Yes, Nintendo is opening up its Japanese Nintendo Museum for a tour later today. No, it will not be taking questions about anything else at this time.

That's the official line from Nintendo, which announced on its official American X/Twitter account over the weekend that whilst it's happy to share a quick 10-minute tour of its Kyoto museum, "there will be no game announcements or mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during this presentation".

"Join us [later today], August 19 at 3pm PT, for a tour of the Nintendo Museum that’s scheduled to open during the fall of 2024 in Kyoto, Japan!" the account announced. "The Nintendo Museum Direct livestream will last roughly 10 minutes.

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During Lockdown, the only thing more scarce than flour was Switch fitness game Ring Fit Adventure. It was the perfect thing at the perfect time: a game that provided a home workout in a period when you had to stay home. Strap the controller to you, grab the oversized resistance wheel thing, and get moving. Everyone wanted one, and the desire for it lingered long after Lockdown. Today, Ring Fit has sold more than 15m units - it's one of the most successful games on Switch. Nintendo sensed there was a market and Ring Fit proved it. And it's not just Nintendo: companies like Peloton, with its uber-expensive exercise bike and integrated workout platform, have shown people will pay significant amounts of money to gamify their fitness needs, and it's into this exact space a new challenger has arrived.

It's called Quell and it's currently £190, and I tried it this week and I really liked it. The topline thing you need to know is that it delivers a punishing workout. It's more intense than Ring Fit; after a short demo plus a 20-minute regular session, I was dripping sweat freely on the rug in Quell's smallish London office. There was no air conditioning - enough said. That's not to say Ring Fit can't be intense but it's generally a calmer experience. Quell is designed to push it up a notch.

The second thing to know is that Quell feels more actively gamey than Ring Fit, which I was quite surprised about. It's built with roguelike principles in mind, so you try to see how far you can get in the game but also build and customise a loadout as you go. Do you want this power or that one? That kind of thing. And then between runs, you equip the items you earned, affecting your power and statistics, adding a layer of role-playing game progression to the mix. "Real fitness. Real gaming," is the company's motto, so you get a sense of the areas it's trying to push on.

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Nintendo is dropping a free three-part demo for its upcoming horror, Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club from next week.

From Tuesday 20th August, players will be able to grab the prologue and chapter one.

Chapter two will drop on the morning of the 23rd August, and the third and final freebie, chapter three, will be available on 28th August.

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Launching a new console is neither easy nor cheap, and in order to remain relevant in the “console wars” a continuing price has to be paid… a price that Microsoft learned the hard way. But while hardware developers like Sega and Google were unwilling to pay the ongoing price and watched their dreams crumble as a result, Xbox doubled-down and continued to invest deeply in their commitment to the home console market every year… because while each iteration of their hardware has sold at a net loss, the only path to the treasure they are seeking is to see the road through to the end.

The act of “taking up our cross” involves more than a one-time event of accepting Christ and His grace… it is an ongoing, self-sacrificial journey that will continue for the rest of our lives. Each step we take as we carry our cross will compel us to shed the layers of selfishness that once defined us, and it is a process that is guaranteed to be uncomfortable… crosses are costly, not cozy. But it is in our choice to carry a cross that we’d rather not carry that shows we’re actually following in His footsteps… and that is where the true treasure is finally found.

Whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it – lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:27-30, 33

And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” Luke 22:41-42

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Chinese gaming giant NetEase has taken to Gamescom 2024 to announce its latest title, Floatopia. The newly unveiled game promises to expand the selection of Animal Crossing-like life sims on both PC and consoles.

In a world with no set path, you'll have to forge your own! Hone your exploration skills in The Pathless with this handy guide.

The post Forging Your Path in a Pathless World first appeared on Two Average Gamers.

The post Forging Your Path in a Pathless World appeared first on Two Average Gamers.

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This week’s eShop roundup kicks off with an update to the wonderfully quirky Cult of the Lamb, bringing local co-op to the game. We were huge fans of the original release, and an update like this sounds like a promising way to enhance the experience.

Meanwhile, a classic Pokémon title has joined the Switch Online collection. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team, originally released in 2005 on the Game Boy Advance, is now available to play for free if you have an online subscription.

There’s an interesting sale on this week, too, with Bethesda games like Doom and Wolfenstein discounted. If those styles are your jam, be sure to check out the current deals.

As always, there’s a long list of new titles to consider, so let’s get to it! Check out the new releases below and let us know which games you’re playing this week.

Nintendo Switch

• Cult of the Lamb – Unholy Alliance Update– Heretics never rest, and the Lamb is in need of an ally. Unholy Alliance introduces a new playable character to Cult of the Lamb: the Goat! Summoned by blood and born in corruption, this wicked new ally can join the holy Lamb in local co-op. Crusade through dungeons, slay heretics, build your cult and seek new powers together. But there’s more: In addition to co-op play, the Unholy Alliance expansion also adds new tarot cards, relics, buildings, fleeces, follower traits, follower quests and other secrets to discover! The Cult of the Lamb – Unholy Alliance Update is available now on the Nintendo Switch system.

Game Boy Advance – Nintendo Switch Online

• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team – All of a sudden, you’ve found yourself in a different world, one where you’re now a Pokémon yourself and can speak and interact with other Pokémon. But what is your true purpose and destiny in this Pokémon world? That’s the real mystery! As the hero of this journey, you’ll begin the game by taking a personality quiz, with the results determining which Pokémon you will become out of several options. From there, you’ll select your partner Pokémon before being whisked to a world full of Pokémon to befriend and dungeons to explore. Form your rescue team, take on mysterious changing dungeons and engage in strategic, turn-based battles in this game originally available on the Game Boy Advance system!

Digital spotlight

• Capture the Moment! – Grab your Nintendo Switch and get ready for World Photography Day on Aug. 19! Make memories (and take selfies!) as you catch, battle and train Pokémon in the Paldea Region in the Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet games. Or you take in-game photographs that capture Pokémon in their native environments in the New Pokémon Snap game. No matter your photography techniques or style, you can enjoy some picture-perfect fun with these games and more on Nintendo Switch.

DLC

• DREDGE – The Iron Rig – The Iron Rig is the second official expansion** for DREDGE –  a cosmic horror fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent. This content adds a new constructable destination with its own story, items and adversities that can be experienced at any stage in your playthrough. Gather, craft and deliver your way through the mysteries of The Iron Rig, revisiting areas from DREDGE to investigate ancient disturbances stirring in the deep. You will assist the Ironhaven Corporation in constructing facilities that unlock items, gadgets and more, but what are they truly here for? Find out in DREDGE – The Iron Rig, available today!

 Nintendo eShop sales

• QuakeCon 2024 Sale – Celebrate QuakeCon with savings up to 85% off on select Bethesda games like DOOM Eternal, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus! This sale lasts until Aug. 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT. For more information and to view the full list of games, visit https://www.nintendo.com/store/sales-and-deals.

Also new this week

• Aery – Ancient Empires
• Amazing Drawing: Coloring Book Simulator
• Arcade Tanks World: Tank Battle Simulator
• Arco
• Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians
• Bizarre – Available Aug. 17
• Castaway – Available Aug. 16
• Cooking – Available Aug. 16
• Cup Killer – Sandbox Game – Available Aug. 16
• Cyber Mission – Available Aug. 21
• D.C.K.: Dock Chess King – Available Aug. 18
• Dadish Collection – Available Aug. 16
• Elrentaros Wanderings – Available Aug. 16
• Energy Lab – Available Aug. 21
• Exit Station 7
• Guayota
• Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery
• Ice World: The Frozen Age
• Just Crow Things
• Lunar Nightmare – Available Aug. 16
• Magical Delicacy
• Mangavania 2 – Available Aug. 21
• Mika and the Witch’s Mountain – Available Aug. 21
• Minami Lane
• Murder Is Game Over: Streaming Death – Available Aug. 16
• Mute Crimson DX – Available Aug. 16
• My Lovely Empress – Available Aug. 21
• Overboss
• Parking Jam – Available Aug. 16
• Parking Masters
• Phantom Spark
• Rack and Slay – Available Aug. 19
• Rewind or Die – Available Aug. 16
• Space Rift
• Squiggle Drop
• Stumble Guys – Available Aug. 20
• Supermarket Manager 2024
• Synaxarion Christian Stories: Holy Martyr Neophytos
• Tactical Strike: Special Forces Shooter
• The Godfeather: A Mafia Pigeon Saga
• The Sirena Expedition – Available Aug. 16
• Thief Puzzle – Available Aug. 16
• Tiles Match
• Turn to Mine – Available Aug. 16
• Ultimate Fishing Supermarket Simulator 3D
• World Wars II – Airplanes Battle

The post Cult of the Lamb update joins this week’s eShop roundup appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Gamescom has scrapped its Best Nintendo Game Award due to a lack of nominees.

Gamescom's award committee confirmed it had received "too few submissions" for the award category to go ahead this year.

This is the first time since the Gamescom awards were split into platform-specific categories back in 2011 that there will be no award for Best Nintendo Switch game.

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Nintendo has announced the opening date for the Nintendo Museum while launching its official website. People will be able to visit the new museum starting from October 2, 2024.

This opening date announcement followed the Nintendo Direct stream that exclusively featured the museum earlier on the same day. Nintendo first revealed the date in that program. The whole museum will also have English language support for foreign visitors who are not well-versed in Japanese.

This museum will not only feature a collection of Nintendo's consoles and game products, including the Hanafuda flower cards that the company made shortly after it was established in 1889. The facility will also have interactive physical games and workshops based on the company's creations, ranging from digital Hanafuda and Karuta games to a Super Mario-themed shooting gallery. The Hatena Burger cafe and the Bonus Stage merchandise shop will complete the facility.

Nintendo will restrict access to the museum with a limited number of tickets. People who want to visit the museum must first have a Nintendo Account that they also use on the Switch. Most of the tickets will be available via a lottery drawing, but Nintendo will also open sales for the remaining tickets if there are cancellations.

People with other nationalities other than Japan can also purchase tickets for the museum, but they can only pay with credit cards. The museum's staff will also only accept passports to confirm the identities of foreign nationals.

Here are the ticket prices for the Nintendo Museum, which are grouped by age:

• Ages 0-5: Free
• Ages 6-11: 1,100 yen (~$7.55)
• Ages 12-17: 2,200 yen (~$15.10)
• Ages 18 or more: 3,300 yen (~$22.65)

The Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, Japan, will be accessible to the public on October 2, 2024.

The post Nintendo Museum Opening Date Falls in October 2024 appeared first on Siliconera.

A few years on from the two-case collection of Famicom Detective Club remakes, Nintendo is following up on the promise and potential of this visual novel series with the first fully new entry in 27 years. Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is coming out at the end of this month, putting our youthful sleuths through the wringer of another traumatic murder case.

From today and through to the game’s launch on 29th August, Nintendo is teasing out the first few chapters of the game with a free demo, and we’ve sampled the prologue and first chapter of the game a little ahead of time.

It’s another day at Utsugi Decetive Agency, with our 19 year old protagonist (who you get to name) continuing on as an assistant detective at the agency. Barely have you said hello to Utsugi when the phone rings with the police calling you to a strange and unsettling crime scene.

A body has been found that morning, a teenager still in middle school… but they were found with a paper bag on their head, marked with a smiling face.

This quickly grows into the revelation that this could be tied to a decades old case that Utsugi was aware of and the urban legend of Emio – The Smiling Man, a person with a bag on their head who finds crying girls and tells them quite specifically that they’re going to give them a smile that lasts forever. But is this the same killer? A copycat? Something else entirely?

If you’ve played the remade Famicom Detective Club duology, or even the more jovial Ace Attorney series, you’ll immediately find your footing with the visual novel-style gameplay of this game.

The early conversations and interactions through the Prologue and Chapter 1 gradually set out the scope of what you’ll have to do. Most of the time you’ll select ‘Ask/Listen’ and potentially a sub-topic to engage in conversation with someone, but sometimes the conversation might dry up, nudging you to ‘Look/Examine’ the person or the environment to prise out new clues, or to ‘Think’ and have your internal dialogue nudge you down another path. Thankfully you are generally prompted by highlighted words when you need to think or if there’s something new to ask about, though you might end up still simply tapping through all the options to try and find the one with new info.

There’s further options, to call over to another person, dip into your journal with all the collated details on people, and more, though the opening chapter only touches on this lightly.

One thing that does return for the chapter conclusion is the case review, a sit down chat with Ayumi to go over the facts and latest discoveries and try to draw some conclusions. It’s basically a mini quiz to see if you’ve been paying even a modicum of attention, though you can also point out suspects that could be a bit of a punt.

Emio – The Smiling man seems to take a few incremental steps forward in terms of the game presentation. The art style is very much in keeping with the 2021 remakes, but I feel like there’s a shade more animation to characters in their idle states, their hair waving gently in a breeze, and the like. Animation to go along with dialogue is snappy and to the point, fading between motions to quickly relate a motion, but without dragging thing out. Helpful when the game’s voice work is Japanese only, so you  can skip through dialogue as fast as you can read.

But while this is a more serious kind of mystery than an Ace Attorney, that doesn’t mean there isn’t space for some unusual and memorable characters. In particular detectives Kuze and Kamihara are polar opposites to one another, Kuze being very intense and by-the-book, while Kamihara is a rather unserious character in some ways, deliberately a bit mean, it seems.

