Game Diary: The Vast Odyssey

Do you ever get overwhelmed by the sheer size of a game and suffer from indecision about what to do next? That has happened to me with Assassin's Creed: Odyssey this week.  I have been playing it every day since I received it last Friday, but yesterday I needed to take a break.  I have already managed to put 20 hours on the clock though so that's probably understandable.  Things were going well to begin with - the game limits you to the fairly small island of Kephalonia for the first few hours, giving you some freedom to explore and get used to the mechanics of the game.  A lot of it will feel familiar to those who play Origins, but there have been some siginificant changes. Origins took some steps towards becoming a full fledged RPG, and now Odyssey has gone all the way there.  Instead of simple outfits that just changed your appearance, you now have helmets, torso armour, gloves, belts and boots as well.  This has increased the level of enjoyment for me because it means the random loot you find and treasure you pick up is a lot more meaningful.  There are a lot more dialogue options with important decisions to be made that will affect direction of the overall plot, ala Mass Effect or The Witcher 3.

Then there are the multiple levels of side quest. First is the mercenary system, which is quite similar to the nemesis system from the Middle Earth games but a lot less annoying.  While random mercenaries will come after you, they will only do so if you have a bounty on your head, which you can pay off from the map screen at any time, or just wait for your bounty level to drop over time.  These mercs have strengths and weaknesses much like the Uruk Hai of Mordor and there are no less than 9 tiers of them to work your way through.  They don't appear to be randomly generated though, or at least not the early ones. At the end of the starter zone in Kephalonia you will get access to your ship, but you won't really be using it very much as much of the first 15 or so hours takes place on land.  There are vast areas of water to explore further on into the game, but it takes quite a bit of time to get there. Not long after you get your boat, the game reveals the next system: the Cult of Kosmos.  There is a large network of 30 or so targets that need to be taken down, and their identities remain hidden to begin with.  You have to explore the world and find clues before you know who is part of the cult, then you can go and murder them. The higher level the cult member is, the more clues are required, and these high end cultist are level 50 or close to it so you won't be able to finish all of this until the end game or beyond.

In addition to this, I also did an optional quest to kill a legendary boar, which then triggered seven more similar quests to hunt down similar legendary beasts all across the Greek world.  When you add in the daily and weekly notice board quests that can be completed for orichalcum and traded for good weapons and armour, you have quite a lot to be getting on with.  You're looking at a game that will easily take 80 or so hours to finish if you want to do everything, which I do and I was fine with, until I got to Athens.  With the city sprawling in every direction as far as the eye can see, and the map screen littered with question marks, I started to feel like it was getting too much, and that's when I needed to take a break. I have no problem with the massive length of the game, as I can just chip away at it a little bit for months to come.  It's more the sheer number of options of where to go next - just visiting all of those questions marks in Athens will take hours, and it's just one district in the huge land mass of Attika. In addition to this, there are another four or five places on the map that I could go to now that I am level 20.

I think what I have decided to do for now, is to focus on taking out the low end cult members, working my way systematically through them and thoroughly exploring the rest of whatever island they happen to be on as I go.  In between I will play around in Athens for a little bit, but not try and do the entire city in one go. For me the best parts of the recent Assassin's Creed games has not been the densely populated areas, it's been the open countryside and the highly atmospheric tombs, of which there are many to be found in Odyssey too.  I haven't even got to the point where you can fight the mythical creatures like gorgons, minotaurs and so on yet, though I know this is in the game because various streams have shown game play of it.  I will also be taking regular breaks from Odyssey to play other stuff like retro games and Forza Horizon 4.  I am really enjoying my time with Odyssey, but I am wary of burning out and not finishing it.   It wasn't that long ago that I finished the DLC for Origins, after all. Kassandra seems like a really great protagonist from what I've experienced so far, up there with Ezio, Edward Kenway and the Frye twins, so I want to see this game through to the end. I might have another update as I get further in, or I may just wait and write a full review when I'm finished, we'll see!

Game Diary: Big Game Season

It's been a few weeks since my last update, so I thought I'd better let you all know what's going on.  Since I uploaded my review of Cosmic Star Heroine, I'm afraid I've dropped the ball with the Summer Backlog Challenge a little bit and have been playing other things, so this is just a regular game diary. As of today there's only three weeks left to go before the challenge ends, so I need to get on with things and try to finish Pyre at the very least, plus Hob if I can possibly manage it.  I do also intend to finish Battle Chasers, Odin Sphere and Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time but they will be outside of the challenge at this point. I can take my time with those but I do want the get to them sooner rather than later - I really don't want another 5 or so years to have gone by before I finish them.

I had a week off work last week though, and the busy gaming season really got underway, so today I'm going to go over what I've been playing recently.  Before my break, I got back into Assassin's Creed: Origins - particularly the DLC.  I finished The Hidden Ones, which I thought was solid but rather dull, and also pretty brief.  Then I started Curse of the Pharaohs which is much more exciting, and pretty huge as well.  You're looking at least 20 hours of gaming if you intend do everything.  I haven't quite finished it yet - I still have two Pharaohs that I need to lay to rest which involve exploring the afterlife and completing some quests before doing battle with them.  The boss fights in this DLC have been pretty challenging so far - they have a lot of hit points and hit hard, so you really need to be patient, use arrows to charge up your meter and then let loose with a powerful attack, then rinse and repeat.  I was struggling because I kept running out of arrows half way through one of the fights, but then I realised I had two other bow types which each had their own unique arrow counts.  The arrows do negligible damage but they do charge up your meter from a safe distance which is the key factor.

