Tag: Review

  • Tech Review: Nacon Colorlight Limited Edition

    Tech Review: Nacon Colorlight Limited Edition

    Providing a one-sentence review for the Nacon Colorlight Limited Edition is easy: It’s a transparent, “Designed for Xbox”, Pro Compact model, with six customisable colour zones, and many of the same pros and cons. As such, there’s plenty to like if you’re looking for a sturdy, easy-to-use, customisable wired gamepad – but its form factor and triggers can feel at odds with the benefits you get from the programmable software features.

    Despite the Pro Compact frame, the Colorlight is not much more compact than an original Xbox Series gamepad and weighs about as much one with the batteries removed. That said, it still feels robust in your hands, with thumbsticks, face buttons, and bumpers that all have a similar tactile feel. The grips are lightly textured and the braided cord, which is 3.5 m long and does not detach, ensures you can store it easily without twisting or tangling. What is notable, and presumably accounts for most of the size reduction, are the shorter hand grips. Your mileage may vary based on your hand size, but I found the Colorlight felt less secure during games that required rapid inputs (first-person shooters being a prime example).

    As a certified “Designed for Xbox” product, the Colorlight’s basic button and thumbstick configuration is identical to an original gamepad, and you get Dolby Atmos support if you have a headset plugged into the 3.5 mm jack on the base. The offset thumbsticks are a similar size and height, while the A/B/X/Y face buttons are slightly larger and, as a consequence, more cramped. Thankfully, they have the same “clicky” feel and a similar range of motion. The one design I don’t understand is why the menu, view, and share buttons were pushed towards the edge of the gamepad, instead of clustered around the central “Xbox” button.

    The thumbsticks are a highlight. They feel robust and have a raised rubber edge that ensures your thumbs don’t slip, even when applying only light pressure. In contrast, the d-pad feels a little spongy when depressed and rotated – lacking the “clicky” feedback of an official Xbox gamepad – but it functions as intended. So to do the bumpers, though they feel less prominent. Unfortunately, the somewhat squat triggers bring down the overall experience in any game genre that relies on them extensively – think first-person shooters or racing games. They feel more like the bumper-trigger hybrids on a Dualshock 4, rather than the well-defined curved triggers we’ve seen on every Xbox gamepad since the original “Duke”. They’re sturdy, they get the job done, but it always felt like my fingers were close to slipping off during hectic gaming sessions.

    With form factor out the way, the next element to discuss is the Colorlight’s programmable software and unique lighting options that you typically only see with premium-priced gamepads. Unsurprisingly, it uses the basic Pro Compact app – which is simple to use and offers excellent presets – just with extra settings to customise the RGB lighting. You get full button-remapping; you can invert the thumbsticks and tweak their dead-zones or response patterns; you can adjust the trigger activation ranges; and set the d-pad to a 4-way or 8-way input. You can mix and match to your liking, but each preset clearly demonstrates the impact of each adjustment and you can tweak it on the fly – making it easy to understand and test the results during gameplay.

    What is unique to the Colorlight is a tab dedicated to tweaking the colour and behaviour of the 6 LED lights. If you’re boring like me, you can just pick a single colour and brightness level, or you can tweak each LED individually to create a unique arrangement of colours with different behaviours. Six LEDs with a symmetrical split is not quite enough to create anything too elaborate, but it does allow you to create unique profiles for different users or, if you want two in the house for local coop, it’ll be easy to identify which controller belongs to whom. On the back of the gamepad, you’ll find one button to cycle a basic set of colour, while another toggle puts it into “advanced” mode to use the software interface.

    As a final point on the user experience, the Colorlight benefits from being simple to use with unified features. It works on last-gen Xbox One consoles, current-gen Xbox Series consoles, and PCs – just plug it in and you’re good to go. Better still, the customisation software app functions identically on all devices and syncs with your profile between them. Additionally, if you’re a fan of retro games, the wired Colorlight has far greater compatibility with older GOG and Steam PC games from the mid-2000s onwards, whereas they often bug out when using Bluetooth or a wireless adapter.

    Overall, the Nacon Colorlight Limited Edition is a decent budget gamepad, with some surprisingly premium features. It doesn’t offer back paddles, swappable thumbsticks, or weights, but the programmable software options and lighting customisation feel on par with more expensive gamepads. The build quality is great, the layout familiar, and the customisation options intuitive to use and easy to test mid-game. Unfortunately, the shorter hand grips and trigger design make it less ideal for shooters and racing games – both genres the software feels tailored for. It works well as a robust backup controller for a child, or maybe as a dedicated Xbox-style gamepad for PC but would like to see a revision with conventional triggers.

    Pros:

    • Robust build quality, familiar layout, and tactile feel to original Xbox gamepads
    • Intuitive and useful programmable buttons/triggers using the Pro Compact app
    • A wide range of lighting configurations to personalise your pad
    • Quality braided cable that’ll survive handling and storage

    Cons:

    • Short hand grips and Dualshock-esque triggers make it less ideal for shooters and racing games
    • Unintuitive menu, view, and share button placement

    Score: 7/10

    A review sample of the Nacon Colorlight Limited Edition was provided to gameblur by the manufacturer.

  • Review: DREDGE: The Pale Reach DLC (Xbox Series)

    Review: DREDGE: The Pale Reach DLC (Xbox Series)

    I really enjoyed DREDGE earlier this year. It was a near-perfect indie experience that felt smartly designed to get the most out of a limited budget without wasting my time. I’ve been looking for an excuse to go back and wrap up a few achievements – but playing through The Pale Reach expansion was both satisfying and disappointing. It is more DREDGE – which is a good thing – but it also left me concerned about future expansions if they don’t (or can’t) shake up the mechanics and gameplay structure significantly.

    In brief, The Pale Reach expansion exists to provide more of what DREDGE already did well. It couples simple but satisfying fishing and dredging mini-games with a rewarding progression system – ensuring you’ll rarely play for more than an hour without improving your ship, fishing equipment, or passive skills in some way. You sail out at the break of dawn to maximise your exploration and fishing time, then dash back to shelter once the sun sets in order to avoid cosmic horrors that plague the open seas after dark. Despite the stylised, cartoonish visuals and soothing soundtrack, there’s a constant sense of lingering dread in what is typically a relaxed genre.

    The Pale Reach provides a new icy biome to explore, with a substantial secondary quest, new equipment to craft or purchase, and new sea life – with several gruesome abhorrent species, of course. A visiting photographer provides an incentive to sail south, but she only serves to reveal an angry Narwhal that roams the frigid waters. The meat of the story involves discovering the fate of an old expedition – a task that’ll force you to dredge up parts for an ice breaker – and prevent the awakening of yet another slumbering monstrosity.

    Mechanically and structurally, the expansion plays out exactly like any of the existing island biomes you visit in the base game – albeit a suitably low-risk option that you can tackle early with only a hull upgrade or two recommended. NPCs will ask you to catch fish or dredge old parts to craft new gear; tattered journals will recount the fate of the prior expedition and update your goals; ancient shrines will hint at the true nature of the threat; and the aforementioned Narwhal will alternate between chasing you and conveniently destroying ice barriers if tempted with enough fish.

    There are some useful rewards that have application outside of the icy biome – like the ability to create ice blocks that keep your haul fresh for longer or a mysterious anchor that creates a two-way portal to Blackstone Isle – but if I had been playing DREDGE for the first time and someone installed the expansion without me knowing, I doubt I’d have realised it was post-launch content.

