Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £15.49 (£22.68 game+soundtrack, £6.47 soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

The only distinction between a Cold War and a normal war is that it’s less obvious about the casualties. Back-room dealings. Thefts. Extractions. Wetwork. It’s a nasty world, the world of espionage.

Similarly, paradigm shifts are often violent things. Every new technology or cultural wave brings with it things that governments and societies don’t necessarily properly get a handle on until decades later. And the most feared kind of paradigm shift of all (or welcomed, depending on your viewpoint and optimism) is Singularity: The point at which our technology takes such a leap forwards, it shakes the world. Free energy. Posthumanism. A workable virtual reality for everyone. Or perhaps the ability to completely accurately predict the financial market. A lot of these sound cool, until you realise they come with changes attached. Big ones, for which there may not be an answer anyone likes.

Sigma Theory: Global Cold War… Takes both of these concepts, and puts them into a (currently) tough turn-based strategy game about hopefully being the first to take the world into a new age, safely. And the hopefully isn’t there just because you’re competing with several other world powers. As noted, these technologies can bite, and since a game generally takes about a game-year’s worth of time… No, nobody really has that much time to prepare.

Part of the reason the game is tough is because it only really tutorialises for your first game (Which you may not even complete), and, generally speaking, it throws you in at the deep end. This partly works due to the subject matter, and it’s quite clear that you are not expected to win your first, or maybe even fifth game (Taking about an hour to two hours per complete run), but it would be nice to see more tutorialising. Nonetheless, the basic idea is that you have four agents (Hopefully the ones you wanted, but failing to answer their own questions won’t allow you to recruit them), and, using these four agents, a pair of tactical drones, a pair of scientists, and your diplomacy, you convert and exfiltrate scientists (Or just kidnap them, although that’s less effective), play the game of politics for favours (and maybe even big favours, if you’ve played your cards right and got good blackmail material), and try to defend your own home turf as other nations do unto you… As you have clearly demonstrated you want to do unto them.

The UI is pretty clear (The one minor exception being that the menu is fond of that glitch effect that I know not everyone’s comfortable with, and no option yet to turn it off), and the notifications solid, so that definitely helps, as does the fact that once you’ve tried something like exfiltration (An affair where, ideally, you want to leave without the police or agents properly noting you, but the best you should hope for is getting out with the scientist), you know roughly how it goes. The music fits the mood, being ambient synth with that distinct Technothriller vibe, and the sound clearly fits with what’s going on, so… Aesthetically, it all works.

Where I think Sigma Theory works best, however, is in how it deals with the subjects in question. There’s a lot of groups interested in your work, not just the other nations, and while they want to embrace certain goals (the Hypercaps, the Ancaps, the Mind Control lovers, and at least one criminal syndicate, to nickname but four), that’s… Not necessarily the best thing. Nor, in fact, is just releasing the technology into the wild. Yes, free energy means we never have to worry about energy again… But it has a knock on effect on industry and employment, and, as noted, there’s no real time to prepare for that. Other technologies, such as mind control, are more easily spotted for their effect on the Doomsday Clock. If that runs down, everyone loses… But other nations may not care, for their desire to be first.

Sigma Theory is an interesting strategy game with some equally interesting takes on various singularity and posthuman related subjects (albeit in passing, mostly), and, while it’s tough as heck right now, it’s still enjoyable to play, and I would recommend it. Could do with some granular difficulty settings, though. That would definitely help.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t worry about the Singularity. His reasons are his own.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £12.99 (£3.99 soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

There is little more cathartic, in most media, than giving a Nazi what for. A boop to the snoot. The old one-two. Especially since the Ratzis do have this nasty habit of exploring things man was not meant to explore, in an attempt to find that unbeatable, supernatural edge in their hateful war on that which is not them.

If you guessed, from that intro, that Pathway heavily involves some pulpiness and Nazi-murdering, then yes, you win a No-Prize. It does, along with zombies, Bedouin tribesmen, strangely intelligent dogs, and companions who aren’t always clean as a whistle themselves. It essentially comes in two main parts: Exploring a map in your jeep, encountering events and folks in your path, and trying not to run out of fuel (You can run out of fuel, but it’s never good, as your characters’ health becomes the next fuel meter)… And, if the situation demands it, tactical RPG action where you can move and take a single action, balancing risk and reward.

Do you trust your wolfhound to not only take out that Nazi, but take the punishment from his friend before you get there? Do you think your gun can do more damage than your bowie knife to that Zombie, and, considering it’s one that blows up after it dies, do you want to risk melee? The answer varies, but only some clever tactical thinking will let you out of a fight unharmed.

Nonetheless, it’s all pretty clear. Go places, kill nazis, limited inventory, multiple characters, and where the icons aren’t all that clear, the tooltips help immensely. Being able to adjust the combat difficulty and fuel is nice, and, although it has no effect on the difficulty, being able to change what “Daytime” looks like is a nice aesthetic touch. The visual style works pretty well, being solid pixel art, and the animations not only make it clear what’s going on, they have a fair amount of impact to them (Especially vaulting over cover. Even with an eagle eye perspective, the energy is obvious.)

