Author - Judgeman

Montague’s Mount Review (PC)

2013/12/04

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

PolyPusher Studios has brought us a very interesting game that falls into the first person suspense category, named Montague’s Mount. Partly funded from an unsuccessful Indiegogo drive, Montague’s Mount was originally intended to be used with the Oculus Rift system. However, since funding did not reach the level that the designers wanted to support the Oculus Rift, or any other levels the designers wanted for that matter, we are left with the feeling that Montague’s Mount is unfinished and could have been great.

Story

You begin the story of Montague’s Mount, waking up on an Irish beach with amnesia. Injured and alone, you set off into the area surrounding Montague’s Mount to discover where you are, who you are, and where has all the inhabitants gone. The story progresses through a series of notes, flashbacks, and monologue from the main character as you discover new bits of information that helps you piece together the fragmented stories surrounding the Mount.

Montague’s Mount is a slow paced game, a game where the player must take his or her time with the story and let it unfold at it’s own pace. This isn’t a story for twitch gamers or someone looking for a huge scare. The story is atmospheric in nature, but is meant to build suspense more than fear, uncertainty more then peril. Most of the time, this works for Montague’s Mount, but not perfectly.

The story is paced at a very slow rate, with story bits and clues drip fed to you as you solve puzzles and move from one area to the next. This can lead to a high rate of frustration with today’s gamers, gamers who are used to a much more Call of Duty pacing to their games. So, that makes my first recommendation for this game, it isn’t for everyone. You will have to be able to handle a story that will unfurl at a snail’s pace and be willing to score the areas for any type of clue. I won’t even go into the amnesia bit, I just hate it when developers fall back on that crutch. It is just becoming way to cliche in these types of storys.

Game Play

With the Oculus Rift being in mind when PolyPusher Studios first began designing Montague’s Mount, you can imagine that the entire game play is centered on how you interact with the world at hand. Montague’s Mount is seen through the eyes of the protagonist, so it is a first person game that allows you to interact with items using the mouse. As you move through the world, you use the mouse to see around you and pick up items or use items with the mouse. The designers have set most items that you can interact with in a different lighting, so they become much easier to see as you progress through the game.

Other items you can interact with are strewn over the entire landscape. This brings me to one of Montague’s Mount’s interesting points, that the game also is helping promote the Irish language. Items that you click on for descriptions, will show up in Irish first, with the English translation below. Irish has seen a huge come back in the last century, after being almost completely removed by British rule. Being a student of the Irish language myself, I found this addition to be a fantastic addition to the game, but completely understand how this will not add or subtract to the game for someone who isn’t interested in the language.

Puzzles are the game’s core for progression. Montague’s Mount separates areas by using gate that the player must find ways past. These solutions could be as simple as finding a can of gas for the generator, or as complicated as deciphering Morse Code to discover how to lower a draw bridge. For the most part, a player should be able to figure out the puzzles by just paying attention to their surroundings, but unless you are familiar with Morse Code, you will need the Internet for some of these puzzles.

Montague’s Mount has very solid game play, but it forces you to take your time through the environments. There isn’t any way to run, nor is there a need to. The story and game play revolves strictly around discovering the mystery behind who you are and the secret of Montague’s Mount. I do wish that the developers were able to get the money to through in Oculus Rift compatibility, because this game is screaming for that type of technology.

Aesthetics

Montague’s Mount’s aesthetic is heavily influenced by the lead designer’s view of Ireland when he moved there. Being an outsider to the land and culture, he saw Ireland as a cold and colorless place. This lead to his design of Montague’s Mount aesthetics. Ireland in Montague’s Mount is a dreary, rainy and grey landscape. As you play the game, the color palette will change from being almost black and white in tone, to almost full color, but never quite there. The graphics of the game are decent enough to get the job done, without looking fantastic nor horrible. The designers did a great job in using the aesthetics to help build the suspense and the isolationist feeling of Montague’s Mount.

The audio of Montague’s Mount is minimal, but this seems to be a design decision and not one born out of lack of funds. The music soundtrack adds to the lonely feeling of the surroundings by being very minimal. You will not get an epic sweeping score for this game, mostly just a set of music that sounds like it is distant, almost echo-like. The voice acting is done well, and completed in English. I thought it was interesting that a game like Montague’s Mount that is promoting the Irish language, did not have an alternate track to listen to the game in Irish. A separate voice track in Irish would have gone a long way to really immerse the player into this world. Missed opportunity here on that, but one that does not ruin the game.

Final Thoughts

Montague’s Mount is a solid game that could have been so much better. The story pacing isn’t going to be for everyone, you will need to be patient and have a desire to look around and search for clues. The game play elements of Montague’s Mount work well with the story, though it would have been perfect for the Oculus Rift system. The puzzle difficulty ranges from the simplest of fetch and go here types, to absolutely needing the Internet to solve. Sound and vision were good too, without being spectacular. I do wish that there was an Irish language track to go with the Irish vocabulary that appears on the screen. Montague’s Mount is a solid, suspenseful game that fans of the genre can pick up on Steam for about $10. If you like your games slow, atmospheric, and with a touch of amnesia, Montague’s Mount is a game for you.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

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Edna and Harvey: The Breakout – A Review (PC)

2013/11/09

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

I am the type of gamer that hates to play games out of order – well, games with an overarching narrative. Prior to playing even one second of Dead Space 3, I had to hunt down copies of Dead Space 1 and 2, just to experience the narrative as the writers intended. The funny thing is that I realize that most sequels don’t even have the same writers involved, due to the fluid nature of the industry, and that most game narrative take a back seat to other sections of the game. It is still something that I have a hard time with, so I was a little bit twitchy when I received Edna and Harvey: The Breakout. Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is Daedelic Entertainment’s first game, which was technically a university project and is the first game in the Edna and Harvey series. A while back I reviewed the sequel, Edna and Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes, so with this review I was backtracking to the original game. I hate doing that, so if I’m a little hard on this one, you know why.

