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

Pacman, it seems, has been refined down to a science. Somewhere, out there, a mathematician is looking at this latest offering from Namco Bandai, and doing complex equations to work out what the absolute maximum possible score is. And most likely, there’s also a competitive player who would beat that score.

If I could give one recommendation to Pacman: Championship Edition 2, it’s that it made me appreciate exactly how much calculation can go into a game. Let’s talk about why.

A simple starting layout: The path is clear.

So, let’s start with the simplest layout. Nearly always, it’s something like this. A simple pattern. Following it through to the end, without backtracking, is nice and simple. It takes ten seconds. Each pellet gives you a small amount of points. Collect them all, get a fruit, which is more points, and the next pattern appears. Do that three times, and the fourth is a power pellet. Which lets you eat the ghosts, which bags you loads of points. Another four, and it’s a power pellet every round. So far, so simple.

Now add in a complication: You don’t have to get all the pellets to get the fruit, and thus the next pattern. You can move quicker, get to that endless power pellet stage a little earlier. But you still need more pellets each round, and, toward the end, you need more than you need for a power pellet to get a fruit.

Now add in another one: There are sleeping mini-ghosts. The more you pass close by, the more get added to the train of our old friends, Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde. They add even more points when you get to the power pellet stage, and long trains appear to give the most points… So pathing to achieve the maximum amount of mini-ghostage is a consideration. But of course, you still have a minimum pellet quota to consider, and you don’t want to be wasting time backtracking without picking up pellets.

Now add in a final base complication: If you know Pac-Man, you’d know that the ghosts run away from you, or try to, when you pick up a power pellet. They, quite sensibly, don’t want to get wakka’d , although it never permanently kills them. But they can only run along certain paths, which are, thankfully, made clear when you get a power pellet. So you have to path to catch the ghosts as quickly as possible.

You will probably never see me play in this style… But I do like to watch replays in it.

Nine stages, three and a half versions (Single Train, Regular, and Extreme… Practice I guess too. ;P ), and the layout of each doesn’t change. Five minutes, with one time extension at a high score. And some have their own complications, such as jump-pads. But it starts with a simple path to follow, and slowly makes it more complex, makes the game a little bit quicker, until it’s just as much an exercise in reflex as in logic. The aim, of course, being to achieve the highest score in the time allotted.

Pacman, folks, is Newtonian Physics: The Game. And that Championship Edition 2 demonstrates this, this exercise in getting the most efficiency out of a system with predictable rules (The ghosts have set patterns, the pellets have set patterns, even the things that run away from you, such as later power pellets and fruit, follow set patterns… Including stopping when they’re not “threatened” to trick you) in play? Is to its credit.

Of course, I haven’t talked about the other aspects, because, let us not forget, Pacman is also a game with history. Visually, it makes reference to a lot of versions of the game, from the isometric view, lego bricks, and 3d ghosts of Pac-Mania (1987), to the emphasised pixels of cleaner versions, to the simple vector walls and flat ghosts of the originals, several camera angles (Including both isometric projections… Which I’ve always secretly hated), and the feature to either play with any of these visual styles, or, even better to my mind, play with a simple style, then watch an action replay in any of the others. Musically, it’s pumping beats, some remixes of older pacman tunes, but all delightful tunes, and fitting to the game.

Adventure Mode: Eat Ghosts, Then Eat A Big Ghost Made of Little Ghosts. Just another day…

Then… There’s Adventure Mode. Unlocked, as most features are in this game, by doing well in Score Attack, adventure mode is basically themed challenges. Generally, that would be “Get X fruit.” Collect it quickly, the timer resets. Take too long, and you just lose. Beat enough of them, and you unlock a boss level. And those aren’t too different from normal play. Soooo… Adventure Mode is sort of the weakest part of the game.

What’s strong, however, is the tutorials section. Pacman is a relatively simple game. However, it does have some nuances, and this game? Kindly walks you through pretty much all of them. Which is a pleasure.

So… Apart from Adventure Mode, the game is tightly designed, visually appealing, and a good example of how yes, you can refine a concept that’s been played. Namco Bandai have been proving that with Pacman for some time, and, with Championship Edition 2, have shown that you can make a game with scientific precision.

