Little Inferno

Little inferno was released in late 2012, it's developed by 'Tomorrow Corporation' and features work by Kyle Gabler, the same artist and musician from World of Goo - To the extent where many people, myself included, just sort of logically came to the conclusion that this is a sequel by the same people.

Unlike World of Goo, Little Inferno didn't achieve critical acclaim, nor is it going to anytime soon.
It's a bizarre little thing which plays similar to many odd flash games of the past, and sort of actually reminds me of the 'desktop destroyer' program I used to mess around with as a child (the one where you can take a chainsaw to your desktop and stuff).
Majority of Little Inferno is set infront of a fireplace, and 'Gameplay' is based around purchasing stuff for coins, waiting around for it to arrive, and then setting it on fire - upon which it'll drop more coins than it was purchased for, its a vicious cycle, buy, burn, buy , burn, yet is oddly satisfying for an hour or two, some items have unique effects when burned, some items explode, others get up and leave, some spawn more items.

There are also puzzles to figure out, in the form of 'combinations', essentially a list of 100 combos with hints as to what they consist of, for example, 'Poker Hand' combo is achieved by burning both a Hand and some poker cards at the same time. These vary in complexity and obscurity, with certain combinations making borderline no sense (to me at least).

Graphically, the game looks wonderful, the fire effects are very pretty, and item descriptions/animations are entertaining. Similarly, the music is pretty good for the few short instances where it stirs up, the music sounds very World of Goo though, and often you'll wish you were playing that instead.

The story does sort of progress, but it's really not worth the payoff, the final segment could easily just not exist and nobody would be any worse for it.

Verdict:
Little Inferno was pretty disappointing overall, yet setting things on fire for a couple of hours is oddly satisfying, Its in the Humble Bundle right now, and for the price of 'what you want'? its probably worth it, but the regular asking price of £7 is absurd.

Approximate Game Length :  3 Hours
Actual Worth / Steam Price:  £2 / £7 = 0.14
Actual Worth / Humble Price: £2 / £PWYW = Sure, why not.
Should you play it : Meh, give it a go if you stumble upon it, it's nothing too great though.
Rating: 2/5

https://www.humblebundle.com/
Go grab the humble bundle! You get Hotline Miami if you beat the average (and that game is fucking sweet) or you can just pay something minimal and a copy of this and Dear Esther (with some other meh games tacked on)
ps. Awesomenauts is fucking terrible. Just putting that out there.

Rotastic

'Rotastic' , Released in October 2012 for PSN, XBLA and Steam, I can see where they were going with the name, but if im honest, I can only think of Rotisserie chicken when I see the name 'Rotastic'

The gameplay here is based around rotating around pivots, and im sure i've played another game like it, but I cant for the life of me think where i've seen this game concept before.
I got up to world 5 during my half an hour playthrough, that's about half the game I might add since there are only 8 worlds.

Levels are split roughly into 'Collect the Gems', 'Break the crates' (which oddly turns the game into 'breakout' of some form), 'Survive' and 'Duels'.
Pretty much all of the level types play out exactly the same, hookshot onto pivot points and use centrifugal force to fly your way around the level to pickup/dodge shit, there are tricks and little maneuveurs you can do to boost your points, but honestly most of them just reward you for playing the game normally.
The Dueling/Battle mode however is a little more interesting, this still essentially the same gem collecting game as before, but now there are between 2-4 players on the field, and crossing other's ropes will allow you to cut them - its equal parts collection and trying not to be caught out and is actually pretty good - of my experience with the game, the small multiplayer bits were the best and so I would presume that local 4 player would be pretty good.

Graphics and sound are pretty terrible, the art is just about good enough to pass for this sort of game, but many of the levels are incredibly dull looking. The music was horrible, some shitty flute track which seemed to loop every 10 seconds.

I'd also like to add that the game crashed on me twice in the 30 ish minutes I spent playing. Which is less than ideal.

Verdict:
Honestly, im surprised they managed to get released on XBLA/PSN/Steam, it doesn't really seem much more fleshed out that some flash games out there, and for the most part, its not even particularly fun.
I wouldn't waste time with this unless you have 3 friends onhand to give the 4 player local multiplayer a go.

Approximate Game Length :  <2hrs
Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £1 / £8 (Steam) = 0.125
Should you play it : Nope, Barely worth the 450mb bandwidth allocated towards downloading it, and certainly not worth £8 , though perhaps give it a download should you have some friends come over, it might see 15 minutes of play, maybe.
Rating: 1/5

http://store.steampowered.com/app/204580/

Save the Date

Save the Date is a unique twist on the Visual Novel genre, it is a short indie game from 'Paper Dino Software'

Save the Date is a game about saving your date, funny that.
You take your girlfriend out for dinner, and... bad things happen.
Its very hard to talk about the game without spoiling the twist which makes it so good, but know simply, that is IS good.

The less you know, the better your experience will be.

