HIGH Playful environments and cute co-op puzzles.

LOW Clunky movement and not enough puzzle variation.

WTF How did two bricks make me tear up like this?

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!

With so many games that focus on offering hardcore action and explosions, I find myself occasionally searching for something a little more laid back. LEGO Voyagers is absolutely in that camp, and my wife and I had a great time in its meticulously crafted world — this is a co-op–only experience that focuses more on exploration than adrenaline, and it’s great.

Two LEGO brick friends are on an island together, dreaming of space travel because they live so close to a rocket launch site. After watching a rocket crash-land near the island, players control this pair of single-bricks as they solve puzzles and salvage the abandoned spaceship parts. Platforming and puzzles combine together in completely LEGO-fied world that will lead players through canyons, factories, forests, and more. 

These little bricks will jump, roll, and attach to larger LEGO pieces while on the hunt for the crashed rocket parts. While most of the puzzles they’ll need to solve to earn these pieces are simple, they’re effective in how they integrate into each level, and how they utilize multiplayer functions into the challenges.

For example, one puzzle had me control some platforms, flipping them between horizontal and vertical, while my wife had to use another by leveraging momentum. In other parts of the adventure there are vehicles that transport LEGOs to complete a puzzle. Working together with a partner to drive a truck (one steering, the other controlling speed) made for an enjoyable comedy of errors, and was ultimately satisfying when we finally got the truck where it needed to go. 

While my wife and I absolutely had a good time with LEGO Voyagers, there’s no denying that it’s a bit on the shallow end since many of the puzzles amount to repeating the same challenges — finding blocks to make a bridge, to complete a road, and so on.

Some of the puzzles feel a little misjudged, as well. Some took too long, some were too awkward, and some were both. The vehicle puzzles I just mentioned, while amusing, ended up also being annoying due to how long some of the sequences went on.

There were also some puzzles that were difficult thanks to their execution. In the factory, for example, I controlled a crane magnet that could pick up specific LEGOs. My wife had to pick up the correct piece with her character, wait for the me to pick it up and put them on a different conveyor belt so she could grab more LEGOs, and then I had to pick them all up again to go to a third location. Controlling all of those pieces plus my wife felt awkward and took much longer than it should have.

Ultimately, Voyagers lands in a weird place for me as far as recommending it goes, and also with who I would recommend it for. The simplicity and repetition of the experience means it’s hard to recommend to older players who might be looking for a little more meat on the bone. On the other hand, it might not be right for a younger audience due to the execution issues with some of the puzzles. Despite landing in this mixed middle ground, I did have an enjoyable time with my wife, and we walked away with fond memories of it, so for me Lego Voyagers gets 6.5 stuck together bricks out of 10.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Light Brick Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. It is currently available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. The game must be played completely in multiplayer.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. No specific disclosures here, just a couple of people roaming around as Lego bricks in a Lego world. Good for all ages!

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no text in-game. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players will move with the left stick, jump with A, attach and detach to blocks with X, and make noises with B (not required for gameplay completion).

The post LEGO Voyagers VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Atmospheric. Exceptional pixel art.

LOW Minimal story and half-baked mechanics.

WTF Cow + wolf = giant monster bone bear?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

A distress signal sounds. A small response group led by a fierce warrior named Naut heads out to a space station inhabited by thousands of people, only to find it quiet and desolate — but not empty. They quickly discover that the residents have been turned into terrible monsters. With survival as the only option, this small band must fight the horde to stay alive, while ultimately trying to find out what happened.

Katanaut is a 2D action roguelike where players take on the role of Naut, a warrior with a knack for swords and an exterminator of monstrous creatures. Players will infiltrate the overrun space station, pick up special abilities and power ups, and fight bosses to get to the truth of what’s happening. As players go through each level and defeat enemies, they’ll uncover new things to unlock for future runs, like new weapons, guns, abilities, and passive upgrades. 

During play, there’s a lot of emphasis on movement and flow while balancing slicing with swords and shooting enemies. For example, the player’s gun only has a limited number of bullets, and gaining more requires players to get in close with melee, so each encounter becomes a bloody dance of shooting enemies from afar before diving headfirst into the horde to get ammo back.

In addition, there’s a wealth of active abilities that can boost Naut’s combat abilities, like a ball of eldritch lightning, summoning a small group of allies, or things like shield generation or damaging enemies if players dodge-roll through them. There’s plenty of variety overall to make each run feel unique in how players will interact with the environment and the horde they’re fighting through.

In terms of atmosphere, there’s an eerie and tense energy that Katanaut nails. Every cut paints the walls of the station in blood, and the environments become more and more grotesque as players near the core. There also seems to be a hint of mental manipulation – is Naut wanting to eliminate the threat and save the world, or is he trying to learn more and harness this power for himself? Is he being manipulated by this unknown power, or will he be strong enough to resist? Only time will tell as players run through again and again.

While this all seems like a recipe for success and Katanaut does give a strong first impression, that feeling, unfortunately, fades quickly.

My biggest issue with the experience is that the roguelike elements are here, but they aren’t quite on target. For example, while there are plenty of varied and interesting abilities, the guns feel too similar and boring. Sure, the damage of a given weapon can go up or down, but none felt that interesting, or even that different from one another, making guns overall seem like an afterthought.