I also got the urge to play a Diablo style game again, but I didn't really want to just play Diablo 3 again, as I have done that to death at this point. I almost chose to play Grim Dawn, and I still want to eventually, but for now I returned to Path of Exile.  While I played through the single campaign a few years ago on the PC, a great deal has changed since then, with a whopping six new acts being added and loads of new features. I'm also playing on the Xbox One X this time, which has been great.  The game runs really well and Grinding Gear Games have done a great job in making the controls work on the Xbox controller.  I didn't really enjoy the Incursion league and it's new feature where you go into the past and open up rooms within a Vaal Temple, as you only get a very limited time to try and take down a boss and open some doors before you're wrenched back into the present.  If you don't manage to open the right doors within the temple, it's pretty much a waste of time exploring it for real when you finally get the opportunity because you won't be able to get to the boss.  The brand new Delve league begins today on consoles though and I would like to check it out - it involves exploring an infinitely generated mine with only the protection of torch that trundles along beside you on a cart.  Move too far away and you will be consumed by the darkness, though of course the best loot can be found just out of the safe zone.

Moving on to brand new stuff, Two Point Hospital was released last week, and it's every bit as good as I was hoping it would be.  Anyone who played Theme Hospital 20 years ago and loved it should rush over to Steam and buy a copy right now - it's only about £20 which if you ask me is a bargain! I've only played the first level so far but I have heard there are about 25 in the game total which is loads of quality gaming right there.  It does play pretty much identically to the classic game but with much nicer graphics and plenty of quality of life improvements.  The in game radio stations are great too with some really catchy, cheesy music and hilarious dialogue from the DJ's. The terrible puns and dad jokes are also in full force and will have you groaning and chuckling in equal measure.

The other new game that I've been playing an absolute ton of is Yakuza Kiwami 2.  This may be the fourth Yakuza game to be released in the west within the last two years, but I have been waiting patiently for my chance to finally play Yakuza 2 and here it is at last.  I was tempted to start the PS2 version last year, but I'm glad I waited because this enhanced PS4 remake adds a load of extra content, such The Truth of Goro Majima mini campaign, hostess club management, a tweaked version of the Clan Creator from Yakuza 6, and a saucy photo shoot mini game.  Just playing the hostess club mini game is enjoyable enough, let alone all of the other content! This game is my main focus at the moment, but I will have to cut back on my play time a little bit in order to finish off the Summer Backlog games.

Looking to the future now, another two massive games are just about to come out.  Tomorrow finally sees the arrival of Dragon Quest XI in the west, a game that I have been longing for since before it was announced.  We didn't get Dragon Quest X as that was an MMO released on the Wii and Wii U, two consoles that were either being phased out or weren't successful enough for Square Enix to bother bringing the game over, so it's been years since a new mainline game in the series was released outside of Japan (VII and VIII on the 3DS were nice, but they weren't new). While it will be extremely tempting to dive in to the game as soon as it arrives tomorrow, I shall try and resist until I have the Summer Backlog Challenge is over, and I have wrapped up the AC: Origins DLC and Yakuza Kiwami 2.  It will be tough but I can do it!

Finally, at the end of the week we have the release of Spiderman on the PS4. I wasn't planning on buying it just yet, but the hype has gotten to me so I have pre ordered it from Amazon. While it does looks like a very good game, I am less excited about it than the other games I've already mentioned today, so it will probably go on to my backlog pile for a while.  After that I have a bit of breathing room until October. There is also Shadow of the Tomb Raider in September but I still haven't finished Rise of the Tomb Raider yet, so I don't really feel compelled to pick it up just yet.  If I can hold out until the Christmas holidays I expect it will have come down in price by then (something I really should have done with Spiderman, but oh well). Let me know what you're playing at the moment, and what you're looking forward to from the months ahead. There will be another video up on the channel tomorrow, and hopefully another Summer Backlog Challenge update here on the blog quite soon. That's all from me today though, so I'll see you again later, and in the meantime, take care!

Summer Backlog Review #3: Mass Effect: Andromeda

Welcome back to the Summer Backlog Challenge 2018, and review number three! We're making steady progress through the games this year, which I hope will continue for a bit longer.  Eventually though I will run out of the shorter games so these reviews will be further apart. That's where the diary entries come in - they pick up the slack when I'm not quite ready to give my full opinion.  I have just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda this week though so it's time to weigh up what I think about it.

Those of you who are familiar with the Mass Effect series already will know that it is a sci-fi action RPG series developed by long term legends of genre, Bioware. By the time the original game was released they had already entertained 1000's of PC owners with their classics set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Then with the advent of the original Xbox they decided to make something a bit more console friendly, which resulted Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, still regarded as one of the best games set in a galaxy far, far away ever made.  That experience gave the company the idea to create their own original space opera, and thus the Mass Effect series was born.  It was conceived as a trilogy right from the start, with story seeds sown from the earliest moments that would pay off two games later.  Everything went smoothly, until players got to the end of Mass Effect 3 and witnessed the ending.  To say it was divisive would be putting it mildly.  The disgruntled fans ranted and raged all across the internet, until Bioware finally relented and released the free Extended Cut DLC.  Then, all went quiet - the series was seemingly done, for now.   A few years later though, Andromeda got announced and the fans started to get excited about what the new game might bring.  Then they played it, and the backlash began again.  Is it truly as terrible as everyone would have you believe? I really don't think so, but allow me to explain further...

Plot & Character: 7 out of 10

Mass Effect: Andromeda sees the series transported 600 years into the future and into another galaxy. The Andromeda Initiative has set out to try and set up a colony on one of several potential "golden worlds" that have been identified thanks to some clever Salarian technology.  Things don't go according to plan, however - a strange dark matter known as the scourge causes massive amounts of damage to the human Ark, Hyperion and the planet that they were hoping would be conducive to supporting life turns out to be un breathable and beset by devastating lightning storms. The "Pathfinder", i.e. the person spearheading the expedition to find a livable world, tragically dies while exploring this planet, and so it falls to their heir to take up the mantle in their stead.  This is your playable character, a male or female human named Ryder (you can choose their first name).

I did think this was a pretty good starting off point for a new game (or potentially a whole new series) but certain developments later on in the story weren't so great. The new antagonists, the Kett, came across as a weak facsimile of the Reapers, or rather the Collector's from Mass Effect 2. Vaguely humanoid, hostile aliens who take the genetic material of other species and use it to make more drones.  Not very original at all, and not as well executed as before. There were also several plot lines that were set up in this game that never went anyway, because Bioware were obviously expecting to continue the story in a sequel at some point.  We now know that this isn't going to happen, not even in the form of DLC, so it does make these threads quite unfulfilling.