While not normally a competitive person, it does feel good to see my name in a top 50. 😀

The Mad Welshman opened his mouth and popped in a tic-tac. Then another. Then another. Measured. One day, he too would eat a ghost. One day.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £9.99 (£3.99 for the Soundtrack, which definitely ain’t bad)
Where To Get It: Steam 

When I got the email that the developers of UnEpic were making a new game, I was both excited and nervous. Excited, because UnEpic did interesting things. Nervous, because it was also referential as hell, dumb in places, and stupidly hard and grindy in others.

This, er… Makes slightly more sense as a joke once you’ve played UnEpic and seen the bits before this… :/

For good or for ill… Little has changed. The references are somewhat less forced, the story veers wildly between pulpy silliness, philosophical discussion, and blatant referential humour, and the grind?

Oh yes. The grind remains. And it remains my problem with Ghost 1.0, because, to me? It’s just not fun to repeat alarm lockdowns for Energon-Cubes-As-Currency, so I can get better weapons that, really, I should be earning more organically. And this is a damn shame, because, for all the bitching, there has been improvement over the UnEpic formula, with fluid movement, a better overall story (Involving the enslavement of androids by an evil corporation… Hey, I said better, not amazing), and some cool stuff hidden in there… But, even past the halfway point, I’m not sure it feels worth it to continue. Boss with nigh unavoidable paralyzing shockwave, making it a damage race? Check. Instant death laser segments that, while using the cool idea of controlling robots with cyber-psychic powers, uses it for tedious, “Do it right or do it again” segments involving scientist robots with no offensive abilities (Read: Forced puzzle-stealth segments.) Check.

Not cool, Fran, I totally made my Dexterity Check!

There’s fun in there. Really, there is. The second boss, for example, is fun. The first boss, once you figure it out, is fun. The interplay between Ghost, Boogan, and Jacker (The latter two technically making a return from UnEpic) is fun. But it’s buried beneath a game that feels like it’s run by an adversarial GM who still thinks OD&D is the best thing since sliced bread. And this is such a core problem, and obviously deliberate, that I unfortunately can’t get past it.

So, when it comes to the question of “Is Ghost 1.0 worth playing?” , two questions have to be asked. The first is whether you like metroidvanias. A simple enough question, but the next is harder: Do you find grind and “death makes things harder on you” fun? Because, regardless of the good voice acting, the fair animation, the interesting toys (Once you’ve earned them), and the story that definitely has interesting elements, if the answer to that second question is “No, not really”, or some variation thereof, I really can’t recommend Ghost 1.0 to you.

The first boss, about to get a schooling from an awesome cyber-psychic merc lady. Who still died five times while getting the cash for the gun she’s using… >:|

The Mad Welshman is hacking Ghost 1.0 to provide a “Less Grindy” mode, but he’s hit Alarm Level 9, and the respawns are getting a bit tiresome. 

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Source: Kickstarter backer.
Price: £15.99 (£3.99 for Ray expansion)
Where To Get It: Lots of places.

Hoo boy. Having had a troubled release (Which I sort of missed), I had some trepidation going into Mighty No. 9. And I was right to do so. This is one review where I’m not swimming against the tide, because, as you may have gathered from the almost unanimous opinion, Mighty No. 9 is aggressively mediocre, and a lack of effort shines blearily through every muddy moment.

It is the year 20ZZ. Facial expressions are forever frozen. Brains, brains, brains.

So much so, that I can’t really think of anything nice to say. If I was extremely charitable, I’d say it looks kind of nice… Except that facial animations, even “Mouth opens and closes”, was apparently too much effort, and, much like some games I’ve seen over the years, the game’s look has become actively worse since the early days… Somehow. It mystified me with Breach and its UI. It mystified me with Colonial Marines. It mystifies me moreso with Mighty No. 9 because… For fuck’s sake, it is a Megaman variant. You run. You jump. You shoot. You dash. How can you screw that up?