This is really just the very beginning of the case, and I can read barely anything into how it’s going to progress at this point, but I’ve no doubt that there will be plenty of twists and turns, more murders, and a gradually emerging gallery of suspects.

Chapter 2 will be available within the demo later this week on 23rd August, before the third chapter is added on 28th August ahead of the full launch. I’m already keen to peel back more of the mystery in the coming days.

Vroom vroom. That is the sound of 11 rivals revving their engines as they blink the sweat out of their eyes and exhale years of self-doubt from their lungs. Today is their day. We have lined up these racing games on a starting grid and are interested to see how things shake out. Will the realism-obsessed driving sims take the lead with their sublime physics engines? Might the futuristic combat racers simply destroy the opposition with explosive rockets? Or perhaps a nippy arcade crowd-pleaser will soar to the finish line, propelled by the sound of roaring cheers. It's all to play for here at our incredibly messed-up grand prix with a worrying lack of rules or regulation. Start your engines, everyone, these are the 11 best racing games on PC. 3! 2! 1! ...

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Vroom vroom. That is the sound of 11 rivals revving their engines as they blink the sweat out of their eyes and exhale years of self-doubt from their lungs. Today is their day. We have lined up these racing games on a starting grid and are interested to see how things shake out. Will the realism-obsessed driving sims take the lead with their sublime physics engines? Might the futuristic combat racers simply destroy the opposition with explosive rockets? Or perhaps a nippy arcade crowd-pleaser will soar to the finish line, propelled by the sound of roaring cheers. It's all to play for here at our incredibly messed-up grand prix with a worrying lack of rules or regulation. Start your engines, everyone, these are the 11 best racing games on PC. 3! 2! 1! ...

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Looking to get the most out of your Nintendo Switch? Got a few selections on the backlog you’ve yet to pick up and play? My Best Buy and Best Buy Total members can use this Best Buy Offer Builder to buy three Nintendo Switch games for the price of two.

There are over 40 games to choose from when building your bundle, but if you ask us, you should focus on Nintendo’s first-party titles, which often maintain their full $60 price well after launch and rarely go on sale otherwise. There are five Nintendo-developed games that you can choose from in this build-your-own-bundle deal, and each one is already a classic in its own right:

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
• Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp

Also part of the deal? Sonic x Shadow Generations, which comes out Oct. 25 and gives Shadow the Hedgehog some suspiciously Venom-looking powers. With the Best Buy deal, you can pre-order Sonic x Shadow Generations while picking up two other games to play while you wait for its release.

In order to qualify for the deal, you do need either a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership. A My Best Buy Plus membership costs $49.99 per year and gets you free 2-day shipping, an extended 60-day return window on most products, and exclusive discounts (like this one). A My Best Buy Total membership costs $179.99 per year and includes all the benefits of Plus as well as protection plans, 24/7 tech support, and 20% off repairs.

Genshin Impact will finally make it to Xbox later this year. HoYoverse revealed the free-to-play anime RPG will get ported in November, though a Switch version of the hit game remains MIA years after its release on smartphones and PS5.

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Funko Fusion, the upcoming third-person brand-blending action game, is out next month. And to help spread the world, the devs have released a demo for Funko Fusion, as well as confirmed that not even Mega Man is safe from this mish-mash of IP.

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Video game release dates are more a suggestion than a promise these days, and understandably so. Making games is hard and audiences have never been busier and more fickle. Still, it’s disappointing when you find out that sci-fi shooter or fantasy adventure you’ve been waiting for won’t be out any time soon, and a lot…

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Title: Burnout Paradise Remastered
Type of Game: Arcade Racing
Developer: Criterion Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Released: March 16, 2018
Platforms Available: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch
Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 4
Level of Maturity: E10+ (Everyone 10 and older)
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Long before the Forza Horizon franchise came along and stole the title of the best arcade racing under the sun, the Burnout brand held that position, along with rival and legendary FlatOut. Burnout Paradise came out sixteen years ago, but many gamers still consider it an unrivaled affair in many ways. It’s all about the sense of speed, the level of mayhem, and the ultimate handling of cars that don’t need an official license to be scrapped ideally. All three of these essential things are 100% preserved in the remaster. All the vehicles handle precisely the same things they did years ago. The physics of crashing and the uncontrollable, very satisfying feeling for the viewer of hurtling down the road with a tail of sparks in your back and being in complete control have also been retained.

The Visual Revamp: A Subtle Transformation

The only thing that has undergone a remastering process is the graphics. The difference is noticeable when you put the old PlayStation 3 version alongside the newer PlayStation 4 version. The textures are much more detailed, especially in the roads and landscapes around you. Not that it’s a difference like night and day, but it counts. Often, it even achieves the desired effect with remasters that the game “looks” like your memories, and thus, you’re subconsciously disappointed because you think they’ve shoved an essentially unchanged title in front of you.

But once you confront your memory with the 16-year-old original, you never want to return to it. Of course, 60fps is retained, and the resolution of text and informational images is increased. We reviewed the game on a PlayStation 4 with a smaller TV, and the difference between the original and the remastered Burnout (running at 720p) was huge.

Preserving the Core: Unchanged for Good Reason

However, the visual upgrade could only go so far that it didn’t ruin the gameplay experience. Of course, as part of the rework, the authors could afford to completely change some parts of the map and tweak the design of the cars or improve the resolution of the civilian traffic that’s meant to get in your way. Thankfully, this isn’t the case, as doing so would have ruined what makes Burnout Burnout.

In this game, everything is subordinate to maximum speed, but you have maximum control over it. However, it may seem like something other than it to the casual passerby. A change in, for example, the lighting conditions or the colors of specific locations would cause the game not to work either. Logically, this raises the question of whether there is any point in remastering such a game when virtually nothing can be changed. Fortunately, it does make sense. And for two reasons. Both are so compelling that you must invest in the game if you’ve played it for the past sixteen years.

Online Mode: Reviving a World of Challenges

The first reason is the online mode. This is seamlessly tied to the single-player skirmishes, and you switch into it with the press of two buttons. Suddenly, a new world opens before you, where you rarely race from A to B. 500 challenges will have you jumping over others on a bridge. Doing 50 drifts around a fountain. Smash 20 billboards around the city. And finally, you’ll get to race now and then. The problem with the old console version was the number of players. Sixteen years later, you occasionally ran into a lone player, but the experience was just half the experience when the lobby was half full.

All the Extras: The Complete Package

The second reason is all the bonus additions that came out as part of “Year of Paradise” twelve months after the original game’s release. That means new cars, new bikes, and new achievements/trophies and challenges associated with them. None of these are significant, including the biggest, Big Surf Island, which adds a new and not-so-small section of the map. However, if you’ve looked forward to them in the past and always justified their no/buy by saying you wouldn’t have anyone to try them with anyway, now you get them in a complete package. You can see why neither reason is compelling enough to make you consider buying them.

The Timeless Magic of Burnout Paradise

But the essence of the whole Burnout Paradise magic is somewhere a little different. It’s primarily that “those” games don’t come out anymore. Even Forza Horizon, which is ideologically closest to it, can’t match the adrenaline rush of a race where everything falls into place, from the choice of car to the opponents to the great soundtrack on the radio. By the way, no song from the original setlist is missing in the remastered version, for which the authors deserve a big thanks.

Although this is indeed a reworked version, in which everything is 1:1 and not even things that we take for granted today have been “fixed” (for example, there is no fast travel, and absolutely all races end in one of the eight locations on the map), Burnout Paradise has something to say to the world even in 2024, especially to those of you who have not enjoyed it so far and are just in the mood to drive at high speed with a high percentage of twisted bodies. Just don’t expect miracles from it. After all, it’s getting on in years.

Conclusion

Games like this just aren’t made anymore, plain and simple. Burnout Paradise Remastered is a sad reminder of the good old days of racing games, but it proves that its design was so timeless that it can still work brilliantly sixteen years later. However, there’s nothing extra to be found here compared to the original version.

Where to Buy Burnout Paradise Remastered

PlayStation Store (PS4): Available for $19.99. You can purchase it directly from the PlayStation Store.
Xbox Store (Xbox One): Available for $19.99. Check it out on the Xbox Store.
Steam (PC): Available for $19.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam.
Epic Games Store (PC): Available for $19.99. Purchase it from the Epic Games Store.
Nintendo Shop (Switch): Available for $29.99. Purchase it from the Nintendo Shop.

For more content like this, stay tuned on our website!

The post Burnout Paradise Remastered – Olschool Destruction Races appeared first on WePlayGames.net: Home for Top Gamers.

Title: Deliver Us The Moon
Type of Game: Adventure, Sci-Fi Thriller
Developer: KeokeN Interactive
Publisher: Wired Productions
Released: October 10, 2019
Platforms Available: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Nintendo Switch
Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 5
Level of Maturity: Mature
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Few game titles say as much about their content as Deliver Us The Moon. The developers from the KeokeN Interactive team have thought deeply about the state of our planet and, according to the result, have yet to come to a very positive conclusion. Their title offers a near-future vision in which planet Earth lacks essential resources and is depleted by the insensitive use of these resources. The situation is even so serious that humans are slowly approaching extinction.

Human Error Aftermath

As a result, people are starving or being plagued by unprecedented natural disasters. Mainly, severe sandstorms are typical. 2030 becomes the pivotal year in this dire scenario when a complete collapse occurs, leaving humanity without power and minimal chances of survival. However, man has once again shown himself to be an extremely resilient and adaptable organism capable of facing all kinds of disasters using science and technology. Thus, the WSA organization enters the scene, making it possible to colonize the Moon to extract helium-3.

This offers a solution by sending the energy produced back to Earth. Unfortunately, everything lasts; even for a while, this efficient process is hit by complications. After 22 years, life on the Moon has died down, and supplies have been cut off. Earth is on the verge of extinction. At this point, a former WSA employee enters the scene to investigate what has happened on the Moon and try to restore the power supply.

From Earth to the Void: A Shift in Atmosphere

The initial tutorial and introduction to control principles take place during one of the giant sandstorms on the spaceport. The early minutes make it clear that Deliver Us The Moon is heading in the direction of an adventure game full of exploration, journal reading, and mystery solving. The actual commissioning of the rocket module and subsequent launch is one of the most gripping moments of the entire game. However, the episode on Earth is only a short chapter of the title; the rest of the game takes place in space. Anyone expecting some scared horror experience will be disappointed. Deliver Us The Moon is a pure thriller that tries to build its atmosphere based on a serious theme and, in particular, an empty sense of loneliness.

An Isolated Rescue: The Weight of Solitude

You won’t come across a single survivor throughout the entire game. During the mission, you must make do with radio communication from Earth or replaying footage that sheds light on the facts that occurred on the Moon. The gameplay itself is then one of the problems. You are not on a trip but on a rescue mission. During this, you must operate various devices, find the most suitable routes, repair broken systems, provide oxygen to individual modules, etc. Everything looks quite lovely at first glance. Unfortunately, the developers failed to use several promising mechanisms to the maximum.

Lost Potential in a Vacuum

Thus, many activities are annoying with illogical sequencing or ridiculous results. Moreover, what the player is supposed to do is not always entirely clear. The irritating and outdated time pressure system in the form of lack of oxygen must also add to the big minuses. Thus, nothing is more frustrating than having to solve a logic puzzle in a weightless state in a time limit, which unfortunately isn’t as logical as it should be. The gameplay is not downright disastrous, but let’s say it is somewhat unbalanced. The developers failed to follow through on several promising themes and were left halfway in many ways. On the other hand, Ily appreciates the story’s presentation. It is revealed through on-board diaries or video footage, especially holograms, most of which I don’t even want to believe are optional as they illustrate significant moments and push the player’s experience further. This was also the case, by the way, with Deliver Us Mars, a sequel I’ve already reviewed and recommend watching.

Lunar Landscape: A Cold, Sterile Beauty

The most exciting thing about the whole title, however, is the treatment of the game environment, which, although somewhat sterile and monotonous, especially in the climate of complexes or orbital stations, is most in line with the theme. The most beautiful moments are then shown to the players during the ascent to the lunar surface, which are very emotional and impressive. In short, the Unreal Engine has done a decent job. In addition, the developers have gone the extra mile with the concept of gravitational attraction.

During gameplay, you will experience weightlessness and the different gravity on the Moon. I also appreciate the hilarious and atmospheric soundtrack accompanying the player on this rescue mission. It’s a pity that the soundtrack has been unnecessarily neglected, as much more could have been done here. The game’s downside is the optimization itself, which is relatively good in the case of the reviewed PS5 version. Apart from a few glitches, I didn’t notice anything, so there is nothing to complain about here.

Conclusion

Deliver Us The Moon is a above-average sci-fi adventure game that particularly benefits from an attractive setting and a compelling story that makes players think. The developers brought some interesting ideas, but failed to make the most of them at 100%. The result is still good but not extremely engaging and a bit repetitive gameplay. Even so, the title offers some memorable moments, vistas and delightful feelings that many space fans will appreciate.

Where to Buy Deliver Us The Moon?

Steam (PC): Available for $24.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam.
Xbox Store (Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S): Available for $24.99. Check it out on the Xbox Store
PlayStation Store (PS4, PS5): Available for $24.99. You can find it on the PlayStation Store.
Nintendo Shop (Switch): Available for $19.99. Purchase it from the Nintendo Shop.
GOG (PC): Available for $24.99. Purchase it from GOG.
Epic Games Store (PC): Available for $24.99. Purchase it from the Epic Games Store.

