Between the Stars has legs. Well, okay, it doesn’t have actual legs, I mean, aside from the crew… But it does have legs in the scope of potential. Potential legs. Erm. I may have gone a bit adrift here… Which is actually pretty apt!
“We plan to give people a sense of freedom and a prosperous world. In practical, historical terms, that’s about as good as it gets.”
There’s really nothing all that cool about cyberpunk visions of the future. They are dystopian nightmares of relentless technological progress at the expense of the human condition and the accumulation of vast wealth by a small, unaccountable few as billions live in squalor. It’s hell, and we can say that with even greater confidence than the genre’s pioneers: we’re living it now.
Crown Trick is an easy to learn, hard to master turn-based rogue-like with a great presentation and tough but enjoyable combat. It fits into the rogue-like mould with a few standard elements; random encounters, enemies, weapons and dungeon layout but also does enough to make it stand out amongst the wave of rogue-likes that have been releasing on PC recently. In the game you play as Elle, a young girl who finds herself trapped in the realm of Nightmares and with the help of a magic crown, has to stop those responsible for keeping her there.
It’s 1924 and alcoholic ex-serviceman turned private investigator Edward Pierce is sitting in his quiet office, drink in hand, wondering where the next job is going to come from. All of a sudden there’s a knock at the door and before he knows it, he finds himself whisked off to a remote island to investigate the death of the Hawkins family in a fire that consumed their home.
The intro to Call of Cthulhu may seem a little cliche but that’s probably because because it’s the beginnings of a tale of Lovecraftian horror, a genre of horror that until now I thought I had no experience with. Truth be told H.P. Lovecraft has huge prestige in the genre and whether you directly choose to read one of his books or not, the chances are that if you enjoy horror in any of it’s mediums you will most likely have come across his influence. It’s at this point that I feel Cyanide Studio have set themselves a hard task, to convey their twist on a story told many times before while making it fresh and interesting.
The first couple of chapters of Call of Cthulhu feel a little on the slow side to me. Characters are introduced, you go to a couple of new areas but nothing much actually happens. Thankfully at chapter three things start to pick up and I begin to sense there is something not quite right with the island I have found myself on. While investigating various points around the island I get the same feeling as when I watched The Wicker Man, that everyone knows something that I don’t and that something is not good.
As this is my first real experience with a pure Lovecraftian story I find that the mystery behind the island and the deaths of the Hawkins family are one of the strongest points in Call of Cthulhu and they really carry the game forward. The developers have really nailed the setting, game design and atmosphere on the head and this creates a really spooky (but enjoyable) environment in which to explore and find out information from the other islanders.
Another strong point in the game is the stealth. Call of Cthulhu doesn’t afford you many weapons and being able to take out others by yourself is very rare. Instead you slip about the levels causing distractions that let you into areas you otherwise couldn’t reach. While some people may see this as a cheap way of making the game harder, in my eyes it increases the intensity and feeling of unease when trying to reach your goal. You feel a little helpless and less likely to just run about destroying everything and for a horror genre game I’d say that’s no bad thing.
On the whole the voice acting and writing is good although there were some irregularities with the volume of the voice acting from the main player character. Sometimes his voice would be really quiet compared to everything else. However I’m going to put this down to me playing an early release of the game as there really were no other problems with the game or settings what so ever. It ran really smooth and I was able to play through on the highest settings without any problems at all which is impressive considering how old my PC is.
There are slight RPG elements to the game also. You have the classic conversation options but in most cases you need to exhaust all options in order to advance anyway, so there’s not a whole lot of choice aside from a few occasions. The other element is the skill tree, which works much like Focus Home Interactive’s other game The Council in that it allows you to grow your character in the way that you see fit. You can put your skill points into things like being able to better spot clues or being more able to influence people when speaking.
Unlike in The Council I didn’t notice much of a difference when levelling up the skill tree and almost feel like they would have been better not even including skills in a game with only 10-15 hours game time. It almost seemed like an illusion of choice because if you explored each area thoroughly enough and spoke to each person for long enough you generally discovered everything you needed to advance anyway. This leads me to my biggest bug bear with the game that it seems to be very on rails. Yes you can explore areas, yes you can choose conversation topics but for the large part the game seems to pull you to the same point regardless of what you do.
