Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 7

Game review: Grindstone for EGS

There wasn’t a review or any post last week because I had so much to talk about, and in all cases, I just wanted a little more time with each…thing before passing a verdict. So in my infinite wisdom, I chose instead to start playing another game that I figured I could get through in a few days.

Ah hahahahahahaha. Ha…ahem.

So, one week later, let’s talk about Grindstone, which I bought from the Epic Game Store. It is to date only the second game I’ve bought rather than just being a free game of the week, so that should say how much I was looking forward to playing this. First of all, it’s a puzzle game, and my love for those goes all the way back to Tetris on my first Game Boy. Second, it has a cartoony presentation that’s one part adorable mixed with two parts gory. As a fan of horror and cartoons, that sounds like a perfect cocktail for me.

It didn’t take long playing it before I started muttering, “This had to be a mobile game first,” and I did some digging to confirm that yes, this was originally part of the Apple Arcade offerings before moving to PC. I will circle back to everything that made me think that, but first I want to take more about the overall gameplay, the story, and the usual stuff that a review should dig into before hitting on the feely bits.

So, the story is about a barbarian named Jorj, a family man just trying to save up some gems for a nice beach vacation for his wife and son. So every day he climbs ol’ Creep Mountain to slay Creeps and Jerks and to grind out more Grindstones, the main currency of this world.

Pretty simple stuff, and it’s augmented through lost pages collected by killing various monsters and bosses on the mountain. Soon after starting, Jorj’s mother Jorja is added as an alternate player character, which doesn’t really change gameplay, but offers the classic question, “Do you want to play as a dude or a chick?”

The puzzling here is a simple affair, but it has a lot of tricks to allow for creative solutions. From Jorj’s starting point, you have to select chains of Creeps of the same color. (Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Purple.) Getting a chain of ten drops one Grindstone, and this is what makes the chain building way more interesting. Hitting a Grindstone while building a chain allows Jorj to swap to a different color of Creep, so if a player focuses first on getting a few gems on the board, they can make much longer multi-color chains.

You want that because with every additional five chained Creeps after ten, the shape of the Grindstone changes and offers additional rewards. The triangle drops two smaller gems, the square drops five, and so on. My highest chain of forty-five, or all enemies on the board, netted me a huge Grindstone worth 50 gems. (It was not a galaxy-brain chain, but rather an item I equipped that turned all the Creeps green. I’ll cover more on that later on in the gripes section.)

Creeps can often turn hostile, sporting a glowing aura and a snarling face to let players know they intend to attack. They can only attack if Jorj stops on tiles above or below them or to the left or right. So landing on a tile diagonally to them is safe. This is part of any level strategy, figuring out how to end a chain on a safe space, and for whatever reason, I struggle with this because I can’t see the red Creeps when they’re angry. Seriously, I end a move, the Creep attacks Jorj, and I sigh because I literally didn’t see that it was angry. That’s a me problem, not a game problem, as those little guys are clearly marked.

Soon after the start, the game starts dropping in Jerks. These are colorless enemies with a number over them representing their health, and thus the number of Creeps needed to chain first before adding them. Because they are technically colorless, they can be chained from any other Creep, and the chain can continue through them if the same color is available. (Or if a Grindstone is available, leading to a longer chain and possibly another slain Jerk.) But the danger with them is that they have a much wider area of attack than Creeps, and Jorj only has three hearts two work with. Those hearts carry over between level unless players exit to the map and use a healing nectar. Adding the final wrinkle to the risk/reward mechanic is that Jorj cannot keep what he gathers in a level if he loses all his hearts and gets knocked out.

You’d think that would be it for gameplay, but nope, there’s more. Jorj can equip three items to aid with his runs. Some of them recharge between levels, like the Spinny Sword, Pickaxe, and Arrow. Others have a limited number of charges and must be refilled after draining their charges. Then there’s outfits that can offer special traits. The Prospector outfit lowers the resistance of rocks, making it easier to mine materials, while the Santa suit has a chance to drop presents at the end of chains. The presents can be anything, so I found that the most useful suit when I wasn’t in need of some special gimmick for certain areas. There’s a lot of strategy power in the outfits, so they are worth exploring.

Finally, areas of Creep Mountain end with Boss fights, and they too require some tactical thinking and creative solutions to beat. Though I should note, because the colors of incoming Creeps is random, sometimes RNG makes a boss fight way harder. On the second boss, I had them down to 9 health and had to flee and start over because ANY move I made would have led to a knockout without me getting anywhere near the boss. I got him on the second try because the RNG was better. I’m saying that sometimes luck is just as much a factor in a win as strategy is.

Right, so all of this sounds positive so far, and it should. The game has a main line of levels to play as well as side routes filled with their own challenges and rewards. There’s a Daily Grind board pitting players against a trio of tests to see how high they can get on the leaderboards. These Daily Grinds offer only a little gold, as all gems and items found within are “sacrificed to the gods” at the end of a run. Getting on the board isn’t hard, though, but that’s because so few people are playing it. Like, I got second place twice during my time reviewing the game, but even up to the closing of the board for the day, there were only fifteen other people listed. Maybe the boards are divided by region, or maybe lots of player just skip the grind because it offers so little in rewards. I don’t know.

Anyway, we now get to that glaring flaw, the mobile game tomfoolery and davefuckery. The fact that this was on Apple Arcade can’t gloss over the sheer amount of mobile game bullshit making Grindstone a diamond buried in a turd farm.

Where to begin? Items that need to be refilled between uses have ridiculously high prices per use. Granted, unlocking the Carnival of Creeps area reduces some of the problem, but players who rely on rechargeable items are stuck in a LONG daily grind just to keep their favorite gear in operation. I ended up sticking with stuff that recharges between levels because then at least I could focus on climbing up the mountain instead of constantly backtracking to play for hours, all so I could get two more uses out of a potion flask.

There’s a chef named Helga who can make “snacks” out of the Creep guts Jorj gathers during runs, and these cost either 3,000 or 6,000 guts. That’s around six hours of grinding for a one-time use item. No, I’m not exaggerating. I did the grind multiple times to get a lunch bucket that could turn all the creeps green, because otherwise, certain floor drained all my saved up gems with one knockout after another from armies of creeps. And yes, paying for health potions often requires backtracking to easier floors. Paying five gems for one heart or ten for two seems the least offensive of these prices, but on higher floors, it gets a lot harder to make chains long enough to earn gems and avoid damage. It got to the point where after every level, I had to go back to the map to heal, and the cast of doing so meant I usually just broke even.

There’s the sheer number of crafting materials needed to craft and refill items. This sort of multi-currency crafting is rife in mobile games, stymying progress by forcing players to return to the same floors over and over just to keep stocked up on random garbage.

Oh, and lest I forget, there’s hats. Yes, cosmetic only items that must be earned by fulfilling special requirements. The first hat I got required a bunch of Jerk guts, lumber, and Grindstones. The second required trying on five outfits, but for the better part of that timer counting down, I only had four. I finally got the fifth by defeating another boss, and by then, I was on the last day of the timer. So there’s the classic FOMO of free mobile games still baked into a game I paid for.

Oh, but we’re not done raking the hats side quest because Jorj’s dear son runs a hat stand outside the family cottage. This stand gathers hats Jorj might have missed from the special hat missions, and they cost X amount of yarn, X amount of a random item, and FIVE HUNDRED GRIDSTONES. So every hat is literally a full day’s worth of work to collect, and as an added kick in the taint, little Harry’s shop is only open for two weeks out of every two months. That kind of garbage is bad enough in a free game, but for a game I paid money for, it’s a whole other level of aggravation.

None of this is a deal breaker to the point where I would stop playing and delete the game, but there were frequently times where in the midst of trying to pay for an item or just make a little forward progress without spending gimmick gear, I started thinking, “I’d rather be playing anything else besides this.” Because it stops feeling like a game, and more like a side job with terrible pay. That’s a wretched feeling to get from a “casual” puzzle game.