By not pacing well. By making your power somewhat dependent on a combo system that… Seems only to be based on a “No hit” rule, because the enemies are too widely spaced for anything else. The voice acting may not be quite as awful as some folks have suggested, but it’s actively made worse by the aforementioned lack of facial animations… And dashing into bosses to hurt them? Is an idea that works erratically, depending on which boss you fight. Said combo system is unclear, to boot. Why did I get that piercing shot boost for five seconds again?

It’s depressing. Even taken on its own, it’s a slow game, with lacklustre animation, level design, and sound design, and I can almost feel a collective shrug-and-meh from IntiCreates… Through their game. And it would be less depressing if it weren’t for the fact that all the interesting ideas seem to have been dropped, in favour of…

I feel you, Round Digger.

…Well, “Better than nothing” has almost become a meme (Along with some cringeworthy marketing later in the process), and it would sum up Mighty No. 9 well, except for a tabletop truism that applies equally well to computer games.

Better no game than a bad one. Don’t bother, if you hadn’t already.

The Mad Welshman sighed. He didn’t even feel strongly enough to come up with something amusing to do after the review. Even kicking puppies felt pointless.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Enter the Gungeon is, at its core, entertaining. But it is definitely not the kind of entertaining that suits everybody. I’ll try to unpack that as we go along, but essentially, it’s a procedurally generated twin stick shooter set in… The Gungeon, home of more ammunition and projectile weapon puns than you can shake a boomstick at, along with a gun that can kill… The past. CUE OMINOUS MUSIC!

See? It’s got a parchment drawing and everything, it’s obviously both important and super cursed!

The game itself is pretty responsive, and, much like other procedural twin-sticks like Binding of Isaac or Nuclear Throne, I almost never feel like dying is anything but a failure on my part, as there’s quite a few tools to deal with the swarm of bullets that will head your way, including that most important one, the dodge roll with generous invincibility frames, and the limited “Blanks”, which destroy all visible bullets, and slightly knock back enemies. There’s a variety of guns, a variety of enemies, and a number of secrets and unlocks that were enough to stump the collective player base for all of a week or two (Which doesn’t sound like much, until you look at the guides, and realise how much was there to be discovered. So, er, go you, fellow players of Enter the Gungeon!)

However, the game likes keeping its secrets perhaps a little too much. I thankfully know what most of the items do as I get them, although rarely before I’ve used them for the first time, but the guns? I have no idea if a Wind-Up Gun (Which gets weaker the further into the clip it goes, as its spring firing mechanism winds down, presumably) is better or worse than the Barrel of Fish (Shoots fish, and an associated small puddle. Oh, and it sometimes stuns enemies), or the trusty RPG (Which… Well, blows things up but good, and is slow to fire and load.)

The Gatling Gull: Buff and violent. It killed a pig once, although it was aiming for a Gungeoneer.

I get it, really I do. It’s like potions and weapons in a “proper” Roguelike (Quote marks fully intended), where you don’t know what a thing will do until you try it or somehow identify it, but I’m specifically mentioning the guns because I know that’s going to be a turn off for some, and I’d rather they knew now than getting all ranty later. Similarly, the difficulty in levels can also be somewhat erratic, to the point where I dread the mention of certain bosses, such as the Beholster (Has quite a few potential attacks), or the Gatling Gull in a completely open arena (Where I know most of the fight is going to be dodge rolling rather than shooting), while simply shrugging at others, such as The Bullet King, whose patterns are pretty easy to pin down. Enemies, also, are somewhat inconsistent, as a room full of bullet bats is a case of “Er, is this threatening?”, while Lead Maidens and the setup of a certain possible level 1 encounter (Screenshotted below) makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Basically, I’m saying it likes its mystery a bit much, and I think the difficulty “curve” is a bit… Inconsistent.

By no means the most difficult encounter in the game. Not even close.

Otherwise, the music isn’t bad, the sound effects are varied and, in some cases, suitably meaty, the visuals are consistent and well put together, so the main thing I’d really have to say about Enter the Gungeon is that your mileage will vary a little, but will vary a lot more if you don’t like mystery about those things wot you’re firing other things from. I’m not really going to comment on the story, firstly because I have yet to complete a loop of the Gungeon, and secondly because… Well, you’re not really encountering all too much of it except towards the end. Overall, Enter the Gungeon is definitely a case of “Your Mileage May Vary.”