    As a consequence, I’m torn on how to rate The Pale Reach expansion. If you skipped DREDGE at launch and wanted to play it; or if you wanted to return to complete fishing challenges, boat upgrades, and check other free post-launch content; DREDGE: The Pale Reach is a well-priced excuse that slightly bulks up an already excellent game. If, on the other hand, you’ve 100%-ed DREDGE and were hoping to see what else could be done to shake up the gameplay formula, getting more of the same might disappoint.

    Pros:

    • A smart and respectful remaster that preserves System Shock 2’s timeless qualities and a few flaws
    • The updated textures, ambient lighting, and new weapon models don’t gel with the original designs
    • Competent gamepad controls and a multi-plat release improves accessibility
    • There’s only one cyberspace section at the end (which I guess some might consider a negative)

    Cons:

    • It ultimately looks and plays just like the late ‘90s early 3D FPS-RPG hybrid it is
    • Some laborious objectives remain unaltered and can drag down the pacing

    Score: 7/10

    DREDGE: The Pale Reach was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch.

  • Review: Robocop: Rogue City (Xbox Series)

    Review: Robocop: Rogue City (Xbox Series)

    Robocop: Rogue City is quality 7-out-of-10 fare – one of those games that lack the production values of an “objectively” higher-scoring “AAA” title but are often way more fun to play. As such, how much you enjoy it will depend on what you’re willing to forgive to finally play a good game based on an underutilised IP. It shares many of the same highs and lows as Terminator: Resistance, demonstrating a lot of passion and an obvious love of the IP. However, some great character interactions, solid shooting, an authentic sense of style, and a flashy new engine can’t obscure the disjointed campaign flow, limited mechanical depth, dated character models, and awful cutscenes.

    If you’ve watched the 1987 film recently, it’s easy to argue Robocop: Rogue City retreads too many themes. What makes us human and who gets to decide? Is the rigid application of laws truly just? Is there no end to corporate greed and the collateral damage it causes? Repetition, sure, but these themes make for some of the best interactions between Robocop and the supporting cast and they tie into a narrative role-playing mechanic that influences the fate of several characters and Old Detroit. That said, it’s no subversive masterpiece. Robocop guns down hundreds of gang members with no consideration for the socio-economic manipulation that pushed them into that life, and there’s no shortage of real-world examples that demonstrate trying to resolve violence with violence begets more violence.

    The events of Robocop: Rogue City take place after the second film, with resurgent gangs, an ongoing Nuke drug problem, and the OCP still looking for any excuse to replace the police force with robots and level Old Detroit to make way for their Delta City project. Robocop experiences more glitches during an attack on the Channel 9 building, so OCP inserts a chip to monitor his performance (tying into the progression mechanics) and assigns him mandatory therapy sessions (used to define, question, and reinforce your role-playing choices). He’s then let off the leash to investigate “the new guy in town”, a mysterious villain whom several gangs and mercenaries are vying to work for.

    This kicks off an interesting but poorly paced story that revolves around Robocop in more ways than one. A good chunk of the opening half is spent shooting through several gangs to interrogate their leaders; destroying more dysfunctional ED-209s; dealing with OCP’s ongoing efforts to undermine the existing police force; avoiding or engaging with mayoral election campaigns intent on using him for political goals; and uncovering an even deeper conspiracy within OCP that leads into a drawn out finale and a bizarre final boss that, I guess, is was somewhat foreshadowed. I know this is both a video game and Robocop is satirical sci-fi, but the plot is still full of contrivances, inconsistent logic, and sudden deviations that make it feel as though the script was written on the fly.

    That said, if you focus instead on optional missions and smaller moments between Robocop and Lewis, his fellow officers, the citizens of Old Detroit, and even the antagonists, you’ll find much better writing, unexpectedly touching moments, and get the chance to explore lovingly recreated spaces like the Metro West Police Station. Peter Weller’s voice and delivery add instant authenticity and, with the notable exception of OCP’s CEO “the Old Man”, the rest of the voice cast give it their all – even if most performances aren’t going to win any awards. During many of these moments, you choose Robocop’s response or actions, which don’t drastically alter the events you experience, but they do change how he perceives himself and how the cast interacts with him down the line.

    The problem is no matter how good Robocop: Rogue City looks – with incredibly detailed environments, destruction physics, realistic lighting, and exaggerated gore – the vast majority of character models look dated and stiffly animated, lip-syncing is all over the place, and the cutscene direction feels crude: think simplistic framing, awkward cuts, poor dialogue delivery, and shifting sound levels. Robocop’s model looks great, Weller’s delivery is perfect, and the soundtrack variations of the original theme are brilliant – but all that can’t stop many cutscenes robbing the game of the emotional impact the writers clearly intended.

    Now I’ve got this far without discussing the gameplay in-depth, and I’d argue that’s because there’s not a lot of depth – well, at least not enough when tackling all the primary and secondary missions takes almost 20 hours, alternating between corridor shooting galleries and repeat visits to a hub-like Old Detroit that evolves over time. Mechanically, Robocop: Rogue City is another RPG-shooter hybrid like Terminator: Resistance – albeit with less looting, crafting, and upgrading gear and a greater focus on satisfying gunplay based around Robocop’s iconic Auto-9 and his incredible resilience. There are simple dialogue and scanning-based investigations, but while some larger chapters and the Old Detroit hub often reminded me of Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex games, Robocop is no Adam Jenson. Even if a mission starts off peaceful, it’s guaranteed to end in a gunfight.

    Thankfully, the shooting is solid, and Robocop: Rogue City nails the sensation of being half-man and half-machine, with the durability and manoeuvrability of a tank. I’d always laugh when yet another gang member or mercenary threatened Robocop and pulled out a handgun or rifle, as only high calibre rounds and explosives pose a significant threat. From the moment Robocop thuds into the Channel 9 building, draws his iconic Auto-9, and the classic theme kicks in, you’ll spend most of your time shooting enemies in the head, in the groin if they’re armoured, or in weak points if they’re robotic. Although you can carry another weapon in reserve, the customisable Auto-9 with unlimited ammo is your workhorse tool and clearly received the most attention.

    Firefights are dynamic and evolve to a degree, just not enough to sustain a campaign twice the length of the classic FPS that inspired it. Enemies with more armour, bigger guns, or special abilities are slowly introduced; environments are full of hazards you can throw at enemies, or throw enemies into; most secondary weapons are useful in specific situations; there are offensive and defensive skills you can put points into for incremental buffs and perks; and you can upgrade the Auto-9 using “PCB” omni boards and chips that feels like a less-intuitive variation of what we got in Terminator: Resistance.

    The problem is it takes hours to get impactful perks if you don’t take a min-max approach – think deadly ricochet shots, bullet-deflecting armour, and bursts of slow-motion actually long enough to be useful – while there’s a steady increase in the number of tank-ish enemies that offset their impact and drag out firefights. As I was blasting through an end-game gauntlet, about 18 hours in, I realised I was just going through the same motions on autopilot: pull the left trigger, smile as the CRT effect and targeting outlines appeared, pull the right trigger, watch heads or groins explode. Considered in isolation, most scripted firefights are entertaining, but there are a lot of them, and they all blur together over time.