Approximate Game Length :  30 mins
Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £3 / £FREE = 10
Should you play it : Totally, this game is awesome, and the twists are pretty unique.
Rating: 5/5

DOWNLOAD FROM HERE (17mb) - http://paperdino.com/games/save-the-date/

Mirror just in case the dev website blows up - http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/savethedate-1.0-win.zip



ps. Cant find the 'Good Ending(s)?' - Read here when you've given up -

Element4l

Element4l is going to ride under the radar for a long time, but then eventually, it's going to be included in a sale of some sort, and this game is going to EXPLODE and join the list of indie classics - you heard it here first.

The game is essentially a physics based platformer, you control a being that can morph into 4 elements - Ice, Fire, Stone and Air - warping into them drains a little energy but provides you with the strengths of that element, the game basically builds around this by setting up levels to force you to master the elements to be able to progress.
Air makes you float upwards and be carried by winds
Stone thrusts you downwards
Ice makes you slide around
Fire throws you sideways and lets you bounce off lava.

There are 16 levels, ranging from 'childsplay' act1, to 'leetskills' act4, you'll be able to tell for yourself when the difficulty is ramping up, because the playtime counter shown at the end of each stage will eventually start entering 4 digits (and it shows in seconds), that and the swearing - Infact, mostly the swearing. I was actually shocked at how hard the game was, im usually not the kind to get phased easily by skill based games, but my god the last few levels reminded me of sections of Super Meat Boy.
Element4l runs just around 2.5 hours maybe for a first playthrough, but it will vary depending on personal skill, and whether or not you succumb to 'easy mode'.

The artstyle is minimalistic yet beautiful, im a big fan of the silhouette artstyle provided by games like Limbo and Contre Jour, but Element4l is so very polished, id say it's the best looking game that uses this style. Quotes and little random pieces of text pop up throughout the game, occasionally hints, sometimes things which are slightly more random (the message referencing BMX rider 'Danny Way's great wall of china jump comes to mind).

Music is also fantastic, its a weird style but it reminds me a ton of Brian Transeau (BT)'s more chilled out works, and im totally okay with this. A kind of melodic electronica style, which is pleasant to listen to and adds to the overall mood of the game.

Verdict:
Element4l is a true gem, it does everything right - the graphics are lovely, the soundtrack is amazing, the controls are tight, the difficulty is challenging (and has a good curve), the levels are well thought out... I really enjoyed this game, and i'm sure most of you will too.

Approximate Game Length :  2-3 Hours
Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £15 / £7 (Steam) = 2.14
(also, free soundtrack with the game)
Should you play it : Yes! Fantastic little gem in a sea of pretentious indie shite.
Rating: 5/5

http://store.steampowered.com/app/235820 - Steam market page
http://mindtree.bandcamp.com/album/element4l-original-soundtrack - Soundtrack

Phoenix Wright 5 Hype Train

Klavier, Edgeworth, Badass Apollo, Winston Payne, Pearl Fey and Trucy Wright confirmed for brawl.

Im so glad to see Pearl and Trucy reappear, something tells me we'll be seeing Maya again as well, and while im kind of upset that Phoenix has a new assistant instead of using one of these two, its nice to see that they will at the very least be in the game. 

One can only hope we'll get some nicely remixed theme songs as well? Child of Magic? Please?

People so far unaccounted for: Larry Butz, Maya, Ema Skye, Gumshoe? , Oldbag, Von Karma's , Maggey Byrde , Lotta Hart...

See the new trailer for yourself here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxiF0Jt0ywo&feature=player_detailpage#t=164s

Prison Architect (Alpha 10) Preview

So I've been hearing some good stuff about this game, its from British studio 'Introversion software', best known for Darwinia and DEFCON and Uplink (all pretty good games).

Prison Architect is a bit of a curveball from them, as whilst most of their previous games have an emphasis on real time combat, Prison Architect feels and plays like a 'Bullfrog' game, that is, a business/management sandbox game.

Guys please stop rioting. PLEASE.

Though it has a very simplistic art style, you'll be too busy doing other things to pay it much heed, sure it doesn't have blockbuster graphics, but really as long as you are enjoying the game, you'll soon forget all about it, as you become immersed in expanding your prison (or as I found it, trying to quell the constant riots).
Gameplay will be familiar to anyone who has played Dungeon Keeper or Theme Hospital, you build a prison from scratch, zone out where you want your facilities, corridors, cell blocks and etc.
Then you can research better stuff, or unlock more facilities as your prison grows.
It's an effective tried and tested formula, and Prison Architect does it well, the fact that I started playing at some point and then it was midnight all of a sudden is proof. The twist of the game which seperates it from other bullfroggy games is that prison inmates don't take shit from no guards...

My prison was going pretty well, few hours of play in, and then all of a sudden - riots. Riots everywhere.
Prison inmates are punching the shit out of everything they can get their hands on, toilets, their bed, cell doors, the guards..