Main melee weapons suffer from this as well, although this might be more of a pacing issue. Katanaut offers six main weapons, but I have yet to unlock more than one additional weapon after all the time I’ve spent with it, and that includes fully completing a run.

Speaking of pacing issues, it’s not limited to the main weapon unlocks. Looking at the campaign’s structure as a whole, progression from run to run feels so incremental that the time investment doesn’t feel worth it. Increasing health by one point, increasing stamina by five points, increasing katana damage by 5% — it all feels tiny, grindy and unsatisfying, and it makes the ultimate goal of reaching the end feel like an impossible slog that will take much, much longer than I want to spend with it.

These are all significant downsides, and the story was equally unsatisfying. Does a roguelike need to have a grand, overarching narrative to be good? No. But does it need to at least have some core of a story to motivate me for why I should care about going through this space station? I think so.

I wish I could say that the payoff was worth it, but after finishing a run, I got to see the credits for the game and then opened up an enhanced difficulty — and that was it! None of the story questions were answered! What was the villain’s motivation? Why create the monsters? If I beat the boss, why do I need to go back and do the same run again, but harder? This made the “ending” fall completely flat for me, and after that narrative letdown, I didn’t feel a lot of motivation to continue.

Katanaut looks good and has potential, and honestly, it’s getting better by the day. The developer has been dropping frequent updates that offer additions and enhancements that weren’t there when I first started playing, and the push and pull of going between melee and ranged during the action feels on point. However, there’s a lot of competition in the roguelike genre right now, and in order to succeed, Katanaut‘s going to need better handling of its story and adjustments to the grindy nature of the meta-progression. As it stands today, it didn’t land with me and I haven’t stuck with it, but that could change in the future with a few more patches and upgrades.

For me, Katanaut gets 6.5 otherworldly abominations out of ten.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Voidmaw. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8.5 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Players will use all types of weapons (blades, guns, grenades, etc) to slice enemies to bloody pieces. Dead bodies and gore are shown in each level. There are a lot of otherworldly horrors comprised of fleshy tissue, blood, and teeth. While there is no salty language in the game, there’s plenty of disturbing imagery throughout.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, and the text is resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Katanaut VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Buddy and Bag Boy are just too cute.

LOW Unimaginative use of an oversized world.

WTF The only surviving animals appear to be two miniscule cats who are real jerks.

If the machines eventually take over, I can only hope our new mechanical rulers are robots like Buddy and Bag Boy, the main characters of Misc. A Tiny Tale.

In the wake of humanity’s extinction, we have (unsurprisingly) left an assortment of junk and trash in our stead. Living amongst our refuse is a diminutive race of robots who have turned cans into homes and see couch cushions as mountain ranges. Late one evening, an explosion rocks their peaceful little world, prompting Buddy and Bag Boy (best friends forever, and the nicest little bots anyone could ever hope to meet) to venture out in search of its source — and, just maybe, learn a little something about themselves along the way.

Misc. A Tiny Tale is a third-person, 3D platformer with a heavy emphasis on collectibles. The challenge is light and there is no fail state. Buddy has just a handful of primary verbs, and most obstacles can be overcome with a standard double jump and glide.

Across its eight main stages, players are dropped into large, non-linear areas with the goal of uncovering the missing golden cogs necessary to open passage to the next level. Finding these is a matter of exploration and rendering aid to the local robot population. In addition to collecting the lost cogs, players are also asked to clean up the garbage and goo littering the world.

There is a general lack of complexity in Misc. A Tiny Tale, and most of the cogs are found through simple fetch quests. Others are tucked away behind basic platforming segments or awarded for cleaning up scattered garbage. I was disappointed that there was little evolution after the opening stages, and found myself repeating these same straightforward tasks in the final areas of Misc. A Tiny Tale.

As one could guess from the title, size plays an important role in Misc. A Tiny Tale.  The robots are rarely more than a couple of inches tall — blades of grass are jungle thickets, a coffee table is a towering mesa, and a child’s swing set becomes a colossus amidst the arid desert of the local playground.  Unfortunately, this sense of scale is rarely utilized in a meaningful way. 

Many of the stages take place outdoors, in natural environments lacking in a standard sense of relative size. Often, the oversized objects end up feeling like set dressing. Is the process of scaling a mound of dirt in a garden meaningfully different from climbing a mountain as a human-sized character? It wasn’t until the final stages, as I was bouldering up the side of a TV stand and running along the eye-level baseboards of a mammoth living room, that I began to truly feel how miniscule these robots are in relation to the human world.

For all the simplicity in its play, I was surprised to find myself hunting down every golden cog in each of the stages, something I attribute to how endeared I was by the characters and writing. I wasn’t anticipating being so emotionally invested in Buddy, Bag Boy, and the many friends they make along the way. Of particular note are the Bro Bots, a couple of workout-obsessed beetles that have a crush on one another but are too shy to admit it. Enter Buddy, matchmaker extraordinaire, to help break the ice. Moments like these ultimately overshadowed my disappointment with the core play and, after a surprisingly affecting late-stage turn (no spoilers here!) I was fully onboard with Buddy and Bag Boy’s odyssey across the tiny robot world.

