Source: Free
Where To Get It: Steam

Let’s begin this review with the most important facts of all: Mandagon is free. It takes, on average, less than an hour to play. Also, it is meant to represent Bardo, which is described as “Limbo” in the game’s description.

This is, presumably, a good thing. Also, proof the game is somewhat pretty.

These are important things to note, and indeed, look up, because the last one is pretty much going to be the focus of this review. So let’s get the mechanical and visual stuff out of the way first: There is no death, it’s just exploration. It tells a story of a man who has sacrificed himself for the sake of his daughter. It’s visually pretty, and the music and sound are all chill as heck. Also there is a not-bad representation of Palden Lhamo, who you may confuse for Kali (Indeed, there are some schools of thought stating that she’s an emanation of Kali.) The controls, as such, are simple, although the “maps” do not seem to show where you’re meant to go… Although the six sacred tablets do show you where they’re meant to go if you activate them in your inventory.

Bam, mechanical, visual, and aural stuff over with. Let’s get to the meat of things, and why, despite the game being free, I’m being a bit critical. Not of the game mechanically, but culturally. It should also be noted that I am not, myself, a Tibetan Buddhist, so my own criticism should be taken with a grain of salt. All that being said, let’s start with the elephant in the room: Cultural Shoehorning. We see this a lot, even within Europe (Wales, Brittany, the Scandinavian nations, pretty much anything that’s been shoved under “Faerie”… The list is a pretty long one), and to be honest, it annoys.

Bardo is not Limbo. Heck, this is only one sixth of what Bardo appears to be (Chönyi Bardo , the Luminosity of the True Nature, commencing in between the final breath and the transmigration of the mindstream to its next existence, going back to the first Bardo, Kyenay bardo, which encompasses a person’s life.) Making it worse, not even Limbo is Limbo as most folks understand it, and yet the term continues to be used for a transitional state between lives (A concept that mainly came into the consciousness via Dante’s Inferno, which was, itself, a sort of discussion of the theological concept), despite being… Er… Not really a transitional state.

As you might have guessed, this is a game world. The map is showing me where I am.

Yes, I know that’s some heavy shit to lay on you this early. Stick with me. Anyways, Chönyi Bardo is when those who have finally died experience visions, and the nature of those visions depends upon how they practiced and/or understood Buddhism during their life, and whether they recognise this in the first place. Spoilers, the main character of Mandagon must have been someone spiritually buff as hell. I mean, we’re talking enlightenment muscles out the wazoo.

Not that, you know, enlightenment is like muscles. Or maybe it can be. Enlightenment’s odd like that. Anyway, the point is, that only if you are a spiritually aware person will you have the chill as heck experience as you do in game. Otherwise, to simplify things a little, you terrify and delude yourself, adding this baggage to your next existence because you didn’t prepare to shed said baggage. However, that they do not get reborn is perhaps another sign of this, as adherence to the precepts of Karma allow one to escape the beginningless cycle of rebirth that Buddhism calls Samsara (In many forms of Buddhism, a less than ideal state, as opposed to a state of acknowledging unbeing or non-self.)

This may seem like grumping, or nit-picking, but it’s actually kind of important to note, because too often, we simply accept a thing for what it seems to be, rather than what it is. A good example of this would be the Steam discussion on what actually happened in game, where there’s a sadly unsurprising lack of awareness of a lot of this, even with the individual who appears closest to “Getting it”, as it were. Games abstract things, sometimes to the point of misrepresentation, and Mandagon, while very pretty, very chill, and having some great moments, does this by its very simplicity.

Palden Lhamo. Kind of important. 😉

So this isn’t so much nit-picking, or grumping, as helping you be aware that yes, while this is a pretty game, a chill game, a short game, and a free game, it’s also a game referencing a thing that’s a lot more complicated and interesting than the game presents it as. So go enjoy it, it’s all good, it’s free… And then do what I did, and look at the bigger picture. Otherwise, it’ll end up like that Bill Bailey line about the Gandhi Pinball Machine, where you have to light the three Magic Naan-Breads to… Oh, you get the picture!

The Mad Welshman is a long way from breaking out of the cycle. And he likes it that way.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Spoilers. Spoilers spoilers spoilers. There you go, there’s the story of Inside, the latest offering from creators of Limbo, Playdead. Oh, wait, there’s non spoilery things I can say: There is a small boy. He’s running from some weird stuff. Stuff that can kill him stone dead. Also there are brain machines, around which quite a few puzzles revolve.

Pictured: Technically A Spoiler.