GUYS PLZ ;_____;

In summary, Prison Architect is shaping up very nicely, I actually forgot it was an Alpha build until I started typing this up because it already feels like there are a lot of features, and the core gameplay is already there. If this is the sort of fun they can give in an Alpha version, then I verymuch look forward to the Beta's and the eventual full release.
There are a few little issues here and there (sometimes your workers wont build stuff no matter how much you ask, environment can glitch, pathing can be weird, guard AI is bad) but there isn't anything here that's a real dealbreaker - so-long as they get rid of it before an official release.

Cart Life

Cart Life is a unique game made by 'Richard Hofmeier', the game is billed as a retail simulation game, but in reality this game is so much more.

The game begins with you selecting a storyline, the two initial stories unlocked are Andrus the newspaper seller, and Melanie the coffee stand vendor.
I selected Melanie to start with, a recent divorcee who is struggling to raise money to take custody of her daughter Laura, the game starts with a conversation with Mel's sister, who has offered to take us in, and then after a VERY brief tutorial, brushing our teeth and going to bed, we are dumped in the world.

Much like Melanie herself, you are thrown into the world pretty much clueless, you know roughly what you would need to start a business sure, but how does one actually go about doing so?
To run her business Melanie needs a sellers cart, equipment, stock (coffee, milk, cups, sugar...) , permits and more, but then the decisions begin, where do you set up? what quality coffee beans do you go for?

This bit was great fucking fun, it was the best simulation of waiting in line i've ever seen >_>"

And then comes the drama, the chores, and everything else that comes with life.
My first day, despite being reminded, I managed to fail at picking up my daughter from school, not only does she probably hate me, but the ex-husband comes by to bring her home.
It's weird little scenes like this that have a surprising impact, particularly because the scenarios presented are just so lifelike.

I don't even know what my ex-husband did, but I hate him.

After eventually getting my cart set up - an ordeal in itself requiring waiting for hours at the courthouse, selling my personal possessions to be able to afford stock and a bunch of other horrific stuff... Finally got the shop up. And then comes the serving - which is, similar to everything else about this game - stressful. As soon as a customer places their order you are on the clock, you have to remember what they ordered, physically type out "Be careful, its hot" and then take their money and do mental math to work out how much change to give them, all under 15 seconds or so, at which point you lose the sale and they walk away.

Get real life work skills to put on your CV

Other notes:
Graphically, very minimalistic, and greyscale, perhaps an ode to the grey monotony of the working life most of us lead, it is however sufficient enough to get the game across, and in some senses may actually heighten the experience as the brain as a lovely tendency to fill in the gaps with our imagination.
In terms of music, the game is equal parts depressing real life silence and quirky chiptune, its OK, but nothing too memorable.

Verdict:
Though I only spent a few hours playing, I can safely say that Cart Life is one of the best simulations of real life I have seen, much like the real world it is based on, this game is harsh, stressful and unforgiving. Every action has a reaction and it seems impossible to play without a certain feeling of strangulation. Whilst not what I would call a 'relaxing way to unwind after work', Cart Life is a very unique video game experience unlike any other, and playing it will make you understand how it won 3 prizes at IGF2013

The game is available as a free download on the authors website with 2 stories, or $5 for 3 stories
http://www.richardhofmeier.com/cartlife/

Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £5? / £FREE = ??
(I have no idea how much I would actually pay for this)
Should you play it : Give it a go, but be warned that this game is pretty much the exact polar opposite of a 'good time'
Rating: 4/5

Call of Juarez : Gunslinger

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is the 4th game in the CoJ franchise, it is a series I've personally never had problems with, however I did completely skip 'The Cartel' because of the reviews surrounding it.
The game is developed by Polish games studio 'Techland', who also make the Dead Island series - but aren't known for producing anything else worth commenting on.

Gunslinger shares many similarities with its predecessors; dual revolvers, dueling, slow motion and unfaultable gunplay, this outing has for whatever reason (I presume development costs) decided to steer away from the fantastic semi-open world gameplay of CoJ Bound In Blood, in favor of a very linear arcade style shooter. Gunslinger is missing many of the innovations made in previous games like horseback gunplay, epic set pieces and true character development, these losses do make the game feel more shallow as a whole, however the fun to be found in the game stands strong.

Yes, that border is always there, No, you wont notice it whilst playing.

The game begins with Silas Greaves entering a bar and sitting down for a drink, before long he ends up sharing a story with some folk in the bar, and thus we have our game. The entire game is told as a recollection, with running storytelling from Silas throughout, this method of storytelling felt somewhat similar to a very extreme version of the amazing storytelling in Remedy games Alan Wake and Max Payne. Being that the story is a recollection, the way the conversation between Silas and his audience flows directly affects the game itself, the plot jumps and skips backwards and forwards as Silas remembers the story - and its a genius way of both storytelling and directing the player.

Parts of the story end up being retold multiple times from different perspectives, one level in the game started being told someone in the bar, a telling of marching through the town to assault a bank - the story told in the legends, Silas cuts in before the climax - "Sorry son, but that's not how it went down at all" - The game turns western filmgrain and begins to rewind, "It was dusk, not high noon, I was riding in from the east..." - The sky darkens before our eyes and we are suddenly set behind the bank instead, the story continues from Silas's perspective.