Despite its lack of complexity and failure to capitalize on its oversized world, I found it easy to like Misc. A Tiny Tale. The chunky, expressive little automatons immediately drew me in, and its earnest narrative of self-acceptance and mutual aid proved a pleasant counterpoint to the ever-growing hellscape of the real world. While these elements aren’t enough to propel Misc. A Tiny Tale into the annals of the genre giants it’s modeled after, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a smile on my face as I watched the credits roll over a saccharine song espousing the power of friendship.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Buy Misc. a Tiny Tale – PC – Switch

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Tinyware Games. It is currently available on Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence. This game is generally appropriate for all audiences.  The violence is minimal, with the only enemies in the game being wind-up toys, and the only weapon being a safety pin. There is no blood or gore.

Colorblind Modes: There are no specific colorblind modes available, however there is a high-contrast option for the dialogue boxes that appear during gameplay.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles for character dialogue, however there is an un-subtitled song that plays during a late-game cutscene with lyrics that are heavily referential to the narrative and themes. For this reason, this game is not fully accessible. Otherwise, the subtitles cannot be resized, although there is a high contrast option for the dialogue boxes that appear during gameplay. There are no significant audio cues utilized during gameplay, and I experienced no issues when playing without sound.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Misc. A Tiny Tale Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The level design.

LOW In the sewers again, eh?

WTF Shouldn’t it be easier to hit enemies when aiming down the sights, not harder?

Nothing good ever happens in an underground science lab — whether it’s zombifying viruses, inter-dimensional hell portals, or just plain corporate greed run amok, these clandestine facilities inevitably court disaster.  As a retro-styled first-person shooter, Kvark is the latest title to explore the consequences of subterranean scholarship.

Set in Czechoslovakia during the late ’80s, Kvark tells the tale of an energy company attempting to branch into the weapons industry.  By experimenting on their employees with a mysterious substance called Anethium, the corporation manages to prove the above hypothesis.  Awakening in a cell on the bottom floor of the facility in the aftermath of a disaster, the player must fight their way to the safety of the surface.

A slow, exploration-based shooter, Kvark is clearly inspired by the original Half-Life, and models much of its structure and play after that seminal 1998 release.  While the similarities in theme and setting are obvious, the most interesting resonance is in the structure of the levels themselves.

Many stages are constructed in a circular manner, causing areas to often be revisited from new perspectives.  This design thesis is clearly established in the opening stage — shortly after exiting their cell into the multi-level prison, players will walk through a hallway with a barred, moss-covered window near the ceiling.  A room is visible through the bars with barrels and boxes piled high.  Several minutes (and many winding corridors) later I noticed that same barred window — this time near the floor — and realized I was looking back into the first hallway from the other side. 

This structural bookending, described as The Preacher Loop by GameCritics’ own Sparky Clarkson, defines the space by removing abstraction and reiterating its logical construction.  Through recognizable landmarks and showing the same spaces from new vantage points, the player becomes keenly aware of their progress and orientation within the environment.  As Sparky points out in his article, this design technique is a major factor in why Half-Life’s Black Mesa facility feels grounded and cohesive, and the effect is similar in Kvark.

Unfortunately, this thoughtful design is let down by Kvark’s inconsistent aesthetic direction.  The opening two thirds of Kvark take place in anonymous industrial spaces, sewers, and tunnels.  Occasionally, the player will pop into offices and labs which feature a more noteworthy brutalist aesthetic with stark, chunky concrete architecture and wood paneling.  These segments offer more visual interest and complement the recursive structure with more striking spaces.  However, it seemed as though every time I entered one of these areas, Kvark was quick to direct me back into the mines and tunnels, losing much of its spark in the process.

Compounding this issue are the repetitive mechanics.  Armed with the typical assortment of shotguns, rifles, and machine guns, the player must battle through an army of robots, mutants, and evil scientists.  While the play is functional, there’s little that sets it apart — the majority of encounters consist of enemies blindly charging after the player until they are eventually gunned down.  Though there is an undeniable thrill in this and the over-the-top gore is a constant source of amusement, there are few surprises, and I quickly tired of the monotony.

To be fair, the final third of Kvark is a marked improvement, and finally delivers on the promise of the clever level design.  Gone are the claustrophobic passages and burrows, when my character finally emerges on the surface. 

These sections feature much wider spaces with a broader selection of enemies, and the encounters become more dynamic. Objectives are telegraphed by distant, concrete edifices barely visible through the fog.  Airborne enemies pepper the player from above, their ground-based counterparts lobbing grenades as mutant rats charge out of the underbrush. In these late stages, Kvark finally comes into its own.

In the end, Kvark shows an enormous amount of promise.  However, its disparate elements coalesce too late in the runtime and are ultimately overshadowed by the uninspired combat and indistinct aesthetic direction.  That being said, there is a sense of momentum in the final stages of Kvark, and if the developers can focus on that quality and carry it forward, I have high hopes for their subsequent releases.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Buy KVARK – PS – XB – Switch – PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Latest Pass and published by Perun Creative. It is currently available on PS4/5, XBO/X/S, Switch, and PC.  This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.  There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Use of Tobacco, Violence. This game is a first-person shooter where humans, zombies, rats and robots are killed with guns.  The visuals are presented in a blocky, low fidelity format, and are not photo-realistic.  When enemies are shot blood sprays out and stains the wall.  They can be decapitated, dismembered, and will occasionally explode into chunks of gore when killed. This is all presented in an over-the-top, unrealistic fashion but is still fairly graphic.  Cigarette butts can be picked up from ashtrays and smoked.  Normally this lowers the players health, but a perk can be obtained that heals the player when smoking cigarettes. There is no profanity or sexual content.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. During gameplay, none of the enemy sounds are captioned or subtitled, and while there is no dialogue with the enemies, I did find that I was more susceptible to ambushes and attacks from behind when playing without sound. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Kvark Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The city sequence.