Story

Edna and Harvey: The Breakout begins with you locked up as Edna in an insane asylum with your terry cloth bunny, Harvey. As the name suggests, your first objective is to break out of said asylum. The game does start you off with amnesia so you have no idea why you are locked up in this padded cell, that is until Harvey begins to show you your past through the process of “tempomorphing”. Through this little jaunts to the past, Edna will discover not only her past but precious skills she has learned that she will need to get out of the asylum. As the story progresses, Edna and Harvey run into the other residents of the asylum, including the Keymaster and Dr. Marcel, who runs the entire institute.

As the story progresses, you learn that your father was locked up and executed as the murderer of Dr. Marcel’s son. You also discover that it is Dr. Marcel that is removing your memories during your treatments at the asylum. Edna and Harvey become determined to discover what these missing memories contain and try to discover why their father, who does not seem to be the murdering type, was executed for the death of Dr. Marcel’s son. The story is written well enough, with enough humor to lighten what ultimately becomes a fairly dark and depressing story when you really think about it.

My issue with the story of Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is how it connects to Edna and Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes. You see, it really doesn’t and that absolutely drove me nuts throughout my play through. I kept waiting for the connection to occur, to see where the overall narrative connects the two stories, and it never appears. If you haven’t played Harvey’s New Eyes, then you can start with The Breakout and move forward, but if you have played the sequel first, do not panic these two games never feel connected in any way. I guess that can be considered good news for some, but for me I desire a bigger and connected story between two games of the same series, and it just isn’t here.

Game Play

Game play for Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is your typical point and click adventure game play with a few tweaks and one annoyance. The biggest tweak is the “tempomorphing” game mechanic. Simply put, “tempomorphing” gives the player a chance to go back in time to learn the skills that is needed to get past a certain puzzle. While this was interesting at first, it looses a lot of it’s glitter when you realize that it is a forced mechanic and can only be used when the game needs you to learn a new skill to solve the current puzzle.

The rest of the game consists of the player exploring rooms for items to pick up and puzzles to solve. The puzzles are pretty much just using certain objects with each other, until you get the desired result. Some of the puzzles are much more interactive, meaning you have to talk to some of the other characters in the game and get them to do what you want them to do. The puzzles are never too hard nor too easy to solve, either that or I am getting better and these types of games.

The one annoyance I had with the game play was the inventory screen. The developers decided to make the inventory screen a pop up screen that only requires you to hover over it to open. While that in itself isn’t all that annoying, it is when the object you want to use the item with is underneath the inventory screen. I would have preferred that the inventory screen was a separate screen like other games, or at least a pop up bar along the bottom of the screen instead of what it is. Overall, if that is my biggest complaint for the game play of The Breakout, then the game is doing just fine.

Aesthetics

I have always loved the aesthetics of most point and click adventure games, being much more like an interactive cartoon or comic then attempting for a realistic look. Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is no different, relying on a much more “hand drawn” look for the aesthetic. The game looks just as interesting as the sequel did when I played through that one, with no changes to the art style between the two stories. The animations of the characters need work, though, to make them move across the screen in a much more fluid way. In some cases, the models just feel like there is way too many missing frames in between their movements and that brings out a much more disjointed feel to how things move across the screen.

Where Edna and Harvey: The Breakout falters badly in the aesthetic department is in the translation. The voice acting is good and the actors get into their characters without going over the top, but in the actual dialogue there were some issues in the translation from the original German to English. The dialogue does feel broken and disjointed, to match some of the animations on the screen. For me, this just takes me out of the entire feeling of the story. I understand why there is a translation issue in these lower budget games, and considering that this was a university project it is still well done, but a bad translation breaks the narrative for me. I am also the type of guy that hates it when Nazis in a World War II movie speak English, so I may be nit picking here a wee bit.

Final Thoughts

Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is a solid point and click adventure game that has just a few issues, a decent story line, and solid game play. Being the original game in the series means most people will want to start here, but since the narrative does not connect the games together, it really doesn’t matter too much which game you begin with. The story progresses well, and has some nice twists and turns in store for you, with a fairly dark reveal for the main character. Game play elements are your tried and true point and click adventure mechanics, with puzzles that nether crippled you nor just handed you the solution. I did like the aesthetics for The Breakout, the look of the game has a nice, hand drawn feel to it while the voice acting does a decent job. The translation from German to English could get in your way from really enjoying the game as a whole, but if you can get over that then there is a solid adventure game here waiting for you. Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is available now on Steam.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

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How to Survive – A Review (XBLA)

2013/11/02

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Xbox 360 News, Xbox 360 Review

Zombies have become one of the gaming industries’ go-to villains these days. It seems like zombies have supplanted Nazis, aliens, and Communists as the number one thing to kill (again). Well, that brings us to EKO Studios and 505 Games new game on XBLA, How to Survive. With what boils down to be a game that is a mash up between Lost, Dead Island, and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, How to Survive is entertaining enough for the few short hours that it lasts to recommend to fans of the zombie genre. With an isometric view of the action, decent crafting system, and “need” bars to represent your body’s requirements, How to Survive comes out as a average yet solid zombie game in the great mass of zombie games that are available to you.