This, in essence, is one of the biggest problems with reviewing Inside… That it’s a game that wows you, that frustrates you, and has all of these experiences… And, for fear of the dreaded cry of “UGHHHH SPOILERS DUDE”, we can’t talk about most of it. We can tell you that the animations are subtle and interesting. We can tell you that the movement is fluid. We can tell you that, on keyboard, the action key is right control, and that because the game starts immediately, and is checkpoint based on its saves, you may have a few annoyed minutes of fumbling because there are no tooltips in the game.

But then you get into the game, running from dogs, strange masked people, and other weirdnesses, and you get involved in a story. A story for our time. An enthralling story. A well checkpointed story with well designed, self contained puzzles such as REDACTED, REDACTED, and, of course, REDACTED.

…Y’know what? Sod this, the internet’s saturated with spoilers and I’m going to damn well have my fun. There’s an early puzzle that amused me, and was high octane, even though it shouldn’t have been with how stupid and predictable the dogs chasing me were. I climb a fence… They go the long way round to try and get me. So I climb back, making sure they’re nipping at my heels (But not literally nipping at my heels, or they’d kill me in a particularly gruesome manner), then I climb back over, pull a board out of the boarded up doorway, and climb back over the fence just as the dogs reach me. I repeat this the magic three times, then just manage to get away from the dogs.

Pictured: Something quite atmospheric. Also technically a spoiler.

“I only just managed it” is this game’s thing, when it’s not “Wait, I was actually meant to… [FACEPALM] IT’S SO OBVIOUS!”

The adrenaline, the tricks the developers play that, nonetheless, make perfect sense in the world’s logic, and, furthermore, get applied later so you know that yes, they’re not just doing it as a one off. The secret thingumajiggers that lead to the secret ending… Yes, there’s a secret ending. The subtle horror of a small child in a world gone oh so wrong. That’s the magic of Inside. Not necessarily the puzzles we don’t talk about, which, believe me, won’t help you all that much. The next one’s a doozy. They’re all doozies… Until you solve them, and they’re not anymore.

No, if you’re going to buy Inside, buy it because you’re interested in world building, in how a story can be told without a single line of dialogue. Buy it because you want to see animation done well. Buy it because it’s a story you’ll want to remember, and read again by playing it, occasionally stumbling as you forget exactly how you did that one puzzle. Don’t buy it if you never liked Flashback, or the original Prince of Persia, or any of the puzzle-action-platformers that led up to the creation of Inside, and no doubt will lead to more interesting gems like this one.

It’s really that simple.

Pictured: Something subtly horrific. Guess.

The Mad Welshman scratched his head, and The Mind Controlled Englishman scratched his head. Unseen to both, The Also Mind Controlled Uruguayan scratched his head. But somewhere in those dominated neurons, a personality was chuckling. “They’ll never find me.”

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

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.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Review Copy
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

In a perfect universe, everything is easily understood, and if you then fuck it up, it’s your fault. Enter newtonian platformer Perfect Universe, a collection of games with the single theme of gravity. Also some nice shaders that make it look a bit like an ink drawing.

This man with no shirt is part of a Perfect Universe. Food for thought…

So let’s talk games. There are several games, three of which are available single player, 6 multiplayer. The SP games are all variants on “Collect the things, and do it quickly for maximum cheevoness”, while the MP games are things like Moon Golf (Warning, does not often contain moons), racing to collect balloons, and platformer Dodgeball. It’s at this point that you may be thinking “Oh, well that’s easy, and not worth my time!”

Let me tell you about Mister Legs. Mister Legs laughs at your bravado, knowing it to be ultimately foolish. He waits, eyes wide, because he knows that you will forget that his legs can stick to things, or that he jumps better, so much better, when his legs are firmly planted on terra firma. He may not be a rocket, or a gliding bearded man, but he will make you scream, as you stick his leg to a surface just a little too low, a little too late, and you have to do a segment all… Over… Again. He will not sigh, he will not laugh. For he knows it is a Perfect Universe, and thus, it’s your fault.

Mister Legs, implacable avatar of a Perfect Universe. He has sticky and independently moving feet.

Indeed, each game has its own tricks and traps, and the main one is actually kind of clever: Gravity, in this Perfect Universe, is based on the objects in the world. And this allows for some pretty cool perspective and control tricks. Take Space Station 1, for example. Looks simple, doesn’t it? Go around, jump on platforms, avoid spikes. Just hold ri- Oh, yes, when you’re moving up a surface, up is right. This, combined with the fact that gravity is toward the outer surface of the level (IE – The spikes covering most of it) makes it more of a test of skill than it appears. And, since the rules are easily understandable, and explained early in the game… It really is a test of skill.

