Source: Review Copy
Price: £8.99 (£6.29 until Nov 7th)
Where To Get It: Steam

I’ve got to admit, I love me some balls. Balls clacking together, balls going into holes, balls being smacked by long, roughly cylindrical objec- What, you’re not a Pool fan either? Not even the Snooker? Oh good, you like some Pool. Well, let me make you happy by announcing that Pool Nation FX, by Cherrypop Games, doesn’t just have the US 8 and 9 ball varieties, but also Snooker and the UK variety of 8 Ball. Unfortunately for me, it still has the Endurance mode I so dislike (But I grudgingly admit is challenging). But fortunately overall, it’s still fun, and still mellow.

The menus are bright, pretty clear, and… Oh hey, the bonus game is just a bonus game! WOOOO!

Released on Early Access in the 7^th of this month, the game feels largely complete. Career mode is there, and has had a facelift from the previous edition. No more do players have to unlock their cosmetics through the sometimes gruelling bonus games, as the game’s unlocks run on in-game currency: PoolNationBux (or PN$.) Happily, this includes the bonus games themselves, and this change is a good move. Before, I would struggle through Pool Nation’s punishing Endurance mode, and in FX? Unless I want to 100% the game (Which I will… Eventually), I don’t have to even touch the bonus games. But, in most cases, I still want to, because they’re fun little additions.

Some examples would be: Golf, where your goal is to pot the balls in specific holes, in a specific order. Straight, where no trick shots are allowed, and the simple shots, controlling where the ball ends up, is the best. Time attack modes where you try to pot the balls quicker than the AI, and, of course, Endurance, where the balls keep being placed on the table, and when you reach 24 balls… It’s all over. Variety is definitely not something this game lacks.

The game is mainly mouse based, but is easy to get your head around, and the tutorials teach well.

It should be noted, however, that some things haven’t changed too much. The AI can still be a little inconsistent at times, seeming to do badly for several shots, and then 8 balling you when you miss your final shot on the black. It happens less than it did in Pool Nation, which is an improvement, but… It can still happen, especially on higher difficulties. Also lacking, although this is purely a niggle, are the weird stories behind the characters of Pool Nation’s world. It’s not a necessary thing, but I was amused by some of the wacky stories that made the world seem… Odd. Like the player who believes he’s a gopher. Maybe they’ll come back.

In the meantime, the game is definitely pretty, Cherrypop are definitely working hard in the bugfixing department, it has a fair bit of variety, and for its price, is something pool fans of all types, from the casual players, the hustlers, and the fans of making trickshot videos (For lo, there is a trickshot mode, and, while I don’t claim to understand it, I’m told it’s amusing) could enjoy, one game at a time, for a while. If you don’t particularly want to wait for your PN$ to build up, the “Unlock” DLC for the cosmetics is quite cheap. As such, while there are bugs and crashes in this Early Access game, they are being worked on, and I’d say it’s worth gambling the £8.99 (£6.29 until November 7^th) on what promises to be many hours of amusement.

Yes, that *is* the white ball all the way over there. I wanted to see how far I could get it, and if you could see it. :V

Pool is, you may have noticed, one of the few exceptions to The Mad Welshman’s “No Sportsball” rule.

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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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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Every now and again, there comes a time when there’s no diplomatic way to say that a game is terrible. Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope is one of those times. This game is appalling, even for a genre not exactly known for high production values, or even polish at times. That genre is Hidden Object Puzzle Adventures (or HOPAs). Bear with me, while I explain why this game is the pits.

It is an unwritten law that all houses must have a ResEvil Lock/Safe somewhere on the property. Ghosts are not exempted from this.

For those who don’t know, HOPAs are a specific subgenre of adventure games, where at least a third of the puzzles (Usually more than half) involve finding hidden objects because… Well, between one and three of them (Usually just one) are important plot items, and the rest… Is just for the joy of finding hidden objects. Your mileage may vary immensely on whether that really is a joy, not only as a personal preference, but also within games. They mostly tend toward supernatural, sometimes romantic or familial stories, rely on simple characterisations, and have retained many of the same core UI elements as they had in their humble beginnings (Around 1998). Backgrounder over, let’s talk criticism.