Story

How to Survive begins with you selecting one of three characters, each falling into the three generic archetypes for these types of games; ranged expert, melee expert, and tank. You survive a plane crash and wake up on a strange island, surrounded by corpses. The player then meets the first survivor, who starts to fill the player in with what is loose on these island; zombies. You are then tasked with located the parts and other survivors in order to get off the island with your brains intact. The rest of the story for How to Survive is pretty much just you, running around an island with unlimited amounts of zombies, trying to either collect items or talk to people to move onto the next island, with the ultimate goal to escape.

How to Survive starts you off with very little story, then proceeds to not build on that for the rest of the game. Part of what makes zombie games or other media so enthralling is that the zombie story line gives the developers and writers the chance to build great personal narratives for their characters. These personal narratives come from the fact that the zombie apocalypse is more of a slow burn catastrophe rather than something that has an intelligence behind it that is hellbent on destroying the characters. How to Survive does not take this into account and never really develops the players’ characters much more then someone who is driven to get the hell out of the area.

The only person in the game with any type of personality is Kovac, the oldest survivor on the islands that has developed a self help book from which the game gets its title. Voiced as a hardened Russian, Kovac helps the character through a series of tutorials that are scripted like reading a Zombie Survival Guide for Dummies. These guides are done in a very similar vein to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, giving out information without really taking itself too seriously. I, personally, liked the sense of humor of this character and these guides, but they did not add anything to the overall story line nor really feel like they belonged in the game at all. It was a nice attempt by the developers to get some humor into the game, but it would only appear in these sections and never carried over to the rest of the game.

Game Play

How to Survive falls into the twin stick, isometric shooter genre with most of its game play elements. The player controls the movement with the left stick and the aiming of the character with the right stick. This allows you to move in one direction and fire off rounds into another. It took me a little while to get used to it, but once you do it feels pretty good. You also have a sprint button to use when things get out of hand. You can only sprint for a short period of time before the bar runs out, but it is enough to get you out of most jams. Items that you have found can be used from the main screen if they are hot keyed and ready to go. You better give yourself some room, though, before you use that healing pack since it does take time for it to work.

Items can be found all over the islands as you progress through the game. Most of these items are materials that can be used in How to Survive’s crafting system to make better items, while others make the job much more manageable. Crafting will require certain materials, blue prints and work tables to complete, but these are easily located throughout the games, and the islands are fairly small to begin with, so walking between points doesn’t take too long. The crafting system works well to a point, but becomes redundant once you have crafted a solid weapon to kill zombies with. There isn’t any reason to make the bigger and badder guns in the game, when a trusty rifle will take care of most things with one, satisfying shot.

Other materials that are found help you survive the island, like bottles, fruit, and safe houses. These come into play with the character’s three needs: thirst, hunger, and sleep. You will have three bars near your health that will progressively decrease over time. During your forays into the wild, you will have to keep an eye out for wells, collect and cook food, then take naps in safe houses to keep up your strength. Nice idea, but like the crafting system, with a few points in the skill trees these become insignificant and forgettable. Whenever you do need to take a nap or get a drink, the resources are never too far off.

How to Survive also has a diurnal game play element that players need to be aware of. As night falls on the island, the tougher monsters come out to try to eat your face. These monsters look more like feral zombies then the other zombies on the island, and are much tougher and faster creatures. The good news is that these creatures fear the light, and you have a flashlight. Keeping them at bay with the flashlight, then using a ranged weapon will take care of these monsters and allow you to continue to forage at night.

Aesthetic

How to Survive is set up with an isometric view, which can be troubling at times. You will loose your player behind certain landscape items, and if you are surrounded, it becomes a headache to see what you are doing or where to run to safety. The character and zombie designs are very generic, and the special zombies seem to be borrowed from other games. There are fat zombies that will blow up ala Left 4 Dead, and the special zombies that come out at night remind me of some creatures from the Resident Evil series.

The music and voice acting does the job without winning my heart, nor making me reach for the mute button. Kovac is voice acted a little over the top for my taste, but it fits in with the aesthetic that the developers were aiming for with the survival guide humor. When it comes to the sound design, this switch in atmosphere just doesn’t quite work out for me, and feels out of place with the rest of the tone. I think I would have preferred the developers to choose one path for their voice acting and story tone, then try to ride the line between humorous and serious.

Final Thoughts

How to Survive is a fun, decent game that will only be in your mind for a few, short hours then become forgettable once you finish it. With so many zombie games on the market, it just makes it hard to justify spending $15 on this game, unless you are an absolute fan of the genre and need a new zombie game. For $5 more, I would recommend buying State of Decay over How to Survive, both for the better story line and the refined game play elements. It’s not that How to Survive is a bad game, far from it, it’s that it is just not a great game. How to Survive falls into the mediocre pile for me, mostly for it’s lack of a compelling story line and it’s half-hearted attempt at humor. If you absolutely need a new zombie game and can’t wait until Dead Rising 3, then pick up How to Survive, it will entertain you for a few hours. How to Survive is available now on XBLA for $15.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

Salvation Prophecy – A Review (PC)

2013/10/31

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Firedance Games has released a new indie space adventure game, named Salvation Prophecy. In Salvation Prophecy, you will lead one of four galactic races towards total conquest of the galaxy through a series of different styles of battles. Game play can be broken up into three genres: third person shooter, ship to ship battles, and strategy. The issue with Salvation Prophecy is that the game feels disjointed and comes off as trying to do too much with what it has. I would have rather seen the developers go with a single game play focus and truly fine tune that aspect, then give us three almost incomplete styles of game play.

