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

Unbeknownst to many, there are four elements of projectile based murder: Rapid fire, Burst shot, Splosion makers, and Lasers. Circuit Breakers, an arcade score attack shooter, understands this. Even if it doesn’t understand some other things.

It starts pretty simple…

So, I’m going to ask you, the reader, how much you like 80s buttrock (You know, the kind of thing that wouldn’t be out of place in a Sonic game or an 80s teenage hijinks movie.) Because if you don’t subscribe to the church of BIG HAIR, the music is going to annoy the hell out of you. Fortunately for me, I ooze Glam, which is close enough to count. In any case, the game’s idea is pretty simple: Pick one of four characters, each specialising in one of the four elements of murder (Machine Gun, Shotgun, Missile Launcher, and Laser), murder everything in a room while not getting hit, move on to the next, rinse and repeat with the occasional Big Boss thrown in.

Of course, it’s not quite that simple, for two reasons. First, weapon upgrades are tied to an energy mechanic: Short, controlled bursts, or you’re going to be staying with the level 1 whatever-the-hell you picked. I’ve had the best luck with Samson (The rocket-man), but after room 4 or 5 it gets a little tough not to just go hog-wild. Conversely, the hardest time I had was with Tay, whose powerful shots still require you to line folks up before firing if you want her weapon upgraded to its fullest destructive potential.

…Then it starts ramping up.

The other thing is the base key bindings. Being a twin stick shooter, it’s perfectly sensible to have WASD and arrows as moving and shooting respectively, but… E is ‘accept menu choice’ , Q is back, and Enter is start and… Look, the bindings don’t make a whole lot of sense beyond the basics. They’re rebindable, and the game is just as enjoyable on keyboard as it is on gamepad, but it is a strange decision. Finally, there’s some minor readability issues with some rooms that mean you can’t clearly see the pits of “Can’t walk here” when things get hot and heavy (Most noticable in Score Attack)

Apart from that, it’s a workhorse of well worn design… Simple AI, relatively simple rules, simple unlocks, and nothing more complicated than score attack, with potentially memorisable enemy patterns, different approaches depending on your character chosen, and a fair variety of enemies and bosses. Of course, it’s a tough game, but considering how easy it is to get back in, I don’t really find it annoying, and I can quite clearly see how it’s my fault when I die. A good example of this is my playstyle with Tay.

…Then there’s tanks…

“Okay, wait for them to line up, I want those bonus Energium chunks so I can murder better, and… Hey, wait, those guys spawned behind me? Crap, change appr-OW. Okay, still got this, I still got this, there, loads of peopl-OW, how was that guy not? Oh, he was slightly below the laser, sod, I can stil-OW… Welp, new life time!”

It’s also multiplayer, and I can definitely see the entertainment value there. Alone, it’s challenging. With friends, it’s an orgy of destruction. It can be played locally or online, and supports multiple controller types for each player, so there’s less faffing around if you decide to play locally.

So, apart from the keyboard binding being a little odd, it seems like it does exactly what it sets out to do, and the difficulty means that yes, if you don’t get frustrated by not getting past Room X, it seems like the enjoyment is worth the £6 that’s being asked here. It’s very specifically aimed at fans of swarm shooters like Robotron or Smash TV, and probably won’t interest anyone who isn’t into topdown shooters for very long. It should also be mentioned that, at the time of writing, Circuit Breakers has a competition for a specially designed arcade cab with Circuit Breakers on it (and Steam), and it’s pretty simple to enter.

Obviously, being a member of the press, I haven’t. But you definitely can. 🙂

The Mad Welshman ran pell-mell through the house, seeking, searching, destroying. Why were these robots around? And where the hell had his coffee gone? He had the feeling the answers had to be related.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Early Access Purchase
Price: £29.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Mordheim

There’s just something about sending your friends into a magically radioactive, monster infested city that tickles me. Now, before you go calling me a monster, consider that this is a game called Mordheim, about sending fantasy gangs into a desolate, doomed city to get glowy green rocks that everyone wants, but nobody should really have. Because, while they power magic and machinery alike, they are artefacts of Ancient Evil, and have a nasty tendency of mutating or corrupting pretty much everything they touch.

Today’s Anti-Heretical PSA brought to you by the letter S, for Sigmar our Saviour!

Also consider that, most of the time, my buddies are doing well, because I’ve been playing this since early in its Early Access run. The fact that I’ve been playing it almost the entire way through its EA run and still not gotten bored should really be a testament in and of itself, but just in case, here’s the rest of the review.