LOW Having no idea how to get the last song segment.

WTF People seriously live out here?

Farewell North has a single goal in mind, and it’s one that it pursues with an impressive zeal.

From the moment the player arrives in a canoe to a dock in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, right up until the final moments before credits roll, focus is never for even a moment. Farewell North is here to make the player cry, no matter what tricks it has to pull to get that reaction.

A mood piece as much as it as 3D adventure/puzzler, Farewell North puts the player in charge of a border collie looking to cheer up a woman during a visit to her family’s ancestral home in the aforementioned Orkneys, the northernmost point in the British Isles. The woman’s mood is represented by the greyed-out visuals of the world and it’s the dog’s job to lead her from place to place, barking to restore little bits of color at first, then gradually helping her reconnect with good memories. When achieved, the past will be realized in a lush and vivid form, giving the player a chance to relieve them as an entire lifetime is squeezed into a five-hour journey.

The tone is careful and meditative, with most of the gameplay designed to simulate the experience of being a fairly chill dog. Not a lot of jumping or zoomies for this pooch — he’s lived long enough that he prioritizes stretching out on a nice flat rock whenever he can find one.

As the player trots around the island with their human in tow, the woman will reminisce about growing up at the end of the world, where it’s just a few people, their dogs, and the huge amount of wild sheep they manage and care for. This leads, naturally, to a couple of sheep-herding sequences, which provide a nice concrete goal that’s often lacking from the experience overall.

From time to time the player will encounter puzzles, which are largely simple perspective shift affairs. The woman will come to a gap in the path or a broken bridge, and it’s up to the dog to search around the area until he finds an angle that makes the it look like the path is complete. Then, with the press of a button, it suddenly is. There’s no real narrative justification for these puzzles, and at times it feels like they’re included simply to keep Farewell North from being slotted into the frequently-dismissed walking simulator category.

Only one puzzle sequence is genuinely effective — and unsurprisingly, it’s the one that’s completely organic to the story.

Born to the sharp cliffs and deep green fields of the islands, the dog served for years as a loyal companion and sheepherder for the woman’s mother, but eventually he had to move to the city along with the woman, and the game does a masterful job of simulating what a horrifying and alienating experience it was for him. To go from the largely-empty islands to being absolutely surrounded by new sights, sounds, and smells is overwhelming, and it’s impossible not to feel for the dog’s plight as he struggles to find his way home. That struggle largely involves light platforming and some stealth sequences, but they seem less contrived when the action is heightened by the dog’s mood. It really is an exceptional setpiece.

Also memorable are the canoeing sequences, where the woman takes the lead and paddles from one island to the next. The waters never get particularly choppy, so it’s just a matter of carefully alternating strokes and vibing as the woman tries to remember the words that her mother used to sing to her as a child.

At moments like these it seems like the player is going to slip right into the past, since the largely uninhabited islands seem almost timeless in their utter lack of civilization. One can easily imagine these remote locations staying unchanged for hundreds of years. Then the player paddles around a corner and sees a row of wind turbines jutting out of the sea, and they suddenly remember that time marches on, irrespective of our feelings on the matter.

Farewell North is built around the idea that the journey is the point, rather than the destination.

It’s about listening to the wind and watching the waves roll in, looking at the remains of a shattered lighthouse and remembering it so vividly that it’s almost as if it’s still standing there, signaling the ships at sea.

…Sadly, it’s also incredibly dishonest and manipulative in ways that I wouldn’t feel comfortable spoiling here in this review.

That doesn’t matter, though, because the goal isn’t to offer the player an airtight story or any justification for a second playthrough. No, the goal is to wrap the player so completely up in this dog’s journey to the place of its youth that by the end of the tale they’ll be feeling exactly what the characters are.

As far as I’m concerned, that aim was a complete success.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Buy Farewell North – PC – PS – XB – SW

Disclosures: This game is developed by Kyle Banks and published by Mooneye Studios It is currently available on PC, XBS/X, PS5 and SW. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. The game contains no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated E by the ESRB and contains Fantasy Violence. Honestly, the fact that they had to put the warning on there is kind of silly. There’s nothing really violent or shocking about the game. It’s safe for all ages. Just have the handkerchiefs ready.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which cannot be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Farewell North Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The atmosphere is off the charts.

LOW Having hitchhiker penalties without hitchhiker bonuses.

WTF Chain smoking cigarettes to combat a child peeing.

Hi everyone, Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

A new ride, a tank of gas, an invite to a music festival, and an entire summer ahead of me. What new adventures await? I have all summer to find out. Keep Driving aims to capture that sense of freedom and adventure by placing players behind the wheel of a new car with endless opportunity ahead of them.

In this resource management RPG, players will travel across procedurally generated roads with the ultimate goal of meeting up with friends at a music festival. Players will collect resources and items, obtain skill cards, pick up hitchhikers and upgrade their car in order to keep driving. As players obtain different items like food, extra gas cans, a spare tire and so on, they have to organize the items inside their trunk to make it all fit — imagine the inventory system of something like Resident Evil 4 and you’re on the right track. If there’s not enough space in the trunk for an item, players will have to either throw something away to make room or put the back seats down to create a bit more space.