Story

The story of Salvation Prophecy evolves over the progress of the game, but begins with the player choosing one of four races to control: Salvation, Drone, Free Nations, or Wyr. Each faction has their own style of combat and story elements. The Salvation faction is a race of mutated humans, fanatically devoted to a prophecy while the Drones are automatons that have rebelled against their former masters. There is a tint of humor that is generated in your conversations with other members of your faction, especially in the Wyr campaign. While I love a game that can make me laugh, it feels a little more than out of place in Salvation Prophecy. I can’t really tell what tone the developers were going for in this game at times, and that does affect the story elements for me. Later in the game, missions do pop up that allows you to entire worm holes to explore alien worlds and finding runes that tell about the games titled Salvation Prophecy. These will lead to a larger spike in both pacing and difficulty as the game heads towards its conclusion.

What I did like about the story for Salvation Prophecy was that it took an unexpected turn during the last portion of the game. The player must change focus from conquering the other factions of the galaxy, to preventing a fifth group from total conquest. Salvation Prophecy seemed to pick up the pace once this fifth faction enters the game, it is unfortunate that the story and game play that leads up to this event is just mediocre at best.

Game Play

Salvation Prophecy’s game play switches between three different styles: third person shooter, ship to ship space battles, and the strategy component. You begin the game as a lowly grunt of your chosen faction, entering into boot camp, aka the tutorial level. You are then released into the greater struggle for galactic dominance by invading other planets that are controlled by one of the other three factions. On these planets, you participate in a infantry level battle against your foe, using ranged and melee attacks to wipe out your enemy. My first impression of these battles was that it felt like you had personal control over a single unit of a real time strategy game. However, the game play of these battles really boiled down to you not rushing in and taking on too many opponents. The battles to evolve over the course of the game, allowing for more units to enter the battlefield, but I never got the feeling that my presence there was making much of a difference. I could just hang back a bit and blend in with my fellow soldiers to take everything down.

The space battles offer a little more thrill, but even those end up being simplistic once you figure out your limits. I was truly hoping for some epic dogfights, dodging and chasing enemy aircraft amid larger space cruisers, battling it out for supremacy. However, the artificial intelligence of the enemy space craft won’t dogfight with you, they will simply turn tale and run if you engage them. That leaves the space battles being more about chasing down running enemies, then engaging them in epic combat. In a similar vein to the ground battles, the space battles only become difficult if you get in over your head, so if you pay attention you will not loose your ship, or your life.

The last game play element is the commander stage, a strategy style element that allows you to conquer worlds and create missions while building up your own troops and resources. While this sounds exciting, my main complaint here is that I never once felt that any decision I made had any lasting effect. Every time I would conquer an enemy world, they would almost automatically retake it, giving me the feeling that I had no way to defend myself, nor make any real progress to the game. Resources come in so fast that you will never run out of them, but regardless of how many troops you have or send out, you will never really feel like you are making much progress.

Aesthetics

Like most indie games, Salvation Prophecy did not have a lot of budget for the most up to date graphics or sound, but what is here works for the game just fine. The graphics are not gorgeous in any sense of the word, but do get the job done. The space battles are interesting to look at, and the ship models do make it easier to tell friend from foe during these battles. The design of the four factions are interesting enough, even though the animations for the models don’t flow as well as I would have liked. My biggest complaint for the graphics is the melee animation for the models, due to the fact that I never get any indication whether or not a melee strike actually hit a person. I would have loved to have some sort of hit animation to help give me an indication whether or not I hit, instead of just having to watch the enemies’ life meter decrease.

The sound and music do a decent job in telling the story well enough, without being a soundtrack that I want to listen to over and over again. The voice actors do a good job in emoting their characters without being too over the top, except when called for by the story’s strange sense of humor. Really, all I can say is that the sound does the job without getting in the way of the game, nor really being memorable.

Final Thoughts

Salvation Prophecy is a game that tries to do a lot of things in one game, but unfortunately does not do a single one of them well enough to become a great game. The battles are interesting to be a part of, but never really gives the player a feeling of actually contributing to the overall outcome. All you have to do is play it safe and watch where you run, and you will be fine. The commander section of the game is a nice change of pace, but again, the player never truly feels like she is impacting the overall conquest of the galaxy since your colonies are overrun just as quickly as you set them up. Salvation Prophecy’s strength is in its price point, set at about $20. For that price, you do get a decent space adventure game that can be fun if you overlook some of the details. All in all, Salvation Prophecy does a decent job, without really excelling at anything.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

Rise of Venice – A Review (PC)

2013/10/20

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Kalypso Media’s newest political/mercantile simulation game has made its way into our hands, and it is a solid experience. Rise of Venice is set during the height of the Italian Renaissance and follows a young man’s quest for fame, power and wealth. While I love history and historical-based games, an economic/political simulator set during the Italian Renaissance wouldn’t be one of my first choices of genres to sit down and play for hours on end. I was pleased to find that Rise of Venice does a great job in making these aspects of Renaissance life both interesting and fun to play, if you can make it past the steep initial learning curve.

Story

The story is one of family. The family patriarch is on his death bed and summons you to give you his last wishes. He persuades you to leave the life of a mercenary and to finish the dream that he saw for his family, to become a powerful mercantile force in Venice. Your patriarch gives you enough gold and a ship to begin your business, then leaves the rest in your hands. Other members of your family pop up during the game to help you out by giving advice, or taking control of some of the ships in your ever growing fleet. Your goal is simply to become rich and powerful, in one of the richest and most powerful cities in the world during this period.

The story progresses through cut scenes and in game conversations with family members. As you become richer and more powerful, you must deal with more complicated situations and make tough political and economic decisions to better your family. Your progression through the story line depends on your political favor in Venice, thus decisions you make in game along with deals you complete may stall your progression if the Venetian council deems you not worthy enough of a new rank. The story moves along well at times, as long as you are making the right deals, both politically and economically. It is also filled with enough intrigue and backstabbing to make it interesting, without being too much. While it won’t bring you to tears like other games on the market, the story here does a very solid job in bringing the intrigue of Renaissance Venice to life.