For a start, unless specifically pluralised, hidden objects tend to be the only one of their kind in an individual puzzle. Not so with Dark Heritage, which not only has objects similar to each other (You may try and click on a “Hammer”, only to find out, near the end of the game, that it was actually a “Lever”. The actual hammer is on the other side), but exactly the same type of object (For example, two wheels. One’s a bicycle wheel, one’s a cart wheel. Only one of these choices is correct.

The game gives you clues via the usual journal. Those clues are not always visually clear, however.

The inventory puzzles, similarly, involve arbitrary interactions, much more so than usual. I couldn’t use a saw or an axe on some planks, because, since they had bolts on them, I was clearly meant to use a wrench. You’ll lose cutting tools (Because adventure game rules), then wonder why, as your main interactions appear to be cutting, smashing, and sawing of some description. Not all of them… But enough to leave you scratching your head, wondering why the hell you can’t smash this time.

As to the puzzles… There’s a lot of repeat puzzles, with at least two variations on the “Push levers which affect other levers, making sure they all go up/down” puzzle, a couple of jigsaws, and the lever push’s annoying cousin, “Three dials that go round and, bee tee dubs, affect each other. Good luck aligning them in patterns you may or may not have seen somewhere!”

This is the emotion portrayed throughout the conversation. Note also that that’s a webcam wig. You can tell because of the odd movements compared to the head.

The game attempts to experiment, with FMV actors over the usual fare of mixed 2d/3d scenes. This would be interesting, if a) They had something worth saying, and b) The actors weren’t asked, for some bizarre reason, to mostly just portray a single emotion, maybe two (Sometimes none!), with little to no relation to what is being said, or how it’s being said. The story is paper thin, even for a HOPA, and it can basically be summed up as Hero’s Journey Lite. “Get McGuffin, Beat Evil Master, and also solve the fiendish mysteri-” Oh, wait, we already covered those mysteries, didn’t we? They’re fiendish, alright, but not in the way you’d like.

HOPA fans will find the hidden object annoyances frustrating, Adventure game fans will not be sustained by the story, the acting (Voice or otherwise), and both will be annoyed by the inventory puzzles. This is one of those times I can’t recommend a game to anybody except those of us who look at games to see what the hell went wrong. And that makes me sad.

The Mad Welshman checked his pockets and sighed. He’d left his keys at home, and would have to solve a jigsaw puzzle, find a crowbar in among 11 other objects, break some planks, find some nails and a hammer (One of which was behind a colour matching lock), and build a ladder to get back in. Just another day, he sighed, as a Ghoul engaged him in conversation at the bus stop.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £4.79
Where To Get It: Steam

In the beginning, there was only void. And then God said “Hey, I’ve got these four elements, let’s bang them together and see what happens!”… And then the miracles of life, technology, and the like occurred, with the occasional muttering of “No, I’m pretty sure that should have done something.” Such is Doodle God, a simple, yet fairly entertaining puzzle game, where you put things together to make new things. Fire and Water, for example, makes Steam, while later on, Money and Banks make Debt suddenly come into existence.

Early on, the world is largely barren, and without form…

For a puzzle game in the region of £5, it’s got a fair amount of content, with the main game (Containing four chapters of putting things together, with some simple and slightly silly story to go with it), puzzle mode (Where you’re aiming for something specific using a limited amount of elements), Quest mode (Mini stories), and Tournament (A daily quiz tournament, requiring coins to enter, that give hint rewards and more tournament coins). There’s a fair bit of variety, although not an amazing amount of replayability unless you really feel like it outside of Tournament mode. It looks alright, the music is relaxing, and the world of the main game fills up as you get more things made, which is a nice touch for such an accessible game, simple in both concept and control.

There’s just one small problem, and two larger ones. The first larger one is inherent to the game itself, in that, the further the game progresses, the more likely you are to be fruitlessly shoving things into each other in the hope that you’ll find the things you need to progress, as some elements only have a few interactions, while others… Have a lot. Humans, for example, get shoved into a fair few things, but Plasma is something that gets relatively little love. There is a hint system, but it leads to the other problem with this game: Microtransactions.

