HIGH Simply chilling in high places and taking in the view of the world.

LOW The ending, which is poorly designed and written, and riddled with bugs.

WTF Oh, so that’s not a frog statue.

The planet Cigalo is dying. Its ecosystem has been shattered, its swamps drained, and its surface strip-mined in order to build a spaceborne array of solar panels that will eventually block out its sun. An environmental catastrophe interrupted the project and forced the exploiters to depart, leaving behind abandoned facilities and mountains of scrap.

As Caravan SandWitch begins, players step into the role of a teenage pilot trainee and Cigalo native named Sauge. She’s just received a distress signal from her sister, who was assumed dead after disappearing on on this half-ruined planet six years ago. Although that premise sounds grim, Caravan SandWitch itself is anything but. The desiccated world of Cigalo is rendered in attractive, saturated, cel-shaded graphics. There’s no combat whatsoever, and most of its play loops are built around exploring, collecting items, and driving folks around in a big, bright yellow van.

Sauge progresses the story mostly by reaching new sites in the world. Initially this is gated by a need to disable “jammers” that block communications and blot out the map, but as the plot unspools, it becomes necessary to reach specific locations to empower transmitters and link disparate decrepit industrial locations through a kind of teleportation network.

As is standard for third-person open-world games, these tasks are presented with a minimum of time pressure. A few character-related quests get locked out when Sauge gets a new tool, but more time is always available to finish these before moving on. The passage of days is noted, but nothing moves forward until Sauge collects enough scrap parts to build the next sensor or grapple gun and the player chooses to advance to the next chunk of the adventure.

Although driving the van is generally smooth, one could complain a bit about the platforming. Sauge will frequently clip through a ledge while mantling, particularly if the shape is odd. On tight ledges, Sauge will sometimes rotate in a random direction while jumping, though they will still grab and mantle to the next ledge correctly. Even when the animations got dodgy, the result was generally what I intended, and the small number of unexpected failures didn’t result in any permanent harm since Caravan SandWitch has no fall damage.

The total harmlessness of falling even from enormous heights might support a chill experience, but it also plays a part in rendering events curiously inert. It’s fine for a story not to have combat, but Caravan SandWitch feels like it goes beyond this to evict any kind of conflict entirely. Despite the desperation of the scenario players are presented with on Cigalo, Sauge gets to drift through it without truly confronting the planet’s exploiters, the elements, or even her parents.

For all her ominous looming, the eponymous Sand Witch does almost nothing directly injurious to any of the characters. The planet’s native sentient species, who suffered cultural and physical genocide, hold no apparent animosity towards the lingering humans on the planet. Only one character evinces even the slightest negativity towards Sauge and he’s quickly won over. Caravan SandWitch even shies away from confronting the damage the loss of Sauge’s sister’s caused the family.

The poorly-translated dialogue contributes to this problem. Almost every line in Caravan SandWitch is intelligible, but they’re often abrupt and unmusical, as if important nuances from the original French were elided by the translation. The conversations are functional, but any emotion comes across as perfunctory and shallow. It’s particularly bad towards the end of the campaign as the subpar dialogue interfered with the intelligibility of the action, sapping what little power there was in SandWitch’s contrived, half-baked endgame choice.

Despite its numerous charms, Caravan SandWitch just didn’t sit right with me. There is perhaps something to be said for a chill attitude in the midst of apocalypse, but this experience gets there by avoiding all of its tragedies, save one. The looming death of this world and seeming indifference from everyone inhabiting it left me too uneasy to fully accept the atmosphere Caravan SandWitch seemed to be after. While Cigalo was beautiful to see and relaxing to visit, even as the planet crept ever closer to collapse, I kept wishing that someone would rage against the dying of its light.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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 a home-built Windows X PC equipped with a AMD Ryzen 2700X processor, an ASRock X470 motherboard, 32 GB RAM, and a single GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. Approximately 10 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).

The post Caravan SandWitch Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The survival systems are fantastic.

LOW Whenever the story mode decides to tell a story.

WTF “Green Hell” as a title.

With an oversaturation of survival games available, new titles need something fresh to sell an audience. For better and for worse, Green Hell has some distinct hooks to offer in terms of setting and item management. Unfortunately, it also has serious issues when it comes to presentation.