    Now despite ending on a low note, Teyon still deserves plenty of praise for creating the best Robocop video game available, just as they did for the Terminator IP, and that makes this a must-play for fans of Terminator: Resistance. For those not part of that crowd, Robocop: Rogue City can still be a lot of fun if you’re heavily invested in the IP and can look past inconsistent production values or underdeveloped systems. It somewhat outstays its welcome but provides a unique opportunity to role-play a conflicted Robocop, violently prosecuting justice through a CRT filter, to a fantastic soundtrack. If nothing else, it might also convince you the IP could work in a dedicated narrative-adventure game.

    Pros:

    • Great interactions between Robocop and the secondary cast that revisit themes from the 1987 film
    • Recreated locations from the films and classic Robocop lines delivered by Peter Weller himself
    • A customisable and immensely satisfying Auto-9 that explodes heads, hands, and groins alike
    • A progression system that (eventually) unlocks some overpowered perks

    Cons:

    • Weird campaign pacing and contrivances
    • The emotional impact of many encounters is undermined by crude cutscenes and character models
    • Not enough mechanical depth to sustain a 15-20 hour campaign
    • No permanent CRT filter option and no New Game Plus

    Score: 7/10

    Robocop: Rogue City was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Review: ADORE (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: ADORE (Nintendo Switch)

    ADORE is an intriguing “hands-off” action-RPG from Brazilian developer Cadabra Games. The focus is on capturing, upgrading, and synergising creatures that function as your attack abilities – a feat you’ll achieve by grinding procedurally-generated maps for said creatures and a myriad of upgrade resources. With real-time, isometric combat exclusively using summons, it feels novel at first, but progression begins to feel repetitive, unrewarding, and even frustrating at times.

    Starting with the good, ADORE has an interesting premise. Your protagonist has been cohabited by the spirit of “Draknar”, the god of creatures, who was slain by his brother “Ixer”. Ixer’s betrayal has resulted in a curse spreading across the land, corrupting once-peaceful creatures, and leaving it up to Lukha and a hidden village of fellow Adorers to try to set things right.

    ADORE gets off to a slow start but the combat and upgrade mechanics are surprisingly deep. At first, you only need to consider the type of creature – think beast, mystic, nature, or arcane – and their attack patterns.

    Some dash forward for a flurry of quick attacks; some waddle along before dealing a sweeping AoE attack; others have to charge up for a few seconds before dealing a devastating high-damage attack. With up to four creatures assigned to the face buttons (or keys), picking the right attack behaviour is essential, and so too is using the correct damage type to counter armour. You also have a limited, recharging stamina pool to manage, so you can’t just spam all of them at once.

    That’s only the basics, however. Creatures charge up special attacks you can selectively trigger; they can develop synergies with other creature types to unlock new abilities; they can gain experience from Shrines of Draknar to unlock new traits and level existing ones; upgradeable artefacts carried by Lukha add useful triggered abilities; while equipped runes provide him varying levels of passive buffs if you have the points to invest. On top of that, you can collect ingredients and cook meals to heal and buff your team mid-mission.

    You set out from a central hub and slowly unlock five regions on a world map. There’s a string of plot-related missions – most of which are just item or creature hunts before a battle against another Adorer or puzzle-like encounter with Ixer – and there’s a constantly refreshing list of optional missions.

    You jump through a portal in the Adorer village into simplistic maps made up of interconnected segments, each with a handful of hostile creatures to capture or defeat, a mini-mission or two –think activating switches or guiding floating orbs while under attack – and, hopefully, a useful item spawn like the “Particles of Gaterdrik” used to capture creatures, cooking or crafting materials, and upgrade shrines.

    With 39 creatures to capture, managing their upgrades, synergies, and constantly shuffling them in and out of your active party can be fiddly with a gamepad, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in slowly creating a diverse and powerful menagerie. So too is mastering the deceptively simple-looking isometric combat, which forces Lukha to stay mobile and dodge attacks, summon creatures when you spot a gap or first-strike opportunity, and quickly recall them before enemies can land a counter – potentially knocking them out of action for a mission if their health hits zero.

    Unfortunately, moving the plot forward, capturing new creatures, and obtaining resources for upgrades involves grinding short missions and longer excursions; to the point progression feels repetitive and unrewarding, undermining the overall experience.

    To ADORE’s credit, it always indicates what challenges you might face – like a legendary creature – and what resources are available on any given mission. The problem is how quickly the resource costs escalate. Activating one or two runes, levelling your creatures up two to three times, and enhancing an artefact once; are all manageable in the opening hours but as your roster grows, you’ll be forced to tackle the longest multi-map excursions or multiple short missions to achieve any significant progress.

    As fun and tactical as the combat may be, and as stylish as the character designs and environment first appear, it doesn’t take long before your brain settles into a monotonous routine and both the vibrant backdrops – which already suffer from that “made in Unity” look – blur together.

    Of course, grinding to upgrade your party is hardly a novel idea in video games, but the gameplay loop falls flat here due to a few annoying design choices. The first issue is that you have to manually pick up most rewards and they’re prone to falling out of the playable area or hidden behind chunks of the environment.

    The second issue is how death results in dropping most of your currency and crystal shards – essential for purchasing and upgrading artefacts, or expanding rune slots and rune activation points. Both simply add a degree of frustration to an already grindy progression system.

    Now ADORE should entertain those that love collecting and upgrading creatures for battles, with no shortage of upgrade mechanics to engage with and satisfyingly tactical real-time combat. It’s the mission and progression structure that leaves me conflicted. On one hand, it’s a smart way to get more mileage out of limited assets, gives you plenty of time to engage with the mechanics, and its a good fit for short sessions on the Switch or Steam Deck. On the other hand, the longer you play, the less rewarding the progression system feels, and the more formulaic and repetitive the gameplay loop feels.

    Pros:

    • A novel, hands-off, summons-based combat system
    • Plenty of mechanical depth when it comes to upgrading and synergising your party
    • Perfect for shorter sessions on the Switch or Steam Deck

    Cons:

    • The progression system feels increasingly unrewarding and repetitive
    • The rogue-like punishment for death adds nothing but frustration

    Score: 7/10

    ADORE was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, and PlayStation 4/5.

  • Review: Return to Grace (PC)

    Review: Return to Grace (PC)

    Playing Return to Grace had me thinking back to when so-called “walking simulators” were still a divisive topic. Video games like Dear Esther, Gone Home, or Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – in which the narrative, characters, atmosphere, and audiovisual experience take precedence over mechanical complexity.

    On one hand, it’s a design that benefits Return to Grace, making for an immersive experience focused on the narrative pay-off. On the other, I was reminded of how fine a line this genre walks between compelling and boring if the pacing and length are even slightly off the mark.

    Return to Grace is a first-person narrative adventure that places you in the environmental suit of Adie Ito – an archaeologist exploring a frozen and stormy Ganymede in 3820 AD, searching for an ancient AI “Grace”, held in god-like reverence.

    She was an AI that led humanity into a golden age of peace and expansion across the solar system before her disappearance, a thousand years before, triggered a new dark age with many technological innovations and record keeping lost.

    This is a genre that thrives on strong storytelling and Return to Grace, despite retreading some familiar ideas, offers up an intriguing setting, quirky cast, a briskly paced mystery to unravel, and plenty of optional environmental storytelling and world-building.

    Times have clearly changed since Grace was the caretaker of humanity. Travel throughout the solar system is no longer commonplace as Adie has taken a risky, 300-day journey to get to Ganymede. It’s a one-way trip but she claims everything of value to her on Earth is gone. Record keeping from a thousand years prior is so limited she had to rely on centuries of oral histories to pinpoint the location.