…But there are many things you can fill the world with.

Thing is, the microtransactions are for… Er… Hints. And, in the main game at least, they’re just on a cooldown rather than “Once they run out, buy more please!” It honestly feels extraneous and pointless, since… It’s a Steam game. The series has been around long enough from its free game origins that guides exist. And I know people would rather look something up than give someone money for hints in this day and age.

Finally, there’s the second larger problem: Some of the combinations are logical stretches at best, and somewhat nonsensical at worst. I often found myself scratching my head, thinking “Okay, how does this and this… Make that?” A good example (Only occurs once, to my knowledge, so not a huge spoiler) is that, at one point, Astral and Death makes… Er… Mindflayers (Y’know, the DnD monster. Psychic, has tentacles, octopus headed, eats brains?). That’s by no means a simple connection, and you occasionally feel that there could have been a simpler way to do things.

Tournament mode, it must be noted, has one somewhat annoying bug. See if you can spot it.

Still, Microtransactions can be ignored, there’s a fair amount of content for the price, and puzzle fans might find this one interesting. You’ll know fairly quickly whether you like it, hate it, or don’t particularly care about it. Just be aware that, unless you’re a completionist, you’re going to finish the game, finish the puzzles, quests, and artefacts, and be left with… 3 to 5 achievements to the game left, and the tournament. Personally, I finished the review and the game in a day’s worth of play, and don’t find the tournament all that “Addicting”. But I’m not you.

The Mad Welshman accessed his GodPod, clicked on Electrons, then on Printing Press. And Lo, Dideth Reviews Come To Pass.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £34.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Blood Bowl, the turn based strategy game set in Warhammer’s equivalent of American Football, has returned. Except it never really left, and I’m feeling very conflicted about this release. For context, this review comes from somebody who has been playing the game since Dark Elves Edition of Blood Bowl “1”. Which was the second of four editions of the same game. This, in essence, is an elephant in the room. And I can’t really avoid talking about it.

No, no, that’s the *Ogre* in the room, not the elephant! Geez!

At its core, Blood Bowl is about positioning, use of skills, and dice. Lots of dice. Dodging is a dice roll. Passing, blocking, throwing, catching… All dice. Rerolls are a thing you can buy for your team, and they’re important. Beyond that, there’s play styles that each team are suited to. Skaven, for example, play a running game: They’re only okay at passing, but they’re good at dodging away from players marking them, and they can run a long way. Orcs, by contrast, are bashy: They excel at punching things, relatively bad at passing and dodging, and are about average in terms of mobility. It’s relatively easy to learn, but mastering it takes a bit of thought and practice. Your average game takes between 1 and 2 hours, so it is somewhat time consuming.

I would like to begin by mentioning that Blood Bowl has a variety of teams, but this is only really true for Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition, and Chaos Edition. 2 is a complete reset, with a new engine, and new design decisions… And funnily enough, this is part of the problem, the elephant in the room. Blood Bowl 2 is undeniably prettier than the previous 4 editions, with meaty animations, a UI where players’ stats and skills are represented by collector’s cards, and some quality sound work. But it’s also a more limited experience than previous editions, in more areas than just the 8 teams (plus one team if you pre-ordered) compared to Chaos Edition’s 23 (More teams are coming, but as DLC.) Not helping is the fact that many of these new or changed features are implemented in odd ways.

The animations are undeniably cool… But they pad playtime.

For example, the “Campaign” is somewhat similar to Legendary Edition’s, in that it’s a combination tutorial/challenge mode, with surprise events. But it’s more limited in the sense that you are playing one team (Humans, the generalists) instead of learning core mechanics from multiple teams, and oddly implemented in that the tutorial section (Comprising at least the first two hours of play if you go there first)… Is teaching in ways that experienced Blood Bowl players would scratch their heads at. Part of a match is played before teaching about buying players (With less options than you’d have in a real game, and much worse AI), and then another match goes by (Finally showing you blocking and other important skills) before you can buy “Staff” (Apothecaries, “Fan Factor”, Cheerleaders, and, rivalling in importance to Apothecaries… Rerolls).