At its heart Green Hell is a first-person survival game set in the Amazon jungle with two modes – survival and story. In both, the player will have to manage hunger, thirst, and tiredness, which can be done by scavenging and hunting for food, finding sources of clean water and building shelters.

To monitor these conditions, the player has a watch which doubles as a compass. A notepad is utilized as the player makes more discoveries and levels up their abilities. Finally, a backpack is provided to store building materials, tools, food, and other paraphernalia.

Green Hell does a great job alternating between challenge (for example, requiring the player to build a save point) and rewarding familiarity (properties of crafting and food types are consistent in every playthrough). This makes the evolution from ‘barely surviving’ to ‘hardened bow wielder capable of precise head shots’ feel earned. 

I was impressed by the developers’ commitment to keeping everything as diegetic as possible, meaning there’s almost no content that is not rooted in the world itself, rather than in menus. If I got leeches, I had to look down at my body and pick them off. The notepad does not pause the action, forcing me to flick through pages to the correct entry. If I wanted to light a fire, I had to take my backpack off and go to the right pouch. All of this is mechanically clumsy, but helped root me in the environment with an impressive level of immersion free of menus. 

The setting is also impressive — ranging from lush jungles to threatening marshlands, every area is beautifully rendered and brought to life with fantastic sound design. The first time night fell and the wildlife echoed through the trees was a memorable moment. Similarly, the crisp sound of rain falling through the canopy reminded me of rain-battered forests I’ve seen in real life.

Unfortunately, while the environment is great, the story mode brings baggage that weakens the experience with what I can only see as racist content.

Sharing clumsy parallels with the fictional films like Green Inferno and Cannibal Holocaust, Green Hell’s story mode casts the player as Jake Higgins, a man who makes contact with an indigenous tribe known as the Yabahuaca. The script indulges in all the worst tropes.

For example, he and his partner Mia describe the tribe as resorting to “barbaric” inoculation to describe the process the tribe uses to make themselves immune to a local poisonous frog, and they frequently discuss how easy it will be to ingratiate themselves with these “simple people.” It struck me as strange for two scientists (Mia is a linguist and Jake is an anthropologist) to be so dismissive and incurious about the people they are supposed to be engaged with.

There are multiple endings to Green Hell and the ‘bad’ ending has the tribesmen stand around Jake accusingly as he realizes that the disaster happening (not spoiled here) is all his fault — a common theme in typical ‘white savior’ storylines. The Yabahuaca are relegated to being the backdrop of this white man’s struggle, and little is done to humanize them. This use of the Yabahuaca as little more than props is bad enough, but the only in-game interactions the player can have with any indigenous people is in regards to a nameless tribe that the player can kill (and possibly eat), again failing to see their presence as anything more than ‘things to be dealt with’.

The handling of the tribes in Green Hell is a shame because it’s one of the most mechanically compelling and balanced survival titles I’ve touched in years — it’s well-realized experience that offers a sincere commitment to placing the player into a harsh environment. But given the script in story mode? Stick to survival mode instead.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published Creepy Jar. It is currently available on XBO, PS4, Switch and PC. This copy was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 15 hours were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Language, Use of Drugs, Violence, and Users Interact. This game involves eating snails and larva, and killing harmless animals like the capybara. At points the player will have to treat graphic injuries ranging from rashes to deep lacerations. It is possible to kill people and then harvest them for food. There are also drugs in the form of drinking Ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogen.

Colorblind Modes:There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles, which cannot be altered and/or resized. The game would be very difficult to play without sound as there are a plethora of audio cues for threats, prey, etc. that are not indicated visually, making it not accessible.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. The X and Y axis can be inverted and there are 4 control scheme presets that can be used.

The post Green Hell Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The mountain race near the end is delightfully done.

LOW Some pretty noticeable bugs throughout.

WTF The eye-opening things about the Greek Gods and their proclivities.

Ubisoft seems to have something of a love affair with Greek Mythology at the moment. Hot off the heels of 2018’s substantially more grounded Assassin’s Creed Odyssey comes Immortals Fenyx Rising which immediately casts aside all those boring, dour attempts at reality and injects excitement, passion, vivid colors and more silly jokes than it’s possible to shake a xiphos at.