    Even before I appreciated the divergent nature of the narrative, I was already sold on the setting, and I wanted to discover more about its take on the future of humanity.

    Thankfully, that “future history” element is integral to the present investigation-based story; it comes up when Adie comments on the technology she witnesses in the spire; and it often features in her conversations with an entertaining selection of AI personalities she discovers on her journey.

    Shortly after arrival, she awakens “Logic” who – alongside “Control” and “Empathy” – form core components of Grace’s identity. The problem is they’re old back-ups that have little knowledge of what led to Grace’s shutdown, what happened to the people that maintained the spire, or how her interactions with humanity evolved over time.

    What they do have is unique personalities, system permissions, and thoughts on how Adie should proceed. As she pushes on, they create amusing hybrid personalities – for whom Adie picks some choice names – that help her circumvent new obstacles.

    It’s not obvious at first but Return to Grace‘s most significant narrative mechanic is how it tracks your decisions. The consequences can feel a little rushed given the 3–4-hour runtime, but there are a few key moments where Adie can push forward instead of exploring, take risky shortcuts instead of the safer path, or allow the AI to perform certain tasks for her. These decisions feed into evolving AI responses and (if we exclude one obviously bad ending) lead to minor ending variations that felt appropriate for my choices.

    Return to Grace‘s biggest issue – and this is one shared by all games in this genre – is what you’re doing mechanically is rarely that engaging.

    You explore and move at whatever pace the game dictates; you sit around listening to lengthy conversations that block your ability to interact with anything until they’re finished; you push or mash a single button to trigger scripted traversal moves or optional commentary; and sometimes you engage in pattern- or memory-based puzzles that require little mental effort. Crossing balance beams, briefly controlling a crane, and melting ice with a flame-thrower is about as wild as it gets.

    Thankfully, Return to Grace’s brisk runtime – coupled with some choice comments from the AI if you do get stuck – make this less of an issue and the compelling world had me hacking every door and audio-log I could find for more details. That said, it didn’t make the process of trudging around larger areas, repeating door code inputs, and twirling Adie’s glove to line up sync points a dozen times feel any less repetitive or tedious.

    Return to Grace’s brevity and strong storytelling are its saving grace. It kept me hooked over two evening sessions and I only started ruminating on the weaker elements just before the credits rolled.

    I wanted to find out more about the past events by sifting through the deserted spire; I wanted to hear every one of Adie’s comments on the current state of humanity; I was fascinated by the AI personalities and their attempt to dissect her motivations; and there were moments of doubt that had me wondering if Adie’s quest was misguided.

    If you’re in the mood for a brisk, immersive, thought-provoking adventure with a lightly divergent narrative, and you can accept the somewhat limited and repetitive gameplay loop, Return to Grace is a great addition to the genre.

    Pros:

    • An intriguing setting and briskly-paced mystery to unravel
    • Thought-provoking conversations and ending variations based on your actions
    • A likeable cast with quality voice acting
    • Atmospheric environments and soundtrack

    Cons:

    • An over-reliance on a handful of simple, repeated mechanics
    • The short length makes some AI relationships feel rushed

    Score: 8/10

    Return to Grace was reviewed on PC using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on Xbox Series S|X and PS5.

  • Retrospective: Vaporum (2017)

    Retrospective: Vaporum (2017)

    I love Vaporum and many of the classic games that inspired it, but it’s a difficult sell to newcomers. Clunky, archaic movement limitations and artificial grid-like environments – elements you might criticise in any other modern game – are core gameplay features and, if you buy into the nostalgic aspect, all part of the charm

    Vaporum is a retro-inspired but infinitely more accessible modern “blobber” – think first-person dungeon-crawler, usually party-based, and with RPG elements. You trudge around labyrinthine grid-based levels, searching for keys, solving puzzles, hunting for secret areas, avoiding hazards, and defeating enemies to progress between floors. It’s a wonderfully contrived game world that makes little sense unless the primary purpose of the facility was to frustrate and/or kill its researchers.

    Events take place entirely within a massive steampunk tower, in the midst of a raging and stormy sea, though figuring out who the protagonist is forms part of the early mystery. The ominous tower beckons them in and although they know they have some connection to it, everything else is a blur.

    As you explore, a combination of written notes and scratchy audio logs spur on their memory, leading to revelatory monologues that slowly reveal the truth about their past and the present research into a mysterious substance known as “Fumium”. It’s a dated but effective approach that works in a game not particularly suited to conventional cinematics – though I wish there was a little more world-building to flesh out events beyond the tower.

    Although many games in this sub-genre – from 1985’s The Bard’s Tale to 2017’s StarCrawlers – shift into turn-based combat when you encounter a foe, Vaporum uses the real-time approach first pioneered by 1987’s Dungeon Master and almost perfected by 2012’s Legend of Grimrock. Unlike many of its predecessors – and one of the reasons it received multiple console ports – is that is Vaporum is not “party-based” and doesn’t rely extensively on an emulated mouse cursor in combat.

    You control a lumbering exoskeleton rig – a sensation not dissimilar to Delta in BioShock 2 – with four starting classes to pick from. These range from pure offence to pure defence, with a few unique perks and 10 gear slots that can be configured without restrictions. There are two offensive slots that can either handle one-handed maces, blades, or pistols combined with a shield, or a single but powerful two-handed weapon. You unlock up to four “gadget” slots that provide elemental damage or support abilities akin to spells, and there are four armour slots to mix and match attribute-boosting gear.

    Fumium gained from destroyed enemies goes towards increasing your rig level, unlocking circuits to invest in a dozen linear skill trees that cover weapon types, energy generation for gadgets, elemental damage and resistance, and general survivability. Each point invested provides a useful but incremental upgrade, while the third level provides a minor perk, and the fifth a choice between two major perks.

    On the whole, it’s a versatile and adaptable system that replaces multiple less-specialised party members. It also feels reasonably balanced given you can only max out 3 or 4 skill trees in a single playthrough. You could prioritise damage output to quickly remove threats; turn yourself into a physical and elementally resistant tank that reflects back a huge portion of damage; or pick a middle ground.

    Whatever your choice, exploration, puzzling, and indeed the combat all hinge on understanding and navigating the grid-like environment, rather than simply increasing your level and gear quality – a design many seem to ignore when you consider the number of videos with players retreating into a corner to just trade blows with enemies.

    Vaporum can look and sound great despite its relative simplicity. The throbbing, clanking, and hissing industrial-steampunk setting is a perfect match for the artificial grid-based world. That said, Vaporum is at its most boring when you’re plodding down claustrophobic corridors or backtracking to a locked door, moving past hundreds of near-identically-textured walls and floors.

    You move block by block in any direction relative to your view, which you can swing 90 degrees at a time. Free-look is great to scan for nefariously-hidden switches and objects, and you’ll engage in some light inventory management and menu-ing to use key items.

    Thankfully, what it lacks in fluidity, it makes up for with purpose.

    When you’re forced to move quickly to hit switches, dodge floor traps, or engage in combat with multiple foes, you’ll come to appreciate the convoluted but engaging movement system that forces you to be actively aware of your position in grid space.

    There are times you need to dash between multiple switches by picking the most effective route. Other times you’ll be dashing between safe spots to avoid fireballs or pit traps. Far too much time is spent shifting around large boxes around to open a path. No matter what you’re doing,

    When it comes to secret hunting, the predictable and repetitive grid-like nature of the environment is both a blessing and a curse. A quick look at the map often reveals blank spaces that hide a secret room but opening them can mean hunting for the tiniest differences in a common texture. It’s worth the effort though, as powerful gear, consumables that permanently increase your basic attributes, rare upgrade circuits, and even revealing documents are common rewards.