Game Play

The game play for Rise of Venice breaks down to you making the right trade decisions to earn the most money in order to climb up the political ladder in Venice. The beginning of the game has you making deals with other cities, such as Genoa, Rome, and Tripoli, with one ship so managing your manual deals is a fairly easy. As the game progresses and the amount needed to reach the next political level increases, you must set up trade routes among your fleet of ships, and that is where the rise in difficulty comes in. Setting these trade routes is nothing short of frustrating and required an outside source for me to understand. However, once understood, trading becomes much easier and more efficient way to make money automatically. I will echo the sentiment on Kalypso Media’s forums and say that a more in depth tutorial on setting up trade routes in needed in game.

What makes Rise of Venice much more then just a trading simulator is the political intrigue that is hidden within each port. Rivals will bribe officials to deny you access to ports, while wars between Venice and other cities will make it nearly impossible to trade with Venice’s enemies unless you bribe the officials yourself. Political maneuvering, bribery, and all out naval warfare occur throughout the game, adding much more to Rise of Venice then just sliders of prices and goods.

Cities will build up in power and in size depending on how much wealth they will gain by your decisions. Disasters, war, and disease will also plague these ports and will hinder your progress, or determine what goods are needed by the cities. Combat in Rise of Venice is unavoidable, since you are bound to make some enemies by the decisions you make. Combat is done at a frantic pace that does not allow any time to develop strategies or tactics to defend yourself. For me, combat was very tedious and mind numbing due to the artificial intelligence deciding to spin in circles most of the time. The good news is that combat, for the most part, can be simulated but the game does force your hand in certain situations.

Aesthetics

Rise of Venice looks good, very good. From the glassy reflection off of the water to the sea life barely visible under the waves, Rise of Venice is a joy to look at. The aesthetic is bright and sunny, which really lends to a Mediterranean feel to the entire game. You can zoom completely out to see the entire map of the area and just watch the symbols of ships cross from port to port, or you can zoom in and really see the detail of the game. Cities are alive with bustling crowds, shipyards, and surrounding forests. Sound effects help add to this feeling of nautical life, with bells whenever you enter a port and the sounds of crashing waves as your ship crosses the Mediterranean. Voice acting is good in Rise of Venice, not fantastic. The actors do a good job in reading the lines and portraying characters, but without an Italian accent. It’s a shame that a game about Renaissance Italy did not go as far as to hire actors that could do a decent Italian accent.

Final Thoughts

Rise of Venice is a strong game about political intrigue and mercantilism during the Italian Renaissance. Kalypso Media does a good job in bringing this world to life with a very pleasing aesthetic and danger at every port. Rise of Venice does have a steep learning curve with some of the game play mechanics, such as automatic trade routes, and can stall at times if you do not have enough wealth or power to reach the next level. However, if you stick with Rise of Venice, you will be pleasantly surprised at the depth of intrigue and bargaining that can be done in the game. Rise of Venice is a solid, historical game that players will really enjoy. Rise of Venice is available now.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]
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Takedown: Red Sabre – A Second Look Review (PC)

2013/10/10

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Developer Serellan has released a new take on the realistic, tactical squad based shooter named Takedown: Red Sabre. Serellan’s focus was to create a game where the player had to think rather than react. In a game where one shot can end everything, looking around corners and planning your routes makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, the actual execution in Takedown: Red Sabre is less than spectacular. In its current state, Takedown: Red Sabre is a complete mess with so many issues that absolutely ruins the feel of the game.

Story

Mission previews is pretty much the only story you get in Takedown: Red Sabre. Before each mission, you are briefed as to where you are going, what the objectives are and you get to choose an insertion point. You then enter the hot spot with a squad of three and try to fulfill the objectives of the job. That is the entirety of the story line here; mission profile, execution, rinse, repeat. There is no communication during the actual missions between you and headquarters, or even between you and your squad mates for that matter. Games without a story line can usually survive by having fantastic game play elements that really allows the player to look past that omission. The problem here is that Takedown: Red Sabre has some of the worst game play that I’ve seen in a long time.

Game Play

First, Takedown: Red Sabre feels unfinished from the start. The menus do not feel complete, and in many cases don’t even let you know that the choices you are making for the load outs are even being saved. Another aspect of the game that feels unfinished is the artificial intelligence of the other characters. A game that calls itself a realistic, tactical squad shooter had better put into place some AI that can act the part. The enemies switch between being completely useless with a weapon, or being a crack shot from hundreds of feet away. Your squad mates don’t fare any better, as they seem to be incapable at times from even seeing an enemy as they come up from behind. Realism doesn’t just mean that one shot can kill you, it means that the environments and individuals in the game world act as they would in real life, and that just isn’t happening in Takedown: Red Sabre.

Another aspect of the game play that really bothered me was the actual game play. Since the ai of your squad mates is so bad, the only tools left for you to complete your mission was to walk very slowly throughout the entire level, and lean to look around corners. You can’t breach closed doors, nor issue commands to your team to help clear rooms or check the corners as you enter. You literally have no command over anything. There is also no HUD to speak of, except for a countdown mission timer, and your weapon with its ammunition in the lower right corner. You will have no markers on the screen to tell you where objectives are, nor any caller available to help you find said objectives. Your only choice is to search the entire map, room by room, killing enemies as you go. The good news is that there are quite a few different maps and missions available in the single player campaign, but they ultimately end up just being corridors with doors at the end of them.