Both items and skills come into play in Keep Driving’s version of combat. As players drive around the world, there will be random events that players must deal with — muddy roads, being stuck in a traffic jam, cameras looking for speeding drivers, and more. These events will threaten the player’s four attributes, gas, car durability, money, and energy, so preparing for the unexpected is a key part of play.

If players can’t deal with road events with the items they have on hand, they might incur a more serious situation, like the car running out of gas or breaking down. Things like this will stop the trip and force the player to take more drastic action, like walking to a gas station if they have the money and the energy to do so. If all else fails, players can take a chance and call their parents which may give them the resources they need to keep going, or it will end the game if their parents don’t pick up. 

One other resource, and a unique one, are the hitchhikers.

These passengers to be picked up run a wide gamut — you might find a musician who requires room for his guitar, a convict on the run from the law, a “free spirit” party girl, and more. If you decide to give one a ride, they come with additional skill cards players can use for road events. However, they can also have some drawbacks as well. For example, The Convict makes the player drive faster, which results in fewer road events between destinations and a higher chance to get pulled over by cops. The longer hitchhikers stay in the car with the player, the additional skills will be unlocked for use. 

The hitchhikers aren’t just resources, though — I’d say they’re the soul of the game.

As players drive between destinations, there will occasionally be bits of dialogue that come up between the player and any passengers they’ve picked up. Bit by bit, they start revealing their past and their stories, fleshing things out in simple, but effective ways. They don’t become friends for life, though. Hitchhikers eventually ask the player to help them accomplish their own goals, and completing them may mean they leave the car, and there were many times when I was sad to see one go. 

Another aspect that solidifies the experience of Keep Driving is the goal of getting to the music festival. Actually getting there is just one of a handful of final outcomes, but it doesn’t matter which one the player ultimately wants to pursue on their playthrough. One time in the middle of a run I got a letter from my grandmother asking me to come visit her at the hospital. I detoured, and when I got there, she told me that there was a plot of land she wanted me to have as an inheritance, triggering a new destination to open up on my map. Quests like these are clearly marked to let the player know if following them will end a run, so my choice boiled down to getting my inheritance or continuing to the music festival with friends. That freeform feeling of choosing your own adventure is really the spirit that Keep Driving is trying to capture, I think. 

The gripes I have about Keep Driving are minor. There are a few minor bugs here and there, like one time when I tried to change tires on the car and the spare tire was displayed outside of the inventory space. Another glitch was when I got penalties for having hitchhikers, even though they weren’t in the car. Otherwise, the randomness can sometimes make a run last much longer than it needs to. At one point I had to spend nearly an hour driving between two cities in an effort to make the game spawn a car upgrade I needed for a specific ending. Minor issues all, really.

Overall, I was hooked by the atmosphere and easy-to-learn management of this summer road trip. In a time where games can be a wonderful escape from current world events, Keep Driving brought me back to a younger time when a car meant freedom and opportunity, and a reminder of those good times was more than welcome. As such, Keep Driving is an easy recommendation for sure!

For me: Keep Driving gets 8.5 liters of gas out of 10

Buy Keep Driving on Steam

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by YCJY Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10 hours of play were spent playing the game, and multiple endings were completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated through the ESRB. There are numerous references to drugs and alcohol. There are some sex references in one of the endings, and there is significant cursing in some of the music tracks and some of the character dialogue. Not recommended for young children.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind Modes are not present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles, but subtitles can not be altered and/or resized. There are no relevant audio cues needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control scheme. Currently the game only supports keyboard and mouse, with the mouse controlling everything. The developer has said that controller support will be coming in a future update.

The post Keep Driving VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH It’s a fantastic reinterpretation of the metroidvania formula.

LOW Being unexpectedly locked out of the explorer frog’s sidequest.

WTF Hummus is easily available on a world like this??

Sparky has done a great job in covering Caravan SandWitch with his main review, and I don’t disagree on any of his points, other than perhaps the degree to which we enjoyed the experience. For me, it was easily one of the year’s best.

One thing that made it stand out were the vibes. As he correctly indicates, it’s an extremely chill experience, and that laid-back quality was was quite welcome in this tumultuous year of chaos. The lack of fall damage and combat were revelations, and after spending 12 hours with Sauge trying to complete every quest possible, I rolled credits without missing either. SandWitch didn’t need them, I didn’t crave them, and it says a lot about how certain experiences can choose non-traditional paths and thrive.

I also loved how the overall world design dovetailed with this fresh direction. The conceit of a large multi-galaxy conglomerate leaving the planet and abandoning all of their facilities, robots and gear was fascinating — coming across huge warehouses with the goods still in them, secure areas left unguarded, power plants sending electricity to nowhere, and autonomous robots performing tasks that no longer serve a purpose were all excellent world building, and spending time with the people left in capitalism’s wake is perhaps a tiny peek into our own future.

The scope of SandWitch was quite welcome, too. While the map makes the available territory seem much larger than it is, it’s quick and simple to cross from one end of the land to the other in a matter of minutes, and that was just fine! It never felt onerous or tedious to get anywhere, and I never felt like I needed or wanted tons more space. In fact, this cozy area suited me so well that I eventually became familiar enough with the landscape that I knew where I was going, even without the map.