The story revolves around the recently-escaped titan Typhon wreaking havoc on the Gods of Olympus. Having kicked their asses before the game even begins, it’s up to our inexperienced hero Fenyx to head off on an epic quest and prevent Typhon from destroying all of humanity. Fenyx’s design is entirely customizable, though it should be noted that anyone who doesn’t pick the default female with short red hair is doing it wrong.

Events are narrated throughout by comedy duo Prometheus and Zeus, and while some players will bounce off the fact that they try to make almost every single thing that happens into a joke (seemingly) aimed at small children, I appreciated that they were constantly trying to make players laugh instead of going for the overly-serious ‘mature’ storylines so popular in triple-A titles these days. While many jokes don’t land, some of them absolutely do, and there’s even some surprisingly decent character development between the pair as nearly everything Fenyx gets up to triggers tales about the nuances of Greek mythology.

This third-person open-world adventure take places across the colorful and spacious overworld of the Golden Isle which can be traversed in a number of ways, whether on foot, by mount, gliding across valleys or climbing up mountains.

The Golden Isle may not be the largest open-world out there, but it is incredibly dense. Some areas have multiple puzzles, Vaults (sectioned-off puzzle or challenge areas) or combat situations within spitting distance of one another, and while it may have been nice if the overall design allowed the open world to breathe a bit more, there’s still plenty on offer for players to get stuck into.

From hunting down chests filled with armor and gems to instanced Vaults hiding away longer trials which reward players with upgrades to Fenyx’s health, skills or stamina, there’s a lot of rewarding content to be found, and much of it entirely optional — appreciated since it helps prevent the usual fatigue from checklist missions and ‘points of interest’ that plague most of the titles in this genre. I applaud the choice to encourage players to explore the isle organically instead of filling the map with billions of icons.

The puzzles are well-implemented throughout, even for a notorious puzzle-hater like myself. There are many types on offer, ranging from stuffing conspicuous objects into similarly-shaped holes to changing wind currents that help brittle objects reach their destinations. Most important, however, is that none of them are so obtuse that they bring progress to a screeching halt. A few may cause players to pause for a few minutes, but none ever made me get so frustrated that I abandoned it in a huff.

Another win is that Fenyx‘s combat is pretty breezy from beginning to end. It’s not the deepest out there, but it’s a good one featuring fast, fluid movement and chunky, powerful hits when steel meets bone.

Players can use a sword for quick, slashy attacks or an axe for more powerful stunning blows, and can also unlock a number of exotic powers as they progress. From pulling themselves across the battlefield towards airborne enemies, hurling massive rocks around or conjuring massive warhammers out of thin air, there’s a nice selection of abilities for nearly every occasion. Enemy variety could be a little more… well, varied, and the bosses rarely feel unique, but it’s a strong effort overall.

Annoyingly though, Fenyx Rising can be surprisingly buggy. It’s doesn’t appear outwardly glitchy, but enough annoyances popped up during my playthrough to rub the sheen off it somewhat.

These issues ran the gamut from small and infrequent things like clipping through the world or having to re-attempt a puzzle that didn’t trigger its solution correctly, to more serious ones such as having entire mission-critical structures fail to load where they were supposed to. At one point  I spent almost thirty minutes looking for a furnace that simply wasn’t there and had to reload in order to make it appear.

Worst of all? After going through a long quest chain killing legendary bosses and collecting their crests to unlock a spiffy set of armour, I found out the game had declined to award me a crest from a boss I’d killed more than fifteen hours beforehand. After learning I’d been screwed over by something I had no control over and had no way of fixing, my desire to continue playing fell screaming off a cliff.

It’s unfortunate that these bugs were an issue because Immortals Fenyx Rising has a lot going for it. It’s charming, it’s pretty, and it clearly sets out to provide players with a good time. It doesn’t quite nail every aspect of its design, but it’s easily one of the better open-world games on the market right now, and for my money is the freshest and most enjoyable release from Ubisoft in years.