Official Page: Visit the official Deliver Us The Moon page for more information.
Subreddit: Join the discussion on the Deliver Us The Moon Subreddit.

The post Deliver Us The Moon – A Breathtaking Space Mission To Save Humanity appeared first on WePlayGames.net: Home for Top Gamers.

Title: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Type of Game: Action-Adventure, Puzzle
Developer: Hazelight Studios (Remake by Avantgarden Games)
Publisher: 505 Games
Released: Original Release: August 7, 2013; Remake Release: February 28, 2024
Platforms Available: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC Game
Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 5
Level of Maturity: Rated T for Teen
Reading Time: 8 minutes

It was 2013, and almost no studio was focused on offering a truly quality co-op gaming experience on a single console. But Josef Fares decided to change that with his studio Hazelight and the Fantastic Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to play the original, but now I’ve got my hands on a remake of a game I’ve heard a lot about, backed by the almost unknown studio Avantgarden Games. That’s also why I had doubts before playing it whether the original game was re-created respectfully by the now legendary co-op game industry studio Hazelight, which has already made such groundbreaking games as A Way Out and It Takes Two. I’ve also reviewed these games, so I recommend checking them out!

From Co-op Classics to a Hidden Gem

I started following Studio Hazelight because of the A above Way Out, and It Takes Two games, and I have completed them several times with my friends. These games definitely rank among the best ever made in the cooperative couch gaming genre. It Takes Two, which also earned high ratings from me, including Game of the Year 2021 recognition, along with A Way Out, are perfect affairs, but they owe their excellence to their predecessor, which, unfortunately for me personally, was relatively unknown until now.

A Journey Through Fantasy and Grief

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons tells the story of two brothers who embark on a perilous journey through a beautiful fantasy world after their father falls ill. The word “beautiful” has a double meaning; I’ll get to it later. The only way to save their father is to search for mysterious magical water to keep him alive. After the tragic loss of their mother, the brothers can no longer risk being alone in the world, and the story begins at the big tree behind their house. Playing the remake, I was surprised by the power of the story, and that’s why Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a great emotional ride, which, as a gamer who loves the story games genre in particular, I appreciate.

Solo Play with a Twist

The original was always seen as a co-op game. Still, the remake reminds me of this, so primarily, it is a single-player affair that is spiced up with the ability to control both brothers simultaneously. It takes some practice, but you can get used to it quickly. After all, the controls are very intuitive and easy. Each of the analogs controls one of the brothers, and each has one action button corresponding to the analog above. R3 is used to control the younger brother, and R2 is used to perform his interactions. For the older brother, it is L3 and L2. The last thing you can do in the game is rotate the view using R1 or L1, depending on which side you want to rotate the screen.

Cooperative Play: A Friend’s Adventure

So, the title is primarily announced up front as a single-player title, but I thoroughly enjoyed it with the two of us and a friend who also tried out the short part with me.

You turn on a second controller, each controlling one of the brothers. In this mode, the default control is also retained for the individual controllers. In single-player mode, you’ll occasionally run into situations where the brothers you’re controlling switch positions on the screen, and you’ll wonder why they’re running elsewhere. It’s widespread, and the game can occasionally rattle the hemispheres of your brain.

Puzzles and Trophy Hunting

Although it’s been over ten years since the release of the original game, due to my lack of experience with the original, I did all the puzzles unthinkingly, which brought the playtime up to almost 5 hours, which isn’t much, but trust me you’ll still enjoy the adventure to the fullest especially if you are playing the game for the first time, as I did. For connoisseurs of the original, the game time might be shorter. Also, here is the additional information about the platinum trophy, which took almost 5 hours. In terms of difficulty, it was nothing challenging, and the trophy composition was straightforward. The game has a total of 15 trophies, including the Platinum one. So, for a trophy hunter like me, it’s the perfect thing to do in one long afternoon! One last important thing – trophies are only earned by the Host of the game, so unfortunately, your friends will have to invite you to help out at their house for the next playthrough if they are interested in the shiny trophies too.

Puzzles: Cooperation Over Complexity

But back to the puzzles. These are relatively easy to solve and are more about cooperation and coordination between the two brothers. It will always be primarily about finding a way forward. They managed to climb a wall together, move an object, steal something carefully, row the boat in the right direction, and so on. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of playing the game yet, it may come as a surprise that you are “only” completing specific interactions, and besides that, you are still running forward. With minor exceptions, the game has no branching or extended locations to navigate. It’s a very straightforward but all the more intense adventure for it.

A Tale of Two Worlds: Beauty and Grit

Here I come to what I mentioned at the beginning: the game has a beautiful world. The remake’s graphics, which were taken care of by Unreal Engine 5, are very nice. While I can’t put it on the same level as, say, the Demon’s Souls remake, there are scenes that I can describe as breathtaking.

Avantgarden has done an excellent job in this regard, and connoisseurs of the original version, in particular, will be surprised at how detailed the remake is. I also greatly appreciate the sharp visuals and smoothness of the game. In all my time playing, I haven’t encountered any significant problems I must mention here. The music and sounds have improved significantly, but I can’t say that due to the lack of dubbing. Instead, the brothers communicate in some form of sign language and an unspecified language.

From Fairy Tales to Harsh Realities

The other side of the “beautiful” world is the utterly raw and gritty portrayal in the second half of the play. For a long time, the title feels like a beautiful fairy tale inspired by the first Fable. Gorgeous scenes, a relaxed atmosphere of villages and fantasy countryside, and then there’s a significant change. The beautiful setting is replaced by a barren wasteland and a harsh medieval setting many would not expect. The whole game’s highlight is the Valley of the Giants, which will leave you uncomfortably stunned.

Conclusion

The remake of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons has done more than well. It’s a pleasant surprise that certainly doesn’t put the original to shame. On the one hand, I wonder if it lacks any innovation, and on the other hand, I worry about how it would turn out if the studio tried to set the game up with new passages, for example. For those who have already played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, the remake needs to make more sense and may work more in the context of nostalgia. However, players who have not come into contact with the game, as was the case with me, have an excellent opportunity to play one of the best adventure games with an emotional story at a very affordable price of under 20 euros. And at a discount, as was the case with me, even for 12 euros.

Where to Buy The Game?

• Steam (PC): Available for $19.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam.
• Xbox Store (Xbox Series X|S): Available for $19.99. Check it out on the Xbox Store.
• PlayStation Store (PS5): Available for $19.99. You can find it on the PlayStation Store.
• Nintendo Shop (Switch): Available for $14.99. Purchase it from the Nintendo Shop.
• Epic Games Store (PC): Available for $19.99. Purchase it from the Epic Games Store.
• GOG (PC): Available for $19.99. Purchase it from GOG.

Official Page: Visit the official Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons page for more information.
Subreddit: Join the discussion on the Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Subreddit for community insights and updates.

The post Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake – Hazelight’s Reworked Original Of The Emotional Story of Two Brothers appeared first on WePlayGames.net: Home for Top Gamers.

Title: The Walking Dead
Type of Game: Narrative Adventure
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Released: April 24, 2012
Platforms Available: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC Game, Xbox (360, One)
Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 4
Level of Maturity: Mature (M)
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Combining an interactive movie and an adventure game is not a new idea, but it wasn’t until Telltale Games perfected the concept. The Walking Dead is an immersive experience that takes storytelling to a new level. Unless you don’t mind completely sacrificing your gaming freedom… The protagonist is Lee, a former university professor at the time convicted of murder. At the start of the game, he’s just being escorted to prison, but the arrival of zombies ensures he can start living again, regardless of his past. It doesn’t take long before he meets seven-year-old Clementine, whom he pledges to protect and help find her parents.

A Script to Rival All Others

The Walking Dead arguably has one of the best scripts in the narrative video game genre, and it still manages to make the most out of such a familiar and much-used setting, which zombies are without question these days. The story is inspired by Robert Kirkman’s comic novels and the HBO series of the same name. Really just inspired, the game tells a completely separate story, and the only connection to the books is a couple of side characters that only make a brief appearance a few times in the game. So you don’t have to worry about being limited by your ignorance of the source material. I got the comic myself after finishing the game. Unlike other zombie-themed games, The Walking Dead doesn’t just focus on fighting the undead brain-eaters, but on long-term survival.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Situations

The main characters are ordinary people who are put in extreme situations that they have to deal with, the zombies themselves are actually the second in line. Throughout your journey, you meet a lot of different people that you have to take an attitude towards. In the harsh environment of a destroyed world, no one can last long on their own, and so a disparate group of individuals gradually builds up around Lee, who have only the desire to survive in common. Everyone is pursuing their own interests and getting along well with everyone is simply not possible. It’s up to you what approach you take to them.

Moral Dilemmas and Hard Choices

Example: a starving group stumbles upon several cans of food that are by no means enough for everyone. Do you feed the women and children, or the adult men who protect them? You also don’t have to tell anyone about the find and keep everything to yourself. Or you divide everything equally so that no one is fed at all but is fair. You’ll face many similar dilemmas as you play, but often much more serious and under time pressure. The game doesn’t offer clearly good and bad options, you have to decide everything according to your own conscience, and thanks to the automatic saving you can’t change your mind. Even though the game is tightly scripted from the start and there are only two endings, but there are different ways to get there.

Character Development Done Right

None of this would work without the perfect fleshing out of all the characters, which is crucial in the gaming world and especially in the story-driven games genre. Some individuals you will hate, others you will love, but none will be indifferent. The highlight then is the gradually deepening relationship between Lee and little Clementine. It has to be said that the writers definitely do not spare their heroes and are not afraid to kill them.

Not for Everyone, but Perfect for Some

Despite my enthusiasm, I have to admit that The Walking Dead is not for everyone. The story and the cinematic experience are subordinate to everything else, there’s not much left to the actual acting. Of course, dialogue plays a major role in the adventure part, where unlike in regular adventure games, what you say really matters. Logic problem-solving is then limited to using a few objects in the right places, which definitely won’t blow your mind. Besides, just in tense moments, you’re pressing the right buttons according to how they appear on the screen. Getting to the end is no problem even for absolute non-players. But the story has a good flow and there are no blind spots.

A Compact, Intense Experience

Each of the five episodes lasts roughly three hours, which adds up to 15 hours of intense entertainment. And that’s absolutely ideal these days of an enormous number of open worlds with hundreds of hours of genetic content, given the lower price of the game in both digital distribution and boxed versions.

Distinctive Art Style and Atmosphere

The technical workmanship surprises. The creators have resorted to the now very popular Cell-Shaded comic book graphics, which are at odds with the brutality and seriousness of the content depicted. However, the result is so distinctive and hilarious that one quickly gets used to it. The professional dubbing and music then just perfectly round off the unforgettable atmosphere.

Conclusion

Describing The Walking Dead further without giving away the story is no longer possible. More than a video game, this is a perfect experience. Finding mistakes is pointless: once the story draws you in, you’ll still wave your hand over any bugs or minor illogic. The Walking Dead is fundamentally flawless, and for me personally, one of the best games of its time and genre.

Where To Buy The Game?

Steam (PC, Mac, Linux): Available for $14.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam.
Xbox Store (Xbox One): Available for $14.99. Check it out on the Xbox Store.
PlayStation Store (PS4): Available for $14.99. You can find it on the PlayStation Store.
Nintendo Shop (Switch): Available for $14.99. Purchase it from the Nintendo Shop.
Epic Games Store (PC): Available for $14.99. Purchase it from the Epic Games Store.

Official Page: Visit the official TelTail page for more information.
Subreddit: Join the discussion on the The Walking Dead Subreddit.

The post The Walking Dead Season One: Telltale’s First Episodic Masterpiece appeared first on WePlayGames.net: Home for Top Gamers.

Annapurna Interactive a BlueTwelve Studio oznámily datum vydání dříve oznámeného portu hry Stray pro Nintendo Switch.

Vydavatel Annapurna Interactive na červnové prezentaci Nintendo Direct oznámil, že jeho uznávaná adventura Stray 2022 vyjde pro Switch někdy o letošních prázdninách, a nyní byl port opatřen konkrétním datem vydání.

Společnost Nintendo na Twitteru oznámila, že hra Stray vyjde pro Switch 19. listopadu.Stray hráči hrají za kočku oddělenou od své smečky, po které se musí pohybovat v dystopické společnosti obydlené roboty a androidy, kde není v dohledu jediný člověk. Fascinující prostředí a možnost hrát za kočku se spojují v solidní zážitek.

Hra Stray je v současné době k dispozici pro PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One a PC. Připravuje se také animovaný film na motivy této hry.

Be silly. Be curious. Be stealthy. Be a little annoying. But most of all, be a cat ready to pounce your way through the neon-lit alleys! Untangle an ancient mystery to escape the decaying cybercity in Stray, coming to #NintendoSwitch on Nov. 19th! pic.twitter.com/6p4MXx3Eok

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 8, 2024

Článek Stray vychází pro Nintendo Switch 19. listopadu se nejdříve objevil na GAME PRESS.

It’s an almost daily occurrence that gamers talk about the crushing weight of their backlog. Especially considering seasonal price cuts like the Steam Summer Sale, these ballooning libraries of games are not getting any smaller, and have caused games to miss out on some genuinely phenomenal titles.