The Mad Welshman rolled behind a table. Someone was trying to kill him, and they were bullet shaped… THINK, DAMMIT, THINK… Do I know this casing?

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

The dark future, it seems, involves pretty numbers going up. Also shooting people in the face, sometimes nauseating camera, and strange facial proportions. With Defragmented, the time comes to play a reviewer/critic’s game called “What am I deliberately ignoring?”

I love the expressions… It’s just the odd facial proportions that turn me off. And yes, that probably isn’t what you want to hear today, Mai.

This is a pretty simple game, although not how it sounds. In this game, you note down what features you didn’t really need to use, and which ones you didn’t want to use, and why. Then you ask how it differed from what appears to be the intended experience. So let’s talk about the intended experience in Defragmented first.

Defragmented is meant to be a cyberpunk Hotline Miami, where death is quick, restarting is just as quick, and you’re scored on how quickly you killed your targets, how little you died, and how thoroughly you looted everything. There are, however, problems, and one of them is that it also expects you to use special RPG abilities, level up, switch inventory, and read a plot that doesn’t appear to change with your class.

Oh, did I mention there are classes, with different abilities, different starting weapons, and this… Doesn’t seem to really matter in the long run? Silly me! Yes, you shoot with left click, throw grenades with right click, open things and push things with E, hit things up close with, er… Q… And abilities on F. This would sound fine, if it weren’t for the required action time. Specifically, the moment an enemy sees you, they’re going to fill the screen with tracers, and odds are you’re going to die. Other reasons you might die include “The enemy spotted me from a long way away” , “My ability/gun didn’t do as much damage as I thought it would” , and “Something was blocking the use of my ability/gun that I didn’t quite see because it blends with the wall/floor.”

Pictured: Just some of the confusion that’s going to arise. That’s just one shooting. Go in the front door, and anything up to three folk will do this.

Why doesn’t it matter in the long run? Because most of the abilities are very, very situational, whereas a) Having a gun with bigger numbers, and b) Shooting them repeatedly before they see you nearly always works. Nearly being the operative phrase, because guns have accuracy, which means… Sometimes they won’t hit. Meanwhile, loot is procedurally generated, which… Isn’t terribly useful. Similarly, perspective camera isn’t terribly useful because it then moves around your mouse pointer, and aiming becomes somewhat different, which… Is not recommended when you have maybe half a second to kill the other person before they kill you. Or when there’s an open elevator pit in the near vicinity.

So this, in essence, is the core problem. The only thing that’s really reliable are enemy positions. Loot is procedurally generated, so you could go several levels without a decent gun, the offensive powers don’t seem to scale with the enemies, and melee is… Largely ignorable, due to a similar unreliability. Special abilities, similarly, can be decidedly iffy, to the point where relying on them is a bad idea. It’s a game I want to like, because it has some cool ideas, some interesting designs, and a moderately entertaining story in which the Via Ascensio, home of Cyber-Psychics, is trying to overthrow the Ascended Council, who are corrupt conservatives. Okay, it sounds a lot better in the game, as does the music, but… The game’s got a bit of a conflict going on between its need for twitch, and the more thoughtful end of things, and this is leading to difficulties. Perhaps if the enemies didn’t react immediately, that balance would be a little bit more in favour. But while it’s entertaining, and tuneful, I’m not a fan of either enemies who can shoot you from off screen (Mission 1-2, even with the camera changes in a recent patch), or the uncertainty that any of my plans beyond “Shoot it a lot” will actually work.

I definitely don’t grudge the simple visuals, but the camera (And the neon) takes getting used to.

But who knows, maybe you’ll do better than I, or see what I’m missing here. After all, for all that it’s hard as nails, and the dying in the same places can get frustrating, death doesn’t really have a consequence (You just restart the mission instantly), so it can definitely be completed. I just wish it didn’t feel like difficulty for the sake of difficulty.

The Mad Welshman can always count on Deal-EO. Powers, politics, safety… None of these things could be trusted. But Deal-EO gave him the other thing he trusted. Guns. Lots of guns.

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