And here’s the thing: while I have gripes about excess grind, there are all kinds of games where I do it because there’s a tangible reward for putting in the work. I might get extra Titanite Shards to upgrade backup weapons in any of the Dark Souls games. I might hit up the same Rift Dungeons in Diablo immortal to see if I can find a new legendary item that changes my character’s abilities in cool new ways. (A mod that turns Arcane Blast into a large, slow moving tornado that follows enemies and deals damage over time? Yes, please!) I might grind levels in Salt and Sanctuary to make wielding a great sword less taxing, or I might hunt the same mage over and over in Salt and Sacrifice because I’m looking to make a complete armor and weapon set from them. All these examples of grind, I go in for because the end result makes me feel like it was worth it. At the end of a day’s grind in Grindstone, all I have is an empty gem account, a useless hat, and the ability to use a gimmick item one or two more times.

It’s that kind of grind that feels bad, and it takes what could have been another 5 star game rating down to a 3. I’m not saying it’s not worth the price of admission, or that it doesn’t deliver as a puzzle game that encourages creativity to get the best rewards. But at the end of the day, I’d be hard pressed to recommend Grindstone to anyone, even the most hardcore puzzle fans. Even if I did, I would suggest playing it in smaller doses, and don’t worry so much about the FOMO hats.

But hey, the boss fights are pretty cool. So that’s something, right?

Game review: Into the Pit for Steam

You ever have a guest who overstays their welcome? They finished the wine and drank all your bourbon as well. Now they’re looking like they might go through the kitchen cabinets to find something else to amuse themselves with, and you just want to say “Well you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

That’s what Into the Pit feels like. It’s an absolutely gorgeous game with great music, art style and gameplay that should have been a 5 star contender. From the moment it opens with a short cutscene establishing the main character’s quest to find their missing cousin, the bold use of bright colors mixed with pixelated shadows make an impressive impact. In short order, the game guides said character to the eponymous pit to rescue not only their hell-bound cousin, but also all of the villagers who followed the town’s alderman on a false promise of finding riches beyond their wildest dreams.

Diving into the pit itself, the player is given weapons, a pair of magic “guns” bound to their right and left hands, as well as a talent that might be something like a chance to regain health after dispatching demons or being coated in poison so that enemy melee attacks will harm them in turn. From the center hub of each floor, there are four  areas that must be cleared to unlock another level down, leading eventually to the fifth floor where a boss fight is waiting. The dungeons are labeled, so you know what kind of rune is available to harvest, or whether there’s an imprisoned villager to rescue, or just a pool of health to recover a bit from the tougher rooms. To escape each room, a set number of mystic keys must be destroyed. Lots of early rooms will only have one or two, but deeper floors in the pit can go as high as four keys. (Oh, and lots of keys have a hidden ambush mechanic, teleporting in a large number of enemies as a form of defense. As a rule of thumb, if an area looks clear, it’s probably an ambush ready to punish player overconfidence.)

Player death is handled by harvesting blood runes. Collecting ten will power up the “Cheat Death” perk, so if you die, you come back with half health. Then the price to activate the perk goes up, and each death gets a little more expensive. You can’t bank blood runes, but after some practice runs, you probably won’t need to worry about using that “free” life until getting to the boss room.

To be sure, that first five-floor run is where Into the Pit feels most confident about its direction. Just to get the next two rune keys, you have to beat all five floors and rescue three villagers. You also don’t have much in the way of support runes to start off with, so whether you can whack the boss is determined by what powers you can level up plus your own skill at old school FPS games. I was admittedly a bit rusty and unused to the gliding kind of movements that the game seems to draw from Heretic and Hexen, so I needed to get loaded up on Curse powers before finally taking down the boss. (Curse make enemies take damage every time they fire an attack, and the boss fires missiles like an anime mecha boss. He practically killed himself for me. Oh, also, the boss is immune to bleeding damage, so don’t bother building that up, at least not on this dungeon.)

The variety of weapons and powers allow for a lot of experimentation in playstyles. Perhaps you might go with the Shotgun and Fan spells for close range chaos. Or maybe use the Hawk and Needle powers for long range sniping tactics. Perhaps a mix of long and mid-range? The RNG nature of the game means you might not get the exact mix you were hoping for, but few runs offer a truly bad combination. (It can happen, and you will know exactly what doesn’t work for you by just stepping into the first room to fight some demons.)

Adding to this is the status effects that can be added and leveled up by completing rooms and selecting higher tier rewards at the hub’s central alter. In addiction to Curse, there’s Bleed, which causes enemies to lose more health if they run after you. Bleed also has a further upgrade called Vampirism, which has a chance to recover a few hit points with every attack. Combined with Grim Reward, which has a chance to recover health when enemies are killed, and tougher rooms start to feel a little less dangerous. (There are support runes to unlock that reward health for picking up rune motes and destroying mystic keys, so while the game never feels easy, it does become more forgiving of player mistakes.)

But there’s also Freezing powers to slow enemy movement, Enfeebling to weaken enemy attacks and reduce the dame they do to you, Chaos powers like planting exploding seeds in enemies, or Strength powers that add more range to attacks or increase their damage per shot.

It’s during these initial runs where Into the Pit positively glows. It just feels good to run around the vividly colored but darkly grim levels, tapping frenetically on the right and left triggers to produce showers of magical firepower. Demons explode in a Doom-like burst of bloody chunks, and the music rises and falls in time with the heat of each skirmish. Beating the first boss felt real good, like I’d just unlocked the secrets of being a mage badass. 

Once the first dungeon is completed, the game has what it thinks is a clever twist, in that after completing each dungeon by itself, rune keys can be combined to access even more dungeons, and those feature a mix of demons and biomes from both the prior areas. Which could have been cool if getting to the bottom floor revealed a new boss who was a mix of two other bosses. But no, it’s just the same bosses over and over. The grind sets in pretty quickly, but instead of XP, it’s a grind to find villagers. Better support runes are locked behind set numbers of rescues, and the enchanter who can upgrade those runes needs to see twelves villagers return before they’ll even talk to you.

Even then, things were going fine for a bit. I got into a routine of clearing out four floors and heading back to the surface to stock up on some gold, fire, and insight runes, the currencies needed to buy support runes and upgrade them. (If you die on a run, you lose all the runes collected in that dungeon. It’s a nice risk/reward mechanic, at least at first.) With spending money secured, I’d make another run back down to the boss to save the last villager of the dungeon, listen to the evil Alderman taunting me for being too weak, and then collect a few more insight runes.

Then the game just flat out gave up on content. The support rune shop has nothing left to sell. The enchanter won’t level up the runes beyond the third tier. The character’s cousin, so chatty in the opening dungeons, just stops writing. The Alderman begins repeating the same taunt across multiple dungeons. There’s nothing to do except fight the same demons, the same bosses, all for no rewards. It’s frustrating because then even new enemies turn out to just be reskins of the same few demon types from the first three dungeons. Once I realized that, I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed.

Into the Pit starts out strong, and if you’re a fan of old-school shooters mixed with randomly generated dungeons, it can probably work for you. But by the end, what could have been a game of the year contender just winds down like an old watch with a faulty spring. Long before the last boss fight, it feels like working on a treadmill in front of a blank wall. Sure, you can do it. But it’s just not as engaging as it was in the early areas, and there’s nothing to buy or earn to incentivize the grind.

So, as much as it pains me to do this, I’m giving Into the Pit 3 stars. The strength of those first three dungeons had me feeling certain it would earn a confident 5 star score, but the grind of mixing and matching keys to find forty-five villagers just sucked too much fun out of the game. So I’d only recommend this to folks who love grinding for the sake of the grind, and also possibly gluttons for boredom.

Manga review: Claymore by Norihiro Yagi

This is going to start random, but a few months back I was watching a compilation of Japanese commercials. Back in my teens, before anime went legit in the states, folks in Japan would mail tapes of the latest shows overseas, and some import shops would have these shows available to borrow. It was there that I got hooked on the insanity that is Japanese advertising, and now it’s a regular habit of mine to go on YouTube to see collections of the “best” ads in glorious HD.

