80 days - To travel around the world, west to east from London to London. In what is a story based game about adventuring, route optimization, wondrous stories and relaxing rides through an alternate 1872 as the valet to a well known gentleman who has made a wager.
Along the way you will need to manage funding, items, packing, and selecting the routes to follow. It sounds simple, but it is complex enough to keep you busy.
To get it out of the way, yes, this is phone game. Do not let that scare you off, all it truly means for you as a PC gamer is that even your most outdated toaster can run it, the controls are simple and they do not need to be any more complex to do what you need to do. Game mechanics themselves do not suffer either, with a great majority of your options being simple choices in dialogue. Choices that actually do matter many times, with stories to tell you that I found surprisingly pleasant and interesting to read.
You can embark on an adventure and enjoy a richly filled world while balancing your own interest at exploration and your task as valet to keep monsieur Fogg in good condition and comfortable, on track to win his wager. It is not difficult to make it in 80 days if you try and plan things out in advance, but often there will be opportunities and potential rewards just a little off your chosen path. A lot of tempting things can drag you out to somewhere you didn't intend and it can both be a great boon to your funds and travel time or a disaster. With every city and most travel lines in the game having their own or connected stories, you will need multiple playthroughs to see them all. And even then it may not be likely unless you actively try.
Losing is alright as well. The wager won't bankrupt you, and you will be able to just try again. After all, why bet only once? A playthrough will take about an hour, perhaps a bit more or less depending on how much of a rush you are in.
But then there are some things that you should probably not get very hyped about either. Racing other people? Live multiplayer feed? Unless you actively go looking on the map for them, you likely won't find others except near the start. Even then, there is no interactions with them and I have yet to notice any sort of multiplayer feed. At best there are some icons on the map of where others went before you, and some things you aren't told and have to find out the hard way(Leaving a train at a midway stop when you have a ticket to the final destination of the train voids your ticket. You aren't allowed to get back on with the next train passing by. Some routes don't let you resume at all if you buy only a partway ticket, and so on)
The game is surprisingly easy to break as well, crashing or freezing if you try to do too much at once. A good autosave system helps with this, so you likely won't have issues- Just start it back up and you're back to where you were.
But in the end, these are small issues that don't actually hold it back.
80 days is a great game that tells you a story, while giving you full control over the story it tells, with excellently fitting graphics and amazingly done mood setting. Its flaws are few and easily forgivable, with a very competitive price to make it definitely a worthwhile buy.
28 September, 2016
18 September, 2016
The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming Review
The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming is an interesting mixture of many
ideas brought together in a single game, yet combining many good ideas
is not always a good idea itself.
I find myself conflicted, since I want to like this game, but I am considering to refund it while I still can. Nobody will see the screenshots and go in expecting good graphics, but I will say that the graphics and animations are actually quite decent. Though the screenshots featured put them in a good light, in game you will find that most models are less pleasing to look at close. That said, they aren't why I was considering refunding.
The reason for that is that for everything this game does, there are other games who do it better. Nothing here is very bad bad, but nothing is exemplary or exceptionally good either. During most of my time playing this, I thought back to other games who did as this does but arguably better. Sure, none of those games combine all the features offered in The Storm Guard, but they focus on making those few that they do offer great.
There is a village and narrator, Darkest Dungeon style. But less interesting to listen to, and the village appears less complex and with some interface quirks that are not very intuitive.
The combat itself is interesting, but ultimately it just doesn't offer that much depth past 'Put the guy with a shield up front'. Maybe this will change further into the game, maybe not. I can't say I'll make it that far when it takes more than an hour to gain a single level on a hero, and with them potentially dying I would certainly hate to have to re-train them.
Another thing you will quickly notice seems to be directly from Darkest Dungeon as well is the dungeon map system, except it simplifies it even further. Move from encounter tile to encounter tile, eat food along the way. Dungeons are simply encounters connected together through minimal narration- Like a DnD game ran by a newbie DM, rather than actual dungeons and a world full of story it feels like a string of random encounters, followed by a semi-random boss fight that often may as well be a regular random encounter.
As a whole, and in individual parts, it just doesn't have the complexity to justify the overal average-ness of the game. It's certainly not bad, but I feel very much like there just isn't anything for me to do aside from positioning. Deciding what hero goes onto a mission didn't feel very important, and then there is no inventory for me to bother with either, nor complex armour or weapon management. The interface is slightly clumsy, that's not really an issue- You can learn the quirks. But one of the big things in a tactical combat game is that you need to see, at a glance, what's going on. You can't do that as there does not appear to be much of any indication that for example your hero's movement points are reduced until you get to his turn and find that he can't move as far. All the combats appear very similar, with no significant changes outside of scenery. Outside of combat the repetitiveness doesn't fare much better. All missions appear to be of the 'move to tile and kill stuff' variety, even if their description and reason for killing these things are different.
In conclusion, I had expected a somewhat quirky turn based tactical combat game, one with interesting maps and a lot of interesting combat scenarios. In the end, I didn't get any of that. While I can see the potential, The Storm Guard is most alike a string of fights generated by a random encounter generator, with some narration about why this is happening and sometimes a choice which encounter you want to fight.
