Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £11.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access 2, Release

GRIP, from the developers of Rollcage, is, in essence, a Future Racing game about cars that don’t care which way up they are, going fast and blowing each other up. And oh, boy, is it fun already, despite not being finished yet!

However… There is a shadow over this fun, that I want to deal with as we go along as well, because it overshadows… Pretty much the rest of it. In a word? Aggression.

This, while showing off the beauty of the environments, is a prelude to something *bad* happening.

Despite the game undeniably looking pretty at this early stage, aggression is definitely a problem with the game as it stands, in many aspects. In some others, clarity is a problem in some small ways. But aggression… Ahhh, that’s the real problem right now. The AI is very aggressive. When it’s turned on, the rubberbanding is aggressive. And the weapon/utility selection in this Future Racing game? Is very much tuned toward aggression over defense.

In the developers’ favour, the default options tone this aggressiveness down somewhat by allowing the player to partake in the rubberbanding as an option (on by default), and a damage negating option, protecting them (and the AI, by extension) from the spectacle of going boom when hit enough times, losing them the race (also on by default.) Turning off either one of these options, however, reveals the real GRIP, and the balancing problems therein. Possibly one of the first Future Racing games I’ve encountered where piloting at my best is, in fact, the riskiest possible move I could make. Why?

Let’s talk about Blue Shells. You may have heard the term, one of the more despised weapons of Mario Kart: A weapon that targets the person in the lead, regardless of distance, and homes in with unnerring accuracy, also regardless of distance.

Not pictured: The EMP, missile, exploding vehicle, and hefty swearing that immediately preceded this.

This game has a Blue Shell, in the form of a blue-ish trailed missile. Unfortunately, what it doesn’t have is more than one option that reliably deals with it. The only purely defensive measures, in fact, are a backwards facing shield (Which will be destroyed after one of either what I’m calling the Blue Shell Missile, or normal, lock-on requiring missiles… Or enough machine-gun shots, but we’ll get into the machine-gun in a minute), and maybe (I haven’t been able to reliably check), the EMP Burst weapon, which seems pretty damn rare. No, more common are the machine-guns (Pretty short ranged, but, as I discovered, have a utility in dealing with mines), the mines (Still presenting somewhat of a colour blindness problem by their warning lights being red and not too visually distinct, value wise, from the track, although the new markers and upwards light-ray do help a little), lock-on missiles, the aforementioned Blue Shell Missile, and turbo boosts.

As it is, with catch-up turned on, and destruction off, there’s tight, tense gameplay where mistakes are paid with a loss of at least a couple of positions (Thankfully re-attainable.) With destruction still off, and catch-up also off, it becomes much more variable, where a few mistakes or a string of missile locks could well cost you the entire race. With destruction on, whether catch up is on or not? Getting into first place is asking to be blown up. Staying in the pack until the end is asking to be blown up. It becomes, in a word, un-fun. In more words, the challenge suddenly becomes a nightmare, and “normal” tracks become hellish torture chambers where travelling more than a few hundred yards without being attacked by something is a blessing from the Powers That Be. I have, no joke, been hit twice by a Blue Missile for 80% of my damage, stayed in first for three whole laps… And then had two missiles hit in quick succession in the final few seconds of the final lap, instantly relegating me from 1^st… To 9^th.

With Catch-Up Assist on and Destruction off, races become a tight test of skill, with the pack being relatively tight.

The Assassin, as this Blue Shell style missile is called, is a painful beast. Doing a hefty amount of damage, and making its way to the leading racer almost unerringly, the back shield isn’t a guarantee of protection against it, and the AI have a very nasty tendency of firing off an EMP burst just before it hits, whether they were the ones to fire the Assassin or not. When this happens (More often than I would like), this makes the race feel, not so much a race against individuals, so much as a race against a hive mind united in not wanting you to win. Even on medium difficulty, the AI… Is effectively too good at times.

Anyway, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, with catch-up on, and destruction turned off, it’s challenging, and mistakes will cost you, but you can win, even if you’ve been knocked back quite a few times. It’s still a bit of a gamble, but it’s an entertaining gamble. The control scheme is very simple, the music is dark and pumping, fitting a game mostly set in grim industrial wastelands, and the tracks give you lots of opportunities for GRIP’s real draw: Being able to drive on most level surfaces. Tunnels, where you can loop up, then drop onto a powerup. There are multiple paths on the tracks, and each has something to recommend them. And each track, so far, is visually distinct. There are lots of cars, from the slow but tough , to my current favourite, the Speed Car of Doom, the Dominator, and, while visual distinctiveness on the track is a problem, it’s currently not terribly important to know what you’re up against, considering… The cars are mainly customisable by colour, and, so long as you remember not to screw with that destruction setting, this is by no means a bad Future Racing game.