However, the holiday season is hyped up with upcoming releases from the big three console manufacturers. As such, there are already so many titles – from indie passion projects to AAA blockbusters – that have slipped through the cracks. Through combing through the last half-year of titles, we have crafted a list of the top 15 games that you’ve already slept on in 2024.

Source

Source

Your favorite talking Pokémon is back, and there are more mysteries to solve! Detective Pikachu Returns will release exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on October 6, 2023. As usual, this Pokémon adventure was developed by Creatures and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.

First announced in 2019, the Nintendo Direct on June 21 of this year gave us our first peak at this cinematic sequel. Not a ton of information has been revealed about the gameplay itself. However, it’s fair to assume that it will be somewhat similar to the original. Detective Pikachu released on the 3DS in March, 2018. Check out the trailer to Detective Pikachu Returns below, and find out everything we know about the return of this iconic, case-solving duo.

The adventure continues

The story of the original Detective Pikachu is remarkably similar to the film adaptation, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. The Pikachu of this game belongs to Harry Goodman, a detective who mysteriously disappears after a car crash. Confronted with the need to start asking questions, Pikachu finds that the only human who can understand him is Harry’s son. You play as Harry’s son, Tim Goodman. Together, you and your talking Pikachu scour Ryme city, solving mysteries in search of Harry. But of course, the journey is full of twists and turns.

The Pokémon world is a little different in Ryme city. Here, Pokémon are more than the beloved companions of humans. In Ryme city, humans and Pokémon live side-by-side. Tim is in college, rather than Ash, who is 10 years old. The original, as well as Detective Pikachu Returns are a little closer to a platformer or puzzle game. It’s a welcome departure from the top-down, turn based combat of the core games. It also melds the more modern, world-traversing games like Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet.

There are some clues available to solve the plot of Detective Pikachu Returns. It’s important to remember that the overarching goal of the series is to find your father and Pikachu’s owner, Harry. However, in the first game, a more pertinent mystery unfolds. Without spoiling anything, it involves a plot for control and a mysterious compound that puts Pokémon into a violent rage. The first game ends with Tim and Pikachu resuming the search for Harry.

Buzzing with excitement… or caffeine?

Based on the first game and the trailer’s short amount of footage, we can surmise a bit about the gameplay. Most obviously, it seems you’ll be able to control different Pokémon to assist in your investigations. Growlithe can use its sense of smell, Darmanitan can break through walls, and there’s sure to be more. We’re introduced to Tim’s mom Irene, and sister Sophia. Something is bound to happen at the local coffee shop. It seems the maps have definitely gotten bigger and more varied, if not just better looking. Detective Pikachu Returns is definitely upping the anti in the sequel, and we’d expect no less of Nintendo.

It also seems like Tim and Pikachu will become wrapped up in another epic mystery that distracts them from their primary goal. If you’ve seen the movie, then it might easy to guess where that plot line is likely going. As such, we can only hope that the mystery at the center of this game adds something new to the story. And of course, you can expect plenty of neo-noir dialogue and quipping from the most talkative Pikachu there’s ever been.

Solve the case in Detective Pikachu Returns next month!

Detective Pikachu Returns releases exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on October 6, 2023. You can pre-order the game on the Nintendo store or wherever you buy your games.

Stay with us, we’ll let you know of any updates as they become available. Are you excited?

The post Everything we know about Detective Pikachu Returns appeared first on Mega Visions.

When Sony chose to challenge Nintendo, the reigning king of portable gaming, in a battle for handheld supremacy, Microsoft wisely chose to stay out of the fight. Rather than waste their precious time and resources pursuing a prize that belonged to someone else, they invested in purchasing entire studios that owned proven IP’s like Minecraft and focused on building up the Xbox Live platform that represented their future. By staying true to their “North Star”, they avoided a fruitless battle to possess someone else’s destiny… while Sony paid a high price in their unsuccessful handheld war, Xbox bought entire franchises that will last.

There are many “treasures” on this planet to seek and acquire, and many offer temporary value and rewards that are beneficial. But our “North Star” in all things is to pursue treasure that will last, and that means we must seek God’s will on which pursuits are worthy of the time and attention we give them and offer rewards that are permanent. Rather than wasting time pursuing someone else’s dream, let’s prayerfully seek the unique destiny He has for us… that’s where the real treasure is found.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. Colossians 3:1-2

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

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Everybody has several games that mean quite a lot to them. For me, one of these games is Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I not only grew up with this game, but I also have a lot of memories of this game. Outside of that, I also met some amazing friends through the community behind this game. I even did several speedruns of this game, and I’m an active member of the community. Now, color me surprised that 25 years after the release of this game, we got new fan-made content for this game. Not just fan made content in the style of fan patches to solve bugs with the game, a whole new level and promises of a level editor to create even more new custom content. This blew me off my socks and in today’s article I want to talk about it. So strap in and let’s get ready to play new content for one of the best Indiana Jones games ever made.

The new level – SED

There is a speedrunning discord server for this game. Well, it was a speedrunning discord server but for a few years now, this server has grown into a server of people who appreciate this game. If you want to join this discord, here is an invite link. When the server started to grow, several modders joined our server. One of these modders is going under the name of Urgon (currently) and what we didn’t know is that he was decompiling the whole game. Not only that, he was creating a level editor based upon an existing level editor.

This existing level editor is for Star Wars Jedi Knight & Mysteries of the Sith. Those games used an engine that formed the basis for the Jones3D engine. While he was developing that editor, he tested his skills by creating a new level. So, basically, parts of this new level are tests of the new level editor and what you can do with it.

Now, information about this new level and the download link can be found at this GitHub repository. If you want to download the actual level, you have to go to this page and click the green button named “Code”. In that dropdown, you can choose “download zip”. You’ll need that later if you want to install/play this custom level. Now, if you read the pre-mod or the installation instructions for this level, you might feel overwhelmed if you aren’t very technically inclined. That’s why two community members wrote two special tools to aid you in preparing your game.

You might ask yourself, like Klamath did in at the end of our stream of this custom level, why are there two tools for basically the same? Well, let me tell you the history about it. When I wanted to play the custom level, I had a bit of trouble myself while figuring out the tutorial. I also found that the required steps were quite a lot to do. So, I decided to start writing a PowerShell script that did all the steps. I announced that in the Indy3D discord that I was writing this. When I almost completed my tool, the_Kovic dropped his version of the tool.

Personally, I didn’t want to throw my work out the window and continued finishing my GUI version. When I finished, I didn’t convert my tool to an EXE and left it just as a script file you could run using a command line or a code editor. The next day, Kovic released a GUI version of his tool and I gave some feedback on his tool. In the days after that, I created an EXE version of my tool and we both kept adding features in our tool. He wrote his tool in C#, which is a bit friendlier to create an EXE. If I didn’t release my first version as a script only and converted it to an EXE, I think it might have been less overwhelming for people.

That said, Kovic thanked me for creating my tool since like he said on our stream: “It put my butt into gear to create a tool and write a GUI, which I normally don’t write“. On top of that, our tools aren’t meant to compete with each other. I can’t write C# and Kovic can’t write PowerShell. And it would be a shame to just delete work because somebody else was quicker or made their tool more user-friendly first. The result now is that we both have two very strong tools with a very similar, maybe even completely the same, feature set.

Outside a different choice of coding language, the biggest differences between both our tools are under the hood. In Kovic’s tool, you get more files than in my tool when you download the tool. And that’s because to prepare your game for custom levels, you need to extract several files in the resource folder. The tool used for extraction has a bug where instead of extracting the folders of the archive into the resource folder, it extracts them into separate folders, like if you would extract a zip file. Kovic packs a modified version of this extraction tool so that part of the process goes a bit faster. In my version, the tool just downloads the latest official versions of the tool and prepare the game that way.

In the end, both our tools give you the same end result. They prepare your game to install custom levels and play them. If you want to try out the_kovic’s tool, you can find the latest version on this releases page. If you want to try our my tool, you can find it on this releases page. Feedback to our tools is always welcome! If you find an issue or if you have an idea, feel free to hit us up, and we will look into it.

Earlier I talked about a stream of the level we did. Klamath, the_Kovic and me did a live stream where we played through this level. Now, I have to emphasize that release of this level is an impressive technical achievement. Creating a level for a 3D game isn’t easy and requires a lot of work. It’s even more impressive when you know that not everything is documented about the engine, and you have to decompile a lot of it. In the next part of this article, I’m going to talk about the level itself and critique it.

If you don’t want spoilers, I’d advise you to skip that section for now and come back later. Now, I want to say that I start reviewing the level in a moment, but this feedback is mostly meant for people who want to make new custom content. What did this new level do right and wrong if you look at it as a player who doesn’t know the technical background of this level? This isn’t meant to break down the amazing work the modders did to make this work.

Reviewing the new level

Editorial note: this review will spoil quite a lot. If you don’t want to get spoiled, you have to skip this section of the article. This isn’t a walkthrough of the level either. Some sections are skipped, I’m only going to talk about the sections I want to talk about.

The new level takes place 25 years after the ending of the original game. Indy returns to his Canyonlands dig site. You are set loose at the tent where Sophia picked Indy up with a helicopter to start the Infernal Machine adventure.

In terms of new content, there isn’t a lot new to see. Some ladders are missing and some parts of the level are blocked off. Also, all treasures are missing that you would usually find in the level.

Before I continue, I want to mention that some parts of this level are made quite difficult on purpose. The developer wanted to give us the feeling we were young kids again, playing this game for the first time, and have us figure out the new puzzles by ourselves. Yet, finding a correct balance between difficulty and unfair is a very fine line to thread. Personally, I think that in some sections, the developer crossed the line into unfair level design.

When running on the top section, you notice that there are some new voice lines. These voice lines are made possible with a voice cloning AI tool that was trained on lines from Doug Lee, the original voice actor for this game. The new voice lines sound amazing, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think that Doug Lee came back to record the new lines. In most cases, these voice lines really fit Indy’s personality and fit right into the game.

We come to our first snag when we want to go to the new content. I can understand not seeing the shovel and being confused, since it’s hanging at the jeep on top. And you know what’s even more confusing, the other side of the jeep model has a shovel in its texture! Anyhow, when you pick up the shovel and dig up the Infernal Machine part, it’s clear that you need to break a wall. Here comes one of the worst parts of this level. The location of this cracked wall is insanely well hidden. It’s in one of the last places you’d look, and several of the first players ran around for hours upon hours in Canyonlands before it was found. And when it was found, it made us annoyed.

It’s a clear example of how players who are used to the level, overlooking the obvious. The wall you need to break has an actual cracked wall texture, but it’s behind something you can’t see through. I think it would have been fine if the location, where it is at, had a bigger ledge so you’d notice it somewhat instead of just having to go on a wild goose chase.

Now, we enter the new area. We come to a big open space where the next set of puzzles are. The first puzzle is actually a jumping puzzle. Now, I highly advise you to not play this level if you haven’t played through most of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Not that there are spoilers, but because some of the jumps in this level are straight up difficult and not what you really expect from this game. Kovic calls it “Kaizo Jones” for a good reason.

There are some small platforms and not having the look key working is going to be a pain in this section. Since, there are some moments where you need to be able to free look and not being able to see beneath or above you will make things a lot more tricky. After you finished these jumps, you might start to notice that the developer of this custom level added some details. Like, the rope bridges are gently moving in the wind. This is something that isn’t present in the original game. It’s a new “COG” script that makes that possible.

These cog scripts are a blessing for custom content. Since, this game isn’t hardcoded at all, so if you learn how to write these cog scripts, you can basically write new mechanics as well. It’s insane what possibilities there are going to be in the future for this game. I hope there is going to be good documentation so that custom level creaters know what’s possible and what’s impossible with the level editor.

While you are exploring this area, you notice that it’s huge. This also explains why it takes quite a while to load this level. Currently, modders are looking into why it’s running so slow. Since, we don’t really know if it’s the level size or something else slowing down the loading of this level.

So, after jumping around the central column, you’ll arive at the shed. Here you notice you can actually enter the shed from the top. Kovic explains it quite well during the stream. If you want to hear some technical explanations on how this level works, I’d advice you to watch our stream. Since there is a lot of interesting development talk in there. Later, Kovic and myself had a contest in trying to quote voice lines from the main game. We got close to 200. Kovic won that because I said a line he already said.

After you picked up everything from this shed and climbed outside, you experience another new mechanic of this game. It’s a mechanic that gets backported from Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb. The fact you can use your whip to go over a zipline.

After you returned and struggled with getting across the other bridge, you will encounter other parts of this level. Here you’ll encounter two voice lines that straight up lie to you. The first voice line is that you need more force, explosives to break a rock that’s blocking your way forwards. Here is the issue with that, you get an explosive barrel later. You need to find an extremely hidden swim tunnel in the water. It’s not the only hidden thing in the water, so investigate behind and underneath rocks quite well. Since, these puzzles in this water border in the unfair territory. What makes that explosive voice line even more evil is that there is a box of TNT in the shed earlier. But what’s the second voice line that lies to you?

Well, that is after you made your way past said boulder. You find a minecart and interacting with it, Indy says that it will run with gasoline. And there is still gasoline left in the shed. Sadly, you can’t pick it up anymore. Now, this is a red haring, you don’t need this minecart at all.