Takedown: Red Sabre also has a co-op option and multiplayer to go with the single player campaign. Unfortunately, I could not connect to any games online to check out how the multiplayer actually worked. That is very disappointing to me, because the multiplayer had a chance to be very interesting, and might have been actually fun. However, I may never actually see that since there is something that prevents me from connecting to the online games. At the end of the day, that really says everything about my experience with Takedown: Red Sabre, it’s a nice try but the bugs are just too numerous to ignore.

Aesthetics

Takedown: Red Sabre looks dated, and I mean very dated. My first thought when I loaded up Takedown: Red Sabre was how much it looked like Counterstrike Source, and that’s not a good comparison. Counterstrike Source came out in 2004, and this is a 2013 game. While I am one that says graphics does not make the game, the game needs to at least look good. Video games are a visual medium, and when the first impression of a game is that it looks like something that is nine years old, you’ve missed the mark. Corridors all look the same, the rag doll physics are absolutely laughable, and the textures looks like they are only slightly more defined then Counterstrike Source. If the game had a unique aesthetic, that can be at least interesting to look at despite the dated graphics, but this game tried so hard to be realistic, these graphics just don’t do Takedown: Red Sabre any favors.

Voice acting in Takedown: Red Sabre is minimal at best. You have someone reading the mission briefing to you, then you get the occasional chatter during game play, and that is it. It is done minimally and serves the job at hand. Considering how bad the ai and graphics are, I really didn’t pay any attention to the music nor the voice overs that much. Sir Laurence Olivier couldn’t save this production from itself.

Final Thoughts

Takedown: Red Sabre had high hopes and ambitions, but ultimately fails horribly due to the developers execution of the plan. Developing a realistic, tactical shooter is a great idea for today’s market, but the developer has to make sure that there is more realism then just having guns kill you with one shot. The artificial intelligence has to react realistically to the situations in game, and you absolutely have to be able to give your squad orders to complete your objectives. Both of these features are completely missing in Takedown: Red Sabre. The menus are clunky and don’t give you any indication on whether or not your choices have been saved, and I hear there is a multiplayer aspect to this game, but I couldn’t play it. The graphics remind me of a nine year old game, and the game play is just not exciting to keep me coming back. Do yourself a favor, if you absolutely need to play a squad based tactical shooter, find yourself a Rainbow Six game, you will have much more fun.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”1″ ]
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Haunted Hollywood Sports 2013 Review

2013/10/06

Judgeman

Geek News, Halloween, Haunted Attraction Review, News, Reviews

About a week ago, my wife and I were able to head out to Bellflower, CA and attend the preview night for this year’s Haunted Hollywood Sports haunted event. Haunted theme parks and attractions have been on the rise in recent years as businesses are seeing the money that can be made during October. Having visited most of the big name Halloween events over the years, I must say that Haunted Hollywood Sports offers up one of the most unique experiences I have ever been to.

We began our evening within Club Crimson, Haunted Hollywood Sports 18 and over lounge. There we were separated into groups to head out into the park. We were able to visit one maze, one killhouse and walked through one scarezone to get a feeling for the park as a whole. On the way to the first maze, we walked through the Carnival of the Damned scarezone.

Carnival of the Damned

Like most theme parks out there, Haunted Hollywood Sports recognizes that clowns are just damn creepy, therefore one of their scare zones is based on the concept of an evil carnival. What the scare zone lacked in pure production value in the sets and budget, it more than made up for in its cast of monsters and performers. The first indication that we were entering the scare zone was the appearance of a contortionist performing a spider walk. This contortionist was able to get the group into the haunted house mindset just by “walking” past us, creeping people out. The other performers followed up with an equally good show, with the ringmaster and a “doll” being standouts. My wife really loved the ringmaster’s performance, both in the scare zone and while we were waiting to get into the first maze.

Venom

The only walk-though maze we saw on our journey was Venom. Themed as a journey into an ancient temple, Venom had some of the most unique and unnerving features that either my wife or me have ever seen in a maze. I am used to entering these mazes in large groups, which has a tendency to ruin the immersion of the maze and takes away from my experience. We entered this maze in groups of four, so we were all alone in our progress and did not get any previews of what was coming by seeing it happen to someone else. The maze was incredibly tight fit for me to proceed through, which increased my tension. For my wife, who suffers from claustrophobia, it was almost too much to bear. For most of the maze, I had to progress almost by feel due to the dim lighting, and had no idea where the talent would come out at me from. The coup de grace, though, was the exit from the maze. Coming up to a small crack in the wall between two large, inflatable balloons, I realized that the only way out was to squeeze between the two balloons and proceed through to the exit. While I was uncomfortable with the tight fit, my wife was truly started to feel the panic set in.

While I can nitpick about theme or other parts, what matters to me the most is whether or not I had fun, and this maze was a blast for both me and my wife. While the maze had a couple of good startles to be found, it was the slow burn of the claustrophobic environments that really made the maze for me. Forcing us to squeeze between two inflatable walls (and for such a distance) to get out was truly brilliant and was something that my wife and I felt made the entire maze enjoyable and memorable.

Voodoo Killhouse

Our last stop for the evening was going to the the Voodoo Killhouse, which was the one stop I was looking forward to all night. Haunted Hollywood Sports is unique in this type of attraction. Attendees to the park enter the killhouse in groups of ten, don a paintball mask and pick up a semi-automatic pellet gun. The participants are then lead through the maze, where they can fire their pellet guns at the onslaught of zombies that are coming towards the group. I had heard about this attraction, and was incredibly excited to see how this was pulled off.