Of course, it would be a better Future Racing game if, amusingly, either destruction wasn’t quite so, er… Destructive, or, at the very least, there were some better repair/defensive options. But as it is, with Destruction off, and Catch-Up Assist on or off to your taste, it is definitely enjoyable… But it would be nice if Destruction on weren’t a death sentence.

The Mad Welshman sobbed as he heard that dread beeping. The beeps were getting closer together, and soon, soon, his car would stop. Oh God. Oh God.

Filed under: Early Access Releases, Game Reviews by admin

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

“It’s not like Wipeout!” appears to be quite a common cry for Formula Fusion, a game intended to be… Er… Not specifically like Wipeout, but using the Future Racing experience of a team mostly comprised of folks who did work on Wipeout.

So, naturally, I’m keeping the Wipeout references to a minimum, and judging the game on its own damn merits. And, surprising nobody, the game is by no means bad, even at this early stage of development. Let’s talk about what’s currently not so hot first, starting with the F2000 craft, and the upgrade system.

Much like racing nowadays, some teams just can’t resist a really gaudy colour scheme… I LOVE IT.

Whenever people talk about an unresponsive craft, I’m pretty much assuming they mean the FF2000, which does indeed currently steer like gold plated neutronium bricks, while going at a fair clip providing you can actually steer the bloody thing. While I’m almost certain that upgrading its handling stat would allow it to at least steer like a particularly stubborn mule (Proven after writing this sentence), upgrading is currently on a system that’s either relying on multiplayer (I unfortunately wouldn’t know, as, much like many other Future Racing games, the servers are pretty much ghost towns), or on small money drops for each race (105 FusionBux per Gold medal, 55 for a silver, moving rapidly down to 5 for, er… Placing.), with increasing costs the more you wish to upgrade the craft. For example, to upgrade the F2000 to its full level of handling, I would need 6500 FusionBux. I had 35, increasing to 140 as I finished a race in Niagara Falls (Getting Gold, naturally.)

Which would get me 2 percent better handling. There are 6 upgrade bars per craft (Handling, Shield, Braking, Speed, Defensive, and Offensive.) Teams, by the way, appear to be for purely cosmetic and/or roleplay reasons at the present time (I’m Southern Star, the Australian/Oceania grouped team, mainly because I do love me dark craft with red piping. It’s the least ostentatious of the Team colours.) As such, upgrading the craft is a bit of a grind, and it’s uncertain how the planned research tree feature is going to help there.

Looks like a fish… Swims like a fish… Steers like a cow. (But upgradeable to the point where it steers alright, actually!)

Now, let’s move to a counterpoint: Yes, the FF2000 steers awfully. But the FF3000 is somewhat nippy, and I have a fully upgraded FF4000 (In handling, at least) that turns on a penny, so “unresponsive handling” is most definitely not an issue with Formula Fusion’s current build overall. It may not help that it’s very important to check controls, as the arrow keys control pitch and, more importantly, airbrakes for the left and right… Not steering. Steering is A and D, while accelerate is W, and… Well, we all know the S is meant to be for brakes, and I’m sure it works, but who the hell uses brakes, seriously?

Content wise, it’s true that there are only the craft classes (Customisation is mainly meant to be in upgrades and that research tree… Which isn’t implemented yet), and four tracks, out of what appears to be a planned eight (Manhattan, Niagara GP, Atlas Torres, and Trans Atol are all in, while Fiar Fury, Terminus, Sampa-V, and Midtown are not), but those tracks? Are well designed. Manhattan is a fairly good starter track; Niagara GP makes for a good speed track, with only one corner I can think of that requires airbrakes, and the skill being in keeping your boost going; Atlas Torres is the first track where you can, with a flick of your pitch controls, leave the track at least temporarily, and Trans Atol, formerly an explosive hell of airbrake chicanes and hard turns, is now a slightly more mellow, but still challenging industrial track. There are also weapons, of which you are allowed 2 at any one time (Changing them out between races via the Garage), one Offensive (missiles, plasma, the like), and Defensive (mines, EMP bursts, and the like.) As such, much like RedOut, the emphasis is very much on the racing over the combat, especially with the KERS Boost system, which rewards having full weapon energy with… A boost you can fire off around once every 30 seconds, by holding down both weapon keys.