"Wait wait, im getting this story all mixed up, that's not what happened at all"

Another memorable moment from the story involves Silas telling how he spotted a shortcut path, the ingame camera cuts to the shortcut and a path forms from seemingly nowehere - the next few minutes of fighting eventually lead you to an ambush and death, with the same 'Game over' screen you would normally get from dying - "Im sure glad I didnt opt to take that path, im sure that would have ended badly" - The game rewinds. This unique method of introducing alternate universes was very cool, and something I haven't really seen in an FPS game before.

'Concentration' mode in effect. It is awesome.

At the core of Gunslinger is of course the shooting, and the shooting is fantastic Some may argue that the game is not much more than a shooting gallery throughout, but is that really that big of a problem? What else were you expecting to do in a first person shooter game?
Gunslinger addresses this problem by making the shootouts so satisfying that you end up quite happy to fight against constant waves of bandits assaulting your position.
There are only 4 proper weapons in the game, sounds bad, but in reality you will happily just use the dual revolvers to kill everyone, because revolvers are fucking sweet. Guns shoot true, headshots are powerful, reloading whilst firing isn't a burden (firing cancels reload animations), and the special abilities really add to the experience as a whole.

What special abilities? Gunslinger has a 'concentration' meter which can be activated even when half full to give Slow-mo and enemy highlighting, this bar refills pretty damn fast (especially later in the game after upgrades) and really helps even the odds and in turn allows the game to throw more enemies at you at once.
Another special ability is called 'Sense of Death' and acts as a last chance system, it refills on its own over time and is activated automatically upon taking lethal damage - the camera zooms in on an enemy and time slows, the bullet becomes visible, you get a chance to dodge the shot which would kill you by leaning left or right, if successful you gain a slight second wind and have a chance to clear enemies or get to cover. It is very similar to the showdown sequences in 'John Woo's Stranglehold', and is just as satisfying and awesome to look at here.
Finally there are the reflex segments, which are gunslingers method of introducing quicktime events to the game, this again plays out very VERY similar to the showdown sequences in stranglehold, but with a quicktime twist - The camera cuts to new enemies and time slows, then key prompts appear on screen   (WASD for me), pressing the right key fires a bullet at the enemy and the camera spins around to the next, failing the encounter means a cut back to normal FPS action where you will have to dispatch them all yourself (usually at your disadvantage since there will be 6 of them from all directions).

'Sense of Death' in effect. Looks like this one would have hurt.

There is also an XP system integrated into the game, pretty standard affair, you gain XP for stylish killings, combo kills, finding secrets.... Y'know, normal arcade shooter stuff.
The XP buys upgrades in 3 trees (Revolvers/Rifles/Shotguns) and most of the upgrades are sweet.
Upgrading the revolver tree for example allows you to reload faster, shoot faster, more concentration, concentration refills upon 6x multiplier...
Rifle tree is based more around ranged encounter, so more zoom, slight slow-mo on aim.. etc
and the shotgun tree is based around that bucka-buck.
Getting through the trees awards the player with new upgraded weapons (quickload revolvers, faster firing rifles, Dual sawn off shotguns...) and is a nice little reward for speccing heavy into a single tree.

Nice to see a skill tree full with skills that are actually desirable for a change.

Finally, there are the bosses, who are introduced via an awesome little cutscene which turns into western drawing. Most of these end up as showdown duels but some are on gatlings or other things.
The showdowns themselves are pretty good, I think I preferred the draw style in CoJ:BiB (Sweep mouse down to grab gun, pull mouse up to aim and fire) however the playstyle in Gunslinger is certainly tense and skillful.
Left/Right controls your hand position, you want to keep your hand over your gun to increase your 'draw speed', your mouse controls your focus, maintaining focus on your enemy results in a gradual zoom allowing for better/easier shooting in the actual firing phase. When your opponent goes for his gun, 'fire' draws your gun and then you get to play with the floaty crosshair as you try to fire before he does, firing before your fully draw your gun ends up wasting a shot and essentially getting you killed.

Worth noting also, that completion of the game unlocks 'True West' mode, which is basically a completely HUDless experience. It is AWESOME. Single revolver and rifle now have their purposes as precision weapons, whilst dual revolvers are trickier to use because of the lack of a crosshair.

I've written a hell of a lot for such a 'small' game. I should wrap this up.

Verdict:
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a brilliantly made run and gun FPS game, it may not have the depth of  the so called AAA titles but the actual fun from gunfighting in this game easily tops that of Call of Duty, Bioshock Infinite, and other big titles from massive studios. This game with its tight shooting mechanics and unique storytelling method may well have just snuck its way into my next top 10.
Gunslinger is far from long, but then, its far from expensive. Pick it up and enjoy the ride the next time you fancy shooting guys without thinking too much.