With both the setting and size taken into consideration, it was then a bit of a revelation to see a truly fresh application of the metroidvania formula laid atop SandWitch‘s foundations.

SandWitch takes the traditionally-2D system of finding powerups and opening skill-gated parts of a world and successfully extrapolates it to a fully 3D open world environment. Rather than closing off sections of the world, certain buildings were closed or key facilities were inaccessible, so the freedom of being in an open world was still present. Of course, there were certainly places that the player would have to mentally make note of and return to later once they’d received some of the tools that Sauge eventually adds to her arsenal, but it felt logical and organic, and never artificially constrained. I’m honestly quite tired of the metroidvania formula as it is traditionally interpreted, but something about SandWitch made the proposal feel so new and curious that I was immediately sucked in and wanted to uncover every single secret.

Unfortunately, Sparky is dead correct when it comes to the story and the translation. For a game that clearly displays so much love and attention in so many aspects, it’s a shame that the script, dialogue and individual conversations fall flat.

Throughout the campaign there are tons of examples of phrases that feel slightly off, of someone’s point not quite being made, and a general lack of dramatic buildup to the climax despite of the fact that there are many, many opportunities for poignant moments and unfolding revelations.

I must stress to every developer reading this review — don’t skimp on the translation!! Don’t give it to AI for cleanup, and don’t give it to a friend who kinda-sorta knows English. A script can make or break an entire experience, and while Caravan SandWitch is something I absolutely loved, this could have been an all-time classic if the characters and story were better written. The translation is a huge, avoidable mess for a title that is otherwise precisely on-point, and it pained me to see how uncaring I was about the story in general.

With a script that’s so off, it really says something that not only was I invested enough to play Caravan SandWitch to completion, but that it ended up being one of my favorite experiences of the year in spite of the poor dialogue. Exploring this extremely chill, open world while digging around amongst the ruins of corporate greed held my attention from start to finish, and even by the time I had solved all the mysteries and had done all the things, I was still quite ready to spend more time in this world. It’s not without its flaws, but Caravan SandWitch remains one of my favorite experiences of 2024, and I would strongly encourage the developers to continue their work — I look forward to being delighted with something new.

Rating: 8.5

Disclosures: This game is developed by Studio Plane Toast and published by Dear Villagers. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via retail purchase and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Language and Violent References. This is a terrible classification. The mentioned violence is no worse than your typical 6PM newscast and I can’t recall Sauge ever going harder than “drat”. My main reservation is that in one of its endings a character commits suicide by choosing to remain behind (offscreen) in an exploding building. Even with that, I would not put this above E10. The world’s most tedious and unlikable people (perhaps the ESRB raters are among them) will also be annoyed that Sauge has two dads and many individuals are referred to with they/them pronouns.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game is fully accessible. All dialogue is in text, but text cannot be resized or modified. There are no essential sound cues in gameplay.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on PC. MK controls are as shown in the attached images. Controller defaults to X for interaction, Y for exiting / returning to van, A for jumping or acceleration boost (in van), B for exiting dialogues. Left and right sticks default to move and look, respectively, left and right triggers default to decelerate (in the van) and accelerate (on foot and in the van).

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HIGH An accessible way to be introduced to PC-style RPGs

LOW Pixel-hunting to interact with items.

WTF The “Buttload of Porn” items around.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone, Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

I didn’t have a lot of experience with the classic PC style of RPGs like Baldur’s Gate or the original Fallout titles, only their more modern and console-friendly counterparts. One immediate difference I noticed was that I was able to go through console RPGs more like a checklists than actually role playing.

I could start with the things that come easy to the character I created, then buy or grind up stats to be able to do the quests I couldn’t initially handle. There were rarely limits, which comes with both good and bad. While I admit that getting used to PC sensibilities can sometimes be annoying, Space Wreck makes limitations meaningful while also making the feeling of overcoming them enjoyable.

In this isometric RPG title, players will control the rookie captain of a spaceship who finds themselves stranded in space after a pirate attack. The crew draws straws to determine who takes the remaining shuttle to a nearby space station to get help. The player (of course) draws the short straw, meaning that they’ll explore different space stations and ships in space to try and find a way to fix their ship and get back home.

After players create a character and set up skills, the world is their oyster. For example, rather than being immediately handed a basic quest, players can interact with NPCs in any way they want — Charm them into helping, sneak around and steal their stuff, or murder them, if so desired. There are many choices, as long as the character can handle the task, often in the form of passing a stat-based skill check.

Having said that, there are some serious limits to Space Wreck as a whole.

From the jump, the game tells players that combat is not required, and with good reason. Even as a bulky character, there were instances where a single blow would kill me. It wasn’t often, but it was enough to make me reconsider my habit of brute forcing my way through things. On the other hand, my character wasn’t the greatest at speaking, which means there were some conversations and choices I missed out on because I failed the skill check and couldn’t initiate a chat.

While these things were a bit on the brutal side to me, I quickly started to appreciate those limits and actually started to roleplay my character. Instead of trying to beat everyone up, I used hacking skills to get robots to fight for me, and put my tinkering tools to use trying to get into every locked area I could.

