Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £15.49
Where To Get It: Steam

Other Reviews: Early Access 2

Ahhh, sunny Subnautica, where the equatorial ice shi- wait, what? Equatorial region… iced?

Yes, folks, welcome to Subnautica: Below Zero, sequel to Subnautica where it appears either the world is stranger than first appears, or the crash of the Aurora was a major boo-boo that affected the climate drastically. It’s still a beautiful world, but now… It’s a beautiful, cold world, eyeball penguins and everything. And, like me, the player avatar is very excited to be there, being a xenolinguist who finally has a job.

Unfortunately for her, the Alterra Corporation is still a dystopian futurist hellscape, the alien artefact shenanigans are due for a repeat, but, like me, Robin Goodall loves the heck out of the world of Subnautica, even in the deepest of Arctic winters. Even when it really seems like she’s going to have a terrible time.

Right, quick refresher: Subnautica was a first-person survival adventure set on an oceanic world, where things started a little annoying (Grab X Lea- where the heck do I get lead? Oh, near the HELLBEAST. Great), but was able to shift its focus very quickly toward a more exploration based playstyle, with a moderately strong narrative about the sole survivor of a star cruiser being shot down, and their encounters with the lost technology (some of it very self-destructive) left behind by a now seemingly extinct alien species. There was a lot of swimming, submarining, and, while your goal was to leave the planet, many, myself included, felt the world was too pretty to really leave. Below Zero is, effectively, more of the same.

There isn’t a whole lot of story in the game as of yet, but what Below Zero currently has going for it is that the main conflicts are established within the first couple of hours: An unfriendly remnant of the alien race that (indirectly) caused all the trouble in the previous game, the Alterra corporation (Who would want to exploit the alien tech that… Caused all the trouble in the previous game), and, of course, the world being colder, and somewhat different to the world we knew. Oh, still mostly oceanic, still beautiful as hell… But, for example, gigantic mantis shrimp are now a problem you didn’t have before, and the bubbling filter plants of the previous game have given way to other filter plants, that give a burst of oxygen, then deflate for a while. Cold hasn’t yet been implemented, but if the heating pads or strange, radiator like eyeball flowers (Which burn you if you stand too close to them) are any indication, it probably will be.

And there’s two parts to why I’m fine with this. In Subnautica, Unknown Worlds proved their mettle in making demand meters that add some challenge, without overriding their core exploration and narrative focus, and they appear to be bringing those same lessons to Below Zero. Good. Secondly, Robin Goodall is a bubbly, lightly snarky character who refuses to let her situation (Boring, then very suddenly rather dangerous) get her down. Just like me, she loves the world, and wants to explore it, wanting to know what’s going on, and demonstrating a fairly strong moral compass early on.

It is, as before with Subnautica, a relatively promising start.

The Mad Welshman, never having left Subnautica in the previous installment, is presumably to be found somewhere out here. Either as a popsicle, or drinking coffee and smiling at penglings playing from his vast underwater base.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £17.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Warhammer Quest has always been an odd one, for me, even among the many, many adaptations and games Games Workshop has put out over the years. A series they supported fairly well (From its earliest days as Hero Quest, to Advanced Hero Quest, to Warhammer Quest), it showed an aspect of the setting you’d think they’d have dealt more with, outside of some of the fiction, the groggy Fantasy Roleplay, and… I suppose Talisman counts: Adventurers.

I mean, you’d think Games Workshop would understand the appeal. But despite a fair amount of support, Warhammer Quest is one of the lesser lights of the studio. And the times it’s been adapted, it’s been relatively faithful.

Funnily enough, this is another one of those times where that’s precisely the problem. Because Warhammer Quest is a game that loves its random encounter tables. More specifically, hot damn it loves it ambushes. To the point where, very early in the game (approximately the fourth story mission), I was travelling from the dungeon to a town, got ambushed by around 12 Beastmen along the way, killed a few, and… Then got the text that presaged the ambush getting more ambushy with 5 more Beastmen. Considering one of my two heroes allowed for the ambush was downed the round before this happened, I noped the hell out. INJURY: Thankfully no permanent damage.