Approximate Game Length :  ~5 (Main Story on Hard), there are extra 'arcade' missions too though.
Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £18 / £12 = 1.5
Should you play it : If you are a fan of the FPS genre, this is a must play. Just don't be expecting too much more than an old style corridor shooter.
Rating: 5/5

XboxOne - And why if they dont step it up at E3, they will lose to sony.

The Sony hype train is still going pretty strong after their Februrary announce, their show was a strong one showing off some amazing ingame graphics and plenty of exclusives. The console itself had a share button and a few other gimmicks (touchscreen pad etc) but for the most part it was clearly being marketed as a next generation video games console.

And then we have the Microsoft XboxOne announce yesterday, a hulking beast of a console which comes bundled with a Kinect 2.0, which also looks to be fucking huge. Microsoft have gone the way of attempting to replace your TV box, and whilst this may work in theory, im not sure how many people would be willing to go out of their way and make that change - most tech-savvy people nowadays stream or download their TV from the internet, and those who aren't tech-savvy.... you think they're gonna want to replace their cable box with a games console?

An inside look at xboxone development included this line - "We purposefully did not target the highest end graphics. We targeted it more as a broad entertainment play." - Im sure i've heard this sort of argument somewhere else before about a console that isn't doing so well right now.
Most are presuming that the underwhelming graphical power is because of the physical cost of bundling a Kinect2 with every console (and not charging $799 for the thing), presumably the Kinect and all of its fancy motion gesture and voice command things will also be pulling computational power from the console itself at all times Anyone who saw the conference will likely agree that Call of Duty Ghosts didn't look all that great really, it looked slightly above current Gen console level, and probably still behind the graphical quality we can see in games like Battlefield 3 on highest on PC.
also. nobody gives a shit about the scar on the dogs nose. Like seriously? That's your cutting edge technology? High res textures?

And then there are the other problems....
- No used games (without extra activation costs)
- Necessity to be online at least once every 24 hours
- DDR3 as opposed to sonys GDDR5
- Only 5 GB of ram (as 3gb is reserved for the '3 OS's ')
- No backwards compatability
- The shitty name
- Probably lots more.

Heres a rumored specs list taken from a sankaku article

PS4
・CPU: Jaguar 8 Core CPU @ 2.0GHz
・GPU: Radeon GPU @ 1.84TFLOPS
・Memory: 8GB GDDR5 @ 176GB/s
■Features:
・Backwards compatible with previous PS* games
・Can remote play on PSV
・PlayStation Eye
・Supposedly plays used games
・Est. price: $300-$500
・Has a Share button!

Xbox One
・CPU: Jaguar 8 Core CPU @ 1.6GHz
・GPU: D3D 11.1 GPU @ 1.2TFLOPS
・Memory: 8GB DDR3 @ 68GB/s
■Features:
・No backwards compatibility
・Now has Blu-ray & TV support, in the US at least
・Kinect
・Plays used games if you pay again
・Est. price: $300-$500
・Has Windows 8!

All rumors, but those hardware specifications seem like they will become outddated pretty damn quickly over the course of the next console cycle (which I would expect to last at least as long as the current one, if not longer - so 8+ years)

TLDR; E3 better be real fuckin' good Microsoft, and those 8 new IP's better kick ass.

Heres a video summary of the entire conference

Monaco : What's yours is mine

Monaco was the grand final winner of IGF back in 2010, I actually remember seeing a little bit about this game a year or two back but never really looked much more into it than that, and then suddenly, the game got released, everyone started talking about how great it was, and then silence.
The game is a few weeks old on PC but is set to see another wave of fandom when it releases on XBLA on the 10th of May.

Monaco at its heart is a 2d top down stealth game, it plays a little like a mix between old metal gear solid, and pac man, and its great.
Each mission plays out similarly, infiltrate, complete the objective, and then get out - Players are encouraged to try and play stealthy (especially on the later levels, where the guards are significantly less tolerant of your antics) at all times, using a mix of line of sight stealth, tools, unique character skills and hacking to get past all manner of obstacles like gun turrets, lasers, alarmed doors, patrol dogs, and of course the guards. Performance is judged by time, with penalties incurred for not 'cleaning out' the joint - each level is littered with coins and failing to collect them makes your time skyrocket and all your friends will laugh at your incompetency on the online leaderboards.

There are 8 characters to choose from, each with their own unique skills, some are more useful than others but they all have their distinct advantages depending on the level and the players style - in multiplayer getting a good teamcomp can make a heist significantly easier, an option you won't get whilst playing singleplayer. There are also usable items scattered on the levels, weapons, smokebombs and EMP's amongst others, which will make life easier.

Whilst there is a storyline and cutscenes between levels, it is fairly basic (though some dialogue lines can be entertaining).
There are a fair amount of levels, and then remixed (aka. Hard mode) levels which throw in more security and guards for you to bypass. Along with the leaderboard and achievements, if you have some friends there is some reasonable replayability and lifespan here (assuming you like scoreboarding).