In terms of characters and your crew, I have slightly better news.  While it took me a while to warm up to them, I actually came to really like the crew of the Tempest (which is the new Normandy), at least the alien ones.  I found the two humans, Liam and Cora, a bit boring and predictable really, despite the latter being trained as an Asari Commando for much of her life.  The new Asari, Peebee was annoying at first but once you get used to her energetic personality she's actually pretty cool. Drack, the Krogan, shares a lot of personality traits with Wrex and Grunt before him - he's gruff, likes to shoot the bad guys and is a nice guy at heart.  His unique trait is that he is very very old, and most of his organs are synthetic transplants.

My two favourite crew members are definitely Vetra and Jaal.  Vetra can't possibly match the excellence of her fellow Turian, Garrus Vakarian but she's not too far off.  She's loyal, dependable and very good in a fight.  Jaal is a member of the only new non hostile race in the game, the Angara.  He's a part of their resistance and very experienced in fighting the Kett, and he's a very interesting person with lots of stories and insights to share about life in the Andromeda galaxy.  The crew is rounded off by Lexi, an Asari doctor (voiced by Natalie Dormer from Game of Thrones), Suvi, a human science officer with a lovely Scottish accent, Kallo, the ace Salarian pilot, and Gil, the chief engineer.  While these last four won't be joining you in battle, they are all fairly well fleshed out with their own "loyalty missions" to complete throughout the game. In fact, this is one aspect of Mass Effect: Andromeda that I thought was done really well, the loyalty missions were more extensive and spread out that they have been in previous games, and even when you were technically done and had unlocked the level 6 skills for that character, there were normally more scenes to see with them.

Ultimately, even though the story is quite unoriginal in key areas, the fleshed out characters go a long way for compensating for that.  The unresolved plot points were quite interesting too, such as they were, so it is a shame that we will probably never find out where they would have led us (unless a novel or something is released that covers that stuff - that could still be an option).

Mass Effect: Andromeda does look nice, but not quite this nice (this is early promo artwork).

Graphics: 7 out of 10

For a good deal of the time, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a decent looking game, and occasionally a beautiful one.  For me, the icy world of Voeld was the stand out, with the blizzards eventually giving way to serene tundra with a very pretty skybox to behold.  The jungle planet of Havarl also impresses, with it's dense, lush vegetation.  Outside of the environments, much has of course been made of the poor facial animation in the game, so much so that it became a meme for a while and staff who worked on it were persecuted.  While this has been improved with patches since the game was released, it still ain't that great - NPC's have a tendency to look like waxy automatons rather than living, breathing people.  Of course, it stands out the most on the human characters as our brains know what they should look like and can spot when something isn't right.  There is also a noticeable difference in quality between minor characters and important ones - your crew obviously had a lot of work put into the making them look halfway decent, whereas a random scientist on Eos can tend to look a bit half baked.

Sound & Music: 7 out of 10

I don't think the music of Mass Effect: Andromeda is quite as strong as the trilogy that preceded it, but I did come to rather enjoy it by the end of my time with the game.  The main theme starts of rather subtly, but gradually builds up to something more epic.  You will hear this tune every time you load up the game and during the end credits, so you will be rather familiar with it by the end.  Other than that, there is also some great battle music with some furious drum work, perfect for driving you on and furthering your blood lust.  There was also one particular use of synthwave that gave me goosebumps - I think it plays as you land on Voeld for the first time, if I'm remembering correctly.

The voice acting is pretty good most of the time but I do remember a couple of instances where there were some very odd line reads - almost as if the voice actor wasn't aware of the context that they were saying these things and therefore emphasising the wrong part of the sentence. This has to be the fault of whoever was directing the voice actors, and also whoever decided it was fine to insert these recordings into the game as they were. Maybe the studio was rushed, I don't know, but it does come across as rather unprofessional, especially from a big studio like Bioware. 

Havarl is quite a nice looking environment but the dense foliage makes it trick to navigate at times.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10

Like it's predecessors, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a third person cover shooter with strong RPG elements, such as levelling up, equipping and modifying armour and weapons, spending points on skills, an in depth conversation system and romance options. The combat mechanics have been tweaked in a few different ways that I actually came to enjoy after a while getting used to them. Firstly, you no longer stick to cover with the press of a button, instead all you have to do is kneel down next to something large enough to provide cover and you will automatically protect yourself.  It feels odd at first but became second nature by the end of the introduction.  You also have a jet booster built into your suit which is used both in navigating the world and in combat.  By jumping in a fight you get a few seconds of slow motion where you can snipe fools in mid air, which feels really satisfying when you pull it off.  There's a skill that you can buy that will extend this bullet time as well.

Andromeda also scraps the notion of fixed character classes, allows you to spend your skill point on whatever you want right from the get go, from either the combat, tech or biotic skill trees.  As you unlock more skills you do unlock different profiles that kind of act like classes, except you can add multiple profiles to a favourites list and switch between them in battle on the fly.  It's very handy, and allows you to experiment with various different skills to see what you like best. I'm not too sure what they level cap is in this game, or if it even has one, because I was around level 56 by the end of the game and still going.  My companions had maxed out all of their skills already but I was still going, because there are roughly 50 skills to choose from with 6 levels each. When it comes to powering up the skills, Andromeda has borrowed the same system that was introduced in 3, where you have one choice of upgrade for the first three ranks of a skill and then you have a choice of two different options when you reach ranks 4, 5 and 6. For example you may have to decide whether a skill does more damage vs shields or vs armour.