…It’s just a shame that I got screwed over with that armor set I wanted, and no, I’m never letting that one go.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ubisoft Quebec and published by Ubisoft. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4, PS5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 45 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, Suggestive Themes and Violence. The official description reads as follows: This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of  Fenyx on a quest to defeat a titan and restore Greek gods/goddesses to power. Players explore mythologically themed environments, perform quests, and battle fantastical creatures (e.g., harpies, gorgons, cyclops, demons). Players use hammers, swords, arrows, and elemental abilities (e.g., fire, ice) to defeat enemies in close-quarters combat. Fighting can be frenetic, highlighted by impact sounds, screen-shaking and slow-motion effects. Enemies generally burst into particles or get blown back a great distance when defeated. The game contains some innuendo and suggestive humor in the dialogue (e.g., “’…storm his cave, and defile his manhood”; “…only finding peace with horses. Laying with horses”; “Not even if you were…having an orgy on a Pegasos made of rainbows”; “Clearly murder and incest did not make that very short list.”). The word “a*shole” appears in the dialogue. Writers note: The ESRB rating included a spoiler that I’ve thoughtfully removed. You’re welcome.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/ or resized. Most of the game is fully playable without audio, however there are sound cues that signify a puzzle being completed or various time trials where the timer is accompanied by a particular musical piece that sputters out if not completed in time. It could be difficult to discern when these trials are failed without this feedback, though a pillar of light at the destination disappears when it’s no longer achievable if it’s within visual range.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. Also, I’d just like to say kudos to Ubisoft, here. This is one of the most customizable games I’ve seen with nearly every element of the HUD, controls and UI being modifiable to suit.

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HIGH A surprising glow up…

LOW Boss battles.

WTF That dungeon under the city is huge.

The first Oceanhorn was a surprise to me back in 2013. While I expected nothing from that little title, it turned out to be a competent Zelda-like that brought its own style and take on 2D exploration. With this sequel I would have been happy for more of the same, but instead the developers have blown the experience up into a 3D open-world adventure.

The story is about a young, unnamed protagonist that grows up in a small island village. Of course, this idyllic life is disrupted when he encounters a robot and an old man. This meeting soon spirals into a quest to help a princess pursued by dark forces and attempting to reunite divided nations — the usual stuff.

Oceanhorn 2 begins with a small dungeon featuring standard-for-its-genre puzzles and combat that culminates with a cephalopod boss. Impressively, the scope gets considerably bigger with rolling plains, train journeys across the map, a boat and an aircraft, and about midway through the level design goes wild when a diving helmet is introduced and the player can go underwater.

Both the size of the world and the attention paid to small areas is impressive given the size of the team. Things like running across the countryside and finding an observatory with a mini-story about the world’s astrology is a testament to the their dedication to setting and worldbuilding. That said, there are definitely some areas that feel too much like empty space, and some of the diversions feel light in terms of reward — worldbuilding for its own sake is good, but an XP boost or something similarly substantial would have been a nice touch.

More significant problems than empty space are linked to the combat. Specifically, enemies will ignore and interrupt the player’s combos and many can be difficult to parry effectively due to a lack of standard attack patterns. There are weapon unlocks that mix things up and being able to recruit a party of AI helpers can mitigate the frustration, but these things plaster over the combat’s shortcomings rather than elevating it.

Also, the boss fights alternate between obtuse and tedious. An evil turtle required using an elemental attack when it moved into a specific position. It took me a while to figure it out, and when I did, the fight dragged on for another 20 minutes while I was waiting for it to be in the right place before I could shave a sliver of health off each time. Fights like this are a chore.

Even with these complaints, I enjoyed exploring Oceanhorn 2’s world and see what new setpiece or puzzle awaited me – figuring out how to get a power ball through a half-sunken tower is always welcome. The experience is bright, positive, and just two steps away from being truly great.

Players looking for a cheery Legend of Zelda-style title will find it in Oceanhorn 2, and with a much smaller pricetag. It may have a few issues, but it’s worth the price of admission to see what this talented team has put together.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Cornfox & Brothers. It is currently available on iOS, PC, Switch, and Mac. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10 and contains Fantasy Violence. There are human enemies in the game, but nothing explicit and the sword swipes and gunshots don’t really have any sort of gore. This will absolutely be fine for kids.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are definitely some missing visual cues for enemy attacks which will make early combat a great deal harder to deal with. Once there are 2 teammates this becomes basically a non-issue.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable — namely, the X and Y axis can be inverted.

The post Oceanhorn 2 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.