Multiplayer
There is no doubt that this game was made to be played in multiplayer, the levels are massive and the advantages provided by multiple operatives in the field are too good to pass up. With my circle of friends, multiplayer quickly became a romp to try and grab all the coins as fast as possible and zergrush our way to the end of the level, reviving each other along the way and occasionally luring guards away from friends (and other times, leading guards straight into friends).
The game can become rather chaotic at times, particularly when the camera zooms out to accomodate all players if they are on opposite sides of the map, and 'minor' details like cameras and laser traps can often go unnoticed when your friend is leading a conga-line of guards towards you.
ps. Local 4 player, thank you pocketwatch games.

Singleplayer
In singleplayer this game becomes significantly more serious, you only get to pick one specialist (and thus only have 1 active skill) and if you die, you have to change character. I found myself almost always using the recon because the ability to see enemies through walls is so very useful (otherwise you have to rely entirely on line of sight - making it even harder than playing MGS without the radar).
The game in general becomes much much harder, some coins are near impossible to get to without careful planning and execution and getting caught is much more tense (unlike in multiplayer, where there almost always seemed to be someone getting chased around).

Verdict:
In multiplayer, Monaco is a fun and frantic twist on pacman, and in singleplayer, Monaco is a brilliantly structured stealth game with a slightly insane difficulty ramp. Regardless of how you choose to play it, Monaco is a charming, fun and unique game which deserves your attention. Should you be lucky enough to have 3 friends to play it with locally you'd be a fool not to buy this game at the price it is.


Approximate Game Length :  ~5 Hours for first playthrough
Actual Worth / Shop Price (Singleplayer Only):  £10 / £12 = 0.83
Actual Worth / Shop Price (w/ Online Multiplayer) :  £12 / £8* = 1.5
Actual Worth / Shop Price (w/ Local Multiplayer):  £12 / £3** = 4.0
*Used prices for the 4 pack
**Based on 1 copy between 4
Should you play it : Absolutely. This game is an absolute blast in 4 player, and still a very solid stealth game in single player (particularly if you enjoy hard games)
Rating (MP): 5/5
Rating (SP): 4/5

Company of Heroes 2 (Preview)

All opinions and pictures are from the closed beta of CoH2. as such the game will likely change, hopefully get better, and so on. Take everything written here with a pinch of salt.

There used to be trees and stuff here. Then the mortars and tanks showed up...

Company of Heroes (as a series now I suppose) has always been one of those games I wish I could play. Its a wonderful RTS filled with incredible ideas and design choices which just make sense, its also a game filled with so many genius strategical opportunities that I am completely unable to play it to any degree of confidence.
Being let loose in Company of Heroes 2 feels similar to being allowed to climb Ayers rock - Can I rock climb? Sure! Will I die climbing Ayers rock? 100%

CoH2 introduces some new mechanics, brings back the stuff from CoH which made sense, and adds in some new age leveling systems which seem to be prevalent in more and more online games nowadays.

Old Stuff:
Engineers building stuff, reinforcing, retreating, suppression, directional armor on tanks, mortars, snipers, cover mechanics, garrison, actives on most units, breaking down walls...

New Stuff:
- Snow and Freezing - Russia being the frosty deathtrap that it is, there are now blizzards which limit sight and movement, as well as slowing infantary left out in the open. Infantary will have to maintain body temperature by sheltering or going near fireplaces. There is also 'deep snow' which will slow units and leave tracks, and iced lakes which will break if bombarded or if tanks cross.
- Line of Sight - Not that this wasn't a thing in the original, but LoS seems greatly emphasized in this game, and it feels like most units have had their sight range reduced - this allows for lots of clever trapping and ambushes, though as a League of Legends player I always feel worried going into fog of war constantly.
- Tank stuff - Tanks are now able to do things other than be tanks, crew can stop manning the weapons and capture points, or come out of the top to increase vision for example.
- Commander points - seem more important now. Still allow for cool shit.
- Leveling Stuff -
- - Gain XP for playing, access more commanders, perks, skins
- - Loadouts for commanders
- - Loadouts for perks, unlock more perks by doing X of Y (similar to CoD style unlock stuff)

Notice the blue bar on the side of the unit shield, showing its temperature. Units can freeze to death on the field if not protected

Commander loadout selection, You can select a few commanders, then choose which to actually use once you get your first commander point a few minutes into the game - Which is a nice opportunity for strategy counters

'Bulletins',  another way of saying perks. You can unlock a ton for all the different unit types, provided you can complete the challenges required.

Postgame screen, showing a ton of unlocks and buzzwords to make me feel cool.

The game itself seems a fantastic RTS experience with a very VERY high skillcap - So high that I feel barely able to play it or keep up, despite experience in AoE/SC/War3/DoW2 etc.

If there was a way to play the game at half speed. I would do that.

I'd love to talk gameplay balance and whats overpowered etc, but fuck if I know. The game runs on such a hardcore rock paper scissors format that everything seems counterable, I'd run in a tank and take out 2 squadrons, only to be completely shut down by a 3man anti-tank gun crew, Similarly my snipers would ruin shit from miles away, only to be taken out by a mortar crew I couldn't even see.