This game also takes a leaf out of Dragon Age: Inquisition and shifts over to open world exploration for the bulk of its play time. There are plenty of more structured missions such as the main story events and the loyalty missions with your crew, but a lot of time will be taken up with bombing around in the Nomad (which is the new Mako), establishing new forward stations (that you can then fast travel to) and completing side quests. Because you are trying to make these planets liveable and establish new colonies on them, almost everything you do in the game gives you Andromeda Viability Points, or AVP, with the goal of getting every planet you visit to 100% viability. If you are thorough and do everything (or a good deal of it at any rate) this isn't too hard.  Reactivating the Remnant vaults (which are like atmospheric processors that radically change the planets for the better) and killing Remnant Architects (huge worm like robot creatures that are the most challenging things to fight in the game) will give you a large amount of AVP.  Once you hit certain thresholds you get to choose who to bring out of cryo which basically gives you a new perk such as the ability to detect and mine more minerals.

On the whole I didn't mind the open ended structure too much - it made sense for the story they were trying to tell here, but I think I still prefer the briefer, more tightly designed structure of the original trilogy over this one.

Jaal ended up being one of my favourite characters and a valuable addition to the crew.

Innovation & Cleverness: 4 out of 10

Quite a low score here because as this is part of an established franchise, it's a little low on originality, and as I said earlier a lot of plot came across as a bit rehashed.  However, I do want to give props to Bioware for managing to come up with an entirely new crew of characters that are interesting to hang out with for the most part.  They also do a decent job of establishing some mystery in the plot, with Ryder's memories gradually being unlocked over time. 

Value & Replayability: 8 out of 10

The Mass Effect series, like most of Bioware's games, are designed to be replayable. As well as the Paragon / Renegade choices, the story and side missions often present you with choices that will have an effect on the overall plot.  It can be fun to go back later on as a completely different version of Ryder and do things differently than before.  In the previous games, decisions you made in the first and second game wouldn't pay off until the third part, and some of the key choices you make in Andromeda obviously would have changed something in the planned sequel.  Again, we're unlikely to find out just what at this point.

This is also a pretty huge game - the new open world structure with vast planets to explore and a seemingly endless supply of quests to complete ensure that your play time can easily reach the 50 hour mark.  I ended up just shy of 55 hours on my clock and I know I still had quite a bit left to do.  That is considerably longer than any of the previous games in the series which took about 30 hours at most to finish if you took your time with them.  So you definitely will get your money's worth with this one.  What's more, you don't need to go out and buy a full copy of the game, at least if you own and Xbox One.  It's included as part of EA Access so you can sign up to that at a cost of £3.99 per month until you're done, which if you ask me is a great deal.

Overall: 7 out of 10

I don't agree with the general consensus that Mass Effect: Andromeda is a terrible game, in fact I think it's quite a decent one. It certainly has its flaws, and overall I would place it in third place within the series overall (with Mass Effect 2 being first, 3 being second, and the original game coming last), but we aren't exactly swamped with quality science fiction RPG's so it is one of the better efforts in recent years. I also don't think this game is directly responsible for the death of the franchise - for that I think the blame lies partly with the "fans" who ranted and raved about every little problem, and partly with EA for not providing Bioware with the time and support they needed to deliver a AAA product.

Summer Backlog Review #2: Oxenfree

Welcome back to the Summer Backlog Challenge 2018! My first review, for Night in the Woods, was fun to write and has been fairly well received, so I'm going to capture that energy and use the momentum to forge ahead with my second review, this time for Oxenfree.  This is another modern adventure style game, with a strong emphasis on character and player choice.   It was developed and published by Night School Studio and was released across all the major platforms in early 2016.  As I mentioned in my introductory article explaining why I picked my ten games, it was the only one of the bunch that I hadn't bought for myself, instead being part of my Xbox Game Pass subscription.  So then, should you buy it? Or at least use your Game Pass trial to check it out? Let's take a look...

Plot & Character: 9 out of 10

Oxenfree begins with Alex, the player character, Ren, one of her best friends, and Jonas, her new step brother, arriving on Edwards Island for their annual summer party. They soon discover that not many people have bothered turning up this year though - just two others in fact.  The rather bitchy Clarissa, and her friend Nona that Alex doesn't know very well.

After a while chatting, drinking and playing an ill-advised game of Truth or Slap (like Truth or Dare except, well, you get slapped), Alex, Ren and Jonas end up investigating a nearby cave, where some strange phenomena involving a radio that they brought along results in the entire group getting scattered to all corners of the island.  From that point on your objective is to reunite with everyone and figure out what the hell is going on.  That's easier said than done though because you find yourself trapped in some rather disconcerting time loops that seem to get more serious as you go.  To say any more about the plot would risk spoiling the game for you so I'm just going to leave it there.

Depending on your responses to the other characters, Alex can be a friendly, helpful girl or a complete menace to everyone.  I was generally trying for the former but occasionally I picked an option that put me down the bitchy path.  As the game proceeds you can either get to know more about Jonas, or spend time reconnecting with Ren.  Personally I chose to go with the first option most of the time.  You also gradually come to understand why Clarissa has such an attitude to you, and you might even become friends with Nona, although I didn't really interact with her very much. The story is intriguing from the get-go and Alex is a strong enough protagonist to carry it along - soon after starting the game I didn't want to stop until it was done, which says a lot.

You frequently have to choose between dialogue options,with each one mapped to a different button.

Graphics: 8 out of 10

Oxenfree features a truly gorgeous hand painted art style that I fell in love with the from the moment I first saw it.  Every part of the island has been lovingly pieced together, from the woods, to the caves, the beach and the little town center. The character models are apparently 3D but from the zoomed out perspective that the game is set at they complement the style of the backgrounds well.  Whenever necessary there are also some decent lighting effects, and the "VHS player with dodgy tracking" effect that happens whenever there's a time loop is very cool as well.

Sound & Music: 8 out of 10

First and foremost, I was very impressed with the voice acting in Oxenfree, especially as I hadn't heard of any of the actors used before.  They may be established performers already, but if they are I'm unfamiliar with their work.  At any rate their delivery came across as natural at all times.  My only small gripe is that at several points in the game when I had chosen a dialogue option, my reply cut across what they were saying - there doesn't seem to be any queuing of lines like in Mass Effect, for example.  It was irritating because I wanted to hear what the characters were saying but sometimes it doesn't give you very long to answer before the game just moves on without you.