In one section, I landed on a wrecked ship that housed a colony of people. The colony was dying, and it was only a matter of time before the aging people would no longer be around. When I went to leave, the security chief in charge was going to force me to stay in the colony in an effort to revitalize it. I couldn’t fight them to get my stuff back, and I couldn’t steal it back, so I had to get creative. There was another shuttle that no longer had navigation controls, so I could hack it and leave, or I could hack the life support system to knock out everyone and take my stuff back then, if I could find a space suit.

This one small example shows how roleplaying branches out to every other portion of the story, leading to different outcomes and affecting everything going forward.

Something else I appreciate is how streamlined Space Wreck is. I’ve played enough tabletop RPGs to know a character sheet can get bloated and become filled with stats, abilities, items, and much more to keep track of. This also occurs in the videogame world as well, but not so much in Space Wreck. Characters are limited to five stats and five skills and inventory isn’t a big concern, so it was easy to keep everything in mind and never became overwhelming.

It’s also easy to go back to a specific point in the story and make new choices. On startup, Space Wreck has a map which shows players their progress. On some of the major milestones, players have the option to reload from that point, finding even more ways to interact and solve problems. It’s a small touch, but helpful for players (like me) who would like to explore more options without starting a new playthrough each time.

My only gripes with Space Wreck are that it can be a bit difficult to click on the exact item I want to interact with. The pixel graphics and isometric view mean some items overlap each other, and there wasn’t a good way to choose what I wanted. It also feels like some of the dialogue trees were not triggering properly. I would try to speak with an NPC, roll a successful speech check, and then the dialogue box would close without the talk happening.

Space Wreck feels like a good first step into the bigger world of PC RPGs for a newcomer like me. It certainly has the same level of brutality that I’ve often heard of, but it remains manageable and easy to come to grips with. Even better, a run can be completed in under 10 hours, so it’s not a huge commitment and can be readily replayed. I wasn’t sure if Space Wreck would be one I would enjoy, but I’m already starting a second playthrough to see what other secrets it has to offer.

For me: Space Wreck gets a 8 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Pahris Entertainment SIA.  It is currently available on Steam. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on Steam. Approximately 9 hours of play was spent playing the game, and the game was completed.

Parents: This game is currently not rated by the ESRB, though for me this game would equate to an M. Players can fight enemies with melee and projectile weapons. There is no blood, but characters can be turned to ash with the right weapons. Characters will curse in dialogue, and clothing items can be removed to make the character appear naked. There are come cases where players can have sex with NPCs, though there are no graphics for this, it’s text descriptions only.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes. There are two mods to change how the screen looks from a DOS look (blue background with white or gray text) or an LCD mode (White background with Purple or Black text).

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in game, but the text is not able to be altered or resized. There are no voices, and the audio mostly serves aesthetic purposes. There are no necessary audio cues. When text comes on screen, it is normally the main focus, so comes in fairly large. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players can use mouse left click to control everything, with right click giving some more detailed options (Ex: Right click on a person to Talk, Move To, Kick, Shove, Stab, etc).

The post Space Wreck VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Dual worlds means tons more exploration and replay value. 

LOW Trying to run both Axium and Umbral does lead to performance issues. 

WTF Running through Umbral with a horde of enemies giving chase is terrifying. 

Another year, another soulslike…. Although these days it seems more like we get one every few months.

Notables this year include titles such as Lies of P and Wo Long trying and capture the elusive FromSoft magic. Lords of the Fallen, the sequel to a 2014 title of the same name, joins the list as the latest competitor trying to make itself stand out from an ever-more-crowded field of Dark Souls emulators. And yes, it does a solid job of creating mechanics that make it feel unique its kind — particularly in its exploration — and make this a strong option for those craving that good ol’ punishing action-RPG.  

Anyone familiar with the soulslike genre will quickly get the gist — a mysteriously vague plot happens in a creepy world, various starting classes support different playstyles, defeated enemies bestow currency that allows the player to level up but will be dropped if the player falls, and of course, lots and lots of dying. However, the mechanic that sets Lords of the Fallen’s apart from its contemporaries is the ability to switch between the Axium and Umbral worlds.

Axium acts as the ‘normal’ world, and Umbral is a dark world filled with death and undead creatures that are only visible with the player’s magic lantern. The two worlds sit on top of each other, meaning the player will have to switch back and forth between the two to explore, solve puzzles, and progress. If the player dies in Axium, instead of being transported back to the nearest save point, they will be forced into Umbral, and will only lose their EXP if they perish there. 

I love the concept of the dual worlds, as it essentially doubles how much of the game there is to explore. For example, If the player encounters a broken bridge in Axium with no clear way of passage, they can pull out their lamp to see if there’s a way to progress within Umbral before deciding to shift worlds.

However, passing into Umbral is a calculated risk beause once there, the player cannot get back to Axium without reaching a checkpoint, and the more time spent in Axium, the stronger and more persistent the enemies become. For those who tarry far too long, they’ll be visited by the Red Reaper — and trust me, you don’t want the reaper to show up. All of these factors raise the stakes and create a palpable sense of anxiety that perfectly reflects Umbral’s haunting décor.  

Unfortunately, Lords of the Fallen’s greatest strength leads to its biggest downfall — technical issues.