I'd also like to add that the game doesnt actually feel THAT different to the original CoH, but rather a refined and polished version of the free CoH they put out towards the original's end

'Always Online'

The current debate over the 'Always Online' neccesity of the Xbox720 is pretty justified, emphasised by the fact that Adam Orth has since been let go from Microsoft for his recent twitter rant.

Always online shouldn't really be a problem, and as much as people are panicking now, it probably wont be a problem for most people - Instability is the problem, both in a sense of some people have unstable connections, and that if the master servers become unstablized for whatever reason, millions of gamers will be unable to play.

Games companies seem to be constantly leaning closer towards 'Games as a service' rather than 'Games as a product' which is a terrifying fact for the consumer, we've all seen what happens to the online support in old EA games for example, or the recent fiascos that were the Diablo 3 launch and Simcity 2013 launch - people are terrified of spending money on things they wont be able to use.
If there were a mobile phone which wouldnt let you get past your lockscreen without having any signal would anyone still buy it? Probably not - why? - because that sounds fucked up, and yet its exactly what Microsoft are going to introduce if Adam Orth is correct in his ranting.

No internet? The game will shut itself down.

What if I have a bad ISP? What if my wifi connection is spotty?

Basically, what im saying is...

The Square Enix situation

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/04/08/square-enix-detail-where-their-losses-are-coming-from/


“Let’s talk about Sleeping Dogs: we were looking at selling roughly 2~2.5 million units in the EUR/NA market based on its game content, genre and Metacritic scores. In the same way, game quality and Metacritic scores led us to believe that Hitman had potential to sell 4.5~5 million units and 5~6 million units for Tomb Raider in EUR/NA and Japanese markets combined.

"For reference, Sleeping Dogs has moved 1.75 million copies, Hitman Absolution 3.6 million and Tomb Raider 3.4 million."


----

This article was kind of an eye opener, and the comments say a ton.
Im not entirely sure what planet the directors at squeenix are on when they expect their franchises to sell such obscene amounts.
Sales figures of 3.6 Million for Hitman Absolution is incredible! Hitman!
According to a quick bit of research, blood money and contracts both only sold about 1 Million each.
Why on earth then, are they expecting 5 million sales for Absolution?

On the plus side, its likely Square Enix are one step closer to pushing 'The button'
Perhaps the new president Matsuda will have more of an itchy finger, or will develop one when the PS4 comes out...

Kerbal Space Program Vids

Courtesy of our shared youtube channel LetsPlex, Y'all should sub to that shit.

Evoland

http://evoland.shirogames.com/ (Game getting reviewed)

http://www.gamerfish.com/rpg/evoland/ (Flash Version)

Evoland is a 'full' version of the flash game similarly called Evoland.
Im not entirely sure if its the same developers or there was collaboration or what, but the games start off pretty much identical but then the full version keeps going and refuses to end.
The problem here is that whilst the flash version was short and sweet, with entertaining gimmicks and fast feature additions, the full version is longer and more drawn out - and eventually tries to turn itself into an actual game.

Whilst im not going to bash it for trying to be an actual game, in doing so it loses much of the charm of the original flash version - the gimmick of the game being the evolution of the world and game concepts, the actual game being played is, to be blunt, really fucking boring - with the player mostly continuing play to see what the future holds.
As such, when the game throws you into a 10-15 minute long zeldaesque dungeon with only a sword and no other mechanics, you quickly realise you are wasting away precious time which could be spent playing other things.

Approximate Game Length :  Unsure. I played for 1 or 2 hours before quitting from boredom

Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £2.50 / £7 = 0.35
Should you play it : Save Money and time by just playing the flash version if you haven't already tried it, its basically the same thing but less drawn out.
Rating: 1/5

Dead Space 3

The Dead Space series have always been solid action/horror games, the first one in particular was full of memorable moments and the second was impressively scary.
The third seems half and half in a variety of ways, with a handful of highly refined ideas which work well, some other new features which perhaps were not so well thought out, and other aspects of the game which just seem like steps backward for the series.

I'll start with the new features for this game, the first half of DS3 takes place in space as usual, and eventually you unlock a small flying vessel of some description, the game almost goes into a kind of free roam mode for segments, with the ability to choose to backtrack to previous locations, fly out to a derelict ship for an optional mission, another place for a co-op mission, or to simply complete the main objective to advance the story - Im a pretty big fan of 'do what you want' style games, so it was nice to sort of be able to choose what my next objective would be, the optional missions reward you with additional resources, weapons and upgrades (which i'll get to shortly). Unfortunately, very quickly after it is introduced, the flying vessel and any free roam capability is stripped from you, and you're back to crawling through corridors for another few hours, I cant help but feel this was a waste.