Mordheim, by Rogue Factor Games, is based on GW’s Warhammer universe, and is a turn based strategy game that isn’t strictly turn based. You see, everything you do on your turn, you do with third person shooter style controls (WASD to move, left click to do a thing, Q and E to switch what you’re doing.) It’s a nice touch, and goes a long way toward making something that’s somewhat dull to many (I move X piece to Y location, and roll some dice) actually somewhat exciting. TBS fans, understand that, while I know the joys of TBS play, this is nonetheless true, and Rogue Factor are doing something interesting which may attract folks not normally attracted to turn based play.

Everyone’s very fond of posturing and screaming in the Warhammer universe. Everyone.

Make no mistake, it’s a meaty game with layers of strategy that only get deeper the further in you get. It starts relatively simple: A Leader, a Hero, three Henchmen of two types, picked from one of four groups fighting over Mordheim’s shattered and Wyrdstone warped ruins. The Sisters of Sigmar hit things very hard, but are somewhat slow. The Cults of Chaos have dark magic on their side, not to mention mutants. The Skaven of Clan Eshin move quickly, and have poisonous weaponry (With a side dose of rat-ogre later), but are squishy and crack at the first sign of danger. Finally, the Reikland Mercenaries have guns and the usual human “I can do lots, all of it only at an okay level! Wheeee!” mentality. As befits a Warhammer game, none of these people are nice people. As you get more powerful, more types of units and skills become available, as do more dangers within the city, such as traps and Demons that wander the streets… Looking for what they consider their rightful prey.

How does it feel to play? Bloody tense, actually. From around day two, you’re by no means guaranteed a mission where you will stomp face, and very often, you’ll get the short end of the stick deployment wise (Spread out too far, or your leader and hero are in a group, leaving some of your henchmen alone without support.) It’s also not very newbie friendly tactically, as, while it eases you in, it doesn’t tutorialise much, leaving you to work out what things do from the tooltips. The fact that a single mission can take up to an hour or more means that this is definitely a time investment.

The Sisters of Sigmar: Hardcore Battle Nuns. What’s not to like?

Let’s take an example from the Sisters of Sigmar playthrough I’ve been doing. The Sisters had gotten separated in the middle of Skaven territory. Considering how the Skaven like to do things (Ambush swarms taking out individual stragglers), this was incredibly bad news, and Maria ApfelUndOrangen, lay sister, proved this point in the first round, as three rats (including their leader) leapt at her from surrounding buildings. She managed to hold them off for all of a couple of seconds, injuring one, before she was swarmed. D.V. S. Von Vacuum, Matriarch of this particular battle group, managed to regroup with one of her lay sisters by virtue of said lay sister hearing the sounds of battle after another Skaven ambush (Luckily, only an ambush of one) across the district from where Maria had fallen. In yet another portion of the city, Ethel Von Munster also managed to group up with the last lay sister, casually dispatching a skaven with a halberd along the way, taking no injuries. So far, at least, the battle had mostly gone the Sisters’ way. It was not to last.

While Von Vacuum and her cohort battled the surprisingly tenacious rat (Who had managed to dodge nearly all blows to this point), Ethel Von Munster and company went rat-hunting. And they found them. In spades. The previous ambush group simply charged in, and Ethel Von Munster went to work with her Greathammer, blessed by the Matriarch in the name of Sigmar Heldenhammer, Hero and God of the Empire. She managed to take down the rats’ leader, an assassin of Clan Eshin, before she was crushed under a tide of furry, bitey bundles of hate. Her companion took a similar accounting of herself, falling only to the final ratman’s mace.

A starting band of Skaven. So… I heard you like rats?

Things seemed bad, with the majority of the Sisters’ small battle group out for the count, possibly dead. But for some reason, enemy morale broke, not with the death of their leader, but after the murder of a minor clan-rat, and the sisters (With the exception of Ethel Von Munster) lived to fight another day. They were battered, and bruised (The lay sister who’d accompanied Ethel Von Munster had a crushed arm, and the Sisters were forced to amputate), but ultimately, triumphant.

Now, this particular group of the Sisters of Sigmar are strong, and the younger sister of Ethel Von Munster (Coincidentally, also called Ethel) has crushed many a rat head since. They have yet to lose another Sister, and they intend it to stay that way.

Obviously, the story did not go exactly that way, but that’s half the fun of a game like Mordheim: The stories it generates. Be aware that customisation is limited to costume colour and a few options for your characters, be aware that it’s not the most newbie friendly game out there, and you will very likely have some fun with this pretty well crafted and atmospheric game of urban strategy.

The Mad Welshman grimaced as he placed a chunk of Wyrdstone in his pack. His moustache had been… Talking to him, and whispering horrible things. Then again, it was also telling him Wyrdstone was bad for him, and… How could something that got him so much money be bad? Best assume the Stasche lies, he thought.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

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.

Filed under: Early Access Releases, Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

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.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

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.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!