By now, you have learned that this level likes to break the rules of how the main game is designed. You’ll have to think outside of the box sometimes to beat this level. But, for some jumps, you need to use your knowledge of what’s possible and impossible to progress. This makes it quite tricky sometimes to progress. And this brings me to a conclusion we also said on stream. I think that the issue is that people expected a more tame level than what we actually got and that might turn some people off. But, I’m so glad that the quick save system exists in this game. So, abuse the quick save system and make multiple saves since you’ll need them if you aren’t a veteran player of this game.

Anyhow, let’s get back into the flow of the level. After we completed the lever puzzle, we go back towards to the huge open area and take the lift to a new location. What follows is a totally new area where it’s a good thing if you saved up on health packs and you have a great sense of direction.

So, the short minecart ridge comes to an end. It doesn’t take long before you find yourself into a watermaze. This watermaze is unfair in my honest opinion. Klamath had a tricky time solving it and he had to use almost every health pack to get through it. Without Kovic pointing out the right tunnel, I think it would have made the stream quite a bit longer. There was supposed to be a minecart section instead of this swimming maze, but the developer had a hard time making the minecart section to work and he gave up and made this swimming maze.

Now, I’m all fine with this swimming maze, but the map glitches out at certain parts. I have a mediocre sense of direction and I wanted to rely on the map. The map doesn’t always render the tunnels correctly. You sometimes swim off the map or “in nothingness”. Sadly, I have to draw my own map. I wish I still had it, since it would make for a nice screenshot here… But I threw it out but me and my clumsiness… I knocked over my waterbottle over it.

After the swimming maze, we get a new section of “Kaizo Jones”. Where we get some extremely tricky platforming. Here is where you need to use the look key again and be sure you are playing in 4:3. If you are playing in another resolution like 16:9 or 16:10, this will also be one of the moments where you don’t see all the information.

The block puzzle that follows, feels right out of Tomb Raider. The initial reviews of this game called out this game as a Tomb Raider clone. While, this game does the formula a whole lot differently. We even talked about that during the stream. In terms of theming, Infernal Machine is a lot better. Tomb Raider feels like obstacle courses. But that’s thanks to a different engine and control style. If you want to hear the whole discussion, you can watch the stream from this point. Excuse Kovic’s internet being spotty while he was replying.

After the block puzzle, a new path opens in the swim maze. Then, some platforming comes. Something I love is how there is even a troll hidden inside the platforming. It caught me off guard and made me smile. This platforming section was also love to do. It felt like a real test on how well I know the game. This platforming section feels a lot better put together and feel less cryptic on where you need to go next. You really start to notice that the developer was getting more used to the level editor and made better puzzles. The moment of having to use the whip to swing over the gap while the platform underneath you was breaking was amazing.

After that, we get into the finale of this level. We jump into a portal and we land in a playable area which is shown at the end of Shambala, the 4th level in the original game. That area that’s shown to you after you have beaten the Ice Guardian. The path that takes you to Palawan Lagoon. It was possible to explore that using cheats and modified saves, but now it’s in a level for real. Exploring the little house at the end brings us to something you totally don’t expect this custom level to do. You’ll find a parchment inside with a riddle and at the end you notice something in red saying: “MAT -> ZIP”.

There is some meta gaming now going on. You’ll need to make a hard save and exit your game. You’ll need to go to your resource folder & then open the MAT folder. In there you’ll need to rename “SED.MAT” to “SED.ZIP”. You’ll also need to enter the password for the zip, since you get a new cog script to continue the level, which you need to place in your cog folder. In there, there is another surprise. But, that’s something I’m not going to spoil. But, be sure that Kovic is playing with that surprise and maybe I’m going to dig into it. PS, the next paragraph is in white with the right spelling of the password:

Marcus

The way the level ends is bittersweet. If you solve the final puzzle, something special happens and you can beat the level. You could argue that the ending of this level is “lazy” or “creative”… But, it’s an amazing way to wrap up the story in one level with a nice bow.

At the start of the custom level, I felt that it was quite rough around the edges and it had some moments that felt badly designed. In terms of game design that is. If you look at it visually and level flow wise, I personally think that this level would fit right into the original game as a final challenge. But, the further you go into the level, the more you start to notice that the developer of this level is getting used to the tools and the editor and more polished puzzles and area’s are coming through. You notice the journey of the developer and see it becoming better and better.

I want to give a big congrats to everybody who was involved in releasing this custom level. It’s a blast to play and I can’t wait to see more custom levels. The stream I did with this level was one of the best streams ever and it was also quite a lot of fun to write the tool to help people play this custom level. I’m curious what you think about this custom level and/or the content of this article. Feel free to drop something in the comment section down below.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this for now. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you back in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Wikipedia page – Official site – Official microsite

I love how the store credit system works on the Nintendo eShop. When you purchase games, you get golden coins that you can use as a discount for other games. If you have enough coins, you can even buy the game outright. One of the games I have bought with this system is Trinity Trigger. From the description, it sounded like an interesting and unique action JRPG, and I’m always interested to play new and unique games. Especially since key staff on this game worked on amazing games like Chrono Cross and the Mana series. Now, is it any good and should you pick up this game, or is it a game that you should skip? Well, in this first impression I have after playing 1/4th of the game, I want to tell you my opinion so far. I’m also curious to hear your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below. And with that said, let’s dive right into Trinity Trigger.

Just A Bit More

In this game, we take on the role of Cyan. Cyan is an average boy from a small village. He is also a treasure hunter that one day learns he is chosen by the God of Chaos as his Warrior of Chaos.

In the fantasy world of Trinitia, there are two main Gods. The God of Order and the God of Chaos. In ancient times, they used to wage war for control of the lands. Now, they chose a warrior each to represent them and fight the other warrior to the death for dominance. Cyan doesn’t know what that even means, but it might explain why he has amnesia, those weird dreams and that special glowing mark in his eye. In search for answers, he sets out on a journey, and that’s how this game starts.

When this game was originally teased, the main setup for this game was to create a game and story that was nostalgic to those who played old school JRPG’s. A lot of talent who worked on other big titles like Xenoblade, Pokémon and Bravely Default II were working on this game as well. I always find it dangerous to mention these things, since it might set the expectations of players way too high. What if this isn’t going to work out or when the story just doesn’t hit the mark?

You can never predict how the chemistry is between people, and it’s possible that they are unable to work together. But, it’s also possible they hit it off big and make something extremely unique and special. I remember how a game like World’s End Club could have been so much more with two amazing directors behind it, Kazutake Kodaka from Danganronpa fame and Kotaro Uchikoshi from the Zero Escape fame. Yet, that game was decent but could have been so much more if it had more depth and polish.

If I’m honest with myself, Trinity Trigger falls into the same boat then World’s End Club. Take the story, for example. When I started playing this game, an amazing world was being setup and I started to get interested and immersed in this new world. But, it didn’t take long before I noticed that this game hits all the familiar story beats you expect from a JRPG. But the biggest issue in this story is that it doesn’t do anything special during its journey. I have already visited a couple of towns and each time it’s the exact same basic premise that happens.

The best way I can describe the story is that it’s unoffensively bland. It does what it’s supposed to do, but nothing more. It’s a shame, since the amazing voice cast behind this game brought this game to live so much. I have nothing to critique there. The only thing that can be a bit annoying is hearing the same grunts over and over again while you are fighting in the dungeons, but that’s part of the course in JRPG’s.

Playing it safe

For some people, having a bland story in a JRPG’s is a dealbreaker. But, I can handle that if the main gameplay loop is enjoyable. In this game, you go from town to town and explore the town dungeon to become stronger and get new unique abilities.

The battles in this game aren’t turn based like in other JRPG’s. This is an action JRPG, after all, so you have to dodge and time your attacks well. You can even choose to ignore battles if you want to, apart from scripted fights or boss battles, that is. The combat system is decent and does the job. The only complaint I have is that your stamina drains a bit too fast, making your attacks quite weak against enemies. So, you have to use other mechanics like having better damage when you dodge roll an attack in time.

After each dungeon, you unlock a new weapon that has a slightly different playstyle. You can choose between which weapon you use on the fly with a weapon wheel. It works quite well, and it’s fun to figure out which enemies are weak against which weapons. Especially the bosses, since hitting them with the right weapon creates even more damage.

During your exploration, you can find hidden chests with items. Underneath the mini-map, you can find a counter with how many hidden treasures are still left in the area. I find it quite enjoyable to explore the whole map to find these hidden treasures. Some of the hidden passages are hidden away extremely well, and finding them was a blast.

Something I also really enjoy is that you can easily choose between which character you control. Some characters have unique skills and being able to quickly switch between them is amazing. Since, some enemies have a long range attack, and then it’s a blast being able to switch to a character that can use a bow to take them out more easily.

Enemies also drop various items that you can use to craft items in shops or at special stations. And crafting these items actually cost in game money. The amount you have to spend for crafting is a lot lower, but this is a mechanic I’m hesitant about. It would have been quite a lot of fun to be able to craft healing items during your exploration. Maybe these healing items were less effective than the potions you can buy in the shops. But then again, it might break the balance of the game and make you a bit overpowered.

You can only carry so many potions and to be very honest, I never really had problems with a boss battle or a dungeon when I was stocked up on potions. When you don’t do anything crazy and keep your stock high and manage your stat boosting items well, this game becomes quite easy. So easy in fact that boss battles become an endurance test and extremely repetitive.

Each boss battle has the same basic premise. You have to dodge their attacks and use the right weapon to break the shield of the boss. In most cases, this is the newly unlocked weapon. After you have broken the shield, you can damage the boss. If you have broken the shield 4 to 5 times, and kept hitting the boss, you have beaten the fight.

Now, the dungeons play like your typical The Legend of Zelda dungeon to a degree. There is one main theme and puzzle mechanic for you to solve. Once you reached the final room of the dungeon, you fight a final boss and progress in the game. When I think about it, the structure of this game resembles 2D Zelda games here and there. And maybe, the structure of a Zelda game would have fit the game better than an action JRPG. Since, I wouldn’t be surprised if players drop this game and call it repetitive. Since, it really is. I tried to play this game in longer sessions, but I started to feel bored after playing it for an hour or two. Yet, I kept enjoying myself with the game while playing it on my 30-minute train ride from and to work.

Middle of the Road

The more I play this game, the more I feel like this game could have been so much more. The basic foundation of this game is rock solid, and I barely have anything to critique there. Like the controls and the UI for example. The controls are extremely responsive and a blast to work with.

Now, the other characters are AI controlled. Overall, the AI does an okay job following you and aiding you in combat, but it can do some brain-dead actions as well. One of the dungeons where it frustrated me to no end was the ice dungeon, where your AI allies slid into the spikes every single time.

Visually, this game looks pretty decent. There is quite a lot of detail put into this world and the underused area exclusive mechanics are quite a lot of fun to play with. For example, I love how in the forest area the mushrooms can have different effects depending on the color. Especially the one that allows you to light up the area.

But then you have moments where some textures are bland and look like they are from an earlier generation, creating a mismatch. And on top of that, some battle animations can’t be canceled. And the final attack of the bow is just silly. Yet, if a certain attack is in progress, you can’t switch weapons. This is something that annoyed me quite a lot as well.

The soundtrack of this game is quite enjoyable. It fits the atmosphere of the game like a glove. Overall, this orchestral soundtrack is a joy to listen too. But, there are some tracks that are a bit too short and the rather repetitive melody isn’t it doing any favors. Thankfully, these tracks don’t appear to often so I don’t mind it too hard.

The sound effects are pretty good too. I’d recommend that you use the option menu to tweak the sound balancing to your liking, since the basic sound balancing is a bit off when it comes to the balance between sound effects and music. I had to lower the music a little bit so I could hear the important sound effects better during battles.

This game really feels like it’s walking the middle of the road here. My biggest complaint with this game is that it lacks depth in almost every aspect of the game. And it’s just that lack of depth that’s hurting this game. This game has a lot of great idea’s like how easy to read the UI is, but it barely does anything with the stat boosting items.

The game also has local co-op, but I don’t see a reason why to play this game in co-op. There aren’t enough elements to justify for me to have a friend over and play this game. It’s just too bland for that. It’s a shame, since if the combat system was more in depth, it would have been an amazing feature. Now, it’s just another ticked box of features this game has.

Just like how some of the monster design is amazing and sometimes even looks somewhat creepy. They also telegraph their attacks quite well, so you can easily dodge them. Dodging attacks in time is quite important, since you can do special attacks or even more damage. Now, you also have your typical enemies like your slimes and bees, but they look unique and fit their setting quite well.

To be honest, this game is the perfect entry game for young childern to get into roleplaying games. I think that if you have played other more expansive JRPG’s, you will notice the cracks this game has and feel mixed about the game like the whole reception is for this game.

This brings me to the price. To be honest, I wouldn’t pay the full price for this game. The asking price for this game is 40€. And if you want all the DLC, it’s even more. Around 50€. Now, I don’t recommend buying all the DLC apart from the one that comes with the Deluxe edition. The other DLC is just a one time booster pack you can buy to make the game even easier than it already is.

The asking price is too high for this game and it’s length. This game can be beaten in 15 hours and it doesn’t really have replay value. I personally feel that 25€ would have been a better price for the base game and Deluxe edition should have been 40€. If you are interested by this game, I’d buy it if it were on sale. While this game isn’t doing anything new or innovate, it still manages to be enjoyable.