So, in the middle of one such stream was an ad for a manga app that promised everything was free to read. I wondered if the app was available here in Italy, and it is, under the name MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA. After just a few days of reading, I started thinking that perhaps I should add manga reviews to  the blog. It’s a perfect fit, really. For this first outing, I’ll be reviewing a manga that I collected in paperback form, but I’m now rereading on the app, Claymore.

Created by Norihiro Yagi, Claymore is initially the story of Claire, a warrior fighting the demonic Yoma with a giant sword. Early on, she insists that the name Claymore isn’t a proper title for her people. Rather it is simply the name the humans use for them because of the weapons they wield. This group of hunters are all women who have ingested the blood and flesh of Yoma, granting them super strength and speed. The organization they work for tried to do the same thing with men, but they all died horribly painful deaths. So, this mercenary army of “silver-eyed witches” patrol the country, slaying demons on commission.

Early on, it’s established that using their abilities comes with great risks. The more often someone uses their powers, the closer they come to losing their human half and becoming a Yoma themselves. For this reason, each member of the group has a black card that they can send to their handlers to request another hunter to come and kill them before they transform. Claire is summoned to do this for another hunter, and it becomes clear that what makes her special is the small bit of sentimentality she retains. It may not seem like much, but it helps her time and time again to surpass her physical limits and avoid the same fate.

Early chapters focus on Claire against fairly low-level Yoma, what I would call “Crunchies of the Week” due to the ease with which they get crunched. These fights might give the impression that it’s always relatively easy to defeat Yoma, but it isn’t long before readers see Claire was just riding a lucky streak and pulling simple jobs. Soon, the threats become larger, leading to other hunters joining Claire to work together. Then more threats split the focus away from Claire and follow the other mercenaries. These chapters get longer and more elaborate, often bringing everyone together for a final epic battle. Epic is often overused these days, but some of these fights legitimately earn it.

One thing I find interesting about Claymore is Norihiro’s style. While a lot of fighting manga will create vivid backgrounds to place the action on, Norihiro draws background elements for a few panels to establish a sense of place. Once the action begins, many panels are left with no background details, or with speed lines to indicate the senses of direction and momentum. In a way, it reminds me of Caravaggio, who painted on black canvases and used that darkness to avoid painting all the details hidden in the shadows. It allowed him to work faster, and became his signature style. In the same way, Norihiro’s signature style is to put most of the detail in his characters, while only adding backgrounds in the quieter moments of each issue. Later chapters do have more elaborate background art, but still, once the fighting starts, they tend to fall away in a blur of lines.

No details are spared on the Yoma, though, who start off as human-shaped monsters with longer teeth and nails. But they quickly grow in scale, and come in a wide array of shapes. It’s the added details that make each monster unique and memorable. I’d love to describe many of them in more detail, but it’s just better if you check them out and see how their designs and abilities evolve over time.

One thing that might put off readers is the simplistic dialog and sound effects. A good potion of any battle can be summed up like, “Gu! Gyuh! What? How? Guh!” But honestly, I feel like this is properly what real battles would sound like, and to me the comics where both combatants are talking throughout the fight that are ridiculous.

If you can get past that sticking point, and beyond the early “easy” chapters, Claymore offers some really great characters. The building stakes leads to plot twists that often left me yelling “WHAT?” (But in a good way.) On the app, it’s being rereleased one issue at a time, so it’s great to add between other comics that already have hundreds of chapters online. So you binge those and treat these as a palate cleanser. Or, if you really like it like I did, you can hunt down the collected chapters in paperback through VIZ Media. There are 27 volumes, and unlike some manga that run into infinity, Claymore wrapped up its story in a reasonable number of issues that won’t break your bank account if you decide to collect them all.

That’s it for my first manga review. There’s a lot of details I’m leaving out to avoid spoilers, and I will try to do that for future reviews. I love reading these plots twists going in with no clue of what will happen next, and I want you to have that same satisfying experience. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the first of what will be many recommendations, and thanks for reading it.

The Diablo IV Server Slam report

This weekend, Blizzard released a beta build of Diablo IV, the “Server Slam” meant to test the quality of the game’s network and hopefully prevent the access errors that plagued the previous game. When this was first announced as another always online game, my interest sank rapidly. I didn’t get Diablo III until it moved to console and dropped the online aspect. Even then, I didn’t really care for most classes, and only managed to finish the game once with the witch doctor.

The thing is, after I got my new phone and found it could play Diablo Immortal, I reactivated my Bettle.Net account to see if it was as bad as I’d heard. I didn’t expect to play much, so I named my first character AynGonalaslong. I played for a few hours, and then I started other character classes to see how they were, and now I’m only missing notes on the Necromancer before I can give a full, proper review. But the short version is, I love playing Diablo Immortal. So, in light of my enjoyment of this always online game, I decided to see what Diablo IV could offer.

Much like Immortal, Diablo IV has a tutorial section that’s offline. As soon as I completed that, I got hit with massive lag. I thought it was my crap PC, so I removed the high definition assets and lowered all the graphics settings to low. That didn’t work, but on restarting the game, I noticed the other players popping up in the hub town around me and realized it was network lag. So I logged out for a few hours, had some lunch and tried again. This time, things were better. I still experienced moments of lag, but they were fleeting, and only occurred every few hours instead of being a constant slog through rubber band hell. (During my first attempt to play, every time I stopped moving, my character would slide backwards to meet up with where the server thought I should be.)

Before we get to my impressions of the game and the one class I got to try out, I need to vent. This was supposed to be a full weekend to test out the game’s prologue and first region, and for folks in the US, they got from Friday afternoon till midnight on Sunday to play. Being in Italy, I wasn’t even allowed in until 9 PM on Friday night, and because the game immediately downloaded another 1.7 GB of data, I didn’t get to start until 11. Then on Sunday, I raced through dinner, hoping to get a final crack at the region’s boss. I got upstairs at 10 PM, only to see we’d already been cut off. I get it. It’s a beta, but 48 hours isn’t enough time to fully assess the network reliability, to say nothing about reporting issues with the various character classes. (For reference, they nerfed and then buffed Necromancers due to player feedback. I just feel like every class should have been given more time to reveal if they needed similar retooling.) If on launch it turns out there are problems, that’s on Blizzard for giving us so little time to kick the tires.

With that gripe out of the way, let me start with my choice of class, as I chose the rogue. I did so because they seem very similar to the demon hunters in Diablo Immortal, and the class is able to dish out lots of pain even in early level builds. As I was limited to only level twenty, I figured I’d need all the help I could get to stay alive. I was not wrong about that, and my choice of class turned out to be perfect for the beta.

The prologue starts in a sleepy village with a single dungeon to clear out. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil any of the story, but as intros go, it was pretty good. Initially, only the primary and secondary attack are available, so if you’re a mouse and keyboard gamer, this will feel just like old school Diablo. (Left click most of the time, with occasional right clicks for larger crowds.) I’m not a mouse and keyboard gamer, and haven’t been since Quake III destroyed my right wrist. Even after all these years, I can’t game with a mouse for more than ten minutes before I get stabbing pains in my wrist. So for me, the prologue forcing me to only use two attacks even though I had six levels and six flavors of death on tap felt very limiting.

Right, you know about the lag incident, so let me skip ahead to when I could get into the game properly. Unlike Diablo III, the online aspect is much more ingrained into the world. You see other players, and in a pinch, you can help them, or they can help you. I learned this early on when I stumbled into a “world event” that saw me being ambushed by thirty enemies. I was out of health potions and running for my life while watching my skill cooldown count down when a higher level player came swooping in to give me some breathing room. Once I got powerful enough that these kinds of ambushes weren’t as dangerous, I went in on helping the lower level folks in the same way. In that respect, being always online becomes a feature much like MMORPGs, instead of just being an excuse to make sure we aren’t all filthy pirates.