Then again, anyone who thinks the weapons are thus less meaningful won’t have noticed that EMP bursts not only temporarily turn off your engines, they also drain your weapon energy. Good luck boosting now, bucko!

…Meanwhile, it is very important to note that yes, sick jumps are do-able in Formula Fusion.

But, not counting the reverse versions, night versions, and the mysterious “Red Route” that can be glimpsed in Custom mode, the basic tracks are something like half done. The game is pretty, although it currently feels more sedate in terms of the impression of speed (The actual speed is okay), the music is fairly good, the controls are responsive… The only things currently letting it down are that upgrading the craft feels grindy at the present time, and the occasional crash (and I stress, this is occasional.) It has multiplayer (Although, as is often the case for future racing games and other niche-ish genres, finding a game without a bunch of friends who already have it is a matter of luck), it seems to be progressing nicely, and, from what I can gather, it’s been done in a sensible timeline for developing a game like this in the Unreal 4 engine.

Even though it’s not complete, what is there works, and, with the possible exception of the F2000 and Custom Race mode, works well. Props.

The Mad Welshman pondered. Wipeout 1 had… 3 craft, and eight tracks. Formula Fusion has proposed… 3 craft, and eight tracks. Naaaahhh, just a coincidence.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £13.99
Where To Get It: Steam

If it weren’t for my party, I think I would have given up on Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon long ago. They’ve revealed dungeons to me, told me about buttons, and, in at least one case, showed me where a puzzle was that I absolutely needed to progress (And hadn’t found in any of the previous updates.) But I can’t help but think a middle ground between “Tell me where things are (occasionally)”, and “Give me one line in dialogue and another in a book to clue me into a puzzle’s existence” would be helpful. That this is true for more than one aspect of Dungeon Kingdom is, sadly, damning with faint praise.

Ninja, Warrior, Priest, Wizard… Where have I seen those before… *Think*

For all that a lot of effort has clearly gone into the environments themselves, with lovingly rendered caves, temples, and towns, and again, work has clearly gone into the various character portraits we encounter, a game is the sum of its parts, and what fills these environments and character portraits is less than impressive. My last session was a couple of hours, but in that time, I had progressed from a kitchen knife to… Er… A slightly bigger kitchen knife, wailed on rats and bees for what seemed like hours, gained four spells (Three of which I had discovered simply through experimenting), and kicked myself as I missed out on a bashable wall, before reminding myself it took several swipes to knock it down.

I’d also met a high priestess Bavmorda, who was obviously up to no good. This shouldn’t be too surprising, considering the naming seems to be geek reference heaven. The priestess Eilistraee, taking a break from being the deity of Good Dark Elves and Hunting. The dark knight Astaroth, in no way a duke of Hell, honest! The list goes on, and… This reminds me of how the game goes on. And on. And on.

This is the oddest problem… A step-based RPG that feels too slow. And it’s obvious there’s time pressure, as the developers have taken leaves from the Dungeon Master book pretty much wholesale… Character recruiting is the Recruit/Resurrect mechanic from both Dungeon Master games, the classes are exactly the same, the emphasis on puzzles is exactly the same… And both food and water meters are present. Oh joy. Oh joy of joys. And yes, that was an incredibly tired and sarcastic “Oh joy”, because, outside of a setting that demands it (Dark Sun, for example), I do not like water meters. I haven’t seen a desert, and don’t think I’m likely to. In any case, that’s your time pressure, as while water is largely unlimited (Making it just added tedium), food isn’t. I have yet to see a “Create Food” spell. So the game is, much like Dungeon Master, very much a case of “Save Early, Save Often” (And use different saves, obviously.) At the very least, you’ll want to save before hitting the inn to avoid the long walk into town.

No, really. Bavmorda. Luckily, we’re all pigs anyway, by virtue of being adventurers!

This, in essence, is my main problem with Dungeon Kingdom right now… That there is potential, but it’s also got a lot that has me saying “Meh.” I hit things, and honestly, only the bashable walls react. Throwing things, oddly, involves physics where good placement is often important. The music is generic, and what voicework there is, is often flat or poorly directed (“Big… Trouble…”) There are awkward moments where it’s not very clear what to do, even with very simple instructions (Stand facing the entrance, and I will come back. What this means is “stand in the next tile along for a little while, which is facing the entrance of the place you have to go, and I will come back. Nowhere else counts, nor does any other direction), and the story… If I didn’t know Bavmorda was evil, or at the very least suspicious, I would have to find confirmation in… Everyone’s private quarters. There’s no consequence for looking at them, there’s no challenge in looting them, but you have to know, ahead of time, that this is old school enough to expect you to do this. The game also assumes the main hero(ine), chosen by being… The first character you pick is a man in the intro. Whoops!

Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon is undeniably pretty. Some of its puzzles are actually quite good (Which races don’t bow down? Oh, I get what you mean there, haha!) and the developers have made strides in making the game somewhat more accessible with the aforementioned Party hints, a map system, making the food and water meters go down more slowly (Yes, I did notice, and am grateful.) But it feels slow, it seems to progress quite slowly, and it seems to be learning the wrong lessons from Dungeon Master and its ilk.

Monsters will attack, but not always consistently. They generally won’t respond to being hit until they die. Also this is a ghost bat. I thought I’d best mention that.

The Mad Welshman peered myopically at the scroll… Damn these fantasy worlds and their lack of Opticians!

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

Confidence is a fine thing, bravado a little less so. So you can imagine my surprise when I see the words “Three years to develop The Book of Demons” (and it’s still in development), and then the intro to the game reveals it’s just 1 part of a seven part, presumably episodic set of games meant to create more accessible versions of popular game types, I worry somewhat. I also find two words that are going to be the theme of this review.

“Truly accessible.”

Look, it’s gotta be a friendlier game, Satan has a rubber duck! That’s a good sign, right?!?

These are not words said lightly. Games do exclude some players, sometimes because the developers don’t get that they want to attract new players… Yes, you can market a game to the “truly hardcore”, but you’re only limiting your audience that way, even beyond genre. Sometimes it’s because of the nature of the genre itself, and the impression I get is that The Book of Demons is trying to make ARPGs “accessible” so people can… Return2Games. Oh ho, ho ho ho ho.

There’s just one problem. I’m not even a third of the way in, and those two words are beginning to sound increasingly hollow. Let’s discuss why. Starting with how The Book of Demons tries to simplify the ARPG formula… Because, in case it wasn’t obvious by the screenshots, this is meant to be a sort of Diablo Lite. There’s a town, it’s been infected with an evil under the church, and hell has broken loose. Heck, the first quest is even called “The Cook”, a reference to Diablo 1’s “The Butcher.”

This is about a minute before I died. Can you spot some of the reasons why?

Anyways, there are a couple of ways it tries to simplify, and they don’t… Particularly help. First up is exchanging buying items, using spells and the like, for… Cards that do exactly the same thing. On the one hand, it cuts down on inventory management, because, once you start a dungeon area, you can’t change them out, you can only add cards (if you have room) or change them in town. But while this changes things on the surface, it still means you’re using number keys for potions and abilities and the like, so it just… Limits things. And The Gypsy (let’s not go there, beyond saying “Please can we not do that thing where you have a spiteful, yet helpful magic lady who is a Gypsy, ta?”) even jokes about how using a blacksmith was so inefficient, oh ho ho ho!

If that was the only example of trying to simplify by limiting, and not fully thinking it through, I’d be okay. But there’s one core element that fucks things up righteously. You can only move along a set of rails. You’re still holding LMB to move, and attack, and do other things we’ll get into in a second, but your area of movement is limited.

Sounds okay, until you realise that the monsters you find in the dungeon have no such restriction. Gargoyles quite happily leap into your “able to be attacked” radius, some doing area of effect attacks, then out again. Zombies explode into poisonous clouds that, sometimes, it’s much harder to avoid… And god help you if you’re blocked by a monster in a group from retreating, because yes, that can happen, and unlike many other ARPGs, you don’t have the option of going round.

Let’s unpack this. Two of the enemies require holding LMB over their shield before I can hurt them. One is casting a spell to summon two more of these that will make them invincible. If I want to regain *some* health I have to mouse over those hearts too, and those skulls are a poison effect that’s about to make my health sphere go green and damage me, with the option to click on the *health sphere* to remove the poison quicker. Oh, and the spell icon needs to be LMB held over to stop the spell.

That’s what has led to every single death so far, tbh… There have been large groups of varied monsters, and one of them, sometimes two, have blocked my avenue of retreat, and while focusing on them, the other monsters wrecked my day. All the while, I was having to keep an eye on several different things, just like a supposedly less accessible ARPG, with the added funtimes that I could, theoretically stop a spellcaster from, say, teleporting large groups of monsters to my location, or freezing me, or, in later parts of the first third of the game, summon enemies with shields (requiring further click fuckery) that make the spellcaster immune to any and all damage while they’re still alive.