    Battling on a grid can feel a bit limited at first and, so long as you’re up against a single enemy and have a 2-by-2 grid space, it’s possible to simply shuffle around them and get in free hits as they transition or reorient. Vaporum attempts to spice things up by giving some enemies projectile attacks, quick strafes, area-of-effect attacks, knock-back attacks, and sideswipes, but one-on-one battles are always survivable if you’re patient.

    In contrast, group battles – especially those with hazards thrown in – will quickly tax your powers of observation, planning, adaptability, and reflexes. Vaporum is perhaps too fond of locking you in rooms, resulting in combat that feels like an awkward dance as you avoid being boxed in, try not to strafe into a hazard or AoE attack, dodge crisscrossing projectiles (or lead enemies into them), clear space to trigger a repair kit, and line up priority targets.

    It’s often chaotic and unpredictable but if you keep a clear head and have a decent sense of spatial awareness, it can be a lot of fun and you’ll often come out on top.

    So, six years on from launch, and 36 years since Dungeon Master introduced real-time combat to the formula, Vaporum is an interesting mix of old designs with more modern sensibilities. The PC version feels most intuitive to play but the console ports are great, irrespective of which platform/s you own.

    I strongly recommend it for dungeon-crawler and RPG fans, though I’d hazard a guess the audience will always be niche. That said, if you can wrap your brain around the grid-based structure, Vaporum provides a weirdly compelling mix of methodical exploration and secret hunting, plenty of mentally taxing spatial puzzles, and high-intensity combat that requires you simultaneously plan and react.

    Screenshots were captured on the Nintendo Switch. Vaporum is also available on PC, Xbox One/Xbox Series, PS4/PS5.

  • Review: The Riftbreaker (PC and Xbox Series)

    Review: The Riftbreaker (PC and Xbox Series)

    At first glance, you might think The Riftbreaker – developed and published by EXOR Studios – is a simple hybrid of twin-stick shooter and base-building/tower-defence game. To an extent, that’s true, and a skilled player could always draw aggro away from their base and limit the need for extensive defensive structures. However, The Riftbreaker also packs unexpected depth, with hundreds of research options, dozens of building and player upgrades, and the ever-present need to expand and protect resource-generating operations. The Riftbreaker provides plenty of entertainment in short-bursts but can also feel unforgiving and tedious when you mess up and need to recover.

    Story

    The narrative, outside of a flashy opening cutscene, is minimal and stretched thinly over hours of playtime. You take control of captain Ashley Nowak, a “Riftbreaker” – think scientist/commando hybrid – in an AI-powered mecha-Suit called “Mr. Riggs” as they emerge from a one-way jump to the lush world of Galatea 37. Earth is barely liveable, and humans are rift-jumping to distant planets to find resources and establish new colonies. She’s tasked with securing a foothold and building a massive “Rift Station” that will allow two-way travel between Earth and Galatea 37. Of course, things are never easy, and the native species are not happy with the intrusion. Aside from infrequent banter between Ashley and Mr. Riggs, which fleshes out Ashley’s ideologies and past a little more, this overarching objective and the need for rare resources to construct the Rift Station is all the context you’ll get to push forward.

    Galatea 37 is a massive, procedurally-generated world full of potential resources and danger – from both the environment and local lifeforms. Early on, you’ll gain the ability to perform short-range jumps to scout and set up new outposts, but you always need to maintain your starting HQ.

    Gameplay

    Controlling Ashley in her mecha-suit is a breeze, with a familiar twin-stick movement and aiming setup. This makes early exploration an enjoyable foray into the unknown, but you’ll eventually have to decide on the location of your HQ and engage with the base-building, resource-generation, and horde-defence mechanics. The world is filled with finite resource pockets – some immediately apparent, several uncovered through research and scanning – and the continuous generation of these resources is essential to making progress. Carbonium is your basic building material used to craft new structures and gear. Ironium is needed for defensive structures and, most importantly, ammunition production. Cobalt, Palladium, Titanium, and Uranium are rare resources needed for advanced structures, crafting designs, and – in huge amounts – your ultimate goal, the Rift Station. Liquid resources, like water and magma, are essential to the functioning of advanced structures, which can, in turn, produce artificial resources, like coolant and plasma, for even more advanced structures.

    All the basic, advanced, and defensive structures you can build require considerable power, which can be produced using solar panels and wind turbines (susceptible to environmental conditions), Carbonium powerplants, biomass generators, geothermal power, and even nuclear reactors. Of course, the ability to build advanced base structures, upgrade them for greater efficiency, or craft and equip the multitude of weapon and mech-suit upgrades, requires researching your way through three massive, multi-tier technology trees. Research speed becomes a major obstacle to progress and can feel painfully slow at times – unless you can support multiple power-guzzling Communication Hubs. Naturally, all these structures require space, and making more space means your walls and defensive network is spread thinner (an HQ location with some natural barriers is a must). You’ll quickly discover the need to run power nodes to distant resource-producing outposts, which are then more vulnerable to horde attacks. You could surround them with walls and powerful, specialised turrets but that means more power, AI cores, and resource-hungry ammunition factories.

    So many structures and so little space! Thankfully, most structures can be upgraded to make them more efficient, but you’ll still need a sizeable base, with a strong defensive perimeter, packing dozens of power-producing structures, refining and beneficiating resources for advanced structures to complete the Rift Station.

    If this is all starting to sound overwhelming, it can be. Although not as granular or deep as games like Factorio or Satisfactory, I can’t help but feel The Riftbreaker has been untruthful in its marketing campaign. Resource production and beneficiation, coupled with power generation, underpin everything you do. As a result, it’s possible to get it very wrong and find yourself struggling to recover. As an example, an early push for automated Repair Towers seemed like a great idea, until I realised they were chewing through my resources faster than I could replace destroyed structures and defences, forcing me to run about manually disabling them. This frequent need to repair and upgrade structures also highlighted the variable gamepad support. Exploration, combat, and menu navigation are solid with a gamepad, but the precision placement of structures or trying to mass select them for upgrades is problematic (and nigh-impossible under pressure). The base building feels more intuitive using a mouse and keyboard, and this is an option for console players if they have the hardware.

    Having hopefully conveyed the complexity of resource production, construction, and research, you’ll be relieved to know exploration and twin-stick combat is far simpler and instantly gratifying. Movement and shooting feel great, making it easy to kite hordes, dash out the way of larger creatures, and thin the alien ranks before they break upon your walls. The mecha-suit can handle three swappable weapons per arm – ranging from swords to chain guns, flamethrowers to rocket launchers – which can be upgraded to higher tiers or modded for extra elemental damage. There are passive equipment slots and active abilities to enhance your combat skills and survivability, all of which can be crafted with the right research and sufficient resources. If you’re after a more hands-on approach to base defence, you can prioritise the weapon technology tree and create a walking tank. Many of the upgrades in the alien technology tree become essential once you’ve constructed the Orbital Scanner and begin away-missions to secure rare resources in hostile environments (think heat, radiation, volcanism, and corrosive clouds). Given the ceaseless demands of your primary base, these away-missions to explore and establish distant outposts are paradoxically stressful and relaxing.

    So many things to research, so few communication Hubs, and constant power shortages… Waiting on research feels like an excuse to go out and explore more, but there’s only so much entertainment to be gleaned from clearing respawning alien mobs from the local area for upwards of 15-minutes at a time.