Once I got to level 10, I had a build better suited to crowd control, with a perk that knocked back enemies who got close to me. When those flying enemies hit their buddies, all of them fell down, at which point I switched to firing a Legolas-like stream of arrows that could ricochet and hit more monsters farther away. Then around level 15, I got the ability to set up poison traps, and another couple of perk points made it so that enemies stepping into those traps would get knocked down, again giving me the chance to go all Legolas on their prone asses. There’s a whole ton of options in the skill tree, and it’s a MASSIVE improvement over Diablo III in terms of letting me decide what kind of build I want. So when I do get the game, I can say with certainty that I will be investing a lot of time testing out builds across all the classes.

The best part is, all skills can be reset for a bit of gold, (you make a ton of gold just walking between villages, so the cost is never an issue) and because of this, you never have to worry about rerolling a new character of the same class. You’re not locked into your choices, so you don’t have any anxiety over whether your choices are good or bad. Just try something out, and if it isn’t for you, reset and try something else. That’s a huge win in my opinion.

One of the features I had heard about from the closed beta a few months back was that The Butcher was now one of the world events. At any time, he could show up, forcing players to choose to fight or flee. Well he showed up in my game, and when I saw how little damage I was doing to him, I chose flight over fight. But I’d barely begun my escape when The Butcher glitched out and froze at the top of my screen. I shot a few test arrows to see if he would budge, and he didn’t. So I get a free level up not due to my mad gaming skills, but because a high level boss just stood still and let me chip away at his gigantic health bar.

While that didn’t happen often, this kind of glitch occurred enough that I noticed it. I’m guessing a few patches will eventually iron out the bug, but as I said, it was common enough that I felt I had to highlight it.

One feature I’m not sure how to feel about is that as players level up, all the monsters do too. It means it’s never going to become a cake walk to mow through ambushes. I like doing that in other RPGs, going back to earlier areas just to stomp down the mobs. But on the other hand, the enemies’ rising power levels were somewhat matched by my increasing arsenal of options. I’m not saying the fights got easier. I just had more ways of dealing with the challenges. I think I’ll need more time with the full game before I can decide if this is good or bad.

Oh, something else that I found interesting is how durability works. At first, I thought it was turned off for the beta, but it turns out, you only lose equipment durability when your character dies. For me, it was ten durability per death, and the cost of repairs was reasonable. So, say for instance I struggled to take on a boss and kept getting reset to the next room over from said boss. In that case, I could just teleport back to town to have the blacksmith sort out my gear, and pop right back into the fight. I like that a lot, and I prefer it to the Dark Souls or Fallout 3 flavors of durability, where every hit ticks off damage to gear.

All told, I came away with a much more positive view of Diablo IV. Not enough to prepurchase it, since I already have a lot of unplayed games to tide me over. But I can see getting it in the future, and I expect a proper review would take a lot of time to crank out because there’s so much to do and experience. Just playing in the first region, I was still finding new side quests and world events, and I would say they were mostly fun. I got so sidetracked that I didn’t get to play the region’s big boss more than once. (She wrecked my shit hard on my first run, forcing me to teleport back to town to repair my gear, and the beta closed before I could get back at her for another whack.)

In conclusion, I went in a skeptic, and came out ready to be a fan like I was back in the Diablo II days. That’s a massive improvement, so as long as Blizzard doesn’t cock up the game post-launch with microtransactions or season passes gatekeeping content, this could be a genuine game of the year contender. I’m not exactly on the hype train yet, but I do look forward to seeing how the full release works out.

Let’s talk about the co-op in Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep

When I got Borderlands 2 on my PS Vita, it had all the DLC pre-loaded, so I got to play Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep a while back. I mostly remember how often the difficulty spikes came close to breaking my desire to finish the story, with certain areas just being a pattern of me dying and running back from a spawn point to get killed over and over again. The DLC got turned into a stand-alone game, and between those two events, the hubbers and I have played co-op on Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and part of Borderlands 3. So I figured, why not see if going in with a buddy could make the harder parts less annoying.

The short answer is, it’s a mixed bag. Certainly, having someone able to revive me or vice versa did reduce the number of times needed to run back, and an extra set of guns dulled some of those difficulty spikes. But there are still times when, even after side questing to level up, the game just gets painfully difficult. I could just stop here and call this a completed post, but I want to highlight places where that is the case, while also talking about my positive impressions about other aspects of the game.

So, firstly, our team was made of one gunzerker, hubby’s preferred class, and one mechromancer, because who doesn’t want to summon a third player when the shit hits the fan? I tried to convince hubby to do a commando and give us a fourth “player.” But he loves dual weilding so much that logic wasn’t going to convince him otherwise. (And yeah, it bit him in the ass, and he later said, “I should have gone with the commando.”)

One of the first things we both noticed is how every level up brings two skill points instead of the usual one perk per level. Also, instead of waiting until level five to let us grab perks, we got them from level two on. This was really helpful to get our characters battle ready within the first few levels, and once the wait between levels was longer, we weren’t left hurting for options.

The other thing we noticed was how stupidly generous the loot system was in dropping eridium, the currency needed to upgrade ammo and storage capacities. So instead of having to save up a while and needing to carefully consider what weapons I would specialize in, I was able to upgrade to carry more of everything, and to expand my backpack to limit the number of times I had to run back to a vending machine to free up space.

There’s another currency in the game, seraph crystals, which let you buy special guns from a new vendor, but there’s not a whole lot of variety there. Sure, the SMG that has slag and electrical elements came in handy throughout the run, as did the shotgun with explosive ammo. But where all the other vendor change stock every 15 minutes, this vendor’s stock never seems to change even with the same timer counting down repeatedly. I would have liked to see other weapons, like maybe an assault rifle that used corrosive and explosive ammo, or fire and electric. Just…give it some variety, you know?

This generosity contrasted sharply with the stinginess of the gun drops. We got to the end of the game at level fifteen, and I was still using a level eleven revolver because nothing better ever showed up. Not in the vending machines, or in the countless weapon chests scattered throughout the levels. It turned into a running joke, having hundreds of chests for new loot, and most of it going to the vending machine for being crap. I get that all the guns are created by RNG, but someone at Gearbox needs to tweak their loot system because fully 90% or the guns we found were worthless garbage.

One thing I loved is the look of the levels. The way everything looks a little like hand drawn cartoons with heavy black lining has always been a part of the Borderlands appeal, but here it’s used to create a more fantasy oriented world. There no deserts, unlike Pandora, and a lot of variety to the levels makes exploration that much more satisfying. I frequently stopped what I was doing to admire the scenery, or some side characters, or even the enemies. It’s a pretty game, and combined with the music, the story, and the super easy controls, it should be a good time. And most of the time, it is.

I think we were in the second area when the game started tossing seers at us. Seers are skeleton mages who can cast electric spells before disappearing and running to a new location. At no time did these assholes ever grow on me, because they had to be killed first or risk putting both hubby and I into a death loop. (Die, respawn, run back, and die again.) Eventually I got better at waiting them out and hitting them with a high-power revolver, but every time I heard their signature wooshing sound, I ended up growling “It’s these motherfuckers again.”

The other big hurdle is human enemies like knights, archers, paladins, and squires. Individually, none of them are that bad, but the game sends them out in waves, and if I didn’t immediately prioritize archers over everything else, it was back to the death loop for both of us. Add to this certain sections where the game throws human and orc badasses at us at the same time, and suddenly every meter of ground earned could quickly be lost because hubby or I would die and force the other to retreat.

I mentioned how reviving could help, but there were a lot of times where doing so became ridiculously hard. Even a tiny enemy throwing axes or bones can knock back characters, so while trying to revive hubby, I would get thrown back and lose progress on his revival. So I’d run back to him, hold the button to revive…and get knocked away again. Rinse and repeat until he dies, and that’s a rage cocktail that once again almost broke my resolve to see the game through to the end.

The funny thing is, once we got to the final fight, that was a cake walk compared to what we’d been put through before. I remember having the same impression playing the DLC by myself, that for all the crap that had been slung my way, the final fight with Handsome Sorcerer was kind of anti-climatic. All the boss fights before are challenging, and with a bit of variety to keep each encounter feeling fresh and exciting. Then comes the last boss, and he just hops around and summons baby dragons. It was a bit of a let down, to be honest.