Somehow, in the quest for simplicity and accessibility, Thing Trunk, the developers, have actually made it more complicated. Now, I’m not an ARPG novice. I’ve beaten the first two Diablos, the first Torchlight, and have gotten most of the way through the second (It’s only really the reviewing that really stops me from knuckling down there, as there’s always something new to get through.) I’m having difficulty curve troubles, before I even get to The Butcher equivalent, that I didn’t get in Diablo, the game they’re trying to make more accessible.

Yes, it’s Early Access, and not all of the classes are in yet. Yes, they no doubt have time… But not as much time as they think they have if this is the first in seven games to fill up that intro set of book podiums. This is the sort of project I want to succeed, because making games more accessible means more people play, and I get more people to talk shit over with, and we can then maybe… Just maybe… Stop with all this “Elite Player” bullshit and just get down to play together.

But this isn’t exactly inspiring my confidence that Thing Trunk, despite talking a good game (Make no mistake, their marketing has been very well planned), are the ones to help people Return 2 Games.

We can, at least, point out that this *is* a laudable goal.

The Mad Welshman started. All of a sudden, he couldn’t turn left… Or right. As the monsters closed in, leering skinlessly as only skeletons can, he tried desperately to wake up.

Their claws disabused him of the notion it was just a nightmare. And that he was going to wake up.

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Source: Early Access Purchase
Price: £1.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Itch.IO (also contains the freeware demo), Official Homepage (Contains donation link if you wish to support the developer directly)

I like a developer who keeps tabs on things. I like a developer even more when they take feedback and criticism well and fix the things that are broken. Matija Kostiya (Sinister Systems) is definitely the first, and may well be the second… Time will tell. But of course, we’re here to talk about Now, and The Daily Cthonicle, a game where you are the editor of the aforementioned paper, an Occult and Paranormal Broadsheet. This may seem strange, until you realise that in the world of the Daily Cthonicle, the paranormal is very much real. It’s you, and your six journalists, against the horrors that lurk Beyond.

Vampires: Even Fledglings are Jerks.

It is safe to say that you don’t always succeed. In fact, in the case of certain monsters, I’ve found, it’s very safe to say that you don’t always succeed. Vampires, in particular, are jerks. I’ve never lost more journalists, or racked up a bigger expense account in any other situation. I don’t entirely know why.

And this aptly leads to one of my main criticisms of the game as it stands, and, thankfully, at least partly a goal of the Early Access: Clarity. Certain things in Daily Cthonicle are not clear, and don’t consistently work. For example, scrolling down on documents can be done with the mousewheel… But not all documents. The UI sometimes obscures things. Some combat items can be used in Investigation events (Such as the Crowbar), and it is only made clear in the manual that, if you have equipment that could be used in combat… Say, a Gatling Gun you really wanted to save for the final chapter… It will be used, and vanish from your inventory. Some of this is explained in the online manual, but more isn’t. Yes, artefacts don’t get explained… But you also don’t really get an idea of what they do even once you’ve used them. At best, “This was very helpful [in this specific encounter]”

On the successful completion of a chapter, you print a Special Edition. As you can see, the text is somewhat barebones, but imagining how it all went down can be fun. 😉

Now this may give the impression, so far, that I do not like Daily Cthonicle. This is by no means true. I think the base idea, and some of the game ideas (The EVP minigame, for example) have merit. I like that more advanced features, such as laboratory work (Crafting better potions, and divining information about the things and people the samples were taken from) are not necessary in the two lower difficulties. I like that it has both a normal game mode, and a “Skirmish” mode, where you have lots of money up front, and the goal is to eliminate all threats, rather than uncover the web of mysteries. I like that the difficulty balancing appears to have been considered, and appears to be under revision based on feedback. There’s quite a few things I like.

But the game isn’t very new player friendly, it isn’t very clear at times, and while I have confidence this will change somewhat, it’s very much a case of “If you like the idea, and you want to support the developer in refining it, please do so.” at the present time. I think it has a lot of potential, but obviously, time will tell.

The EVP: A recent feature that’s still being refined somewhat.

The Mad Welshman gritted his teeth as he saw this month’s Sanitarium bill. Sighing, he flipped the “Last Eldritch Horror In The Work Environment” counter to 0.

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