Yes, if one of your characters gets downed during a quest, there is a chance they will get injured, although this can be repaired by… Levelling up. Healing items are relatively rare, and take time to use. Taking time means more turns for the dreaded AMBUSH. More turns for ranged enemies to plink away at you. And meanwhile, a lot of things are beyond your price range, from better heroes, to better equipment. It does get sort of easier by the end of the first act, but characters will get downed, and the game seems to take glee in arranging this. Yes, I know, games don’t have feelings. But that is the feeling I ascribe to it. It does help that often, side quests have vastly better rewards than main quests, but that… Doesn’t exactly help, considering the main quests are what you’re incentivised to do…

Still, you may note a 2 there, and while Warhammer Quest 2 inherits some of the problems of its predecessor (The aforementioned Ambush fetish, level design which means you’re often choosing between party cohesion before the next door, and the chance of MORE AMBUSH, expensive gear that makes the early game feel a lot more punishing, partly perhaps from its mobile, microtransactiony roots, mostly from the random tables Warhammer Quest was well known for), it would be disingenuous to say that there hasn’t been improvement and change.

For example, while there are still some control frustrations (occasionally clicking a space instead of ending your turn, having to remember that the game thinks you’re looking at an enemy instead of shooting it again if you’ve shot it with a ranged attack, then don’t mouse away before clicking again), the UI is a little more clear, and a little more visually interesting… Although the Town UI has taken a slight dip from “Functional” to “Stylistic, but less functional.” Camera movement is a definite improvement, although walls obstinately refuse to get out of the way, meaning that you’re mostly going to be looking downward anyway, and, setting wise, putting the game in Warhammer’s End Times period (When Archaon, Chaos Lord, royally screws things up) helps explain why such very disparate adventurers are banding together. A Dark Elf Witch of Naggaroth, one of your first two characters, is, at any other time, perhaps the worst choice of travelling companion. Once it gets going (about halfway through Act 1), it does feel easier, and, as a result, your group feels more powerful, but ambushes remain at best an irritation or delay, and, at worst, a very unwelcome addition to an already dangerous fight. Finally, not every town has every facility, and this starts being felt once you have to deal with long travels (and thus, random events) every time you want to level someone up, but a town doesn’t have the right facilities.

Model wise, some are better than others (It does seem women get the shorter end of the stick, both in terms of how many women characters there are, and the relative quality of models), but all are at least okay, with the caveat that customisation choices are very limited, and only the first weapon equipped seems to affect visible representation (Armour does vis-rep.) The music’s alright, with some tense violin led numbers, and other, dramatic choral pieces, and the world’s stylisation does give it more character than the previous outing, looking somewhat like a tabletop map, complete with layered bits of terrain.

In the end, while Warhammer Quest 2 gets friendlier a little quicker than its predecessor, enjoyment very much depends on how well you deal with the dominance of the random encounter elements of the game. It’s definitely an improvement, and I can see myself playing it in short stints, but, sooner or later, an annoying ambush happens, or the game drops poor plot rewards once too often, and I peace out.

It is the End Times of the Warhammer universe. Brother fights against brother, the vile publishers seek to bleed the Empire dry. In this dark fantasy world, there is only… Game Reviews.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £19.49
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access

Ah, Slay the Spire. It’s charmed us so throughout Early Access, with its simple, but deadly card based combat, three characters, and its surreal, grim world of top-hatted slimes and the Shapes Museum…

…Yes, I said surreal and grim. But not without a touch of humour.

Since I last reviewed Slay the Spire, waaaay back when, a new character had been added (the Defect, an automaton whose deck revolves around the orbs that he summons, be they damaging lightning, cool, buffing ice, or other, more out there types), Ascension mode (where you can finally Slay the Spire, a living construct with a beating heart), and a whole host of balancing. So much more, on the other, similar looking hand, hasn’t changed, and what hasn’t changed… Hasn’t really needed to change.

It’s still a game where you’re thinking both in the short term (How the hell do I get through this fight with a Snecko without too much damage, despite the fact they’re a git who randomises my once cheap cards to expensive hell?) and the long term (Once I beat the Snecko, do I go ballsy and try the random events, which could lead to worse things than the Snecko, but greater rewards, or do I slog through these… Another boss monster before the final campfire? RANDOM EVENTS IT IS!) is optimal, and the mix of patterns (enemies have very specific strategies they employ) and randomness (drops, money, what cards you get to add to your deck) mean that a lot of the game is, effectively, risk management.