The story is pretty good, a bit funny and bittersweet, and the OG Borderlands crew playing a role play game as the gang from the second game is a fun twist on the narration going on in the background and through the characters in game. The humor is about bog standard for Gearbox, but it can hit just right if you aren’t expecting it. As an example, a badass necromancer jumped out from behind a set of double doors right in front of me and shouted “Abra-ka-screw you!” I laughed for around one minute, even after he’d been dispatched, because none of the magic casters had ever used that line before. It hit at just the right time to tickle my funny bone, and there were many other times that such lines hit and left me guffawing.

In conclusion, I think I found the difficulty spikes just as irksome as I did going into the DLC solo, but in both cases, I pushed through and finished because I liked the story and wanted to see how it ended. Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep can be hard, but played with friends, it can also be a fun time. So if you can round up one, two, or three buddies willing to go co-op questing with you, I’d recommend this as a fun, short campaign that can be blasted through in a few days.

Versus series: MMO Battle Royale

You may recall in my last Versus series post, I said I would be pitting Anarchy Online with both Runescapes and Saga of Ryzom (Now just titled Ryzom) to sort out which one I’d rather pay a membership subscription for. I also said that decision might take a while, but it turns out, finding a winner was easier than I thought. But to draw out the tension, I’ll talk about the losers bracket first.

Anarchy Online ended up with the first easy loss for several reasons. Since I’d left, all of my old accounts were frozen, and some genius decided to get rid of the old tutorial in favor of a hot mess that they called a simplified introduction. The controls were somehow more terrible than I remembered, and the graphics were awful. Early levels were a chore, falling into a pattern of “fight, then sit down to recover health for two minutes.” Then when I finally got to the mainland, I was reminded how pretty much every starting solo and group mission fell into the same loop. Walk for ten minutes dodging high level mobs to reach a “cave.” (The interiors are always filled with hallways and sliding doors that someone installed for reasons unknown.) Fight a collection of enemies and collect an item. It’s boring, it’s ugly, and it controls like a tank. Hard pass, and moving along.

Then we have Runescape Old School, which fares much better despite also having lower quality graphics. Yes, I said in the contest between it and the newer version that it had less to offer, but no matter when I boot it up, I always find something to do, and it’s not always “go over there and fight X monster.” I might be baking a pie, or mining metal to forge new weapons and armor to sell. When I choose to fight, the combat is simple and relaxing. It’s just a lovely zen game where the whole point is “make numbers go up.” So if I did have a larger budget to toss out for subscriptions, I’d still want to get the full paid experience that this old school gem has to offer.

But these days with rising food prices, hiked energy bills, and no raise in ever, Runescape Old School falls to the second and first place games. Which brings me to second place, Runescape. Just like its elder version, this game is brimming with possibilities in every journey, and it boasts lovelier graphics and beefier combat that makes all classes feel more powerful. This incredible buffet of joy would have taken the top spot if I hadn’t gone back to Ryzom to make a new character and see if it still held up after all these years.

Ryzom has a rough start in the tutorial, so let’s not mince words about that. But once you get a feel for the various skills you can level up and wrap your head around the freedom of multi-classing, it really starts to shine even before getting to the mainland. Perhaps you opt to be a prospector with a side hustle as a tailor, or as a weapons crafter. Maybe you decide to become a mage, or a tank. It’s all up to you. In a similar vein, you can choose to follow the quests on the mainland or just wander off to do your own thing. You can earn money either way, and those early levels are real easy to get in every skill set.

But around level twenty, things get harder. You either accept long slow grinds to each new level, or you start taking risks that can get you killed. Even prospecting and foraging for materials can kill you, because you might hit a pocket of gas and get poisoned to death. The game has a penalty where after each death, players have to pay off an XP debt, and the multiplier for that debt only gets higher if you keep dying.

At this point, you may be wondering why this game is the winner if it gets so hard so quickly. The answer is, the community. At some point, you’ll revive from another death, and some high level player will wander over to heal your character and ask how you’re doing. So you tell them what you were working on, and more often than not, they’ll offer to help. If you’re foraging, they might use their high level prospecting skills and knowledge of the best material spots to get you stocked up, and they can use terrain management to keep your dig site from imploding. If you want to fight monsters just above your pay grade, they will follow you and offer healing assistance, and if you still get killed, they will revive you.

Then, at some point, you will need a “trek” to find all the fast travel points to the various races’  starting towns. This involves crossing VERY dangerous terrain where some of the monsters can kill new players just by giving them a stern glare. Again, just hop in the universal chat and ask if anyone is free to escort you, and odds are, you’ll find someone ready to help, or at the very least to schedule a time to do the trip with you.

Heck, there are even players who will craft gear to help you progress, free of charge. Others will offer you cash to buy things like TPs (teleport pacts, the items needed to use the fast travel system.) Still others will donate Cats. (experience catalyzers, which can give double XP to any task and make leveling up easier.) Without a doubt, the players of Ryzom are the most welcoming and helpful community in all of gaming, and their support can make establishing yourself in the game world a lot easier.

Sure, it helps that Ryzom’s asking price for a year of service is only 33 Euros, much cheaper compared to its competitors. But if the game wasn’t fun, being cheap wouldn’t help it out. But it is fun, even going solo, and when that is no longer an option and you need a little help to get to the next tier of talents, it’s the one community where you don’t have to be afraid to ask for help.

I cannot stress that enough. I remember a couple years back getting into an MMO that had already been established for a few years, and I asked how to activate some of my character’s abilities. This was met with a flood of “Go read the wiki” responses, and it quickly discouraged me and sent me packing without a backward glance. Asking a similar question in Ryzom like “What key opens the missions window?” will get a small wave of folks typing a single letter. So it’s that support, combined with the great graphics, great gameplay, and fantastic subscription price that gets Ryzom the win.

One final note, though. Ryzom used to belong to a company, but when they opted to close the service, the fans got it up and running with the company’s permission. This too is a sign of how much love the community has to offer, but it also means that technical support can sometimes be a bit spotty. During my first few days, I had a problem with frequent disconnections, and the moderator couldn’t do much about it. However, another player took my problems on and eventually found a solution. (The issue was due to my internet connection being a 4G wireless modem, and the solution was to create a dedicated port for the game. It sounds complicated, but once the other player walked me through it, everything worked fine.)

That concludes another Versus entry. I actually do have another in mind already, but I’m keeping this one under wraps until it’s ready because the game of choice is…let’s say slightly controversial. Until next time, thanks for reading!

GameGame review: Batman: Arkham Asylum for PC (EGS)Game

First, let me apologize for the lack of a review last week. I got stuck playing Into the Dead 2: Unleashed, (Not really a bad thing from the fun point of view, but more for the scheduling issues) and this week’s entry took me a bit later to finish than I’d anticipated. My schedule also wasn’t helped by the number of times this week that I ran out of energy right around gaming time and opted for a nap instead.

I got Batman: Arkham Asylum as part of a generous free offer from Epic Game Store, which gave away all three of the Rocksteady Batman games. But like many EGS offers, it had to wait because of my old crappy internet connection. Then once we did get a better connection, it got lost in the backlog shuffle. But after I played and liked Gotham Knights, I remembered I had this other game full of Batman shenanigans, or Batmanigans, if you like. One ten-minute download later, and I was whisked backward into Bat-History, like *WHOOSH! BIFF! BAM!*

And also *wet fart*

I wish I could say I had a great time with this first outing of the trilogy, but I really didn’t. Part of it could be chalked up to playing a newer game with better tools and a nicer interface, but it really comes down to this game frequently repeating the same things over and over, as if repetition equals fun.  But perhaps even worse is how it takes the brilliant opportunities offered by Batman’s rogues gallery and squanders every last one on terrible boss fights or really, really pointless side quests.