    When the environment isn’t trying to kill you – and there is an inordinate number of natural phenomena on Galatea 37, from calm moon phases to damaging hailstorms – it’s the myriad of alien species. These range from basic Zerg-style cannon fodder to lumbering organic artillery and – sticking with the StarCraft analogies – seemingly advanced, cloaked and bladed warriors. Each environment – lush jungle, scorched desert, icy tundra, or volcanic waste – has several unique lifeforms (not all hostile) but they fill similar roles when it comes to assaulting you or your base. Despite Ashley’s apparent desire to study and conserve Galatea 37’s original environment, frequent hordes and respawning alien clusters ensure she butchers hundreds of them on any given day. Combat is less stressful than resource production and base management to be sure, but it’s frequent enough that you’re rarely able to explore for more than a minute without shooting something. On the upside, it’s a great way to hoover up biomass, uncover hidden resources using a scanner, find new species for the alien technology tree, and several unique power or gear designs.

    Presentation

    When it comes to the presentation, The Riftbreaker looks and sound great for most of the experience. The world feels ridiculously detailed, vibrant, and packed with moving and reactive parts – think foliage, liquid pools, and destructible terrain. Firefights against large hordes in forests are a particular highlight, with projectiles tearing through vegetation, while explosions send shockwaves through trees and grass. That said, it can be easy to lose track of Ashley’s mecha-suit in busier scenes. The Riftbreaker can buckle during massive horde attacks but proved scalable on PC and even performed well on the budget Xbox Series S, about 95% of the time. The audio is also a highlight, with loud and impactful combat and a catchy soundtrack that starts serenely before escalating based on nearby threats. With only two voiced characters, Ashely and Mr. Riggs have plenty of exchanges, often cheesy and overwrought. Thankfully, the voice-acting is not too bad and you don’t hear it all that often.

    The Riftbreaker’s environments are vibrant, detailed, and reactive but it’s easy to get lost in the visual chaos. Large hordes can drag down the framerate on PC and console, but the experience was smooth for the bulk of my playtime.

    Notable issues

    A lot is going on in The Riftbreaker at any given moment and you’re rarely given any downtime (even after delving into the heavily customisable difficulty settings). This ensures the world of Galatea 37 is less a mysterious space to explore, and more of a pretty canvas on which to build and murder things. On one hand, the procedural generation ensures each new location – be that a permanent outpost or once-off scouting mission – can throw up new challenges and sights. On the other hand, I wish there was a little more structure to the narrative and lore, rather than needing to read hundreds of journal entries. Maybe some handcrafted scenarios to test your construction and combat skills, as in the They Are Billions campaign. Other irritations include the aforementioned gamepad support and the need to manually upgrade structures once you’ve researched new tiers (a thousand wall segments being a prime example).

    Conclusions

    Considering each mechanic in isolation, The Riftbreaker is packed with interesting systems but the learning curve, balance, and pacing often feel off. It’s a game in which you’re constantly hitting roadblocks – some of which present an engaging challenge, while others simply require you to sit around until you have enough resources or research completes. It’s possible to find yourself desperately reconfiguring your base to balance power supply, resource production, and resource consumption, while constantly stopping to fend off hordes and likely racking up more damages. There is an audience for this sort of challenge and, despite pointing out these challenges, I could not stop playing. However, I think there’s an even larger audience who’ll pick up The Riftbreaker looking for a twin-stick shooter with streamlined base-building elements, only to find themselves bogged down in base micromanagement and making little progress. That said, The Riftbreaker can be a ton of stressful fun – just so long as you know what you’re getting into.

    Pros:

    • Fluid and responsive twin-stick shooting
    • Tons of research, buildings, gear, and upgrades to unlock
    • A lengthy, involved campaign across a procedurally-generated world
    • Visually stunning with decent performance on PC and Xbox Series consoles

    Cons:

    • Variable gamepad support
    • Waiting around for research to complete
    • Exploration = incessant combat

    Score: 7/10

    A review code for The Riftbreaker (PC) was provided to gameblur by the Publisher. The Xbox Series S/X version was accessed using an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

  • Review: Frostpunk – Complete Edition (Xbox Series)

    Review: Frostpunk – Complete Edition (Xbox Series)

    At long last, console gamers can get their hands on the “Complete Edition” of Frostpunk – an engaging, mechanically deep, and often stress-inducing steampunk city-builder with a focus on surviving the elements. Make no mistake, the original console release of Frostpunk is still a great game, but the expansions introduce some much-needed variety to the basic formula. These expansions change how you think about the geometry of your city, introduce new victory conditions, and shift the focus from self-reliance to trading with other settlements.

    Despite only offering three introductory cutscenes (one for each of the major story scenarios), Frostpunk feels far more narrative-driven than many games in the genre. Each scenario is, in essence, an opportunity to craft your own story. There are technologies to research, laws to pass, encounters in the surrounding “Frostlands”, and plenty of player-choice in how you’ll deal with the demands of your people, refugees, and other settlements. This all comes together at the end of a scenario – if you survive – with a montage that provides a timelapse of your developing city while recounting your key decisions.

    Attempting to save everyone has its risks when resources are scarce. Then again, that’s 35 workers, 18 engineers, 7 children that could be put to work…

    Did you establish faith to drive your people forward in the face of hardships or to crush dissent? Did you care for the critically ill and provide burials for the dead, or did you triage mercilessly and eat the corpses when the great storm arrived? Did you care for and educate children, or did you put them to work collecting coal in freezing temperatures? Although all choices offer a mechanically advantageous outcome and shift the numbers around, the narrative context adds weight to your decisions.

    Of course, in any survival game, the complexity of the underlying systems is what dictates its success or failure. The narrative context is a nice touch, but Frostpunk would hold up just fine without them thanks to the myriad of systems you’ll need to consider and balance if you want your city to survive. Heat, food, and shelter are your primary concern. If you can get the basic layout of your city and resource-gathering operations in order quickly, a contented populace and victory are inevitable. Naturally, nothing in the frozen north is that easy.

    “The Arks” scenario, which has you trying to preserve four seedling arks, was one of my favourite scenarios. It’ll quickly teach you the importance of automating resource collection and upgrading the range and power of your central generator.

    In most scenarios, life revolves around your coal-consuming generator and the warmth it provides (there’s no nuclear power in this alternate history). An optimal city expands radially, ensuring subsequent upgrades to the generator keep an ever-larger area warm. However, the more efficient your generator, the more coal you burn through. The more coal you need, the more coal-producing industries you need. The more industries you have, the more citizens you need to employ. The more citizens you have, the more housing, food, and medical care you need to provide.

    A new player is going to quickly find themselves overwhelmed, even if they set all the customisable difficulty toggles to easy. The urge to expand, recruit survivors, and generate more resources is alluring, but your citizens have numerous needs that need sustaining. Fail to keep them hopeful, or let discontent swell, and you’ll find yourself exiled to the Frostlands. On the other hand, researching and constructing expensive automatons gives you a 24-hour workforce that never gets hungry, never falls ill in cold temperatures, and doesn’t object to your ruling style. Both are viable paths to victory, but both require careful allocations of resources.

    Few things are more terrifying than watching your coal produced vs. coal consumed graph shift into the red. You’ll find yourself scrambling to shut down workplace heaters and secondary steam hubs, hoping you don’t end up with a sickly population the next day.