Perhaps if it goes on a sale it's worth it, but there is no way I can recommend this for 20 euro.
I think I just convinced myself to refund it.
I find myself conflicted, since I want to like this game, but I am considering to refund it while I still can. Nobody will see the screenshots and go in expecting good graphics, but I will say that the graphics and animations are actually quite decent. Though the screenshots featured put them in a good light, in game you will find that most models are less pleasing to look at close. That said, they aren't why I was considering refunding.
The reason for that is that for everything this game does, there are other games who do it better. Nothing here is very bad bad, but nothing is exemplary or exceptionally good either. During most of my time playing this, I thought back to other games who did as this does but arguably better. Sure, none of those games combine all the features offered in The Storm Guard, but they focus on making those few that they do offer great.
There is a village and narrator, Darkest Dungeon style. But less interesting to listen to, and the village appears less complex and with some interface quirks that are not very intuitive.
The combat itself is interesting, but ultimately it just doesn't offer that much depth past 'Put the guy with a shield up front'. Maybe this will change further into the game, maybe not. I can't say I'll make it that far when it takes more than an hour to gain a single level on a hero, and with them potentially dying I would certainly hate to have to re-train them.
Another thing you will quickly notice seems to be directly from Darkest Dungeon as well is the dungeon map system, except it simplifies it even further. Move from encounter tile to encounter tile, eat food along the way. Dungeons are simply encounters connected together through minimal narration- Like a DnD game ran by a newbie DM, rather than actual dungeons and a world full of story it feels like a string of random encounters, followed by a semi-random boss fight that often may as well be a regular random encounter.
As a whole, and in individual parts, it just doesn't have the complexity to justify the overal average-ness of the game. It's certainly not bad, but I feel very much like there just isn't anything for me to do aside from positioning. Deciding what hero goes onto a mission didn't feel very important, and then there is no inventory for me to bother with either, nor complex armour or weapon management. The interface is slightly clumsy, that's not really an issue- You can learn the quirks. But one of the big things in a tactical combat game is that you need to see, at a glance, what's going on. You can't do that as there does not appear to be much of any indication that for example your hero's movement points are reduced until you get to his turn and find that he can't move as far. All the combats appear very similar, with no significant changes outside of scenery. Outside of combat the repetitiveness doesn't fare much better. All missions appear to be of the 'move to tile and kill stuff' variety, even if their description and reason for killing these things are different.
In conclusion, I had expected a somewhat quirky turn based tactical combat game, one with interesting maps and a lot of interesting combat scenarios. In the end, I didn't get any of that. While I can see the potential, The Storm Guard is most alike a string of fights generated by a random encounter generator, with some narration about why this is happening and sometimes a choice which encounter you want to fight.
Perhaps if it goes on a sale it's worth it, but there is no way I can recommend this for 20 euro.
I think I just convinced myself to refund it.
08 September, 2016
Where I've been
As it's been a bit over a month without review, I figured I'd place a message to say why. So here it is, my reasons for not writing a review in the last month or any other post.
Stellaris and Overwatch.
That's pretty much it. Stellaris I won't review because as a general rule I don't review products in alpha states, and Overwatch I didn't review because there honestly isn't that much for me to say that would actually be useful.
I can write entire essays on its design and analysing it, but in the end it will all come down to two things:
1. They knew exactly what they were doing and designed perfectly for their intended target audience
2. I am not their target audience.
Without being salty about it, I can still play it and pass the time, but I can not say I enjoy it much. It's certainly a decent enough game that I would call it good if pressed on it and fully reviewing it, but I will never call it a great game. I can call a lot of the design choices bad because I personally disagree with them, but truth is that for the majority of players all those choices are acceptable or even very good ones. Choices that would have been taken specifically to cater to a specific kind of player that just isn't me.
It's okay, really. I can write a long list of complaints, but most of those are just going to get summed up as their target audience being significantly different from me. I still like playing it with friends, but everything is fun and playable with friends, so that's not really anything to judge things on.
That's where I've been. That, and not finding games I find it worthwhile to review.
Though I will probably put out a review in the next few weeks anyway
Stellaris and Overwatch.
That's pretty much it. Stellaris I won't review because as a general rule I don't review products in alpha states, and Overwatch I didn't review because there honestly isn't that much for me to say that would actually be useful.
I can write entire essays on its design and analysing it, but in the end it will all come down to two things:
1. They knew exactly what they were doing and designed perfectly for their intended target audience
2. I am not their target audience.
Without being salty about it, I can still play it and pass the time, but I can not say I enjoy it much. It's certainly a decent enough game that I would call it good if pressed on it and fully reviewing it, but I will never call it a great game. I can call a lot of the design choices bad because I personally disagree with them, but truth is that for the majority of players all those choices are acceptable or even very good ones. Choices that would have been taken specifically to cater to a specific kind of player that just isn't me.
It's okay, really. I can write a long list of complaints, but most of those are just going to get summed up as their target audience being significantly different from me. I still like playing it with friends, but everything is fun and playable with friends, so that's not really anything to judge things on.
That's where I've been. That, and not finding games I find it worthwhile to review.
Though I will probably put out a review in the next few weeks anyway
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