But before we get into any of that, we should cover how this game gets started, which is vaguely similar to the comic of the same name. The Joker takes over Arkham Asylum. But where the comic had Batman away doing other things, he’s right there to see Joker take over with help on the inside as well as from reinforcements coming from his army out of Blackwood Prison. Also, while in the comic, the whole point of Joker’s plan was to force Batman to confront his own inner demons, in the game, somehow Joker’s managed to construct a secret chemical factory to make Bane-like Titans, which he promises to unleash on Gotham if Batman doesn’t stop him. Then he spends the entire game complaining about Batman stopping him after he invited the dude to do so. I just…what?

Let’s just get this out of the way: the story is stupid. Everything from the setup to the dialogue is absolute garbage. Batman is derogatory about everyone’s intelligence, like “Good thing Harley isn’t that smart.” (Except, she’s got a PhD, Bats.) At one point, he even says of of Commissioner Gordon “Jim is smarter than he looks.” He doesn’t comes off as anything but a condescending asshole every time he opens his mouth.

But hey, we’ve got Mark Hamill as the Joker! Yes, so he should talk every thirty seconds on a loop, repeating the same messages over and over. Oh he’s so wacky. But after I’ve heard the same line thirty times while searching an area for side quest stuff, I wonder if anyone in playtesting noticed how irritating it is that he won’t shut up.

Then there’s Riddler, who five minutes after being sprung from his cell instantly went to work hiding trophies and clues to riddles throughout the property. This includes hiding trophies inside of caves, and then bricking over the caves so they can only be opened with an “Ultra-Batclaw.” (a late game upgrade) He also lays out groups of wind-up teeth for Batman to destroy. Why? Eh, why not? To top it all off, he leaves maps to his challenges, leading at one point to the line, “There’s no way you could have found that on your own. Who’s helping you?” You are, idiot. None of what Riddler’s doing makes any sense, and it can’t, because it’s just uninspired game writers trying to figure out how to pad an already bad idea out with busy work.

Take as another example Detective Mode. In theory, it should be a great way to find clues. But the first time it’s used is to track a guard because he had a flask of bourbon, and you’re tracking the alcohol in his breath. Folks, the flask is shown to be spilled on the floor, so the guard only had a sip at most. To track the clouds of alcohol coming out with their breath would mean they’d be so drunk that not even a functional alcoholic could play off their level of inebriation. Not to mention that their co-workers would have noticed and gone, “Hey buddy, you smell like a distillery, so maybe go home.”

You use detective mode to track recent hand prints, specific blood traces in halls scattered with blood, and pheromones, but the dumbest idea is tracking Jim Gordon’s pipe tobacco. Not because you’re doing it, but because Jim is being held hostage by Harley Quinn and a bunch of henchmen, and yet no one notices this dude scattering a tobacco trail like some elderly Hansel? I’m not buyin’ it.

That sums up how I feel about eighty percent of detective mode uses. They go hand in hand with all the other shitty writing to prove that no one knew what to do with “the world’s greatest detective.” Fer fuck’s sake, the folks who made Yakuza games put out a better detective game with a better detective mode. At least in Judgement, you use detective mode to look for clues and solve cases instead of following a trail of bullshit to yet another terrible boss fight.

Given the upgraded skills and tools Batman can collect, there was potential to make a really fun game. You get batarangs, a grappling hook, another grappling hook for opening vents called the batclaw, ANOTHER grappling hook that anchors a line between two walls for long distance horizontal travel, some explosive gel that can be upgraded to work as a proximity mine, and a mini hacking tool for interacting with door locks and traps. At times, they even come close to feeling like fun. Instead, that arsenal is just wasted on room after room of the same enemies and the same side quests, occasionally punctuated by bad boss fights.

“Oh, come on, Zoe,” you say, “How bad can the boss fights be?” Instead of fighting Harley Quinn, you fight waves of the same Blackgate henchmen while she throws switches to electrify sections of the floor. Hop a fence to get away from the current, fight some dudes. Wash, rinse and repeat until a timer counts down and Harley runs away again. Gotham Knights did something similar with the first Harley fight, but then rewarded you later with an actual boss battle, electric sledge hammer and all. It was way better than this crap.

But that’s just one failed fight in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Bane, one of the meanest villains in Batman’s history, is reduced to being a joke fight that sets up a constantly repeating mini-boss mechanic that I’ll call “dodge the bull, and then ride the bull.” Instead of fighting Killer Croc, you run around a “sewer” on platforms chucking batarangs at his neck to knock him back into the water over and over. Instead of fighting Scarecrow, Bats keeps going into a hallucinatory platforming game of hide and seek before finding a bat signal to shine at a Scarecrow hallucination. You don’t even get to fight him for real eventually. That’s taken from you in one of the biggest fuck you’s of the game. But it’s not the biggest. No, that would be setting you up to think you’re going to fight a roided up Joker, only to throw more minions in your face and make the “real” fight with Joker into a pathetic anticlimax. The only halfway decent fight is with Poison Ivy, and the developers still thought they should toss in some cookie cutter minions to keep it from feeling too original or fun.

I’m giving Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 stars, and I would only suggest it to people who wanted to complete the whole Arkham trilogy. It’s a criminal waste of good vocal talent on a script that two stoned Monkeys (I mean the band, not the animals.) smoking pot could have banged out a better version of in one weekend. I’m not swearing off the trilogy, because I believe that there could be lots of ways to fix what went wrong with this first installment. But I really struggled to finish this, and it’s not because of difficulty. It’s just not a very good time. I certainly hope the next game in the trilogy is better, but I think I’d prefer a palette cleanser before diving into it.

Game review: Into the Dead 2: Unleashed for Netflix (Android)

I’m a bit late getting this review out because there is a lot of game to get through in Into the Dead 2: Unleashed before arriving to the final level, and that’s even before taking into account the daily runs, side stories, and regular and pro journeys. I wanted to see how this premium package compared to Into the Dead, which a sad endless runner with no story, terrible guns, and lousy execution of its core loop. I’ll get to that later, but what I’m saying is, the Netflix version of the sequel succeeds on every level, when it works. And it frequently mucks up in frustrating ways.

The easiest way to describe Into the Dead 2: Unleashed is that it’s a ride on rails, but with a small degree of side to side movement to allow for exploring within a level’s “corridor.” Ammo crates are scattered about and are highlighted by green flares, making them relatively easy to see and run towards. Additionally, some levels have chainsaws and shrub cutters to pick up and use as temporary weapons before they run out of gas. Other levels have mounted guns with a limited stock of ammunition, or armored vehicles with unlimited ammo that will eventually crash and return the player to running and dodging.

In the main story mode, the player’s character is James, an ex-soldier driving back home with supplies to wait out the current zombie outbreak. His truck crashes, stranding him a long way from home, and his sister Helen keeps choosing to move farther and farther away with his daughter Maggie in tow. James has no choice but to keep running to try and catch up to her, frequently panicking as Helen’s crappy decision making leads to ever escalating disasters.

The time of this setting looks to be somewhere around the seventies, as everyone uses handheld radios instead of cell phones, and there’s a kind of judder to the camera’s motion that feels like a seventies horror film. Then there’s a random line from a side story character about wishing he had a new kind of gun back in Nam. But this has to be some kind of alternate universe, because there’s also another side character, Corporal Garcia, and women soldiers taking part in combat operations didn’t become a reality until much later. It could be argued that given the dire circumstances, perhaps the remaining male soldiers chose to let women fight with them, so let’s just run with that.

So, that’s the main story, but as certain checkpoints are passed, side stories open up. For instance, one explains how Corporal Garcia ended up in charge of a group of Privates after her squad mates abandon her. Another follows Mason, one of the squad mates who left Garcia behind and shot one of his other mates “because he was bit.” (He was not.) There’s another with a father and daughter on the run and unable to trust anyone. It ends okay for them, but not for the innocent man that the daughter shoots because she thought he was reaching for a gun, and it turns out he was grabbing his radio to call his wife. Quite a few of the side stories are bleak like this, which I suppose is fitting within the zombie movie theme the game is aiming for. But there are a few stories that go better, like James rescuing a pair of circus tigers, who then become available as companions in the main story. (I named mine Tigger and Argento.)