I’m happy that I gave this game a chance. While I expected a lot more from it, I don’t think it’s a bad game. I can totally understand why people don’t like this game or drop it. Since, it’s a very basic middle of the road JRPG that could do something unique but doesn’t. Now, the Japanese publishers of this game FuRyu have developed a game that became the basis for another larger game (The Legend of Legacy feels like the basis for The Alliance Alive). Maybe this game is creating the basis for another larger and better game.

If that’s the case, I’d love to see more unique puzzles in the dungeons for a start. The dungeons were so easy to beat and didn’t provide too much challenge. Maybe some puzzles were only the unique dungeon weapon has to be used to progress or even exit the dungeon.

I’d also love to see more expansion on the armor and stat items. I felt they barely had any impact in this game and I often forgot you could change the stones in your equipement to increase the damage output in certain cases or decrease the taken damage in certain cases.

The biggest thing I’d love to see improved is more depth in the game. Develop the town more and make them more memorable, instead of just a stop to stock up on supplies to go to the next dungeon. The side quests were introduced too late into the game.

I could go on for a while giving examples of what they can expand or improve, but I want to avoid that you get the impression that this game is bad. This game is decent, but not great. That’s the best way to describe this game. I’d recommend it to younger players who want to give an action JRPG a try. If you are in love with the action JRPG games, I’d highly advice you to lower your expecations. I’d compare to that animated summer blockbuster movie that everybody forgets about in a few months. It didn’t do anything memorable but it a fun time while it lasted. It’s a great snack inbetween games for me and I’m curious to see what the developer does next. Since, the potential is there.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about the game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

Nintendo.com microsite – Official website – Wikipedia page

When you purchase games on the Nintendo eShop, you earn store credit. I usually save up a lot of my credit and purchase a smaller title with it. One of these titles I purchased a few months ago is named Little Noah – Scion of Paradise. After playing it for a bit, I was surprised that it was the perfect game to play on my commute to and from work. I played it on a few train rides, and I think I’m ready to share my opinion on this game. This game is something unique and now that I have beaten it once, I really want to talk about it. Wait, beaten it once? What do I actually mean? Let’s talk about it in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Zipping Kitty Attempts

In this game, we play as an alchemist called Little Noah. She is in a long journey to reunite with her father. While she is looking for her father, her airship gets caught in a storm, and she crashes near a mysterious ruin.

In that ruin, she meets an amnesiac cat named Zipper. Well, she names it Zipper. Together, they start to explore this ruin because they encountered a dark wizard named Greigh, who wants to enable a powerful machine which is dormant in the ruin.

Now, if you are looking for a deep story… I’m going to have to disappoint you. The story of this game isn’t the main focus of this game. The story in this game is fine for what it is and does its job, but there is nothing more to it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a negative for this game. Because the story takes a backseat, the gameplay loop is a lot more polished. Also, I don’t think it was the intention to have a very in depth story.

The voice actors in this game did an amazing job and brought the characters and the world of this game to live. The amount of personality they brought to their characters is really well done and really fits the atmosphere of this game like a glove. The amazing voice acting is one of the main reasons why I didn’t mind the “To be continued” at the end of the game at all. This small title really feels like the developers are testing the water if people who be interested in a larger game set in the world of Little Noah.

So, what do I mean by “small title”? Well, this game can be beaten in an afternoon. Now, the game has quite a lot of replay value in my opinion. The gameplay loop of this game is quite enjoyable. It has quite the potential to grow into something unique that I don’t often see in these rouge lite games. But, I’ll talk more about the gameplay later.

According to various sources online, this game has been worked on by a small team of 30 people. Even by some industry legends like Yukio Futatsugi, who had his hand on another title I played in the past called World’s End Club. The amount of love and care put into this title is quite impressive and gets a thumbs up from me. I know that this game is based upon an earlier mobile game from the same developers called Battle Champs. Yet, I think it’s great to see the developers repurpose the assets after the shutdown of that game and make something new about it.

If you have ever played a game like Rouge Legacy, you’ll feel right at home in this game. In this game, you have to explore a dungeon and fight bosses. During your exploration run, you gain various special items that give you all sorts of buffs.

In terms of difficulty, this game is very balanced. While you can get lucky and get amazing items and buffs to make it quite far in the game, with enough skill and understanding of the game… you can even outplay the game if you get bad items and not good buffs. Now, I’m reading mixed things about the hard difficulty online, but I have been playing through this game on normal difficulty and I found it pretty fair and balanced. So, let’s do one more dive to explain how this game works.

One More Dive

I want to talk about the unique mechanic in this game. The combat system in this game is something I wanted to play for a long while. In this game, you are accompanied by Lilliputs. These are special creatures who attack for you. You start each run with three basic Lilliputs. During your run, you can find other Lilliputs and make yourself stronger.

Each Lilliput is very different in terms of strength, element, attack, and unique attack. You can only have five Lilliputs for your main attacks, and you have two special attack slots where you can place one Lilliput in each. So, you really need to balance your Lilliputs well. The order is also quite important, you don’t want a whole row of slow attacking Lilliputs in an area with a lot of range attacking enemies. Also, you don’t want to use a weak element compared to the enemies you are facing. If you are focusing on wind, you will have trouble with fire enemies.

It’s extremely important to understand your Lilliputs. Since, once you started an attack, you are somewhat locked into that attack. You can’t start another attack while an attack is in progress, excluding the special attacks that is. So, if the enemy moves to the other side of your attack, though luck. This game is a whole balancing and time act, and it’s a lot of fun. The randomness in this whole game makes each run unique, and you can never predict how far you’ll be able to go.

Now, dying in this game isn’t the worst thing. All your items and Lilliputs get converted into mana, which you can use to repair your airship. The more you repair your airship, the more advantages and buffs you can unlock to make even better runs. You can also use special treasure chests you can pick up in your run to either increase the strength of your unlocked Lilliputs or give to Zipper for a special bonus for your next run.

So, how does a run go? Well, allow me to compare it to a crusade in Cult of the Lamb to a degree. In that game, you go into a dungeon, and you have to go from room to room, defeating every enemy in that room before you can progress to the next room. Unlike Cult of the Lamb, some rooms give you a special challenge. These challenges are reaching a certain amount of chained damage or hits, not being hit or defeating all the enemies in a limited amount of time. When you complete this challenge, you receive an additional bonus when you defeat the room.

There are also special rooms that can spawn. A shop where you can spend the gold you earn during a run, platform challenges with a strong treasure chest at the end, (combat) challenge rooms and rooms where you can get special buffs from a crystal and a room where you can get Lilliputs or a buff item. All of these special rooms have a special icon on the map. The map also shows little icons when there is still something you can pick up in the room.

Complete exploration of a dungeon is a very risk/reward thing. You do risk your health to go into an additional room to get additional buffs, or do you want to save your health for the next (mid)boss level? In order to beat this game, you have to beat three worlds. Each world works like this: level – level – midboss – level – boss. Be warned, you can only replenish your health potions at the start of a level. During (mid)boss fights, you can’t replenish your health potions, so keep that in mind when you are deciding if it’s worth the risk to go into that challenge platforming room.

Overall, the gameplay in the dungeon is quite addictive and the fast-paced decision-making you have to make is something that got me hooked. I don’t spend a lot of time on my airship, outside repairing it and setting up the right buffs for my next run. I always want to do one more dive and try and beat the game again. Now, the airship itself is build quite well. You can also re-read the tutorial boxes in case you want to refresh your memory on certain mechanics.

Repetition of Diving

Something that really impressed me is how smooth this game actually runs. The optimization of this game is incredible. I didn’t have any frame rate issues or slowdowns at all. Even when I’m preforming my ultimate attack, which causes a lot of visual flair and effects on the screen.

The controls are extremely responsive as well. Very rarely I felt like I wasn’t in control, and I think some of these moments might even have been a false positive where I was trying to blame my mistake on the game. In terms of the controls, there are only a few nitpicks I can give. The first is the decision to place “R” as the interaction button. This feels quite unnatural and took me some getting used to. Also, I think a left-handed mode would have been welcome since I think left-handed people who appreciate the “L” button then for interactions.

Why am I placing so much attention on this? Well, because you don’t pick up items or Lilliputs automatically. You have to stand next to them and interact with their medal or crystal. But items like health drops or burst gauges are picked up automatically.

The other nitpick I have is that when you start your dive, you get a fixed amount of mana from the first dungeon. Why can’t we skip this little cutscene that plays every time? It breaks the flow of the start of a run. Since you are stopped in your tracks every time.

Another nitpick I have with the controls is how the Lilliput attack order can be decided. The problem comes when I just want to swap two Lilliputs of their place. This is something you can’t do. Unless you swap them from your inventory to the main line OR from the main line to a special attack slot and vice versa. Swapping two Lilliputs in the main line is somewhat clunky to do and feels unpolished.

Visually, this game is extremely colorful and charming. While this is a side view game, like a 2D Mario game, the backgrounds are also incredible. The team that worked on the visual presentation of this game did an amazing job. I only have one nitpick about it and that’s somewhat shared with a nitpick I have with the audio design.

I feel like the frozen status isn’t communicated clearly enough to the player. Several times I was unable to move Noah and I couldn’t figure out why. It took me sometime to realize that she was frozen and that’s the reason why I couldn’t preform an action. Either a more exaggerated visual of a frozen Noah could solve this or more sound effects when you try to do something while frozen.

Apart from that, I don’t have any complaints about the visuals. The animation feels amazing, and you feel the impact of the attacks of your Lilliputs and it feels so rewarding, adding more immersion to the gameplay loop. This game is something where I felt: “One more dive” after each time I died and returned to the airship. Each time I wanted to go and explore the amazing caverns. While I was afraid that this game would suffer from long play sessions, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t the case for me. At the end of a long play session, I have to admit that the game felt a bit repetitive… But I don’t mind repetitive gameplay too much when the core gameplay loop and level design is fun.

The only negative I have about the level design is that you very quickly see all the possible room lay-outs there are in this game. While the dungeon is randomized each run, it doesn’t take long before you see similar rooms. A couple of times, I even had the same room back-to-back. This isn’t a huge problem perse, but I felt that the developers could mask this a bit better with different decorations or minor changes like one of the platforms having a possibility of crumbling or not.

The music and sound effects in this game are really catchy. I would love to add it to my playlist. Sadly, I can’t really find a way to listen to the soundtrack or even buy it. The tracks in this game are charming when they need to be but are also quite action-packed during fight scenes. The sound effects and visuals inform you quite well when an enemy is going to attack.

Now, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I think it’s high time for my conclusion of this game. Let’s dive into the summary and my final thoughts of this game.

Summary

The bad:

– Some minor nitpicks with the controls.
– Story is fine, but lacks some depth and is predictable.

The good:

+ Very addictive gameplay loop with high replay value.
+ Amazing voice acting.
+ Breath taking visuals.
+ Extremely optimized gameplay.
+ …

Final thoughts:

This game is a small indie title created from the remains of an old gotcha game. It’s only 15€ on the Nintendo eShop and it’s totally worth it’s price in gold. While the game lacks some depth and is quite short, the replay value this game has is something that’ll make you replay this game just one more time.

While playing this game, I felt that this game was an experiment. The developers were testing the waters if the gameplay would work or not. This game feels like a prequel to a much larger game and if I’m right, I can’t wait to see what the full game or the sequel is going to be like.

Even when this game is going to be a standalone game, I don’t really mind if that’s the case. This game is a game I can highly recommend if you enjoy games like Rouge Legacy or Cult of the Lamb. While it doesn’t have a lot of, if any, base building… It’s another amazing title in the genre.

While outside of the combat mechanics, it doesn’t do a lot of things you haven’t seen (a lot) before in other similar games. But, that isn’t a bad thing. Since, sometimes a game where all the good ideas from other games come together into one title can be a lot of fun as well.

I’d love to see another game in this universe where there are a bit more stakes in using your Lilliputs. What if certain Lilliputs get weaker when you pick up items of their opposite element? Or Lilliputs that can do a special attack with another Lilliput present…

There is so much more you can do with this combat system and I think that if the developers expanded on the core mechanics, this game sequel could reach quite far. Since, the game we already got placed an amazing foundation for an amazing series. I love this game to bits and I’m so glad I gave this game a chance, since it was an amazing pleasant surprise to playthrough. It comes highly recommend from me. After I finished the game once, I let me hunger for more. I wanted to play it even more. And the fact that I barely have any complaints about this game apart from a weak story and some nitpicks… This game just has a lot of care and lot put in by the developers and everything works and fits together so well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100

Steam store page – Wikipedia – Official website

So, when I’m writing this, it is 2024. I turned 31 years old back in February. I still love playing video games and surfing the internet since I was a young lad. Besides that, I also have a fascination for anything that has to do with dreams and their meanings. And then a game called Hypnospace Outlaw turns up on my radar. A game that promises to bring back the early years of the internet that I remember. Not only that, we are going to have to moderate the internet with a new technology that allows people to surf the internet while they are dreaming. We have to play as an unnamed enforcer to keep the internet safe and on top of that, we can create our own pages and mod this game easily. But before we start spending time on that, let’s find out if the base game is actually good and if it’s worth to start playing this game or if it’s something we should skip. Also, feel free to leave your thoughts and/or opinions on this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. Besides, dear enforcer and MerchantSoft, this isn’t harassment, this is a fair review/critique of the game. Removing this from HypnoOS isn’t the solution.

Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

In this game, you play as an unnamed enforcer for MerchantSoft. A company that developed a headband that allows users to surf the web in their dreams. Your goal is to clean up the HypnoSpace for everybody. You start in late 1999, where your first case is assigned. When your first case is assigned, you are left to your own devices, and you can explore the internet by yourself. And let me tell you, there is a lot of internet to explore.

The story of this game is fascinating. You get to dive and explore through various pages on the internet about various things. A long time before social media was a thing and everybody had a website for their own creations. The HypnoSpace has several zones, with each their own theme. If you remember AOL, you will know what I’m talking about.

If you want to get the most out of this game, I highly advise you to take your time with this game. Don’t rush it at all. This game is sadly rather short if you only follow the main story of the game. It’s only 6 hours long and shorter if you know what you are doing. I mean, the speedruns are only around 11 minutes. The strength of this game is the depth it has. This game has three main chapters, and there are clear triggers that separate the chapters.

The deeper you dig and the more you read up, the more interesting lore gets revealed. I actually started a second playthrough to try and find the things I missed. And honestly, this game is one that gets ruined by playing it with a guide in any sort or form. Do not play this game with a guide. It’s a lot less rewarding if you play it with a guide in your first or second playthrough. The wonder of getting lost in all of these pages is just so nostalgic.

Now, while I was playing, I was wondering if it would appeal to the younger players out there. I’m somewhat on the fence about that. While it tackles a lot of subjects that are still somewhat relevant, I honestly think that it’ll mostly click with those who grew up with the internet of the ’90 to early ’00. With that said, I think that it still might click with the younger people, but know that the internet was very different back then.

Point-And-Click Detective

This game is a point-and-click adventure game in any sense of the word. You get a case, and you have to explore the internet to see if anyone broke the rules or not.

Each infraction you find, will reward you with HypnoCoin. You can use these coins to buy various things in the Hypnospace. This can go from stickers, wallpapers, themes, applications to so much more. But be careful, it’s quite possible that some of these downloads are infected with malware. And back then, malware was a lot more visual and less aimed at serving you a lot of ads or stealing your information.

The controls of this game are quite easy. You mostly click with your mouse and input things sometimes in the search bar. If you know how to do basic things with a computer, you’ll very quickly find your way around with this game as well. While I sometimes struggled with opening apps, I didn’t have too much trouble with the controls. Thankfully, there are some options to tweak the controls to your liking, like disabling that double-clicking opens apps. But, I’m a Windows user and the double click to open apps is just hardwired in my brain.

Visually, this game really looks like you are playing with the old internet. When I noticed that there was a mod that changed the OS into Windows 95, oh boy, I was sold. There are various themes for the OS in this game, and they go from amazing to silly. There is even a fast food theme. Now, if you read that this game is mostly created by a team of 5 people, it’s even more impressive. Not only that, one of the main designers of Dropsy is part of the team.

The creativity of this game never ceased to amaze me. Let me continue on the trend of the visuals and say that the little details on how the webpages look is just so realistic. The little typo’s here and there, the rabbit holes you can jump down, the crazy visuals on various pages… Even the “help me, I can’t remove this” and “Test 1 2 3″… I made me crack up and remember my early days when I used to write webpages in plain HTML with barely any coding knowledge as a young teen.

While I knew that wiggling the mouse sped up the loading of the webpages, I just never really did. I just enjoyed the webpages loading slowly and having that experience again when I was a teenager before Facebook or any other big social media started to take over. Yes, even before MySpace. While I only experienced the late “pre-social media internet”, I do have amazing memories of it.

On top of that, you have the amazing wallpapers and sticker packs you can buy and play around with. With this, you can really make your desktop your own. But, something that really triggered memories for me were the viruses you can encounter. Back as a young teen, I was a lot less careful in what I downloaded and seeing the visual mess some viruses can create in this game, it triggered some nasty memories.

Memories like how one time, I got a very nasty variant of the SASSER worm and each time I installed something new, my computer would lock up and crash. Yes, even when you tried to re-install Windows, it locked up and crashed the installer. After a lot of digging, I found that it was caused by a program starting with boot and I had to screw out my hard drive, connect it with somebody’s computer and then remove the start-up file from there. I also had a piece of malware that looked like the ButtsDisease virus in this game. Where it started to change all the text on a webpage to another word. Oh man, those were the days.

So, during your investigations you can encounter various things. Things like people breaking the rules, and you have to report those. You mostly need to focus on one of 5 categories. Copyright infringement, harassment, illegal downloads/malware, extra illegal commerce and illegal activity. Each law gets several infractions, and you do have to look for them. At one moment, I really that to take notes. I really have to say, taking notes for this game is really helpful, you even have the notes’ app in HypnoOS.

Sticking in your brain

Now, something I have to commend the developers for in this game is that they also took accessibility into account. Something I have to commend the developers for as well is the amount of content in this game, even when the main story is extremely short. I already talked about the visuals and how much I love them, but the music in this game is something else.

Some of the music tracks are really stuck in my mind and I wouldn’t be surprised that if I ever write another article in my favorite game music series, some of them will pop up in that. Some tracks are real earworms and got stuck in my brain. The music for some of the parody products in this game is so good, that I wish they were real.

The music in this game is a mixture of various styles, and I find some of them more catchy than the others, but it’s really impressive at how many styles there are in this game. If you know that this game has over 4 hours of music in it, that’s an amazing feat.

There is even a whole suite where you can create your own pages, music and mods released by one of the main developers of this game. It works only on Windows and you can read more about it on the itch.io page of Jay Tolen here. There were even various community events where your stuff could appear as an Easter egg in the main game. Yet, these tools are now part of the main game and are in your installation folder.

Speaking about this, modding this game is extremely easy. There is even a build in mod browser, and it’s a piece of cake to install and downloads mods. If you use the in-game mod menu, you don’t have to reboot the game for most mods to take effect. Just go to the main menu, choose the mods button and install the mods you want. Now, there are a lot more mods out there then just what you can find in the in-game mod browser, so check them out here.

The game has an autosave, it doesn’t really show when the game gets saved. There are three save slots, so if you want to replay the game, you can pick another save slot. Now, if there is one mod I highly advise is he expanded endgame cases mod. This mod expands the game quite naturally and is a lot of fun and additional challenge. But don’t read the description when you haven’t finished the game, since it contains quite a lot of spoilers.

This game can be quite tricky. Sometimes the solution isn’t the easiest to find. It’s even possible you don’t find the solution to every puzzle out there. Now, there is a built in hint system for this game. It’s somewhat hidden to avoid immersion breaking, but for a small HypnoCoin fee, you can get a hint to progress. I really love this system, since I rather have you getting a crowbar to get yourself unstuck than you getting a guide where it’s very easy to other things and spoil the whole experience. Since the fun of this genre depends highly on solving the puzzles with what’s given to you. If you want to get a hint, just search hint.

Overall I have been extremely positive about this game, and I have to say that overall this game is extremely well-made. I rarely found any moments where I thought, this isn’t right. But does that mean that this game doesn’t have any negatives? Well, sadly enough there are a few things I didn’t like about my experience and that I want to talk about.

First of all, I wish the default text-to-speech voice wasn’t the default language of your system if you aren’t English. I’m from Belgium and my text-to-speech voice reads English extremely weird. Thankfully, I had the English soundpack installed on my computer so after I went into the BIOS settings, I was able to quickly change it to the English one and it sounds a lot more natural and better.

Secondly, this is an issue in general with point-and-click games but the replay value just isn’t here. Once you explored everything, you have seen everything. There are various mini-games, but those are quickly beaten. While I personally don’t really see this is a negative, since not every game needs high replay value and sometimes playing it once and having the whole experience engulf you is the idea… I want to mention it, if somebody is looking for replayable games.

Third, you can find more infractions than what’s required to close the case. While I can understand that the game doesn’t tell you how many other things there are out there for immersion reasons, as somebody who wanted to experience everything, I was sometimes a bit annoyed that I couldn’t make sure I found everything. If only there was an option you could toggle to see completion percentage or something of that nature. Since, because of this, it’s possible to lock yourself out of achievements or content in this game.

Yes, this game has achievements and some of them are extremely tricky to get. It took me a lot of researching and exploring in HypnoSpace to find all the material. Thankfully, taking notes really helped me to find it all.

And the final thing is that the final chapters of this game feel a bit rushed and undercooked. One of the final cases is a breeze to solve if you have written notes during your playthrough and it feels like there is content cut out of the game. The ending comes a bit out of nowhere and if you didn’t explore everything or didn’t register certain things, the ending won’t make sense to you and it will loose it’s impact. Thankfully, the mod I shared earlier resolves this to a degree.

That’s all the negative I could say about this game, in my honest opinion. When this game clicks with you, it clicks really well and doesn’t let go at all. But, I’ll leave my final thoughts after the summary of this review. So, I think it’s high time for that since I have touch upon everything I wanted to in this review.

Summary

The bad:

-Text-to-speech should use English by default

-It’s possible to miss content or lock yourself out of it.

-The game is rather short.

-Rushed ending.

The good:

+ Amazing nostalgic trip

+ Amazing music

+ Fantastic writing

+ Easy to use mod tools

+ Great puzzles

+ Great controls

+ …

Final thoughts:

Hypnospace Outlaw is an amazing nostalgic point-and-click adventure trip through the late ’90’s internet. This game might not be for everyone, but when it clicks… Oh boy does it really click. Now, this is also a game you shouldn’t rush. The charm of this game is in all the little details and references that are hidden in the pages and the world building of this game.

While the game is rather at the shortside for point-and-click games, I don’t see it as a big problem to be honest. The journey that this game took me on was a lot more worth it to me than having a long game. Since, I think it would have lost it’s charm if this game kept going and going.

While I personally have more memories with the internet time period that came right after it, the developers are already working on the sequel to this game called Dreamsettler. I honestly can’t wait to play that one, since the quality that this game has is just top notch. The music is catchy, the visuals are amazing and it alls comes together in an amazing nostalgic trip that makes you want to play more.

There are some minor blemishes on this game, but you can work with them. Like I said before, when this game clicks, it really does click extremely well. I’d compare my experience with games like There Is No Game or SuperLiminal. Amazing small titles that leave a lasting impact on those who play it. All of these games are passion projects that turned out amazing and get a recommendation from me.

If you enjoy playing unique point-and-click games and/or if you have nostalgia for the old ’90’s internet, I highly recommend that you give this game a try. While this game is on multiple platforms, I highly recommend that you play the PC version since it has mod support that gives you even more toys to play with and expands the game even more.

I had a blast with this game and it’s a breath of fresh air for me. I’m angry at myself that I rushed my playthrough, but now I have installed several mods and I’m so going to replay this game after I have published this article. I also want to earn every achievement in this game, since I really want to see everything. I’m also extremely hyped for the sequel to this game and I can’t wait to start playing that, since that is going to be an even bigger nostalgic trip for me than this game. And with the amazing set of developers behind this game, I think we get another gem in our hands.

And with that said, I think it’s high time to wrap this article up. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 100/100

Nintendo.co.uk microsite – Wikipedia page

Next year, I’ll be blogging for 15 years. I have taken a look at quite a lot of games. Now, if you go back to the start of this blog, you might notice that I only started in May 2013. The three years before that, I wrote a personal life blog in my native language. I have since deleted that for personal reasons and started blogging in English in 2013. On my Dutch blog, I wrote an article about Another Code – Two Memories, but I haven’t written one for my English blog. Yet, I have mentioned it in 2014 in a top 25 list of my favorite DS games of all time. I have written an article on the Wii sequel called Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories in 2013. While my old articles aren’t up to my personal standards anymore, I still leave them up to see the growth I have gone through over the years. Now, these two titles became classics in my eyes. When Cing went under, I didn’t hold up hope of these games ever seeing a sequel or a remake. But, we got a big surprise this year. Suddenly, both games were coming to the Nintendo Switch and not only that, they were remade from the ground up. Did these two games grow like I did in my writing, or is it something that should be better left to the past? Well, that’s what I’m going to discover with you in this article. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article, but now, let’s dive right in.

Editorial note: shameless self-promotion: if you want to see me and my buddy Klamath playing through this title… We started streaming it. So, more opinions can be found in the streams. Here is a link to the playlist.

The Remembering Of A Remake

In this game, we follow the adventures of Ashley Mizuki Robins. In the first part of the game, Ashley got a letter from her presumed dead father to come to Blood Edward island to meet him on the day right before her 14th birthday. On that journey, she meets a ghost named D, who has lost his memories.

In the second part of the game, we fast-forward two years. Ashley takes a camping trip to a lake. When she arrives at lake Juliet, she gets flashbacks from when she was very little. Not only that, she meets a young boy whose father wanted to build a holiday resort at that lake but was blamed for the pollution of the lake.

Since this game is a point-and-click game and is quite story depended, I’m not going to talk more about the story than the two small blurbs above. In terms of the story, this game tells a very heartfelt story with very nice life lessons. The writing in this game is extremely well done. The build up towards the ending of the story is very natural and stays true to the themes of the game. The biggest theme in this game is memories and history. Overall, this game is quite relaxing, and the story is never really in a rush to move forward.

