on (And I honestly couldn’t work out how to get a Wiimote connected to a PC to see if that functionality is still there.) For example, the Wiimote acts as a walkie talkie at one point, and that segment… Slightly loses out. Other features, however, become much easier. Combat, especially.

Y’see, combat in Cursed Mountain used to have some fairly janky Wiimote detection, leading to problems, as putting ghosts to rests, whereas, in the PC version, things definitely appear to be friendlier. Now, instead of having to follow lines closely, or flick your Wiimote, it’s “Mouse over these in roughly the right order, and flick your mouse in directions while doing stuff.” Much easier to deal with ghosts now. Speaking of ghosts, let’s talk story.

It can’t be understated that the game maintains an oppressive feel quite well.

The game is set in the 80s, in the vicinity of Chomo Lonzo (Bird Spirit, so named for its appearance), and you are Eric Simmonds, a scottish mountaineer searching for his brother… Who, as it turns out, has not been very respectful of local tradition, with the disastrous result of a plague of ghosts from Bardo. Buddhism is one of the main themes here, and I’m honestly not qualified to say whether it’s a respectful treatment or not (Although many folks seem to think it is), but I am qualified to talk about the pacing, how it makes you feel, and the like…

…It’s not for everybody. Survival horror generally isn’t, but the pacing in this one is slow and deliberate, although when it starts ramping up, it doesn’t screw around. Personally, though, I like it. Eric is a skeptic, and the game sort of reflects this. I say ‘sort of’, because “It’s a hallucination” is something Eric says all the way through, and you get the feeling that, as much as you’re playing along to see where things go, so is Eric… And he seems to cling to the idea of a hallucination more as a defense mechanism than any actual belief. Still, it leads to some interesting moments, like where meeting Edward Bennett doesn’t… Seem like a real thing that happened, thanks to the design of the static cutscenes. And yes, there are static cutscenes, but they’re really not that bad.

AND SUDDENLY DEATH AND BLOOD

What I did find bad, however, was that early areas made it very hard to see some things. “They didn’t even have time to bury the bodies.” Er, what bo- Ohhhhhh, THAT body! But, otherwise, the design is pretty consistent, the game is somewhat easier as a result of the port, it has an interesting premise, and the voice acting is… Alright! There’s definitely a sense of oppression in the game, and I kinda like the religious/spiritual elements (Although, as noted, keep in mind I am not qualified to say whether it’s appropriating rather than being respectful.)

But, also as I said, it’s definitely not for everybody. Some will be put off by the slow pace. Others will be put off by what is effectively QTEs for unlocking secret doors, boss fights, and making fights go a lil’ quicker. Others still will be put off by the lack of graphical options. The price of £4, as such, doesn’t really feel like a cheat to me, because it does interesting things, in potentially interesting directions, and the pacing doesn’t put me off. But, as mentioned… Your mileage will vary on this one.

The Mad Welshman sighed as his ice pick cast another soul back into the cycle. So much pain and suffering, and for what? A man’s pride? 

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £9.99
Where To Get It: Steam

This review is mostly going to sound like gushing. And, in a sense, it will be. Because most of the flaws with Read Only Memories are in questions unanswered, and in flaws with the interface. But the core of the game… That induced a different type of gushing. But I can only talk about that in general terms, because… I don’t want to spoil things for you.

Turing is adorable, if somewhat… Logical at the beginning. He definitely develops, though.

In any case, Read Only Memories is an adventure game, similar in style to older games such as Cobra Mission, Snatcher, and the MacVentures, in that you have a first person view, and interact by clicking on things, then clicking on icons to do things with them. The inventory is a pop-up box menu, and dialogue runs across the blackspace at the bottom of the screen in JRPG fashion (Y’know, typing letters individually with the option to left click to hurry the words along already). It’s got its problems… For example, the dialogue clicking can lead to missing information if you want to hurry things along (A fast mode helps, but only somewhat), and your interaction icons will sometimes require you to move the mouse away from the thing you clicked, and then back, before you can do the thing you were planning to do.

But this is the thing: Those are niggles, and an adventure game lives or dies on not just whether fans like it, but the story, the aesthetic, the themes, and how it deals with them. In this, Read Only Memories does a good job. Visually, it’s going to remind you of Snatcher. Simple, pixel graphics, anime inspired, and most of it looks like a Syd Mead vision of the future rather than grim and gritty. But make no mistake, the story is a grim one. Turing, a self aware robot, breaks into your home to ask you for help in finding his creator, who had been assaulted, possibly kidnapped. Things snowball from there to corporate intrigue, felonies that would make Gabriel Knight or the cast of Day of the Tentacle wince, and… Not gonna lie, you may well cry at portions. Don’t be ashamed of that, it’s both a testament to your empathy, and to the creators’ solid narrative design.

Conservatism. Conservatism never changes. Pompadours, fringe-lines, fashion… But Conservatism… Never changes…

For all that the visuals don’t match perfectly, they match well enough that you believe in this future, where conservatives aren’t worried so much about the colour of your skin as to whether you want to look like a cat or want to improve on the human design with technology, and where robots, for common convenience tasks, are both common and believable in their functions. It’s cyberpunk as hell, in its way, because you’re not a powerful person (A media/hardware journalist, in fact. 😛 ), and it explores themes of consciousness, and privilege of the future, in a very succinct manner.

Perhaps a little too succinct in places (You may never understand why assuming that a feline person might be the TOMCAT you’re looking for is offensive, and the game won’t tell you unless you’re prepared to fuck up more than you already did), but the writing is tight, the music is fitting (I can’t think of a single track that didn’t fit the mood). The sound design is again mostly reminiscent of games like Snatcher, and what rare voice acting there is (The cutscenes) is fitting. What I particularly like, however, is its accessibility. It’s easy to understand, easy to get into, and, while the cutscene sorta assumes a gender for your character at the beginning, that’s not quite true (That cutscene is another niggle), as you can not only state your name, but your preferred pronouns as well (including custom pronouns). Since you never see yourself, and the character is mostly a tabula rasa (within the usual limits of games with dialogue choices), this is a good design choice. I went with they/them/their, and my own name… I don’t particularly know why, but… It felt right.

You may not think this makes sense. But it does. In context.
…Why yes, this is a subtle way of my saying “play the game”, why do you ask?

Read Only Memories can be completed in around 4 hours, but multiple paths and endings mean that this is definitely a replayable game… Yes, including bad ends… Most of the cheevos are hidden, another good design decision. As such, I would recommend this to quite a few folks out there, as it’s a simple enough adventure game (mechanically) that it would be a good entry point for folks who have been scared off adventure games before, adventure game fans will find the puzzles mostly well designed (I don’t know if there was a quiet way to do some things. Maybe I’ll find out later), and cyberpunk fans… Yeah, this is cyberpunk as hell. I definitely feel good about my £10, and I think (Don’t take my word for it, obviously!) that many of you will too. Even if, y’know, you get sniffly and tear up like me.

I’m not going to tell you what end I got, but… Folks who know me and my writings won’t be surprised about it, I’ll say that much.

The Mad Welshman sighed as he read news of another zaibatsu dealing with corruption in the ranks, sipping his Strawberry Power Hassy and brushing his long, dark mane. Sodding business news, he thought.

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