This is backed up by a fantastic soundtrack performed by the artist know as scntfc which is both dreamlike and spooky.  I may actually listen to some of this outside of the game - perhaps at work or during my commute home, it's very nice stuff indeed.

The art in Oxenfree is really fantastic, with a hand painted feel.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10

The game play of Oxenfree is mainly you exploring the island as Alex, trying to work out exactly what is going on and having conversations with the rest of the party. There are typically three different responses during any particular conversation, and you don't always have very long to answer which I found problematic sometimes. Depending on what you say, the other characters may warm to you or grow to hate you over time - in fact there is an achievement for getting everyone to despise you!

Occasionally you will have to use your radio to "tune in" to the weird phenomena on the island or interact with things to break yourself out of a time loop. There are no real mini games like there were in Night of the Woods, though - it's mostly just good old fashioned story telling and adventuring.  That's alright though, because Oxenfree does this very well.  The narrative is brief enough that it doesn't really need game play gimmicks to break it up.

Things start to get weird a short way into the game.

Innovation & Cleverness: 6 out of 10

The game play is not all that innovative, really, although much like Night in the Woods, Oxenfree does a great job of translating the classic sort of point and click experience into something much more console and controller friendly. The way the story is told does actually feature quite a lot of innovation though, and is very cleverly put together, to boot. Don't let the six put you off, this is actually quite high for this category.

Value & Replayability: 7 out of 10

Your total play time for a single run through of Oxenfree is likely to weigh in at around the four hour mark, which may sound rather slight.  There are quite a few different endings that can be achieved though which gives the game significant replay value. I'm not sure if I will go back and play it again, personally, because I usually consider my first play through of a game like this as my own personal version of the story, and leave it at that.  When so much time has gone by that I don't really remember the game anymore though, I may revisit it.

As part of the overall package you also get some documentaries that touch on various aspects involved in making the game, which is a very nice bonus and something I wish more games would do.

Overall: 8 out of 10

Oxenfree did draw me in much quicker than Night in the Woods - I originally only intended to play it for an hour, then that became two, and eventually I just said sod it and played through the entire game in one sitting! Don't let the four hour running time put you off too much, especially if you do intend to replay the game and get all of the endings.  This really is the perfect sort of game for Xbox Game Pass because you can try it out risk free as part of the free trial or your subscription if you're already paying for it.

Summer Backlog Review #1: Night in the Woods

I've managed to cross off several games from my Summer Backlog Challenge 2018 so far, and here I am with the first review of what will hopefully be a minimum of five, but potentially as many as ten. For those who are not all that familiar with this Night in the Woods, it is an indie adventure title developed by Infinite Fall and published by Finji.  It was first released on PC, in February of 2017 and has since made its way to all of the major consoles, including the Nintendo Switch earlier this year. I played the game on my Xbox One because I picked the game up around Christmas time in a sale. I had heard many good things about this game from the likes of Alex Navarro from Giant Bomb and others who recently discovered it due to the Switch release, so it was an easy choice for the first game I wanted to finish as part of this years challenge. So how was it? Let's take a look!

Plot and Character: 9 out of 10
This is really where this game shines the most, which is just as well because most the the game play does revolve around the characters and their antics.  The main character is Mae Borowski, an anthropomorphic cat like creature who has just returned to the town where they grew up after suddenly deciding to bail on college life for reasons that are undisclosed until later in the game.  Possum Springs is a quiet, mostly peaceful little town that has seen better days, at least economically - shops and restaurants are regularly closing down, the mall is mostly an empty, lifeless shell, far removed from the hustle and bustle of its glory days.  Mae is at that difficult stage in her life where she is no longer really a child but not yet fully committed to the notion of adulthood or aware of what is required of most responsible people.  She doesn't yet know what she wants to be, which understandably is the source of quite a lot of angst.  She spends her days sleeping or aimlessly wandering the town and chatting to the residents, and her nights getting embarrassingly drunk or doing things that she shouldn't with her old friends.

These old friends include Gregg, a foxy / doggy thing who has nothing but love for Mae, but is probably not the best influence on her. Nevertheless, despite his fondness of crimes and general immaturity he is at least managing to hold down a steady job at the local Snack Falcon and a loving relationship with his boyfriend, the bear-thing Angus. Mae's other closest friend is Bea, a chain smoking crocodile whose life spent looking after her ailing father and working at their family store every day is starting to take its toll on her.  She's tired, cranky, and more than a bit resentful that Mae not only up and left, but randomly decided to throw away the opportunities that were afforded to her at college on a whim. Over the course of the game you will mostly be spending your time with one of these two in various skits.  You normally have to choose, too - spending time with Gregg means that you won't be seeing Bea, and vice versa. As the game goes by Mae keeps a journal where she sketches key events that happen, and the only way to complete it is to play through twice so you can do what you didn't do last time.  Angus and a strange duck like bloke known as Germ do also feature in the story a little bit, as well as Mae's parents and her aunt in the police force, but the trio of Mae, Gregg and Bea are the main focus.

The script is incredibly well written, sounding very natural and full of humour. I liked Bea in particular as her snarky comments brought a smile to my face on several occasions.  Gregg is cool too but I really didn't spend all that much time with him - maybe I will play the game again so I can see what he was up to.  Underneath the charm and the amusing antics is a darker tale though, which I'm not going to elaborate on here - just know that the tone of the game starts to shift a bit towards the latter stages (though there are hints that something sinister is coming throughout the game). Yes, the plot and character are definitely the main strengths of Night in the Woods, but that's not all it's got going for it, thankfully.

Yeah, I get that a lot too, Mae. :(

Graphics: 9 out of 10
Visually, Night in the Woods is a delight to look at.  No, it isn't a polygon pushing powerhouse, with god rays and particle effects spunking in your face at every opportunity, but it is a great example of 2D artwork.  The whole game has a cohesive, cartoony style to it, probably because all of the art was created by just one person.  It reminds me a bit of Richard Scarry's Busytown, except a bit darker and with a more autumnal colour palette.  Gorgeous stuff!