Though Lords of the Fallen is solid-looking most of the time, shifting back and forth between the dual worlds leads to relatively frequent framerate drops, especially in chaotic areas with many enemies. While it wasn’t game-breaking on my PS5, it was distracting and occasionally disruptive to the flow of combat. 

Speaking of combat, the usual tropes of light and heavy attacks, magic, dodge rolls and parries are all present here, and they meld into an engaging system. I started my journey with the intention of building a melee/magic hybrid build, but after discovering how generous the dodge roll timing was, I found myself just hacking away with my sword. That said, one interesting mechanic is the ability to pull enemies’ souls out of their bodies using the magic lamp, which will then freeze the opponent and allow the player to deliver attacks to their astral body. This is an excellent ranged option, and a nice way to rack up some damage. 

Bosses are big, gaudy and intimidating, but ultimately not as frightening as their exteriors might suggest. Due to similar timing cadences, telegraphed strikes, and a very good dodge roll, I rarely encountered a boss that I couldn’t down with a little patience, nor did I ever feel overwhelmed to the point of hopelessness as I sometimes do in this genre — although that isn’t the worst thing in the world! 

My last qualm is the lack of remappable controls. I know many early soulsborne titles didn’t support this feature, but now, in the year 2023 where accessibility is more important than ever, I should be able to play a complex action RPG such as this with whatever controls allow me to enjoy the experience the most.  

If one can look past the technical limitations and lack of control customization, Lords of the Fallen is a strong addition to the soulslike catalogue. With solid combat and fascinating, multi-layered exploration, not only does Lords of the Fallen do enough to stand out from a crowded field, it manages to be a great game for those with a Dark Souls itch to scratch. 

Score: 7.5 out of 10   

Disclosures: This game is developed by Defiant Studios and Deck13, and published by CI Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5 and XBO,XBS. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language and Violence. From the ESRB: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of a knight on a quest to defeat an evil force. From a third-person perspective, players can travel between fantasy realms to cleanse lands of demonic creatures. Players use swords, spears, hammers, crossbows, and magic to kill monsters in melee-style combat. Battles are highlighted by sword slashes, explosions, and cries of pain. Large blood-splatter effects occur during combat; some areas depict large blood stains, severed limbs, and impaled torsos. One sequence depicts a character disemboweling himself with a sword, with entrails hanging from his open torso. In a handful of scenes, nude bodies/corpse piles appear, with depictions of exposed buttocks and groin areas (no genitalia). The word “f**k” is heard in the game.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.  

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Yes, subtitles can be altered and/or resized. Though audio cues can be helpful to decipher when an enemy is approaching, they are not mandatory for progression, making this title fully accessible.  

Remappable Controls: Shockingly, no, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Lords Of The Fallen Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

The stone tower is so tall that, standing at the bottom, a human can’t see the top of it.

A figure treks across a boundless desert. At first she seems alone, but we soon discover that she’s carrying a passenger — a glowing blue creature so adorable that its inclusion may qualify as emotional manipulation. No context for this journey is offered, but I can’t imagine needing any. There is a tower, the game offers mechanics that allow me to climb it, and so it will be climbed.

Jusant, a title which refers to a receding tide, is a powerfully spare experience. There are no characters to interact with, no villains to fight. The only antagonist is the tower itself, and it’s a memorable one at that. This spire is an incredible piece of level design, telling its story not just through the occasional diary that the player can find lying around, but via the spaces the player traverses.

Starting out at the lowest levels of the tower, they’ll see hovels hewed roughly into the tower, surrounded by the small boats and fishing nets that let the player know that there was once an ocean here, and at the foot of the tower lived the workers who fed the civilization above. The higher the player climbs, the more intricate and finished the stonework becomes. Simple tool benches where items were cobbled together are replaced with intricate machinery, telling the story of class separation through the items the long-departed denizens employed.

Jusant‘s tower certainly tells a story, but who would ever learn it if the climbing mechanics weren’t magnificent?

Using the standard ‘one trigger for each hand’ system that many climbing games employ, Jusant makes it simple for players to clamber rapidly to impressive heights. A stickler for safety, the climber is careful to hook a safety line into the anchor point that marks the start of each climbing route. Then it’s just a matter of angling the controller towards a likely handhold, releasing one hand from the wall and letting the climber stretch for it. In addition to the anchor point, the player can use pinions to set what are effectively ‘continue points’ along their route in case they want a little insurance before attempting a particularly harrowing jump.

While it’s true Jusant is built around proscribed ‘climbing routes’, rather than letting the player simply clamber up whatever they want in modern Zelda-style, it feel less like a restriction, and more like the developers are curating the most breathtaking experiences.

Leaping from one handhold to another, gripping desperately to a beetle’s shell, using my last bit of stamina to grab hold of a waypoint anchor — I know the developers built the levels around these specific moments, but that doesn’t strip them of their thrill. I was especially impressed by the learning curve.

At the start I was struggling to make even the most basic leaps, and after an hour in I was sprinting in a pendulum arc along a flat wall to build enough momentum to propel myself onto a platform a dozen yards away.

With its enormous, intricate layout, constantly increasing challenge, and stunningly beautiful vistas, Jusant makes a strong case that it might well be the best third-person climbing game ever made. (Need more proof? There’s a button mapped solely for cuddling the cute monster sidekick.)

So long as the rest of the experience lives up to this amazing slice, we’re in for an unbelievable journey this October.

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