New in this version is that there is voice acting. While not the whole game is voice acted, most of it is and the non voice acted scenes have little grunts and vocalizations to indicate the emotions of what’s being told. I have to say that the voice acting in this game is fantastic. I wish the voice actors of this game had more of an online presence, since I had a hard time finding other works by these voice actors. The fact that these voice actors didn’t really promote that they worked on this game on their socials is a shame.

The voice acting in this game brings so much charm to the game. For this article, I replayed parts of the original DS and Wii game and I kept hearing those characters talk in the voice of the remakes. They fit the characters like a glove, which is a hard thing to do since when you have voiceless characters… Everybody has their voice in their head, and that doesn’t always match up with the official voice acting.

Now, in terms of differences between the original games and this remake… There are quite a lot of things. On the Cing wiki, there is a long list of changes. But I would highly advise you don’t read that before you finished the game. Since, it contains a lot of spoilers. I can say this without spoiling anything. The list of changes on the game article page has no real spoilers. If you haven’t played the originals, you won’t really notice a lot of the changes. Especially because most of the changes are done to improve the flow of the game and the story. Other changes have been done because some puzzles used the special features of the Nintendo DS or the Nintendo Wii in unique ways.

Arc System Works worked together with several members of the original development team, and I have to say that it really feels like this is the definitive way to experience these stories. Both stories now flow into each other, and it feels more like one big story. If you didn’t know better, you could think it’s just one huge game with those major chapters. They have done an amazing job of translating the story into a modern area without destroying the original messages and atmosphere of the story.

Fuzzy memories make imperfections

In terms of visuals, this game goes for a cel shaded look. This makes the remake of the original DS game look more in line with the Wii title. In the original DS game, the game was played as a top-down puzzle game, with some moments you could see a 2D scene that you could explore.

Visually, this game is quite detailed and looks amazing. Yet, I have noticed some rough models here and there. A book here, a window there. Some of them really stick out like a sore thumb. Now, I might be very critical on these things since I review games as a hobby. But let me tell you this as well. Overall, this game looks amazing. Timeless even. There are only a handful of objects that could use some touching up.

I have the same opinion on the animations. Overall, the animations are fantastic. Seeing the first game in 3D was breathtaking. It brought the game to life in such a different way, and I’m all for it. There were a few stiff animations, but if you aren’t looking for them, I can guarantee you that you won’t notice most of them. I especially love the comic book style cutscenes where the characters speaking go inside their own square next to each other. The animations in these cutscenes add some charm to this game, it makes the more relaxing nature of this game shine even brighter.

The controls of this game are excellent. Sometimes the motion control puzzles are a little bit wonky, but overall they work perfectly. The only thing I really don’t like is how, by the press of a button, you can see the orientation of Ashley. Now, what do I dislike about this? Well, it has a sort of build in walkthrough attached to it. This is something that’s too easily accessible, and I have pressed the button too many times.

Something I’m mixed about is how the additional lore spots are now somewhat easier to find. In the original DS game, you could find special cartridges with additional story lore on them. In this game, the hiding spot is located on your map. So, if you have missed one, you can quickly see on your map in which room you need to look. Now, some of them are hidden in very tricky places. During the stream, I have seen Klamath walk past two of them several times. If you want all the additional lore, you will have to keep your eyes peeled.

If you have played any point-and-click adventure game, you’ll know what to expect here. Personally, I compare this game quite a lot to Broken Sword 3, but without the platforming. You can explore the environment, and you have to solve various puzzles. Something unique is that you can also take pictures. And let me tell you, keep every mechanic the game teaches you in mind. The fact you can take pictures is something that is going to be quite helpful during the solving of the puzzles.

The only complaint I have is that solving some puzzles have a bit too much menu work involved. I especially remember one puzzle in the first part of the game where you have to weigh coins. Instead of them being all five on the table, you have to take them from your inventory each and every time. And the annoying part is that the last two you used, move to the last spot in your inventory. There are a handful of puzzles where some quality of life improvements would be very welcome.

Relaxing with puzzles

There are some amazing new features in this game as well. One of my favorite things is that you can access a big board where all the relationships between the characters are mapped out. Not only that, when you open the profile, you can read a small note about them. If you click on Ashley’s profile, you will read a small hint on what to do next. So, if you put this game down for a while, you can catch yourself up quite quickly.

Also, something I adore is the attention to detail in this game. For example, in one of the puzzles, Ashley digs into a building blocks box. After she found what she was looking for, you will notice a small building she built next to the box with the blocks she took out. There are various other moments like this, and it adds to the charm and realism of this game quite a lot.

The more relaxing nature of this game not only comes through the visuals and gameplay, but also through the music. The music in this game is a rather calming and relaxing soundtrack. The main motive is piano through the whole soundtrack. Other major instruments are violin and acoustic guitar. The soundtracks fit this game like a glove. Now, it is tense when it needs to be, but it never steps out of its lane. It keeps being that relaxing soundtracks that brings this game more to life, and I have no complaints about it.

The biggest strength of this game is the charm of it all. The writing, the music, the sound effects, the puzzles… It all flows together so well. While the game is only roughly 15 hours long, if you know what you are doing, it’s a very enjoyable time to play through. In this remake, the game also auto saves now but outside of cutscenes, you can save at any time in 15 different save slots.

Currently, I’m over midway in the second part of the game and I have been enjoying it quite a lot. While the game has it’s minor shortcomings like some rough object models and some annoying menu’ing during puzzles… I’m falling in love with these titles all over again. If you would ask me if the remakes or the originals are better, I’d have to say both. Both versions still have their charm but if you want to experience both these titles, I’d really advice to go for the Switch version. Since, it brings both titles together in a lot better way.

I mostly have minor complaints about these remakes. Like how silly it is that you can only have ten pictures saved and deleting them is a bit too fincky. But overall, the issues I have with this game are mostly minor. Maybe a bit more time in the oven or a polishing patch will bring this game to perfection.

A lot of other reviewers are giving this game lower marks since it’s slower paced or it’s a remake of a rather obscure duology. I personally disagree with these lower scores. These two games deserve another chance in the lime light since they are quite amazing games. I personally don’t mind the slower paced gameplay, since it’s refreshing to be able to wind down with a slower game. On top of that, if you look at the care the developers put into remaking this game and bringing it to modern audiences while not chaging too much to alienate fans of the original is such a fine line to walk on… And they never fell off that line in my opinion.

I can totally understand that this game isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But, the complaints that this game is linear and doesn’t have a lot of replay value, I find ridiculous. I mean, does every game need to have a lot of replay value and let you explore a wide open world? No, it’s okay to play a game where you need to go from point A to B. It’s okay that the story looses some of it’s charm because you know how it’s going to end. It’s how that experience impacts you, that’s what matters.

The reason why I’m so happy to see remakes of these DS and Wii titles is because we now have remakes of amazing titles like this one and Ghost Trick for example. Now, because these two games have been remade, I’m holding out hope that Cing’s other titles like the amazing Hotel Dusk and it’s sequels are being remade as well. And if they are, I hope the same team is working on them since the love and care they placed into remaking these two titles is amazing.

I remember Klamath’s reaction when I suggested this game for streaming. He was worried that it was going to have low numbers and not a lot of interest. But, after our first stream, he started calling this game a hidden gem. I mean, if this game can have that kind of an impact on somebody who loves point-and-click games and the fact that we had a very high number of viewers watching our streams, it must mean something.

This game has a lot of impact and I hope that others who enjoy puzzle, adventure and/or point-and-click games give this game a chance. It’s something different especially since it’s slower paced but if you let it take you by the hand and if you walk along the journey, you won’t regret the powerful journey you are going on. It’s a journey that will stick with you and sometimes a memory will pop back into your head. You’ll remember the fun and relaxing times you had with this game. While the game isn’t perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives and it’s one of those games where going along with the ride is the most important. Since, the ride of this game is one of the best point-and-click games I have ever played.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m curious to hear what you thought about this game and/or the content of this article. So, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I also hope to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

The Untitled Goose Game captures the simple fantasy of being a goose in a small village. Escape your worries and become a goose instead.

The post Become a Goose in the Untitled Goose Game first appeared on Two Average Gamers.

The post Become a Goose in the Untitled Goose Game appeared first on Two Average Gamers.

Discover the Overwatch Coach Chatbot, a new tool designed to help players improve their skills with custom improvement plans. Try it out and provide feedback to help us make it better!

The post Introducing the Overwatch Coach Chatbot: Your Personalized Path to Improvement first appeared on Two Average Gamers.

The post Introducing the Overwatch Coach Chatbot: Your Personalized Path to Improvement appeared first on Two Average Gamers.

Dive into a game like no other! Discover the enthralling story of Gorogoa and fall in love with its unique visual gameplay.

The post Gorogoa: A Uniquely Beautiful Work of Art first appeared on Two Average Gamers.

The post Gorogoa: A Uniquely Beautiful Work of Art appeared first on Two Average Gamers.

Discover the dark and fascinating world of Inmost. Prepare for a compelling experience that may have you in tears by the end.

The post Inmost is an Emotional Rollercoaster I Couldn’t Put Down first appeared on Two Average Gamers.

The post Inmost is an Emotional Rollercoaster I Couldn’t Put Down appeared first on Two Average Gamers.

Stand by me…in a turn based battle, Echo Generation Midnight Edition but is it worth staying up late for?

Echo Generation Midnight Edition hails from Canada from indie developer Cococucumber with support from Canada Media Fund and Ontario Creates. Echo Generation has made it’s way to the Nintendo Switch with it’s Midnight Edition. The Midnight Edition features upgraded graphics, fast travel as well as a host of quality of life upgrades.

Echo Generation Midnight Edition is a Turn based RPG set in a small town during the 1990’s and if that starts hitting you in the nostalgia feels then buckle up as you’ve got more to come. As soon as you load up Echo Generation Midnight Edition you’ll appreciate it’s art style, everything about the game is distinctly vintage but without looked dated, thats to say it looks old school but with the crispness you’d expect from a modern release. The first thing you’ll need to do is select and name your player character. I went with the character model I thought had the most 90’s vibe, then I had to name them, so with nostalgia in mind, I went for Ripley. The name of your character has 0 impact but I did get a fair bit if enjoyment out of the name choice once with more sci-fi elements of the games plot started to unfold. 

Once you’ve selected your avatar you’re in your bed room which looks perfectly 90s, posters on the walls, a tape cassette player, old school looking PC, toy chests and of course (Ice) Hockey equipment, we’re in Canada remember (Although no Canadian team has won Lord Stanley’s cup since 1993) but being a big hockey fan myself, it was a nice touch. You leave your bedroom all set to start shooting a Sci-Fi movie with your friends, when your mother forces you to take your little sister with you. Now, in most stories this will be a chore, but Lily is a fully capable member of your party, in fact you party will make out at 3 members, You, Lily and a ‘Pet’, one of five to choose from, although pick Meowsy the cat, easily the best support character.

As always I like to keep narrative spoilers to a minimum but Echo Generation Midnight Edition features a great cast of characters, including a psychotic headteacher, hipster bubble tea store proprietors, a distracted inventor who’s some what of a lack lustre father to a Racoon in a baseball cap. As far as the games writing is concerned it’s sensational, it hits the Saturday morning adventure vibe perfectly. I’m sure comparisons to Stranger Things are guaranteed but I’ll be honest, I kept thinking about Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, which is entirely anachronistic and makes me feel old, but be it Stranger Things, Stand By Me or any other rites of passage coming of age story and you’re in the right spot. The plot is the perfect adventure, the characters and their dialogue reach Buffy levels of witty banter and it’s pacing is perfect, the game clocks in around 10 hours and at no point in time did it feel anything other than compelling. 

You’ll spend the 10 or so hours of the games length exploring a variety of locations, the suburbs (engaged in a turf war between kids and a Racoon street gang), the woods, a secret research lab and many more, and you’ll be running back and forth between these locations in an almost Metroidvania-esque fashion. The world features a myriad of NPCs, many of whom are memorable and add a huge amount of charm to the game. 

Battles in Echo Generation Midnight Edition are turn based and for the most part they are pretty much what you’d expect for the most part. Each character has a basic attack and a decent selection of special moves. You’ll unlock these special moves by finding comic books (who says funny books aren’t educational) and each book is themed to each character. The main characters moves are all (Ice) Hockey themed which I really enjoyed. Having blocked a few shots in my time a puck being sent into your face via a slapshot would certainly be an effective tactic in battle. Each special attack has a unique mini-game, pass and you’ll do critical damage, fail and you’ll have time to make do with the attacks base damage. This can be increased be levelling up. Each time you level up you’ll be rewarded with points to spend in one of three categories, health, attack and skill points. 

This brings me to the only really downside of Echo Generation Midnight Edition, aside from the first boss, grinding isn’t needed. Now, there are of course there are two schools of thought when it comes to grinding. To some, it’s a classic part of the TTRPG experience, to others its an outdated mechanic that needs to be left behind. I’m somewhere between the tow and if I’m honest the only game I think nailed it was Final Fantasy XIII. Echo Generation Midnight Edition doesn’t really have what you’d call a difficulty curve, it’s more of a small bump followed by a steep decline. Battles provide little challenge, even the final boss is a breeze and while the mystery of the narrative was rewarding enough but the ease of the combat did dull the feeling of accomplishment somewhat. 

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