Sound and Music: 7 out of 10
While I did enjoy the music while playing through game, I've found that a lot of it isn't all that memorable outside of the experience, save for a few pieces. I've used those in the background of the video. I was slightly disappointed that the game doesn't feature any voice acting at all, though I do understand why there may not be any for budgetary or artistic reasons.  I picture Bea sounding like one of Marge's sisters from The Simpsons.  Sound effects are used fairly sparingly throughout the game, but a pretty solid when there are used.

Most of the time, Mae does speak a lot of sense.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
Being an adventure game at heart, there is quite a lot of talking to people throughout Night in the Woods.  Each day in Mae's life begins with her waking up at home, having a quick chat with mom, and then heading out to see what's going down in the town. You are relatively free to explore Possum Springs, although it is not a terribly huge location. Usually, by talking to either Gregg or Bea (and occasionally other people) you will trigger a story sequence, and then the day will end after it has played out.  You are given fair warning that this is going to happen though, in case you want to scour every inch of the town to see what's changed (something I recommend doing to get the most out of the game).

Dotted throughout the game are other mini games as well, such as band practice.  I was utterly terrible at the this unfortunately, and Mae's journal reflected this.  There's also a complete rogue lite called Demontower, which can be launched from Mae's laptop in her bedroom.  I spent almost an hour playing this and managed to get to level 5 (out of 10, I believe) where things started to get pretty challenging.   The art style changes to that of a classic 16-bit dungeon crawler and for a side game it's a very polished experience.  I think there is an achievement tied to getting all the way to the end but like I said it does get pretty tough after a while.

Night in the Woods probably won't appeal to those gamers who like a steady diet of blood, guts and wall to wall action, but you probably already know if this is the sort of thing that will appeal to you or not.  If you are still on the fence about buying it right now, then I would suggest that you wait for a sale, or for the game to be featured in Games with Gold, PS Plus or Xbox Game Pass.  It's the sort of thing that I can see being offered up as part of those services onr day, and personally I would be thrilled to receive it, if I hadn't already bought it of course.

A feline after my own heart!

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
This was a bit of tricky one to score - games like Night in the Woods have definitely been done before so it's not that high on innovation, though the cohesive design style, witty writing and arrays of fun mini games all contribute towards a decent cleverness score.  Let's go with a six then!

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
Night in the Woods wasn't quite as short as I had been led to believe it was - it look me about a dozen hours to complete which considering the price is more than reasonable.  Then there's the fact that you can play the game over again if you want to and see quite a few different scenes from your first time through.  The Demontower mini game is the very addictive cherry on top, and you could sink a fair few hours into just playing that should you wish.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Night in the Woods did take a litle while to get it claws into me, but after I had warmed up to Mae, her friends and the strange world they live in I really did start to love it. If this sounds like your sort of thing then I would really recommend checking it out without hesitation.

Thanks for reading - I will be back with my review of Oxenfree quite soon.  In the meantime you can check out the video version of this review below.   Take care!

Summer Backlog Diary #3: Night in the Woods & Oxenfree

This post is not going to be terribly long today because I will be writing full reviews of both Night in the Woods and Oxenfree quite soon, and I don't want to end up repeating myself too much. I did want to give you a quick update however because at the moment I'm not too sure when I will find the time to edit these reviews together - hopefully I will have one of them done by next weekend at the latest and then have the other one ready to upload during the week after next.  My PC has been acting up just lately though which meant that the latest Covertape Chaos took almost 6 hours to make when it should only take about 3 at the most.

Anyway, I should stop rambling and get to the point.  Night in the Woods and Oxenfree share quite a few similarities: the are both gentle paced adventure games where being able to take your time and explore them thoroughly is really rewarding.  Neither of these are a huge time investment, but both are set up in a way that it is impossible to do everything in one play through - so instead of fretting about what you might have missed or looking up how get the best ending, you should just enjoy the story that the developers have decided to tell and go with your gut instinct. At least for the first time through.  I'm not sure whether or not I will come back and play either of these a second time - for certain games like the Telltale series, I like to just play them once and feel like that is my personal version of the story.  Going back and doing things another way can sometimes spoil the illusion.

Both of these games are very well written, and do a very good job of portraying believable characters with interesting back stories combined with some very strange goings on in terms of the plot. Both of the protagonists, cat like creature Mae and blue haired teen Alex, are fairly likable but definitely have their fair share of neuroses and personal shit that they have to deal with. I know common wisdom states that Gregg is apparently the best character in Night of the Woods, but I found myself more interested in Bee, the chain smoking crocodile chick who is having to work all hours of the day to support her ailing father after her mother tragically passed away.  It's clear that at one point in time Mae and Bee were extremely close, but her situation and resentment of Mae's decision to just give up college one day get between them.  I chose to spend time with her and work through their problems rather than carry out crimes with Gregg.

Whereas Night in the Woods took a little while to get its hooks into me, I was fully committed to finishing Oxenfree by the time my first hour with it was up and got to the end in one roughly four hour sitting. I loved the painterly art style, exploring the island with it's interesting array of places, and delving deeper into the mystery of what's going on.  It took me a lot longer to finish Night in the Woods over a dozen or so short-ish sessions, but one of those was almost entirely taken up playing the fully featured rogue lite that can be played on Mae's laptop.  The quality of that minigame alone rivals that of many indie games, and it's entirely optional!

I am glad that I have finally crossed both of these games off of my backlog list.  Time to think about what's next! I'm still plugging away at Mass Effect: Andromeda and starting to get towards the end game now I think, but I don't want to to finish it until I have at least completed all of the crew's loyalty missions.  Other than that, I think I will probably try Pyre next, it does sound very interesting. I'm also playing the odd session of OnRush here and there, and will be messing around with some of the Games with Gold / PS Plus / Xbox Game Pass offerings this week, but that's not official Summer Backlog business so I'll save it for another post or video.  I think that does it for the time being - keep an eye out for those two reviews over the next week or so, and I'll be back with another diary once I've had time to play some more.  In the meantime, take care!