Moving on to the controls, there’s a number of options here. I preferred the tilt steer, but you can also choose to slide your thumb left and right on the left side of the screen to steer or use both thumbs on the sides of the screen to steer. There are buttons on the right side of the screen to switch weapons, which you can have two equipped, another to throw grenades, and another to either switch from semi-auto to fully automatic or use a special weapon’s alternate fire. (For instance, there’s an assault rifle with a built-in grenade launcher, so that gun has both buttons for swapping rate of fire and for firing a grenade.)

Every level has a set distance to run until the end, triggering a cut-scene and telling a bit more of the story through radioed calls. Each level also has a set of objectives to meet, with gold being awarded each time one of five objectives is met. Sometimes, certain goals can’t be hit because of a weak weapon or a lack of ammo, but it’s always possible to play through the same level later to pick up extra stars. The stars themselves also unlock different boosts for weapons, like piercing or explosives ammo, or extra ammunition at the start of a run, or added to all the crates in the level. It is possible to get every boost in the game without perfect 5 star scores, so there’s no need to stress missing one or more goals in a level.

When I compare the premium sequel to the ad-loaded, microtransaction nightmare of the first Into the Dead, I cannot help but wonder why anyone would want to play the first one. The guns all sound tinny and have a laughably short range. The supply crates are not highlighted well enough to tell where they are, so most of the time I ran out of ammo and had to hope I eventually tripped over another crate. (Which didn’t happen often.) The prices on companions and special guns is ridiculous, and what can be found in game for normal currency is pathetic.

If not for its flaws, Into the Dead 2: Unleashed would be a master class example of how to turn mobile garbage into a fun game worth playing. It almost reaches a kind of perfection to earn a 5 star rating. But there are flaws, and some of them are pretty agonizing.

First and foremost is that guns will frequently miss a zombie directly in from of the gun. I assumed it was failing to hit for some random reason, but there are bows and crossbows with slower traveling arrows and bolts. With those, it was possible to track my shots and see them go through the target without registering as a hit. How bad is this? Imagine hitting a perfect run and getting all the achievements in a level, and twice in rapid order just before the “finish line,” the gun misses. The first time, James can whip out his Bowie knife to shank the zombie. But the second time is instant death, with the screaming and the flying intestines, and the biting, and that’s goodbye to the achievements. Now, once is bad, but imagine that same scenario happening over and over. To say it kills the fun is a massive understatement.

Then there’s the zombie who either stands up right in front of James or jumps out from behind a tree, building, or vehicle. There’s no way to shoot them at that close of a range, and no way to dodge them, either. Combine this with the guns not registering hits, and mix and match both within levels to make for a perfect aggravation cocktail.

And I also have to gripe about the “toughness” mechanic of zombies. Like, okay, a zombie soldier in body armor and wearing a helmet is going to be hard to put down. But when I shoot a sheriff zombie wearing only a beige shirt WITH EXPLOSIVE ROUNDS and he takes two or three shots to put down, you can consider my immersion broken. On top of this, the game also bandies out that old lame video game trope that the fatter an enemy is, the more impervious they are to being shot. No. NO. This shitty mechanic needs to be dropped from all gaming and consigned to the Video Game Hall of Shame.

Near the end of the game, I also ran into a problem where I needed to get better guns for certain goals like “Make 40 pistol kills” and the game stopped offering new models while the older guns were all level capped. (A level 10 gun against a level 12 zombie is really bad. Like every zombie takes four bullets to put down, and I ran out of ammo long before meeting my goal.) They keep handing out bigger assault rifles and SMGs, as well as a healthy number of special weapons and crossbows. But when it comes to long rifles, pistols, and shotguns, the game got downright stingy.

The only way to unlock more is to wait and play the daily run, where earning stars will eventually unlock another gun. By my calculations, just to get a new shotgun and pistol, I need four days of perfect runs to unlock that gear. Most of the time, I can only manage two stars per run, so that stretches out the wait even longer. Then once I do unlock them, I need to grind in older levels to get enough kills to level the guns up, and then grind in the regular and pro journeys to get enough gold to pay for the upgrades. Given that the upper level upgrades run around 4,000 gold, that’s at least a week of more grinding just to level up two guns that I only really need to tick another checkbox and get one step closer to full five star levels. As much as I’ve enjoyed the game, I’m not sure I have the patience to stick with the grind. And this is coming from someone who once did ten hours of fighting the same knight in the same hall of Lothric Castle to get enough Titanite Chunks to level up six swords.

When it comes time to score this one, I really want to take into account the flaws and how many times they screwed me out of a perfect run. But then I think about all the times I was in the zone, wearing a big smile as I mowed down wave after wave of zombies. That’s why I played so much of this and why I’ll probably keep playing it for a few more weeks at the very least. Sure, the story kinda sucks, but it doesn’t really matter if I’m having fun and enjoying the game.

I’ll give Into the Dead 2: Unleashed 4 stars and recommend it for anyone with a Netflix account looking for a shooter that tickles that late night cult classic vibe to near perfection. It really has been one of the best mobile games I’ve ever played, so if the makers decide to drop a sequel on Netflix, it will go instantly on my Must Play list.

Game review: Relic Hunters Rebels for Netflix (Android)Game review

Ages ago, I played Relic Hunters Zero and was not a fan. A three-quarter top down twin-stick shooter, it had convoluted controls, repetitive levels, and weapons that all ended up feeling the same near the final levels of any given stage. The titular relics were okay, but not really game changing or worth experimenting with to find the sweet build right for me.Relic Hunters Rebels is a sequel that does a better job of world building and crafting an interesting story, as well as making all of the weapons feel unique. The relics in this version all have powers that can be leveled up by playing the game, so all the way around, this feels like a better game. It even has better controls, and the auto-aim is more helpful than I’ve seen in many console and PC games.And yet, it’s a mobile game, so you just knew something had to be ruined by the mobile game economy. We’ll get into all of that soon enough, but just know that the short version is, this game is pretty good if you can get it on Netflix instead of the free version.From the opening cut scene, the relic hunters are attacked by a new ally of the Ducan Empire. Separated from his crew, Jimmy must rely on the local Forrester tribe leader Baru to guide him in unfamiliar terrain back to his friends. Along the way, he gathers blueprints and parts that Baru can craft to make better guns, and beating the first boss rewards the first relic, which ends up being real handy real fast.Partway through the forest region, the game also unlocks Patrols and Dungeons. Patrols are short remixes of the region’s features, with a slightly higher chance of scoring better loot. Meanwhile dungeons feature forty floors of enemies that get progressively more difficult, with a series of powers offered to make the run a little less of a slog. The right combination of powers and guns can make the dungeons the best place to pick up loot, bounty points and runes to use in the shop, and unlock new relics.Even with so many options available, the early levels are rough, mainly because one of your starting weapons is weak against the enemies you’re facing. Which is frankly idiotic because “Oh yeah, metal is weak in the forest.” METAL IS WEAK IN A FOREST. WT ACTUAL F.Get used to this level of elemental stupidity, because every area has a similar elemental weakness that just defies any attempts at logic. It doesn’t help that blueprints for new weapons are doled out in fragments, because of course you have to grind in a mobile game for new weapons. When you get the new weapon, you can quickly upgrade it, right? No, this is mobile, so you need to grind for materials that grow increasingly rare to improve the gun’s stats. For the first two levels, every gun you unlock and grind feels pretty awful. It’s like finding a straw with a load of spitwads, and for the longest while you’re investing in the size of the tissue wad and the level of spit in the load.But mostly, grinding doesn’t yield enough of the needed materials, and you have to visit the shop to buy them using two currencies, runes and bounty. (Because it’s mobile, so of course there’s two currencies.) Getting the Netflix version at least means the second currency is more readily available, but it’s still just as much a grind to get the items needed to make a level two weapon. Advancing weapon levels grants more skill points on each gun. A starting gun can only have five points invested in it, with the next level offering 20 and 35 points. But past the first two points spent in any category, more uncommon and rare materials are needed, and they get harder to find. There’s a lot of overlap in what each gun needs, so for the longest time, this is the sticking point to advancing past the hard setting and getting to the next tier, Rebel. (Note, while Hard levels unlock upon beating the region, to unlock Rebel 1 difficulty requires beating the whole game on Hard. Then it’s all rinse and repeat to keep unlocking higher difficulty tiers.)There comes a point when you have the right guns to advance through the first region and maybe manage to eke out a win in the optional dungeons. At this point, the game introduces Hard Mode, and don’t even think about trying it yet. I made the first few levels with a lot of dodging and swearing, but I realized at a certain point that I wasn’t meant to get any farther without getting in a hamster wheel for a long, long grind to get prepared for the slog.The real kick in the metaphorical dick is that grinding on higher difficulty levels doesn’t offer anything at all over the lower difficulty setting. (Yes, the first time you run them, the loot is better, but even by the second run, it’s the same stuff you’d get on Normal difficulty.) There’s no better chance of getting rare or epic loot, and to me, this feels like a serious oversight. Why would you not provide some incentive to play at higher difficulties? Why make the grind even less attractive if you want to keep players locked in this loop?That’s where Relic Hunter Rebels will become a make or break deal for you. Are you okay with grinding the same level over and over for a low chance of unlocking a new gun or getting the loot needed to upgrade the guns you’re already using? If yes, then eventually you’ll reach a point when every gun feels useful and powerful. The relics will level up as well, offering more raw and elemental damage, as well as other perks like more health or better critical chance and damage. By the end of the game’s 5 areas, you’ll likely have an arsenal and build for every area, and the last boss fight will be fun and satisfying.But if you hate grinding, you’ll likely end up dropping this game with an annoyed “fuck off.” I wouldn’t blame you because several times, I felt the same temptation. I haven’t even covered other irksome details like the bad level design of the mountain region, where someone thought it would be fun to move in narrow corridors while enemies fire through walls with lasers and mortars, and then some random enemy runs up the same corridor to spray automatic weapons that are damned near impossible to dodge. The other levels all have some combination of cover that characters can get stuck on or trapped in, and I’ve frequently seen enemies glitch out trying to move around the same objects. It’s just frustrating to try and strafe away from bullets, only to get stuck on a bush and lose half my health, you know?Still, in the spirit of my Versus series, I downloaded the first game to see which felt better, and despite the grind, this is still the more fun experience. The characters feel more distinct from each other, and the collection of weapons opens up to favor your own play style. The story isn’t bad, if a bit too foreshadowed, and is loads better than what passed for writing in Relic Hunters Zero.As I said before, it all comes down to your tolerance for grinding, but if I have to give Relic Hunters Rebels a score, I’d call it at 4 stars. It isn’t perfect, but it a vast improvement over the previous game that rewards the time you spend with it, rather than offer up more variations of spitwad shooter. So if you’ve got a Netflix subscription, give it a try.