Musically, and sound wise? Well, the inspiration of Nazi-punching pulp media is strong here. A little Indiana Jones style tunes here, a little The Mummy there… It’s good stuff, and the sounds are solid as well. Although dog lovers, be aware that the Good Boy companion can pass on just the same as any other, and it breaks my heart, too, to hear that whimper. Just so you know.

The basic maps, as far as I know, remain pretty much the same, so you do know roughly how much fuel you need to get from start to finish, although what’s in the map is random, based on a variety of events, allowing a fair amount of replay value. Also helping this is a large roster of characters, each with their own up and downsides, and the fact that character skills have a bearing on how some events can be completed.

Overall, I’ve found this one interesting. While I wouldn’t say it’s amazing, or great, it is fun to me, a fan of procgenned RPG content, and while the Nazis-Seek-Evil-Occult-Power storyline is nothing new, it’s still enjoyable.

Nazis… One of the few kinds of villains The Mad Welshman will happily team up with those Dudley-Do-Rights to fight.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £5.79
Where To Get It: Steam

One Finger Death Punch 2 is, on the one hand, more of the same with more pizzazz, or, depending on your viewpoint, more distractions that may screw you up at high speeds. On another level, it’s the survival of memes from a long way back (Bad martial arts movie dubs and stickman fights, cats love to get up in your business while you’re doing important things.)

On another, more basic level, it’s a game where, as in OFDP1, you fight using ooonly the left and right mouse buttons, waiting for your opportunity to gorily beat the shit out of a horde of stickmen of various levels of health who want to hurt you, without clicking too early (Miss, slow down, get hit) or late (Get hit, damn, that hurt.) And, inevitably, get caught out by some subtlety or other to that system, whether that’s not getting the semi-expected “Nobody close, nearest punching bag selected for a brutal out-of-range walloping”, or taking out multiple opponents at once (A boon at times, a curse in others.)

It’s fun enough that I don’t even mind that one of those “more of” is “More business in the UI to distract you if you weren’t focusing entirely on fighting using only the left and right mouse buttons.” Skills are easily more distracting, twitch functionality means that emotes fly across the screen, and the map, while beautiful, is also a little less clear.

But… Here’s the thing. That distraction, which would gain a thumbs down or a disapproving tut elsewhere, works with One Finger Death Punch 2 because part of the challenge is that the game is trying to distract you. And it works narratively because it’s essentially that bit in a martial arts movie where tons of people swarm a lone individual. Of course distraction is an element, and as such, you feel like a badass when you win.

It helps that, even if you lose, a few of the nice things about One Finger Death Punch (and sequel) come into play. Losing slows the game’s speed down. Winning speeds it up. So, in essence, it self corrects its difficulty. For the masochistic among us, the difficulty can also be manually corrected now, so… Wow. And, of course, if you reach the highest tier of Survival, you once again meet Luca the cat, determined to distract you further as cats do when you’re doing something important on a computer. Ahh, joy.

I’m actually going to wrap up here, because firstly, what you see is pretty much what you get: Punching, splashy effects, maps, survival, etcetera… But also because, sure, I could describe One Finger Death Punch 2 in terms of adrenaline rush, in terms of that fightgame high… And that’s a turnoff for some. I could describe it in terms of its simplicity… But that isn’t the whole story, because, while skills automatically resolve, there’s still depth to that, and effects on the play (Killing a brawler or boss instantly, for example, plays a flashy animation, but I hope you remembered who you were going to punch next!)

I could describe it in lots of ways, but my main advice is to watch some footage of it, think if you could give it a go, and then, if you want to… Give it a go. The tutorials are clear (Although 16 individual tutorials felt a bit much), and , worst case scenario, you find 2 hours passed without you realising (A good sign anyways), and you’ve spent £6.

That may seem counterintuitive for a written review site, it’s true, but One Finger Death Punch 2, like its prequel, very much needs to be seen in motion. Personally, I love it.

The Mad Welshman fights using only the thumbs up and thumbs down. Alas, he does mash the review button.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £19.99 (£8 soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Time… Can erase a lot of things. We can’t be certain about the little things about a person’s life, from documentation, even thirty years ago. Time and time again, we’ve found we were wrong about societies from hundreds of years ago (And we may still be wrong), and as to the earliest stages of our world? Ha. Language, especially, can be tricksy. Lots of words look related, but these are just as often coincidence as actual linguistic relation.

So imagine my pleasure when I came across Heaven’s Vault, where the obscurity (deliberate or otherwise) of the past is a core theme, and the tricksiness of deciphering a language from scratch… Ahhh, that’s a core mechanic. And, while the base of the story is nothing new in science fiction, the details? Ah, that’s where it becomes interesting, and cool.