The last few chapters of the game also feel a little disappointing in that they seem far more rushed than anything else. I get that towards the end you want to ramp up the intensity and finish on a bang but there were moments when I wasn’t quite sure what was going on in terms of the Lovecraftian lore and the game didn’t explain well enough for a newcomer like myself. Was it possible that the game was rushed to release or did they perhaps overlook the fact that a complete Lovecraft beginner wouldn’t be able to fully understand every aspect with ease?
On a whole I enjoyed the game but would have loved to have seen it fleshed out a little more to include more explanation of the lore and more scary areas to investigate. It would have been great to be able to better understand why I got the ending that I did as I know there was multiples ways for the game to end and again wasn’t entirely sure what I had done to reach the one I did. The gameplay was enjoyable, especially when investigating new areas and reconstructing crimes much in the same way you would in a Batman game and when dealing with the games ‘bosses’. Production was lacking in a few areas but like I said this could be down to having access to the early release version of the game.
The Verdict – On Target
Platforms Available – PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
Platform Reviewed – PC
Please see this post for more on our scoring policy. Steam review code supplied by PR.
The Council is an adventure game set in 1793. Playing as Louis De Richet the first episode titled The Mad Ones begins with an invitation to a mysterious island by the secretive Lord Mortimer. Unsure of the reason for your presence on the island or that of the other bold characters, many questions are raised in your mind. Having recently been informed about the disappearance of your mother you have reason to believe that she may be on the island but know little more than that. It is your intention to discover the motives behind your mothers disappearance and piece together the goals of the other guests who all seem to have their own strange stories.
Character development is a key part of The Council‘s unique approach to the adventure genre. Adding RPG elements to a point and click game is certainly a new direction and one that feels like it’s been implemented well for the most part. The first thing to notice is that you have to choose one of the three skill trees; Diplomat, Occultist or Detective and then further advance this tree with specific talents. I chose the Detective tree as this is a mystery game after all and I wanted to feel adept at spotting the smallest of clues. From this tree I can choose to further advance my Questioning, Psychology, Vigilance, Logic and Agility skills with each point added meaning using these skills during main gameplay costs less ‘effort’.
Effort is a points based resource that can gathered and used during main gameplay. You start with six points of effort and utilising skills from your chosen tree uses a couple of these points or less depending on your skill advancements. The good thing is that just because you chose a certain tree doesn’t mean you will always be locked out of skills from other trees, it just means they will cost a lot more effort. Running out of effort is not something you will want to do as it usually means things will not go your way. People will see through your motives, you will miss hidden clues and some conversation topics will be closed off to you.
In past adventure games when making key decisions you are sometimes tricked into feeling as if you have majorly affected a plot, dialogue or outcome in some way but with The Council this – at least initially – doesn’t seem to be the case. Depending on how you developed your character you are literally locked out of some options as your talents have not been improved. This might sound a bit unusual but it fits well and the RPG element helps you role play the story and become more involved in it.
During conversations you can use items to help sway the outcome in your favour, unfortunately the inventory and item usage is not the most intuitive. There are four items that help you with things like gaining effort points and discovering character weaknesses but learning what these do and which symbol corresponds to which during the heat of a conversation took me a while to get used to.
Occasionally during conversations you will have a confrontation with another character. During the confrontation the opposing character is basically sussing out your integrity and your aims. This is an interesting part of the game that unfortunately seems too rushed to enjoy properly. Between the amount of text on screen, the timed dialogue answering and balancing the use of items I find it hard to focus properly during these moments, meaning I occasionally miss out on lines of dialogue or text. As enjoyable as these sections are I feel they should be a lot more manageable and streamlined.
Voice acting in The Council can be a bit hit and miss. During the thick of things It’s often quite good, but there are the odd moments where things sound awkward or unusual especially with the protagonist and this can be off-putting. Unfortunately the exact same goes for the script writing. During most conversations and narration the script is good, but again there is always the odd line that stands out as slightly strange. The developers Big Bad Wolf hail from France and I wonder if somewhere along the line the translation has not been handled in the best way. It’s only minor however and for some people this might not even be an issue at all.