Game review: Raspberry Mash on Google Play Pass

I found Raspberry Mash on Google’s subscription service, and it’s everything I could hope for in a mobile game. A rogue-like set in a dark fantasy world, it offers simple controls, satisfying gameplay that constantly stokes that “one more try” vibe, and simple but effective graphics that bring to mind The Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon.

It is also a sad reminder of how the FtP model is ruining games by injecting ads into even the best ideas. Why watch multiple ads just to get started on a run when you can grab your free gear and go? If you reach a shop slightly short of gold, why not log in with the Free Gold TV instead of watching another ad? Oh, did you die fighting the boss? Here’s one free continue. Or you get the “free” version of the game and have whole minutes of your life sucked away by ads, most of which are bold-face lies about how the real games play. (Fuck those fake ads.)

I cannot overstate that this game is so good that I would happily pay to play it on my phone, and yet I’m constantly shown how the brilliant design was corrupted to accommodate the modern “free” experience. Stripping away all of the mandatory ads creates a wonderful game where every run can grow from “interesting” to “amazing.” But just enough of the FtP experience lingers to show the hell that non-paying gamers have to suffer in.

Let’s dispense with my FtP gripes and get into the game. A young woman is banished into a pocket dimension, and soon thereafter befriended by a pile of goo who offers to replace her busted arm. In exchange, the goo wants revenge on the mad god ruling over the pocket dimension. Standard video game story, really, but it’s just enough to get running with a little under two minutes of screen text. I highly approve, since one mobile game I didn’t finish was because twenty minutes into the game, I hadn’t actually played anything so much as watched a really dull visual novel.

I digress, the gameplay is quite simple because the character won’t use their weapon until you stop moving using the direction circle on the left side of the screen. For every run in the game, the character has one ranged weapon and one melee weapon, and those can be swapped with a button on the right. For a console game, this level of simplicity might be considered a bad thing, but on a phone screen it’s perfect. By which I mean I found this game more fun than the vast majority of free Idle RPGs on the Play Store because I get to play the game instead of pressing a button to watch the game play itself.

During the first run, there’s a dodge roll button, but it doesn’t work until you find the artifact in game that unlocks the ability. Then in the area between levels, you need to invest harvested souls to unlock the ability for all runs. Oddly enough, while there are other powers to unlock, none of them require a secondary unlock in this manner. Maybe the dodge roll unlock was a leftover from before the game launched? I dunno.

In any case, the dodge is much like the type used in Enter the Gungeon, so while it can be effective against the bullet hell bosses, it does sometime send the character flying in the wrong direction. This is because the direction input is kinda small and finicky. If I could request anything in a future update, it would be an option in the setting to increase the size of the circle. (This is what’s preventing Raspberry Mash from getting the full 5 star score.) Because of that finicky control circle, sometimes pressing dodge sends the character rolling to catch the bullets you wanted to avoid.

On each run, the layout of the levels is mixed up to make it feel like proper exploration, while the enemy types and bosses remain static. Right before this pattern risks becoming tedious, reaching the third level will unlock a new transport method using electric plugs, which leads to a harder version of the same boss in the first level. From there the next two levels are new, as are the enemies and bosses. (I particularly liked the killer clown minions.) Taking this alternate route eventually leads to the first final boss, but the cut-scene at the end reveals this is not the real mad god, and he has yet to be hunted down. So back down you go in search of the real final boss. (Who looks really cool, by the way.)

Oh, also, there’s a map in the upper right corner that can be expanded, and unlike a lot of games, the map is extremely useful to see where you’ve been, which paths are still unexplored, and where you’ve left gear (shown as gold crosses) or items (blue dots) like extra ammo or food to heal. A lot of backtracking can be avoided because several rooms have teleporters called summoning circles, and these are also shown on the map. If I seem to be making a big deal out of this, it’s because way too many games in recent memory have had terrible maps. To find one that does exactly what I want to keep me from getting lost deserves that extra bit of praise.

Whether you die or win, the character always returns to the starting room with treasure chests to gather starting gear for a run (a lot of which is insanely fun to use and may last until the end of the run) and visit the souls merchant to unlock stuff like more health, higher damage, extra artifact slots in the inventory, and new rare weapons. It’s the same idea as Dead Cells, really. In fact, the whole game is a blend of concepts and mechanics from other successful indie games. I know that sounds derivative, but the resulting blend is so fun that I’ve played until my phone’s battery was low. I played in the bathroom long after I was done with my “business” and my butt had fallen asleep on the seat. If that isn’t a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

BUT, I can only recommend the curated ad-free version, and that’s also the version of Raspberry Mash that I’m giving 4 stars to. I can’t even believe I’m suggesting this, but games like this on the Play Pass can almost justify its existence. At the same time, I look at the popups in this game that all say (Free) and I know that’s where another thirty second ad was meant to go. In those moments, I think how much better this and other games would be if only the developers would just let us buy them and never had to force more ads our way in exchange for pennies.

Which is why I’m so sad to offer this endorsement to get the Play Pass version. It shouldn’t have to be this way, but both Google and Apple have shaped their walled gardens to be full of ad-filled trash, and they both charge a premium fee just to cure the problem that they built into the market themselves. Ain’t that some shit?

Anywho, see you next time.