Once again, a round-up of smaller, digital titles I've played. I liked how Xbox Live used to just call these titles Arcade. I guess that they've grown and become so advanced that the difference between digital only titles and the full release are kind of blurred out.
Had various degrees of fun playing them. Check out my small reviews and come back for other reviews soon!
GW3 has retained it's trademark gameplay with twin stick shooting and colourful levels drawn in retro inspired, Tron movie styled, visuals. The music score is sublime, as usual, and really pumps up your adrenaline with techno tracks that increase their dramatic effects, to further speed up the sensation of a fast game.
Beating your highscore on a level, with tons of enemies crowding around your little ship, while the electronic music keeps you in a trance, is an adrenaline rush that needs to be experienced by everyone! It's really an amazing experience.
One can argue that GW3 brings little truly mind blowing to the table compared to earlier versions and in a sense some of the 3D levels make it more tricky to control and actually lessens your visibility over the enemies but I enjoyed the variation it gave.
If you've never played any of the Geometry Wars games before, what better place than to jump in here! Especially considering it includes all the classic modes from the first and second game. Great value for money, pumping music, sharp controls and colourful graphics, Geometry Wars is still king of the small arcade experiences!
The game is divided into four main chapters, with a few levels within each one. The story follows a couple, a German man and a French woman, who get pulled from each other when the war begins. The woman's father, must also fight in the war and becomes friends with an American soldier. The fourth character is a young French woman, working as a medic. All these lives, are inter weaved through the story and meet each other through the years of the war.
Valiant Hearts is more of a puzzle and adventure experience than anything else, and features a fairly slow paced gameplay style. It's a refreshing way to play, in a time crowded with hectic and fast action games. It gives me a certain nod back to the old point and click adventures on the PC but without being that genre specifically.
By that, I mean the way it makes you solve puzzles with items you find. It requires you to look through the environments for items that may start a machine or similar, to fix a certain problem that hinders your progress in that level. Items may also unlock areas that were previously not reachable.
I enjoyed learning the stories of all the main characters you play and I really liked the historical facts within the game. Every level unlocks small historical photographs with bits of facts thrown in. Items you pick up also explain what they were used for in the war. I appreciate the game for comparing items of that time to the equivalent of today too, it's fun and teaches a younger audience through tangible items of modern times!
I even felt this game would be an excellent educational game for young generations to learn about this tragic and bloody war that changed world history forever, that in time, led to the even bigger tragedy that was WW2.
My first encounter with the Tomb Raider spin-off series, starring Lara Croft, was The Guardian of Light back in 2011. I loved that release and gave it a good score in my review back in 2010. Understandably, I was rather excited for the sequel, The Temple of Osiris.
Even more so because Temple of Osiris has support for up to four players, rather than just two. I played the last game coop, so I got together with three others for this one.
It becomes immediately clear, that the pace of the game has changed. Levels are completed within far shorter time. The puzzles are simpler and the whole experience seems to be aimed at being more casual and faster paced action. This may be the fact that it aims on being for short multiplayer bursts, that require less time to complete and as such are more suited for online play. For me, it feels a little too close to a short handheld or mobile game. Good for on the go, but not necessary for a home console game.
The gameplay from the previous game is maintained and indeed it was good then, so why change it? I like the various abilities the modern characters have versus the reincarnated Egyptian ones. It helps with the variation as playing them feels distinctly different. The puzzles are adapted around their unique abilities too, requiring the player to have one of each. Singleplayer compensates this by letting you have an A.I. partner.
Had various degrees of fun playing them. Check out my small reviews and come back for other reviews soon!
Review
Played on: Xbox One
Released: 2014
Released: 2014
Geometry Wars first saw daylight as a mini-game inside your garage in Project Gotham Racing 2, way back in 2003 on the original Xbox. It reached it's full fame potential when it was released in an upgraded version on Xbox Live as an arcade title, on the Xbox 360 in 2005. Since then, we've had a sequel and now, the latest entry is here, Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions. Mind you, I'm reviewing this a while after release, which was in November last year, it's since been upgraded to the Evolved version for free!
My initial reaction to GW3 was that it was a wonderful new entry in the series, with lots of content, new types of more three dimensional levels and new enemy types. However, I felt the main adventure mode, which requires you to have a certain number of stars gained from each level to progress, was way too difficult to progress far into the game. As such, I ended up getting stuck and not being able to try the next levels as it demanded I earned more stars from earlier levels.
Luckily, they changed that in the Evolved update and simply require you to earn one star from each level to unlock the next. I finally got to see all the levels this game had to offer, a smart update!
My initial reaction to GW3 was that it was a wonderful new entry in the series, with lots of content, new types of more three dimensional levels and new enemy types. However, I felt the main adventure mode, which requires you to have a certain number of stars gained from each level to progress, was way too difficult to progress far into the game. As such, I ended up getting stuck and not being able to try the next levels as it demanded I earned more stars from earlier levels.
Luckily, they changed that in the Evolved update and simply require you to earn one star from each level to unlock the next. I finally got to see all the levels this game had to offer, a smart update!