Another new feature, and potentially a game breaking one, is the new weapon system, In previous games you would find weapons similar to Resi (ie. a pistol, a shotgun, rifle), however in DS3 you find weapon parts, or can craft them from found resources. The game has has little limit on when or how you use these parts and so it is all a matter of how fast you can scrape together the resources to build your weapon of choice - its worth noting also that these weapons have 2 slots, essentially allowing for 2 weapons on the same gun frame. Being able to have an assault rifle and shotgun on the same slot is a pretty big firepower advantage over previous games where you would oftentimes find yourself armed with just the welder (and then the line launcher for emergencies), I would say that once I had an AR/Shotgun and a Sniper/RPG, the entire game became almost trivial and monsters became much less of a threat.
Something minor which may not seem like such a big deal (but actually is), is the changing of ammo, imagine if you were playing Resident Evil 1 and you could reload your shotgun using pistol rounds (and still fire shotgun shells), why the fuck would you use the pistol anymore?
This lack of foresight means you always have your strongest weapon available at all times, with little need to ration ammo for it - When playing old school survival horror games I would have the mentality of "I need to keep X shotgun shells on me incase shit gets real", the ammo change really enforces that this is an Action horror, and definitely NOT a survival horror.

There are a few other new features (or at least, features I don't recall being in past games),
- Co-op is obviously one of the bigger ones, I didnt get to try co-op but I was mostly glad to see that the game had not been balanced around it (or at least scaled it for me playing alone), there are some obvious tell signs that it has been designed for co-op but the singleplayer experience hasn't suffered as a result (something which I was worried about when they revealed the feature at E3 2012), there are special co-op only missions, which will likely fully exploit the fact there are two of you, which is probably a good thing.
- There were a few puzzles put in, hacking minigames and so on, these are actually never explained and can take a little while to figure out, some extra effort in the objective of the minigame/puzzle would have been nice, especially since the game seems to give you tutorial hints on just about everything else.
- There are some segments of the game with human enemies, which are about as uninspired as one would expect, the game essentially turns into Gears of War for these bits, but at least they die fast so you can get back to fighting necromorphs.
- When you land on the Ice planet a body temp gauge is introduced, and you have to keep yourself at a reasonable temperature. I quite liked this new challenge mechanic and would have liked to see it used a little more in the game, however the idea seems to get scrapped after about 15 minutes.

The remainder of the game (read: the established Dead Space gameplay) is all pretty routine, explore spaceships, bases and so on whilst scavenging everything you can find, trying to anticipate which vent the next monster is going to explode out of. DS3 handles these sections well, with some cheap thrills thrown in here and there, some tense sound, and enough monsters to keep you occupied and on your toes. The necromorpsh seem to be shockingly fast now, I like to call them Usain bolt zombies because of how fucking fast they run at you. The game runs well on PC, I ran the game on abs. Max at 1080 and was getting a consistent 120fps (Vsync locks the game at 30, so turn that off as soon as you can), It feels almost a shame they didnt go the extra mile graphically - the game looks fine and all but there was plenty of room for improvement, particularly in texture quality for the PC version.

I had a few gripes with the game, there are segments when the objective arrow would just lead you to a corner and not really pinpoint why you are there, only for you to realise you have to complete something else and the objective marker is guiding you to the end point.
I did not enjoy having to jollystomp every motherfucker I killed, along with having to break about 500 boxes, open 300 lockers and so on, Im not entirely sure why you need to overkill the enemies to recover items from them, and in a game filled with enemies, this gets tiring very very quickly.
Also the difficulty of the game seemed...meh. Granted I wasnt playing it on the hardest difficulty but there seemed little challenge aside from some stupid cutscene deaths (soon.).
DS3 also takes a step back from its predecessors in terms of scares and shocks, I feel like the previous games (particularly DS2) were much scarier and more tense, whether this is game is less scary due to the weapon stuff I mentioned earlier, worse designed, or just become routine, im not entirely sure.
Special mention also to ammo scarcity, in the first 3/4 of the game you are swamped in ammo, literally you dont even need to aim properly just spray at stuff, but then in the last hour or two of the game you will find yourself with practically no ammo relative to what the game is throwing at you enemy wise, very odd.
One last gripe, towards the end of the game you have to climb lots of cliffs, and then climb down lots of cliffs. Its really fucking boring, and occasionally frustrating with insta death happening if you get hit by something falling. I died 8 times on one cliff face, Dumb as fuck, and not fun at all.

Verdict:
Dead Space 3 is a competent and refined Action Horror title, however during its evolution it seems to have forgotten what made the previous games so appealing. Both the scares and challenge in DS3 seem to have taken a back seat to what can only be described as a Michael Bay edition of Dead Space filled with explosions and gunfights. DS3 is not bad by any degree, but it feels like a disappointing end to the trilogy.


Approximate Game Length :  10-14 hours depending on optional mission
Actual Worth / Shop Price :  £16 / £25 = 0.64
Should you play it : I would probably actually say no, fans of the series will be disappointed by the gameplay choice devolutions, and people new to the series should probably go and play DS1 and 2 first (which would leave them in group A afterwards anyway)
Rating: 2/5

Best bit of the game? Mashing the shit out of Space on a corpse and then throwing the remains of the body off a cliff.