If I could reduce the game to a single world, it would be “Minimalist.” The controls are simple (although sometimes oddly placed on the keyboard, such as Enter for jump), the music is low key, mostly piano and some piano synth, and most of the sound is in the background… Apart from the flare of thrusters on the rocket game modes, and the grunts of the half naked beardy man of the main mode. It kind of impresses me how much Will Sykes Games is doing with so little: Perspective tricks, control tricks… For something with simple rules, it’s somewhat hard to sum up.

There’s more than just these two, of course. Rockets. Golf. Balloons. But I wanted to show off this clock, because it’s pretty cool.

I honestly don’t have many gripes about this game, mainly with the single, somewhat lackluster death animation, the fact that some menus are still usable while they’re slowly fading out after you press Quit, the key binds sometimes tripping me up (Only sometimes, though), and some of the game modes not really feeling that appealing to me (I’m not a big fan of the rocket games, but that’s mainly because inertia is a big consideration with those), and, for its price? It’s a perfectly reasonable game, with mostly reasonable challenges based more around doing it better than having to do it perfectly for most of the game, some fun co-op modes, and some cool visual designs. Worth a look if you like simple games that become complex due to the combination of simple rules, rather than through adding complexity to the rules themselves.

The Mad Welshman looked over the endless void, and remembered the old truism: Stare ye not too long into Mr. Legs, for while you stare, Mr. Legs stares also into you. He shivered, then jumped to the next moonlet: Shirtless, bearded, and proud.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Review Copy
Price: £8.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Release

20XX is a very important year. In that one year, a robotic hero fought many evil robots, many a time, and achieved many great things. Not as many as Astro Boy, though. 20XX is also a procedurally platformer inspired by the Mega Man series, which moved to its beta stage on the 15^th of this month. So… How the heck is it?

Don’t get close to Terror Spider. If the Gravwave doesn’t get you, the bomb-spiders will!

Not bad, actually! You might feel a little discouraged by the slightly amateurish looking heroine and hero robots (Nina [Megaman style], who is your default character, and Ace [Protoman style], the red dude), but everything about this game reminds a player pretty hard of a MegaMan game… Until they run across those all important differences. Make no mistake, this is a game with elements of roguelike design. But for those who never played a MegaMan game, let’s keep this simple.

You are a robot, fighting other (presumably evil) robots for (presumably good) reasons. The other robots, thankfully, are not very good at logistics, and have left all sorts of crates and goodies around that might help you, from bolts (Currency), to items (Boost your stats), to entirely new systems compatible with all robots (Weapons and special abilities). You run, dash, jump, wallhop, and shoot your way through levels, fighting a pattern based boss monster at the end of each, get a reward for each level you clear, and pick one of three other bosses from a number of choices to fight next (Each preferring a certain kind of stage). You die once, that’s it, start again from the beginning. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because collecting “Soul Bolts” during play unlocks more things to grab between runs. The beta even has “Casual” mode, which… Starts you with 3 items, as opposed to none. More helpful than nothing, considering the variety of items.

There is quite a variety of items… And it may take a while to get them all.

The game recommends a gamepad, and I’d mainly agree, if only because it otherwise means rejigging an odd (But workable) set of keybinds. The game tutorialises pretty well, so the main thing to deal with is how it feels to play.

Most of it actually feels alright, although it does seem as though levels are balanced more for Nina than Ace, and her alternate weapon modes seem better balanced overall. Most of the time, there are multiple paths to your exit, the enemies scale pretty well, and the weapons are interesting, even if they sometimes feel overpowered. The experience could be better in places, however. While there are some things you can avoid, others generate a little harder than they should for the level they’re on. A single disappearing block going in and out quickly between two deadly flowers? That’s mean. However, for the price being asked, it’s not a bad game, with a fair amount of replay value coming from the generation. There are only three “worlds” right now (A foundry, an ice stage, and an air/jungle stage), but there’s enough variation to keep you busy (For example, the foundry stage can have fire blasters, lava pits, and various different enemy types, not all of which will appear the first time round.) Aesthetically… I honestly preferred the earlier version of Frostor, aesthetic wise, but I can understand the decision to make it easier to read. As to the boss battles, in true MegaMan fashion, they’re pattern based, so once you understand the pattern, it’s a case of… Well, not getting caught in it.

The blue bloom is there for a reason. It’s to let you know this thing has a better chance of killing you than any of its similar kindred. Doesn’t mean I’m overly fond of it, however…

Importantly for a procedurally generated game, it doesn’t often feel unfair. It does every now and again, but since it’s currently in the beta stage of Early Access, I’m willing to say that’s subject to change. So if you like action platformers with some roguelike elements, this is worth at least a look.

The Mad Welshman swung his Energy Saber, ponytail flying in the wind. The robots of Good woul- Oh, wait, he was a villain in this wo- [BEW bew bew bew bew… ]

Filed under: Early Access Releases, Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!