Beating your highscore on a level, with tons of enemies crowding around your little ship, while the electronic music keeps you in a trance, is an adrenaline rush that needs to be experienced by everyone! It's really an amazing experience.
One can argue that GW3 brings little truly mind blowing to the table compared to earlier versions and in a sense some of the 3D levels make it more tricky to control and actually lessens your visibility over the enemies but I enjoyed the variation it gave.
If you've never played any of the Geometry Wars games before, what better place than to jump in here! Especially considering it includes all the classic modes from the first and second game. Great value for money, pumping music, sharp controls and colourful graphics, Geometry Wars is still king of the small arcade experiences!
Review
Played on: PlayStation 4
Released: 2014
Released: 2014
There are a ton of World War 2 games but somehow, there are hardly any about The Great War. Mainly due to the fact that trench warfare isn't really well suited for games seeking to give players variation and freedom of movement. At least in the first person shooter genre, WW1 seems to be a difficult task to make a whole game around. Luckily, Ubisoft opted to think out of the box and make something completely different with Valiant Hearts. A title that is a tribute to the many lives that were lost in The Great War.
VH apparently uses the Rayman Legends engine and, as you may have guessed, is a 2D game. It's artstyle, depicts the colours you'd expect from photographs of time period. With it's pale colour palette and heavy shades of brown, grey, green and blue. The characters themselves have a cartoon-like appearance with chubby, round bodies and tiny feet. The game may not have an artstyle for everyone, but I found it to have a charming apperance. It gives a sense of being a moveable painting with it's wonderful backgrounds images.
VH apparently uses the Rayman Legends engine and, as you may have guessed, is a 2D game. It's artstyle, depicts the colours you'd expect from photographs of time period. With it's pale colour palette and heavy shades of brown, grey, green and blue. The characters themselves have a cartoon-like appearance with chubby, round bodies and tiny feet. The game may not have an artstyle for everyone, but I found it to have a charming apperance. It gives a sense of being a moveable painting with it's wonderful backgrounds images.
Valiant Hearts is more of a puzzle and adventure experience than anything else, and features a fairly slow paced gameplay style. It's a refreshing way to play, in a time crowded with hectic and fast action games. It gives me a certain nod back to the old point and click adventures on the PC but without being that genre specifically.
By that, I mean the way it makes you solve puzzles with items you find. It requires you to look through the environments for items that may start a machine or similar, to fix a certain problem that hinders your progress in that level. Items may also unlock areas that were previously not reachable.
I enjoyed learning the stories of all the main characters you play and I really liked the historical facts within the game. Every level unlocks small historical photographs with bits of facts thrown in. Items you pick up also explain what they were used for in the war. I appreciate the game for comparing items of that time to the equivalent of today too, it's fun and teaches a younger audience through tangible items of modern times!
I even felt this game would be an excellent educational game for young generations to learn about this tragic and bloody war that changed world history forever, that in time, led to the even bigger tragedy that was WW2.
It serves as a lovely little tribute to many victims of The Great War.
Review
Played on: PlayStation 4
Released: 2014
Released: 2014
Even more so because Temple of Osiris has support for up to four players, rather than just two. I played the last game coop, so I got together with three others for this one.
It becomes immediately clear, that the pace of the game has changed. Levels are completed within far shorter time. The puzzles are simpler and the whole experience seems to be aimed at being more casual and faster paced action. This may be the fact that it aims on being for short multiplayer bursts, that require less time to complete and as such are more suited for online play. For me, it feels a little too close to a short handheld or mobile game. Good for on the go, but not necessary for a home console game.
Passing through the levels became the main drive for me, rather than bothering to fully explore. This was because I found the loot you acquired through collecting points and opening chests, that require a certain amount of points, to be disappointing and fairly meaningless. Mainly consisting of various rings that give you hardly noticeable upgrades and a lot of the time an equivalent downgrade.
I loathe the fact that points are collected individually, thus making the coop experience an annoying competitive affair. I don't want to experience how this is to play with randoms on the net, grabbing all the points and collectables in front of your face. Weapons that are found are simply shared amongst the group but I would rather have seen the points shared the same way and used to level up weapons and abilities on a grid like system.
I found the overall experience of Temple of Osiris to be more chaotic than the previous game and left me with a bitter taste compared to the fun original. Maybe the last game filled up my need for another title in this spin-off series, but this just didn't live up to the first game for me.
I loathe the fact that points are collected individually, thus making the coop experience an annoying competitive affair. I don't want to experience how this is to play with randoms on the net, grabbing all the points and collectables in front of your face. Weapons that are found are simply shared amongst the group but I would rather have seen the points shared the same way and used to level up weapons and abilities on a grid like system.
I found the overall experience of Temple of Osiris to be more chaotic than the previous game and left me with a bitter taste compared to the fun original. Maybe the last game filled up my need for another title in this spin-off series, but this just didn't live up to the first game for me.
It's one of those games that worked the first time around and should have been left with that, until something new and very clever popped in as a gameplay feature.