Summer Backlog Diary #2: Putting the "Ass" in Mass Effect?

Welcome back! The Summer Backlog Challenge 2018 is now in full swing, and I have mostly been playing Mass Effect: Andromeda... mostly. So today I'm going to share my opinion of the game so far.

You will no doubt be aware of all the fuss and general derision that met Andromeda upon its original release. Memes were created, rants were spewed forth, mediocre reviews were written by the gaming press, and death threats were sent to one of the animators responsible for the notoriously ropy facial animations in the game. When Casey Hudson returned to Bioware, one of the first things he did was announce that the company had cancelled their plans for any DLC and that the franchise was going to go on hiatus for extended period. Andromeda was blamed with killing off the series, but does it really deserve such a stigma?

Well, in it's original state, maybe, but in it's patched state I would say that it is actually a decent game. Still flawed, yes, but enjoyable in many ways. At the moment I would place it above the original game in the series, which also had it's fair share of quirks and design flaws, slightly after 3, and way way behind 2 which is the best game in the series so far. I may adjust that assessment when I come to the end of the story, but I have quite a long way to go yet.

So what do I like about it? Well the most notable thing is the combat.  After an initial adjustment period where everything feels wrong, you quickly get a feel for jumping, boosting, and sniping fools in mid air, which is just cool.  For this play through at least, I went with a pure soldier character (my usual choice when I play a Mass Effect game for the first time). There are plenty of abilities in all three skill trees to choose from and lots of scope for building interesting hybrid class characters, which I may explore if I choose to play the game through again at a later date.

I also quite like the main character, Ryder - or at least, my version of her. I have watched some videos from the likes of Outside Xbox and Giant Bomb where they were playing as the male Ryder, and he came across as a bit of an annoying dick, but the female version seems kinder, more jokey. I am also playing as a purely paragon character this time, going to great lengths to help everyone out and be nice to them.

As for the rest of the crew, there is definitely no one to match Garrus, Liara or Tali among them, but I do quite like Jaal.  He is very well written and voice acted, and the Angara are an interesting new race. It is a shame that they are the only new non hostile race that are introduced, and they also came at the expense of fan favourites like the Quarians, the Volus, the Drell, etc. I strongly suspect that these other races would have been part of the DLC, but we will never know now.  Vetra is also pretty cool, different enough from Garrus to just be a female clone of him.  Peebee can be pretty annoying at first, but I warmed up to her over time.  Drack is basically just another, older version of Wrex and Grunt - the same gruff, hard headed Krogan stereotype that we've seen before.  I struggle to find the human members of the crew very interesting, they're just a bit too generic for me.

Talking to the crew between missions, getting to know them and furthering their loyalty quests is one of my favourite parts of the Mass Effect series, and Andromeda does a decent enough job in this regard. There's certainly plenty of content to get stuck into, with about 50 - 60 hours of play time, 6 or so sizable planets to explore, and a seemingly endless supply of quests.  Some of these quests can get a bit annoying as they send you back and forth across the Nexus, or to other star systems, but I haven't skipped anything yet. I think if I were to play too much of this game in a short space of time I would start to tire of it, but short sessions every now and then keep it interesting.

I've already touched on a few things that I don't really like about the game, but let's go over a few more.  Firstly, the plot is hardly inspiring.  The overall idea of exploring a new galaxy and preserving the Milky Way races from extinction at the hands (claws, tentacles?) of the Reapers is an interesting one, but for the most part it's squandered here. The remnant, and the kett just feel like recycle versions of what we've seen before, and the revelation of what the kett actually are was hardly earth shattering news.  They've just used the Prothean / Collectors story again, but not as competently.

Other than that I am definitely starting to notice some glitching as I get further into the game.  Mostly it hasn't been a problem, but there is some noticeable and distracting pop in on the planet of Kadara, and Cora phased inside a shelving unit the other day with just her head sticking out the top talking to me.  So although several patches were released and the game is a darn site better than it was initially, they didn't get everything, and now they never will.

I haven't really explored the multiplayer side all that much yet, just a few quick matches. It seems like it's basically what was present in Mass Effect 3 though, just expanded a bit.  Your actions in the multiplayer mode do tie back into the single player, giving your money and resources to use on crafting, but it doesn't feel as critical as it did when it was affecting your Galactic Readiness rating.

I probably could find more to say about the game but I think I'm going to stop there for now.  There will be a full video review in time, but it will probably take me a few weeks to play through the rest of the game.  In the meantime I hope that I will manage to play through the entirety of Night in the Woods this weekend, so that will be the focus of my post next time.  I usually post my YouTube content on Tuesdays, but I don't think I will be ready to make my review by then, so it may end up going up on a different day.  At any rate, stay tuned to RMGB TV and keep any eye on the blog for more.  In the meantime, take care!

Game Diary: Quite the Achievement!

Hello everyone! I realise there has been a dearth of content for quite a while though.  Hopefully this post will be just the start of a flurry of activity on the site, as I have a lot of things to write about. To begin with I want to let you know what I've been up to over the last month or so, and why both the blog and YouTube channel will benefit. So, somewhere around the end of May I noticed that my Xbox Live Gamerscore was about 12,000 points shy of 100,000, which is currently the highest VIP tier called Overlord. Those who are in the Xbox Rewards program who manage to reach this level get and increase in the amount of reward points they get back on purchases, which gets converted to cash every so often.  I decided that I would make it my goal to try and reach the 100,000 points, and also go back to quite a few games that I had only partially completed in the past.

So far I've managed to finish Far Cry 3 on the 360 as well as Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition and Assassin's Creed: Blag Flag.  These aren't the easiest achievements to get but they aren't too bad.  I'm not trying earn every achievement in every game either, as that's not my idea of fun. I did finish most of the side content in these three games though.  As well as these games there were also a number of Telltale games that I hadn't played yet - Tales from the Borderlands, The Walking Dead Seasons 2 and 3, as well as the Michonne mini series.  These are all an easy 1000 points just for getting to the end, and I had been meaning to get around to them eventually anyway.  In addition to all this I have also signed up for Xbox Game Pass and have been playing quite a few shorter games such as the Sega and Capcom retro collections for games like Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Dungeons & Dragons.  I personally think the Game Pass is excellent because I never would have spent money on games like these when there are so many AAA titles just waiting to be picked up instead, yet I would still like to play them.