And very tense risk management it is, where even seemingly hopeless situations can be won through, only for an unfortunate series of events to bring it all crashing down. An unfortunate series of events that may have started… in the last map. So, while it can sometimes be hard to judge, I’ve rarely felt like the bad end of a run is not my fault.

Of course, just saying this doesn’t really help much, so let’s look at an example run, playing as the Silent. After your first run, so long as you’ve at least beaten the first boss, you get a benefit. From the beginning, I chose… Poorly. Specifically, I chose losing 7 of my max HP (normally fine) for a Rare Relic (normally fine.)

What I got was a relic where, so long as I didn’t play more than 3 cards in a turn, I’d get 3 more next turn. This, along with a few poison cards, actually played surprisingly well, if nerve wrackingly. I was always losing HP, because I was playing much more conservatively with my cards than I normally would as the silent, but when your “Poison everyone a lot” cards keep coming up, creatures still die quickly. I beat the first boss (Hexaghost) with… 8 damn HP to spare, and got the powerup (along with the one I’d previously gotten where enemies would now drop 2 cards instead of 1) where I could get 2 relics for each Elite enemy I successfully fought.

And so, in my quest for a kind of power you don’t normally see the Silent possess, I continued to choose… Poorly. It didn’t matter that I’d fully healed, because the very first fight I got into (Three birds, which is normally an easy fight), I chose to fight according to my relics, and lost half my HP. Then I lost some more HP getting my max HP up. Then I came out of an Elite fight with less than 10HP again, merely four encounters in, and the very next encounter was… The Knight and Priestess. A deadly combo even normally, they killed me. Not without me killing the priestess, but, as with those ancient PSAs about knowing, that was only half the battle. Dead. Restart. And a lot of this was my choices.

Still, what with mods, the good accessibility, an excellent score, good aesthetics with a lot of visual clarity, that aforementioned humour breaking up the grim world, Slay the Spire is a tense, yet oddly compelling outing, and has remained so pretty much throughout.

The Mad Welshman goes with Snecko Eye whenever he gets the chance. That’s just the way he rolls.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £46.49
Where To Get It: Steam

The God Eater series has always been an interesting one, even if aspects of that interest are more akin to watching a trainwreck than anything else (HI ROMEO, YOU SKEEVY ASS.) A series in the relatively small genre that is Monster Hunting (Wandering through limited arenas, hunting monsters, collecting items, and crafting better weapons so you don’t get stomped by the latest monster), God Eater has also been known for dramatically pulling the rug out from under its characters time and time again.

So… It’s actually been a pleasant relief to see the first three acts have mostly been an upward arc, narratively, from child-soldiers imprisoned and experimented on, to valuable members of a crew. I know there’s a rug pull incoming, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting, and I’m glad of that.

Okay, so, a little narrative backgrounder: God Eater is a monster hunting game where, essentially, Mother Earth has gotten so tired of Humanity’s shit, she decided to try and evolve them out of existence with the Aragami, horrific monsters that were, at least in the first game, originally human, but changed into various monsters. Humanity, somehow, has survived through at least two apocalyptic events (At least partly self inflicted), but things are grimmer than ever, with Fenrir (the organisation of the previous two games) mostly destroyed, and Gleipnir (No, not Sleipnir, totally not going with a Ragnarok themed naming, why would you think that?) being the “big” organisation this time. You can tell things are bad, because not only are the Aragami going Gray Goo on everything (the Ash Storms, and, theoretically… the totally-not-going-to-happen Ash Tempest), they’ve evolved again. Cue our protagonist, and their friends.

While I have not been able to get as far as I would like in God Eater 3 (The pressures of reviewing, sadly, wait for nobody it seems), I already have a pretty good idea of how the game has improved, how it’s added things, and how its writing seems to be on upward progression from the last outings. Some things remain, annoyingly, a bit of a problem, such as subtitles not properly distinguishing themselves from the background, the fact that, as a Monster Hunter type game, there are a lot of buttons and button combos, so a controller is heavily recommended (both controller and keyboard/mouse can be redefined, but, as mentioned, a lot of buttons), and step attacks, especially the new Burst Art step attacks, remain a pain in the arse to land properly (Locking on doesn’t help that much.) Mook missions remain mook missions, you will end up grinding earlier missions for upgrade materials and money (especially if you want to experience all the weaponry), and some enemy types remain more annoying than others. Specifically shielders, flyers, and ranged-focused enemies (Of which there is at least one who represents all three in Rank 3.)