My wife and I were put into the last group of the night. We grabbed our face masks, weapons, and then after a short tutorial on gun etiquette, we were off to shoot zombies. Initially, my gun was jammed, so I watched as my wife ran through the maze shooting zombies. The zombies, who are employees in protective gear and costumes, really acted the part. I saw the zombies react to weapons fire and hits, with some going down and not getting back up. I was able to clear the jam in my gun about half way through the maze, and that’s when the fun really started for me. In one moment, I walked through a door to see a zombie pop up on my left. Instinctively, I raised my weapon and fired three rounds into the zombie, and saw him stumble backwards. I was sold in that moment about this attraction and can’t wait to do it again.

When we exited the killhouse, my wife and I talked about it like little kids on Christmas morning. The killhouse isn’t about scares like the walk-through maze is, but about giving you a unique experience that you cannot get anywhere else. You do feel like you are being assaulted by a relentless wave of zombies, that you can actually shoot at with a pellet gun. You really need to try this, it’s awesome.

*Editor’s Addendum – GamingShogun here, folks, wanting to tell you that I was able to personally-attend this attraction on Oct. 5th and was able to check out the rest of their experiences. The two shooting range-style attractions were excellent, with my favorite being the one where you are trying to defend a “nuclear football” from swarming hordes of zombies. There is a cool sideshow which runs three times a night featuring several of the park’s sliding monsters as well as some cool magic from Naathan Phan, who was a contestant on America’s Got Talent. Additionally, the two other killhouse attractions were excellent – even the zombie killhouse which used IR rifles instead of airsoft ones. My biggest issues with the park are that it needs to be a bit more “trip-conscious”, as there were a couple times that I tripped over a poorly-lit step, etc. Aside from that, I had an excellent time and can’t wait to return!

Final Thoughts

Like video games, the ultimate purpose of a theme park is to have fun. I think people have a tendency to nit pick these types of events, especially now that these are becoming much more frequent and expensive to get in. Haunted Hollywood Sports offers the killhouse attractions, which you cannot experience anywhere else, and that makes the park something to experience. When it all comes down to it, my wife and I had tons of fun at the Haunted Hollywood Sports event and I would head back to it in a second. You can find ticket information and more over at Haunted Hollywood Sports official website.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″ ]
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Adventure Park Preview (PC)

2013/09/24

Judgeman

News, Previews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

German developer B Alive has let us preview their upcoming theme park simulator, titled Adventure Park. Like most theme park simulators on the market, Adventure Park allows you to build up, maintain, and improve your theme park to attract guests, but with a decidedly more realistic aesthetic and the freedom to create the roller coasters the way you want. What was really nice about my time with Adventure Park was the noticeable lack of bugs that most preview copies come infested with. The individuals at B Alive have made sure that their game will be running smoothly once it hits the market.

The campaign for Adventure Park starts off rather predictably, with you taking over an old, dilapidated theme park and a tutorial to get you started. The tutorial works well enough to walk you through the user interface and the first steps to get you up and running. You have the chance to get some of the rides up and running while hiring your first few workers to help maintain the grounds and the rides before guests start to pile in and give you their feedback.

You begin the game with the ability to select a few rides and decorations to get your theme park started. The other items become unlocked as you hit certain milestones in the life of your park. What I really loved about Adventure Park was the detail that the developers went into for you to customize your park. Each ride can be customized and upgraded to give your guests more of an adrenaline rush, while each of your decorations can be colored to match the rest of your park. I was able to divide Swabbyland (my theme park’s name) into four separate, color coded lands just by coloring my decorations in similar tones.

When you place a roller coaster into your park, you get to select where the station house will be placed then begin building your coaster, section by section. This really gives you some customization on how your coaster will look as well as how it blends into the aesthetics of your park. Also, this seems to factor into whether or not your guests enjoy the ride – very important as the whole reason you are building this theme park is to entertain your guests and make money.

Adventure Park allows you to control every detail about your park, from the entry fee, where you place your workers, and the cost of your food. You can monitor your guests entertainment levels by opening up a window that shows ever guest in your park. You can also glance at your guests’ desires visually as they will have icons above their heads about what they want most. The user interface for Adventure Park is rather intuitive and the player can bring up any menu they want, once they figure out what the icons are.

The aesthetics for Adventure Land is much more realistic than other theme park simulators that I’ve played in the past. The graphics themselves were solid and did a very decent job in presenting Adventure Park. The downside here is that you will spend most of your time zoomed out to see the park as a whole, instead up close up to appreciate the graphics and lighting.

Adventure Park feels like a solid entry into the theme park simulator market when it releases sometime this quarter. If you are a fan of the genre, keep a close eye on this game as it nears release, it should be entertaining enough to give it a shot.

Huntsman: The Orphanage – A Preview (PC)

2013/09/22

Judgeman

News, Previews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

With October right around the corner and us at Gamingshogun loving a good scare, I was tasked with previewing the upcoming game from Shadowshifters called Huntsman: The Orphanage. Being advertised as “more story then gory”, Huntsman: The Orphanage is a highly-detailed and deep story centered around an abandoned orphanage. Huntsman: The Orphanage is another example of how great the Steam Greenlight community can be in bring fantastic indie games to our attention in a world of high budgets and triple-a dominance. The copy of Huntsman: The Orphanage that I was lucky enough to play is a beta version of the game, with some features and story arcs not in place yet, so glitches and holes in the story were expected.

Huntsman: The Orphanage is set in the present, with you sitting outside of the site of the abandoned Grimhaven Orphanage. As the legend goes, on June 17th, 1898, the orphans of Grimhaven disappeared without a trace. However, stories have circulated that a mysterious figure known only as the “Huntsman” is responsible for the complete disappearance of the individuals living in the Grimhaven Orphanage. You set out to discover the truth about Grimhaven, and discover that you, yourself are being hunted by the Huntsman. Now, your only hope of continued existence is to follow the stories and the clues to bring the missing children’s souls back before the Huntsman catches you. Armed only with a cell phone, that doubles as a flashlight and a way for the orphans to communicate with you, you enter Grimhaven.