Just lately I have moved on to playing Watch Dogs and have gone back to Forza Horizon 3 where I still have a lot left to do.  The same is true for quite a few of the older Forza titles as well - there’s so much content in those games that I’m never finished by the time the next one comes out.  Although I have already played Watch Dogs on the PS4, that was several years ago now and I did enjoy it. Watch Dogs was one of the Games with Gold in June so I haven't had to pay anything for it - in fact I took a bunch of older PS4 games that have since been in either Games with Gold or PS Plus to CeX and got £27 in trade in value, which I used to get Ghost Recon: Wildlands.  I haven't really played much of it yet though.

Looking to the future, I’ll be moving onto trying to polish off Mad Max and Mafia III.  I have tons of other open world games to get to – Assassin's Creed Liberation HD, Unity and Syndicate, Saints Row IV Reelected, Sunset Overdrive, Re:Core – tons!!! Right now I still need to earn just under 5000 Gamerscore to reach 100,000, so I've still got quite a bit of gaming to go.  Of course, as a result of this very Xbox centric time my PS4 and Switch are getting a little bit neglected.  I'll make up for that after I'm done though, especially as I really want to spend more time with Wipeout Omega Collection and dive in to Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age which is out very soon.  Even the 3DS is getting some love right now with the awesome looking Ever Oasis, a full on remake of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Metroid: Return of Samus!

Anyway, as I've been playing through these games I've also been capturing quite a bit of footage from them, and I do intend to write reviews and create videos for them as well.  I've been putting it off for a while because I wanted to write this very article that you're reading now, so now I've got this out of the way I shall start knocking out those reviews.  I'm also in the middle of PS2 Tuesdays Season 4 as well, so I do have to spend some of my time playing and reviewing some PS2 classics.  Speaking of which, the next one of those will be The Red Star, a great and overlooked arcade style shooting and fighting hybrid. Once I've got that made and uploaded I shall then try and find a spare hour or so to write the Sleeping Dogs review, and so on with the other games.  You should see quite a bit of productivity if I manage to stick to the plan!  If you have any recommendations of Xbox One or Xbox 360 games that I could play through then be sure to leave a comment. I have recently picked up copies of Bionic Commando (the 3D one), Wet and Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for £1 each - are any of them worth trying? What about the Lost Planet trilogy? I've been thinking of getting those too as they are so cheap.  Any advice would be appreciated!

Cobra Triangle | Rare Replay #5

Today we're on to the fifth episode in the series of Rare Replay games.  I'm sticking with the NES again this time, and taking a look at a 1989 release called Cobra Triangle.   I had never heard of this one before I bought this compilation, but that's not entirely surprising as I never had my own NES growing up.  It was co designed by Mark Betteridge and the Stamper brothers, with programming duties also falling to Betteridge.  Tim Stamper and Kevin Bayliss produced the graphics, while David Wise once again composed the music.  The style of game is an isometric racing / combat game, where you take control of a speedboat that can be upgraded as you progress through the stages.

Probably the best thing about the game in my opinion is the wide range of different objectives that it throws at you.  One minute you simply have to get to the end of a course before the time runs out, the next you may be trying to steal armed mines from the enemy and take them up to a designated area on the water to blow them up safely.  Or you may be protecting a bunch of humans from being abducted by evil speedboats, attempting to jump across a series of waterfalls, or in a battle to the death against a sea dragon, giant crab, kraken or ultimately, a great white shark.  Like many NES games of the time though, the difficulty curve can be rather harsh.  You only have a couple of lives and a few continues to try and make your way through the game, and while you can collect more from time to time, you're more than likely to run out before you get to the end of the 25th stage and actually complete the game. 

Avoiding these whirlpools can be aggravating!

For my first few attempts, I did actually persevere without resorting to infinite lives cheat, but could barely manage to get past the 10th stage.  As I want to get all of the milestones in each game, I did turn the cheat on and slog my way through every level.  The one I struggled with the most was the hardest version of the mine defusing stage, as the time limit is extremely tight.  Neither the milestones or the snapshots were particularly challenging this time around.  The toughest one was definitely the one awarded for completing all 25 stages of the game.  It took quite a few attempts, but I got there in the end. Thankfully the addition of save states in Rare Replay meant I could walk away from the game for a bit and come back and try again later.

On certain levels, such as the ones where you are told to race to the finish, or others that just tell you to collect pods, you upgrade your boat by collecting said pods.  The power up system is very reminiscent of something like Gradius, where you have a list of options along the bottom of the screen, which will cycle through as you collect the pods.  At the press of a button you can select the currently highlighted option, upgrading your ship and resetting the bar back to the start.  By doing this you can improve the top speed of your boat, the power and spread of your bullets and eventually be able to shoot heat seeking missiles.  I would recommend upgrading your offensive options before improved the speed of your vehicle, as you will be going up against the sea dragon fairly early in the game and may have a hard time if you only have the pea shooter that you start with.

Overall: 8 out of 10
I do really like the presentation of Cobra Triangle - Rare have once again used the isometric perspective that they are so fond of, but for the most part it works really well here.  It can make lining yourself up with the pods in midair a little tricky, but this isn't a major issue.  Really though, the greatest thing this game has going for it is the variety of game play it offers.  While the eight or so different level types do repeat several times over by the end of the game, each one is very different from the last and they ramp up in complexity as you proceed.  The worst part of the game is the very harsh difficulty - you can get a good deal better at it with perseverance and practise but completing this game fairly and squarely on the paltry number of lives they give you will be an incredibly stiff challenge indeed.  Overall then I think I enjoyed this just a tiny bit more than I did with Slalom.  It is less samey, yet doesn't quite earn true greatness due to the harsh game play.  A solid eight out of ten.