    Of course, building up your city is only half the story. If you’ve researched the right technology, most starting locations offer an infinite source of coal, wood, and steel. However, it’s rarely enough to sustain a large population and decreasing temperatures (which plummet to -100° Celsius during storms), while simultaneously dealing with frequent demands to remedy housing, heating, and medical issues. There are two additional ways to keep your population hopeful and reduce discontent: passing new laws and exploring the Frostlands with scouts.

    The Book of Laws typically offers two variants of any provided law, one callous but effective, the other compassionate with fringe benefits. There are basic “Adaptation” laws, which include choosing between burials or corpse storage (for later “use”), establishing care homes or allowing radical surgical treatments, and putting children to work or educating them. As you advance, you unlock “Purpose” laws – allowing you to chose between Order and Faith. Naturally, the end-game for both these branches of law is authoritarianism, but Order focuses on security and suppressing discontent, whereas Faith focuses on maintaining the hopefulness of your population.

    Your first storm is an experience to behold. Even a near-perfect run could go to hell in an instant if you failed to stockpile enough food or establish strong coal production lines. Temperatures plummet, areas away from your generator freeze, and your population becomes critically ill in droves.

    Sending scouts into the Frostlands is another way to influence your city, bringing people hopeful (or depressing) news and rare “steam cores” required for efficient high-tier buildings. The system is simple and requires little micromanagement, but distances and travel time in the Frostlands are always an issue. Nearby locations can reveal survivors, supplies, or the fate of other generator cities (and almost always reveal two or more new locations to visit). You’ll want to keep your scout teams active all the time, as their discoveries – especially resource caches – can provide a means to get out of trouble fast.

    Ultimately, Frostpunk is a game about learning the ropes, one step at a time. Failure – and you will fail – is an opportunity to take what you’ve learned, apply it to your next attempt, get something else wrong, learn from that experience, and eventually master each mechanic on your way to completing a scenario. You can save at any time but Frostpunk is a game in which failures can be days in the making. Thankfully, scenarios – aside from the “endless” ones – are only a few hours long, so you’ll rarely feel frustrated at starting anew.

    I initially thought The Last Autumn would be my favourite expansion, with no damn snow and heat management, but abundant supplies mean nothing if you can’t keep your workforce motivated and London satisfied with the construction progress.

    Like many survival games, Frostpunk suffers from gameplay becoming rote once you’ve established an optimised build order and this is why the console Complete Edition is a great choice (or the expansion pass if you’ve already got the base game). “The Rifts” expansion – along with several of the “endless” scenarios – spices up the city-building element by forcing you to expand to adjacent land using bridges. The perfectly circular city structure and comforting glow of the generator are no longer guaranteed.

    “The Last Autumn”, which serves as a prequel during the early stages of global cooling, tasks you with constructing a generator. Temperatures are mild, illness rare, and resources abundant, so maintaining the motivation of your cynical workforce and hitting construction deadlines becomes the new challenge. To manage this feat, you need to find a careful balance of new Administration and Labour laws. “On The Edge” serves as a sequel to events in the main campaign, tasking you with the management of a new outpost – sans generator – entirely dependent on “New London” for food supplies and establishing laws. However, New London quickly becomes antagonistic with their demands, and you’re given the choice to scout the Frostlands and establish supply lines with other settlements or try appeasing their unfair demands.

    There’s a decent photomode if you want to capture your fledgling city in its best light. Despite the battering it took, my city survived the great storm, if only due to the fact citizens were more forgiving of food shortages than a lack of warmth and a massive spike in frostbite amputations.

    One slight disappointment is that Frostpunk is yet to receive an official next-gen upgrade. Make no mistake, it can still look great and feel incredibly atmospheric as you watch your torch-wielding workers wade through the snow while howling winds whip back and forth. However, the image looks distinctly soft on a large TV and has plenty of aliasing in motion. Dense ambient city sounds and grumbling workers add to the atmosphere, ensuring your city feels alive, rather than just a visualised spreadsheet. That said, when temperatures drop and troubles multiply, it can be a pain identifying individual structures in a large city and the interface becomes increasingly cluttered. The game does have a pause-time function so you can tinker at your leisure, but it’s times like these I’d found myself missing the mouse and keyboard. Frostpunk Game of the Year Edition is available on Steam, and this is quite an enticing package if you’re more PC gaming inclined.

    Minor visual and control gripes aside, the Frostpunk Complete Edition on console is still a fantastic purchase for fans of survival games or city-builders that demand a lot of planning and micromanagement. It is, however, an incredibly stressful game and might not be for everyone. If you’ve got the patience to carefully think through every move and plan well into the future, and the temperament to make tough decisions that will keep (most) of your citizens alive, there are few survival-focused city-builder experiences like it.

    Pros:

    • A strong, emergent narrative component that’s uncommon in the genre
    • Challenging but fair survival mechanics that often requires making hard decisions
    • A stiff learning curve but individual scenarios are short enough to encourage multiple runs
    • The expansions add plenty of content and much-needed variety to the basic formula

    Cons:

    • Possibly too stressful for some
    • Picking out individual buildings can feel finicky on a gamepad

    Score: 8/10

    Frostpunk – Complete Edition was reviewed on Xbox Series using a provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Review: Song of Horror (PS4)

    Review: Song of Horror (PS4)

    Travel with me, if you will, back to the 1990’s when survival horror titles were all the rage. When pre-rendered backdrops presented an immense amount of world depth and tank controls were just another challenge to be overcome. To the days when Resident Evil and all its sundry impersonators were the juggernauts of our nightmares and thrilled us late into the night.

    Time has moved on since then, with the likes of Resident Evil reinventing itself into a brand new Juggernaut, yet the thrill of those games remains ever vigilant in our nostalgic memories, providing moments and scenarios that we still talk about enthusiastically today. Even if replaying them in the light of modern amenities removes some of their sheen and lets us realise that some things were best left in the afterglow of our memories. Not that we would ever really admit that.

    If this longing for the gloried past of survival horror games still has a hold on you, then look no further than Song of Horror for this retro-inspired title has all the goods. Developer Protocol Games brings back the heyday of 90’s survival horror games, warts and all.

    Set during 1998, Song of Horror begins with the disappearance of author Sebastian Husher. Sent by his publisher to find him, Daniel Noyer soon disappears as well and it’s up to a varied group of individuals to find both him and what happened to Husher and how it all seems to tie into a missing music box. Before long our protagonists find themselves haunted by a malignant supernatural presence. Spanning five episodes, it’s up to you to find the origin of the curse and hopefully, some way to nullify it, before you’re dragged screaming into the darkness.

    If you’ve played any survival horror game in the last two decades, then you’ll know exactly how Song of Horror plays. You’ll investigate each location for clues and items to use to solve the puzzles around you while reading the notes left behind to further the story and explain why each location is devoid of human life. Because Song of Horror focuses on a cursed music box, sound plays a vital role in the game. If you choose to run, the noise you make can attract the entity, known as The Presence, to your location. This adds a wrinkle to how fast you can get through each location to the game’s overall mechanics. Paying attention to the noises around you are vital to your survival. One of the mechanics of listening at a door to what’s behind it before you open a room, will save you from many instant death moments.

    And these moments are frequent, depending on the difficulty you choose. Song of Horror is littered with instant death moments and trap locations. If you hear crying behind a door, then it’s not a good idea to enter the room, as is pulling the tarp off a strangely covered mirror in a storage room or sticking your hand into a bathtub full of grotty water. Song of Horror is designed with permadeath in mind, meaning you can lose the character you’re playing with permanently if you’re not careful. Lose all the characters or the main one for the game and you’ll have to restart the episode. When a new character enters the fray, you can pick up the previous characters items where they perished.