I must admit, that story alone was enough to sell me on trying out Huntsman: The Orphanage, but it was the execution of how Shadowshifters tells this story that really wins me over. Huntsman: The Orphanage isn’t about the gore or violence, it’s about that subtle scare and that eerie noise just out of reach of your light. You have no recourse for violence in Huntsman: The Orphanage; no weapons, fighting skills, or tactics except to run. The only item you have is your cell phone, which is the sole source of light in the orphanage, but it also allows the spirits to communicate to you. As you walk through the buildings and fields, ghostly images will contact you through the cell phone to give you their demands about what items they need for you to recover and set them free. These items must be placed on the orphans’ graves in order to complete the game.

Controls for Huntsman: The Orphanage are very minimal and straight forward. You have your movement keys, flashlight, and interact button. As you discover portraits of the past caretakers and workers of the orphanage, you will listen to these individuals recount their stories of their time at Grimhaven, including the fateful night of June 17th, 1898. While these stories are acted incredibly well, they can run on the long side. Huntsman: The Orphanage is all about the story telling and, boy, some of these portraits will tell you a story! Get used to sitting back and doing nothing but listening when you interact with a few of them. Since this was a beta release, some of the portraits were not working, nor did I have access to all the areas in game. However, what was there was fantastically acted and told an intriguing story that I will love to see to the end.

The aesthetics of Huntsman: The Orphanage another area where this game shines. The environments are dark and in disrepair, with an aesthetic that is just unnerving enough to put you on edge. Walking through the dark is bad enough, walking through the dark with prosthetic limbs hanging from the ceiling is much, much worse. The actors that portray the ghosts also have that eerie quality to them, being portrayed with jittery movements and that slightly off look to them that you see in Japanese ghost stories. The sound and music is haunting and truly fits the aesthetic perfectly. I felt on edge the moment the game loaded and that feeling just grew as the game progressed. For fans of a horror games that is all story and atmosphere, this is one to watch.

Huntsman: The Orphanage is available now for early access through Steam. I will be keeping a close eye on the release of this game and can’t wait until it is finished.

Darkout – A Preview (PC)

2013/09/18

Judgeman

News, Previews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

Desura games has invited us to participate in the beta test for their upcoming science fiction sandbox game, Darkout. For those of you out there that have played Terraria, you will immediately notice that Darkout borrows a tiny bit of its game play from Re-logic’s game. Alright, let’s be honest here – Darkout followed Terraria down a dark ally, hit it over the head, and ransacked Terraria’s pockets for all of its game play. The major difference between Darkout and Terraria, though, is that Darkout looks fantastic. Being thatDarkout is still in open Beta, we did experience some glitches and game breaks, but these were fixed later with the recent patch. Darkout is still under development, so anything we say here could change during the course of the beta – and we hope it does!

You begin Darkout being stranded on a strange planet, having only the meager supplies in your pod to get you started. You must immediately set out to build s shelter to survive the hostile environments. Darkout, like Terraria, does not have a narrative story line that the player will follow through the game. Instead, its one that you create along the way. Your character has no on screen personality, only what you have given her in your mind. The character isn’t customizable at all at this point, but Desura has said that they are working on different skins for multiplayer gaming.

My frustrations with Darkout began immediately. Having never played the game, I decided to run the tutorial to figure out how the game works. Following the on screen instructions via a text box, I was able to collect my immediate supplies and move to build my new home. During this process, I was constantly attacked and killed by these shadow creatures that will appear out of thin air. I couldn’t even open my inventory or crafting menu without being rampaged by these shadow creatures. Struggling against this tide of small, dark creatures, I was able to finally build my rudimentary wood shelter, complete with doors to keep out the evil. Except that the tutorial never told me how to close my bloody doors. Right click? No, that is my axe. Left click? No, that was my torch. Chomp, chomp. There go my brains again, damn shadow creatures. Shift-click? Oh, there you are, would be nice if that is mentioned anywhere in the game!

The tutorial fails on so many levels that it is a very frustrating experience. Items cannot be moved once you put them down in your shelter, or they might be able to be, I really don’t know. I couldn’t find any mention of what the controls were to accomplish this. The menus to help you figure all this out are even less than useful, because Desura Games is using pictures of how you do things, and not any description or mention of the word “shift” when I want to interact with something.

A big positive for Darkout and Desura Games is that Darkout looks amazing, especially in comparison to Terraria. Where as Terreria went with a retro, 8-bit look to its world, Darkout features fully fleshed out character models and environments. Darkout also sports some fancy lighting effects throughout the game – from glowing creatures, fauna that shimmers in the background, or the way your torch looks underground. This game is beautiful. Its an absolute shame that, in its current state, Darkout was much more of a negative experience then it really needed to be.

Desura Games has been taking a lot of feedback from the community and have been working on making Darkout the best game they can. For me, however, games like Darkout suffer from being compared to the original game that spawned them. In this case, would I rather be playing Darkout, or Terraria? I am hoping that the developers can get Darkout onto a solid path for release, because the game is gorgeous to look at. However, Darkout still needs some serious work in the tutorial stages of the game. Learning to play a game like Darkout via trial and error is in no way a fun time. Of course, since this is still a beta version, all of this can change before release. I am hoping so, because Darkout can be worth your time if it works. You can follow Darkout’s development through Steam Greenlight.

Open Beta Trailer (June 2013)