Meanwhile, if a new player chooses to hotseat play both sides of a Friendly match, with an experienced Blood Bowl player’s YouTube video open, they’ll get a feel for movement, passing, skills, and the like in… Probably less time than the Campaign does, and for the team they want to play.

Animations, meanwhile, are a feature that experienced players would like to selectively ignore. But the selections are… Touchdowns only, “No animations”, or All animations. So that’s a choice between “Watch running and touchdowns”, “Watch running”, and “Watch running, touchdowns, and every single block that isn’t a push, with a side order of every time you fail a dodge or attempt a pass.” The animation system also appears to have led to less customisation than previous editions of Blood Bowl, with only set colours, no armour changes beyond those gained by levelling up (and some skills/mutations), and a set of heads to choose from as your main customisation option.

It is an unofficial “rule” that you must make bad puns when naming your team and its members.

Controls and camera, similarly, will make returning players scratch their head. Previous editions had a fully movable camera with the ability to show player names, player positions, and tackle zones/movement ranges, but Blood Bowl 2… Plays it slightly differently. There are two cameras at a fixed angle, with a fixed zoom arc (Movable, though) marked “Blood Bowl 2 Camera” (Faces toward the opposite left corner of the pitch) and “Blood Bowl 1 Camera” (Faces the opposing endzone). Controls are also in “Blood Bowl 2” and “Blood Bowl 1” flavours, but the latter isn’t quite accurate, as Blood Bowl 1 allowed a player to queue movement, then passing in one go, while Blood Bowl 2… Doesn’t. The difference appears to be “Right click for movement in Blood Bowl 1 Controls”… And that’s it. Passing, as opposed to BB1, is a case of moving, waiting until the move animation is done, then passing.

Some features, also, appear to be missing or imperfectly implemented. Jim Johnson and Bob Bifford, the two commentators, have been placed firmly in both the menu and the Campaign, but their expressions in Campaign mode… Don’t follow nearly the same range as their voice does, and their subtitles have this tendency not to match what they’re actually saying (Sometimes drastically, as in the case of the Halfling Joke. Two bad jokes for the price of one if you have subtitles on, I guess?) You can buy cheerleaders for your team, but will be faced with human cheerleaders every time. Buying rerolls before a team basically involves specifically turning down buying players, then going through the tabs and buying what you want, in the order that you want. And there is an achievement that involves deliberately inflating your Team Value (A dangerous proposition in a League) by having 500K in your bank (A new rule was introduced that means all earnings in your account over 150K count toward your Team Value, you see.)

Generally your first action in a Blood Bowl match is to hit someone.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some new and interesting features. Upgrading your stadium. Coach levels. Sponsors. Aging. And, of course, the newly implemented team, the Bretonnians, whose Blitzers do most of the work, whose Linemen are, as with most Linemen, fodder that you might care about if they levelled up, and whose Blockers are interesting in that their starting skill (Wrestle) means you have to make a deliberate choice of ignoring Wrestle, and thus having a slightly weaker “Blocker” than similarly levelled Blockers of other teams, or making a nonstandard build and ignoring the majority of the Strength skill tree (Which is normally a good thing for Blockers, but the majority of Strength skills don’t synergise well with Wrestle). The preview of what your action will likely do is also nice.

Normally, I’d say this was an interesting game with some odd design decisions and implementations. But the elephant in the room, that all important context that there are four previous games, at least two of which have more teams (Legendary/Chaos Edition), at least one of which has a better tutorial/challenge campaign for its Single Player in terms of teaching and team variety (Legendary Edition), and at least one edition has both a devoted playerbase and a cheaper price tag (Chaos Edition, at £20) means that… I’m not entirely sure I can recommend Blood Bowl 2 at the present time. Which is incredibly awkward for me, as, while I want Blood Bowl to continue selling, the increased shininess… Really doesn’t disguise some awkward design decisions that make it, in its own way, just as clunky as the previous 4 games in the series.

The Mad Welshman coaches many teams, in many universes. He’s going back to the one where he can play the Legendary Khemri Passing Game now. He feels oddly sad that this is so.

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