Yes, this review is pretty long for me, and a big part of that is that there is a lot that has changed, been added, or improved. For example, I mentioned Burst Arts, and now there are not only Burst Arts (Requiring you to fit the Devour move into your combos to use, although Devouring your enemies remains a vital core function you won’t risk forgetting), but Engage mode (Essentially, linked abilities that trigger when two characters fill up their attack meters, such as sharing item usage or improving attack), and Acceleration Triggers, which, like Burst Arts and Engage mode, buff aspects of your fighting style, although some feel more useful than others. Wait, I need to Engage five times to… Improve the speed of that devour move I don’t really use, because quick devour is right there? HRM. The two new weapons, similarly, are new, and the Heavy Moon, a sort of Chakram/Heavy Axe combo, is definitively my favourite, threatening to depose my love of the lance and its pokey, chargey stylings.

Visually, the game is an improvement on previous titles, without busting your GPU. Enemies glow, give good visual tells (for the most part), feel like believable creatures… Well, as believable as murder-monsters based on a hive-mind of single-celled hate amoeba can be, anyway. Characters remain relatively simply rendered, although the clarity does help when combat, and its heavy particle chaos ensues, and, despite seeming like a really unfriendly game, it tutorialises moderately well. Not really well, just moderately well, but it teaches most of its base concepts, even if it stumbles a bit by leaving weapon specific training to practice modes and database entries on their unique moves. The voice acting’s solid, the writing seems, as noted, to be on an upward arc from the last outing’s skeevelord inclusions (Although I may well have to write a going back or something once done, because, as noted, God Eater is well known for its dramatic rug pulling), and, overall, God Eater 3 seems to show quite the improvement, remaining a solid entry in the relatively small genre that is “Hunt monsters for kit and profit.”

jThe Mad Welshman always enjoys getting the drop on things that want to destroy Humanity. After all, that’s his job…

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £11.39 (£14.92 for game + soundtrack, £5.19 for soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Heaaaart beat.. Why do I miss… Oh, wait, no, this is not, in fact, the TV show starring Nick Berry, but an RPG Maker game inspired by monster capturing games (Although to pick just one it’s inspired by would perhaps be a disservice.) A game that, while definitely interesting, is… Not without flaw right now. So… Let’s get this out the way right now.

If you are not fond of puzzle elements, especially, for example, block pushing puzzles, Heartbeat will probably turn you off within the first hour. It’s stylistically very fitting to its inspirations, it tries to do interesting things with its narrative of a world that lives with spirits (Mogwai.) It has a good soundtrack. Its combat is relatively quick and pleasant, and, while this isn’t something that would interest folks other than gamedev enthusiasts, I appreciate how the RPGMaker MV engine has been tweaked to good effect. It’s even pretty accessible.

But I freely admit I’ve found myself struggling to get very far, because of that combination of my own desire for completionism (CHESTS CHESTS CHESTS), and because the game frontloads about nine or ten block pushing/ball rolling puzzles in its first major segment, the Sol Tunnels. And, honestly, this is a bit of a shame for me, both in the sense of being a little ashamed, and feeling sad that this is so, because some of the puzzle elements are, in fact, quite cool.

With a tap of the Q key, you can select which party member leads, and each one has something that helps explore the world. Rex, for example, is a lightning cat Mogwai who can jump small gaps and fences. Klein, the protagonist’s primary companion as a Conjurer (Someone who makes pacts to share their souls with Mogwai, as diplomats and defenders of the uneasy truce), is small enough that he can fit through catflaps, and, being a Cait Sith, can talk to cats. The dialogue is a little cheesy in places, but it’s characters definitely have their charm, and it hits that right note between SatAm Pokemon, and a more serious monster training world.

Sometimes, alas, while you can see the charm about a game, something turns you off, and, in my case, it’s the front-loading of a puzzle type I have never been fond of. I would still say that monster hunting and JRPG fans check this out, because it does do interesting things, playing with the formula, but… It is, unfortunately, not really for me.

It happens sometimes. Still, I can appreciate the art. <3

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