So, let’s start with surface details. The setting: A nebula, through which rivers of ice wend their way, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and both air and water are a premium. The society: Mostly under the rule of the Iox Protectorate, it is an Indian flavoured setting. It is by no means a nice place, but it’s what the main character, Aliya Alasra, calls home. She’s an archaeologist, and a request to find a professor leads to… Big consequences.

As an aside, if you’ve never thought Archaeology or Science have drama… I seriously suggest looking some of the drama up, because hot dang… Side note over, back to the game.

More specifically, some crit I feel obliged to mention, before talking about why this is still interesting, and still recommended. The game is on a single save system. I can understand why, sort of… But it is annoying. The sound levels, at the time of review, don’t always take for the sailing segments. And the base text speed is a little fast (thankfully, it can be slowed down.) Toward the end of the game, the sailing, once joyful, becomes a bit of a chore. Okay, that’s the crit over with, now let’s get back to it.

The language in question, Ancient, plays a big role in the mystery Aliya gets involved in. Understanding of her situation requires exploring thoroughly, and understanding that you may not understand or have the tools to properly translate an inscription without context, or further pieces to work with. Thankfully, the hardest part (Discovering a few words) is already done, and you can infer some due to the fact the language is close to pictographic… Water, for example, looks like two waves, with two curved strokes to represent splashing. Nice. But since it’s also a compound language (Like German), you can also use that. Emperor, Holy, and God all have the same root symbols… And this, readers, is where the game does something clever that I appreciate.

You see, it shows they understand that language doesn’t grow in isolation. It understands that words get tied to other words for reasons. And that Emperor/Empress, Holy, and God all have the same root deeply implies what the game then informs you… That the Emperors and Empresses were considered godlike. That’s a really nice touch.

Visually, it’s an interesting blend of hand-drawn animation and 3D landscapes that works pretty well. It’s fluid, it’s pretty easy to get what to do, and it looks lovely. Every place feels different. Musically, it’s very much a dreamlike experience. Sweeping violins fit well with the nebula’s rivers, and the “rocks”, small planetoids on which people still live (or… Not, as the case often is with the archaeological sites.) Sailing, while it gets annoying due to having to travel further as the game progresses (Fast travel thankfully got introduced just before publishing, and at least one mysterious “And the robot sailed the ship directly to where I was because reasons.”) is, in the first two thirds of the game, an interesting experience. It hasn’t really palled on me except when I’ve been feeling pressed for time, because it’s a beautiful place and the music is nice, but I can see how it would wear for others.

In any case, interestingly written, with a core mechanic that is mostly unique (One of the few games to try and make linguistics core to its play, Captain Blood, does so in a different manner), and a story that kept me going, wanting to know exactly how things went as they did… Heaven’s Vault is definitely one of the most interesting adventure titles I’ve seen this year, and well worth a look.

The Mad Welshman loves exploring myth, and culture, and history. For a game to let him do this with a fictional one… Well, that’s the good stuff.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £7.59
Where To Get It: Steam

Running a shop is, barring the social aspects, mind numbingly dull. Customers come in, they look at things, maybe they try and steal things, and sometimes they buy things. Then they leave.

Goblin’s Shop tries to add things to this basic formula, in much the same vein as games like Recettear, Nono’s Magic Item Shop, or Moonlighter, but… A lot of what it seems to be adding is annoyance. Okay, yes, Employees potentially make things easier… But just as often, they’re going to fall asleep on the job, requiring you to punch them awake. The music is sparse chiptunes, and as such, they pall quickly. And adventuring… Well, have good enough folks, you can easily win through. Don’t, and you’re just leaving to come back later. There’s no real stakes to it, and…

…Well, it all ties into a core problem. Much like actual retail, a lot of this feels more like busywork. I don’t need every single material on the adventure map. I need newer ones. But it’s there, why not pick it up? Money? Money hasn’t been a problem the entire time. After a certain point, it just… Stops becoming important. Selling kit to adventurers to equip them seems like a good idea, until you realise that you have to solicit them, multiple times, to get the silly beggars into the shop to buy something basic like a potion. And the “multiple times” is there, not just due to failure chance, but because they may not actually buy a potion, despite you knowing that they’re going to need one, and soon.

There are some minor nice touches to Goblin’s Shop… Finding monsters is the way you both diversify your party and get more customers, and sometimes, when you sell a nice item to a customer, they’ll give you extra enchantments to work into your items (randomly.) When you defeat bosses, you actually have the chance to be merciful, which nets you kit, and can improve the humans’ opinions of you. But finding new recipes is slow and annoying, getting to new adventuring areas is a matter of going through adventuring again and again until you beat it… This is without getting into odd control decisions and hiccups, like WASD having menu functions in the shop, but not in adventuring, or the character stopping moving (Considering that your character’s only option when he doesn’t have backup is to run away… Not so good.)

In short, there’s a whole lotta grind here, not a lot of stakes, the music helps it feel grindy, and while there’s a lot in the game, there’s not a lot of cohesion to it. And that’s a big old shame.

The Mad Welshman takes no pleasure in being a downer on goblincraft. But sometimes, it just makes him too green.

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