    With four difficulty settings to choose from, each named after a horror writer such as M. R. James and Edgar Allen Poe, determine the games severity. Higher difficulties have more shock encounters and permadeath is a feature of all, with one caveat. The easiest difficulty lets you load up a checkpoint save when a character dies to just before that fatal moment if you’re not in the mood to lose anyone. With Trophies for completing each episode without losing a character and for completing each episode with every character available for that scenario, gives completionists a reason to replay.

    The game has no combat as you can’t fight The Presence. The most you can do is hide from it or interact in mini-games that have you trying to slam a door closed in time while it’s trying to break through or to control your breathing while hiding from one of its manifestations. Knowing your surroundings is important so that you can get to a cupboard or beneath a table in time. Hiding spots do get scarcer as the game progresses.

    Song of Horror places you in familiar haunted locales; an abandoned manor, a mental hospital, an empty apartment block, etc. The scares are also of the traditional haunted house variety, though there’s definitely an Asian horror vibe to many of the manifestations and blink and you miss it moments.

    Though the game uses static camera angles for its environment, the environment itself is fully 3d modelled and is one of the games strongest assets. The set dressing is absolutely superb with Husher Mansion and an antique shop looking absolutely gorgeous in the amount of detail and clutter present. Character models look good, but don’t quite measure up to the environment around them.

    Sadly, for a horror title, Song of Horror isn’t actually scary. Dealing with The Presences attacks becomes rote unfortunately. However, where the game does succeed wonderfully, along with its sumptuous environment details, is in atmosphere. With the use of sound as a warning trigger, the developers have managed to craft a sense of tension and expectancy that permeates each area as you’re always waiting for the shoe to drop, as it were. The palpable sense of dread and suspense is wonderfully realised, something even movies often struggle to get right.

    Song of Horror does have some issues though. First is the character’s movement and speed. Close to “Tank Controls” are the order of the day, making characters a bit of a chore to get used to. Controlling them is tricky with a turn radius that can get you stuck on objects in tight locations or go the wrong way at times, especially when a camera change occurs. Then there’s the character speed which can be frustrating. When you’re being chased by a nigh unstoppable force that can disembowel you with ease, you should be taking off like the Road Runner and not like a geriatric on a Sunday walk down by the lake. This is a peeve I have even with modern horror titles that feel like a slow walk through a museum when you should hot-footing it for your life.

    Finally there’s the game’s bugs. While not game breaking at all, there were plenty of instances of enemies spawning in the floor, characters walking through doors and in one instance Daniel’s torch not syncing with the character as you walk.

    With an atmosphere seeped in tension and dread that can have you holding your breath, Song of Horror more than makes up for its lacklustre scares with gorgeous set dressing and an intriguing, Lovecraftian story.

    Pros:

    • Gorgeous set dressing and environment design
    • Intriguing story

    Cons:

    • Bugs
    • Tank controls
    • Slow movement speed

    Score: 9/10

    A review code for Song of Horror was provided to Gameblur by the publisher.

  • Review: Glyph (Switch)

    Review: Glyph (Switch)

    Amidst the desert ruins of an ancient civilization, you take on the role of Glyph, a mechanical scarab tasked with exploring the sand-drowned ruins of a once-mighty civilization. Buried beneath shifting sands and rolling dunes, this once mighty empire has taken their secrets with them and it’s up to you to find out what those were. Be warned though, for the further in you go, the harder it becomes to extract what those secrets may have been.

    Will you take on the challenge of navigating the lost remnants of this world or will the truth be forever buried beneath the sands of time?

    That is the background to Bolverk Games’ light physics-based platform puzzler, Glyph.

    As the construct Glyph, you’ll be spending nearly all of your time in ball mode, rolling across the landscape while prey to the whims of physics that such a form entails. But fear not, as you’re not entirely helpless. Glyph has a few abilities that the game’s tutorials will take you through in an extensive fashion. What you learn here will be the basis for how you navigate the game’s navigation puzzle levels.

    Glyph can jump, or more correctly bounce, when in contact with surfaces while specific tiles will allow it to double jump. Glyph can also use a ground slam ability to launch itself higher into the air. The final ability unfurls Glyph into avatar mode for a short flight duration to cover the larger distances between platforms and ledges. Combining all these moves together, while paying attention to the way physics affects the way Glyph moves, is the key to success.

    Bolverk Games have designed levels that, while small, will both entertain and challenge you in equal measure. Sporting a vaguely Egyptian motif, the ruins that you will need to traverse are usually the final remnants of toppled pillars, shattered buildings, and tilted ledges and tiles. Navigating your way across the levels can be an arduous and tricky affair that usually requires all of Glyph’s move set to complete.

    As a ball, Glyph rolls around as physics would dictate to a degree, meaning that you’ll constantly be nudging him back and forth across the environment lest momentum lets you roll off a ledge to the deadly sands – or clouds as some levels are set in them – below. But Glyph isn’t slavishly locked to the laws of physics. A jump can carry you quite far on its own and Glyph has just enough floatiness and control in the air to make even the minutest of course corrections.

    Scattered across each level are coins to collect, gems to find, keys to pickup to open the level exit, artifacts to procure, and different avatar forms to unlock. The avatar forms are for cosmetics only but the other items are needed to progress. Once you’ve exited the tutorial into the game’s hub, coins will unlock new levels while the gems will open up new pathways to new levels in the hub. The artifacts will open up the game’s incredibly challenging Time Trial levels.

    If you die during a level – it only takes touching the corrupted sands once to send Glyph back to the beginning of the stage – keys and artifacts are reset but thankfully the coins you’ve picked up stay with you. And you will die a lot because Glyph is an incredibly challenging game that walks that tight line between been fun enough to pick up for some relaxing platforming, but hard enough to ensure a tense playing experience that, when you finally complete a level, you’re rewarded with a sense of satisfaction.

    Very early on the challenge picks up significantly, even in the levels that have a lower skull rating. Levels are rated from one to five skulls for difficulty. Often I’d find that I’d been holding my breath and my shoulders and wrists were tense when I’d completed a level, having to put my Switch down for a well-deserved break from what was an ultimately rewarding experience.

    Your completion times are recorded and you can go back to replay the levels for better times if you prefer. Like a parkour game, finding that perfect line takes time but is worth the effort.

    The Time Trial levels are where Glyph throws its hardest challenges at you. They’re small but require serious mastery of the game’s mechanics to reach even its gold, silver, and bronze levels. The gold time can be as low as ten seconds. Each tier per Trial will net you a gem making the effort worth it.

    Visually Glyph is a beautifully stylised game that ran perfectly on the Switch Lite and is drenched in a wonderful fable-like aesthetic and atmosphere. Controls for Glyph are pitch-perfect as well, making your failures your own.

    Packing in a ton of levels, Glyph is the sort of puzzle platforming experience that doesn’t come around often. With stunning visuals, solid controls, and gameplay that appeals to those looking for a laid-back exploration experience as well as a nerve-wracking one, Glyph soars above the competition and should be in your collection.

    Pros:

    • Visually stunning
    • Wonderfully challenging
    • Great level design

    Cons:

    • Recollecting artifacts and keys can get frustrating with repeated deaths

    Score: 8/10