One area the developers have really nailed is the design of the game and the character design especially is great. Each character has a strong and memorable image that makes them stand out as individuals and is among the best design I have seen in recent games. The level design is also top notch. Never did I feel like anything was out of place or that repeated textures and items had been used in a way that seemed lazy. Every room and building had bold and unique design.
After this introductory first episode I’ve been left with an overall good impression of The Council. I’m very interested to see where it goes with the rest of the episodes, how the characters and story develop and how the choices you make in the game really affect it.
The Verdict – Headshot
Platforms Available – PC, Xbox One, PS4
Platform Reviewed – PC
Please see this post for more on our scoring policy. Steam review code supplied by PR.
The revival of the CRPG is still going strong and with each big release comes a whole host of improvements. The recent release of Divinity: Original Sin 2 has continued that trend and with a $2,000,000 Kickstarter to back them up you would certainly expect that to be the case. Immediately the most noticeable aspect of improvement are the visuals of DOS2. I played the enhanced edition of Original Sin and while I don’t remember it being bad for 2015, graphically DOS2 has definitely seen an improvement. The UI is also a lot easier to use and the level design is excellent, I mean it. Some of the best that I’ve ever encountered in any game ever. There is more of a focus this time around on spinning the camera so that you can see the map from all angles, finding hidden paths and loot that you otherwise wouldn’t have noticed and this gives a lot of added depth to the maps that almost seemed a little flat in the original.
The audio and writing has also received an improvement with most characters having voice over lines and conversation topics. This can sometimes be a sticking point in RPG’s with the sheer amount of NPC’s that can occupy a city or area of the map, but Larian have done a good job of making each character sound unique and have a unique character to them. Every time I come across a new NPC, whether that be a main character or just someone with a few lines, I feel like I owe it to them to listen to what they have to say and that’s really testament to the writing of a game when there are probably hundreds of NPC’s in the entire game.
One of the main sticking points for me in the original game was the combat mechanics and while they are largely the same there is definitely an increase in difficulty and tactical depth. It’s a lot harder to take on groups of enemies that are one or two levels above that in your party. In fact there have been battles that after trying to beat a few times I have had to give up and mark on the map for later in the game. This is far from a bad thing, I love it, it reminds me of a lot of games I played as a kid. There should absolutely be enemies and areas of the map that are unreachable unless you are very powerful or very clever, it adds a certain sense of mystery to these areas and encounters and makes them more than an encounter with ‘nameless mob’ in ‘random map area’.
Along with all of these improvements is also a sense of huge scale, in terms of the map, the story, the game world and really just the game as a whole. I shied away from calling this article a review because even at this stage having played 40 hours I can tell this game has much much more to offer and will easily end up being a 100+ hour game. To review it properly for me would just not be practical unless you want to wait a few months. That’s obviously not a dig at the game as the content they have added is top notch and I’m pretty sure I will enjoy every one of those 100+ hours. If you enjoyed the first Original Sin then this will definitely be up your street with bags of content and improvements, highly recommended so far.
Ten months after its release Tyranny has received its first DLC ‘Bastard’s Wound‘ which adds additional areas to the map and with it new NPC’s, a new quest arc, companion quests and achievements. Obsidian have also released a free patch along side the DLC that expands the content in the third and final act of Tyranny as well as including additional voice acting and a new path to the ending of the game.
The main story behind Bastard’s Wound surrounds a hidden encampment, yet untouched by the invading forces of Kyros. The settlers of this camp have been forced to pitch up in the Old Walls, a sacred place that is usually punishable for entering let alone setting up a village in. Within this small community people and beasts of various factions have decided to work together to keep themselves hidden from the armies of Kyros and so rule themselves. The only problem is that you are the Fatebinder and, well you guessed it, you happen to find out about this hidden village.
The good news is that if you liked Tyranny as much as I did then I feel you will enjoy a lot of what Bastard’s Wound has to offer. I finished the base game pretty quickly after release, so having not played for about ten months it was really easy to pick the game back up and play this DLC without feeling like I was lost in the game world or that I had forgotten every decision that I’d made. In a way that could be a good or bad thing depending on what you prefer. Bastard’s Wound can certainly be played outside the main game without affecting the central story arc too much as far as I can tell, but for those who wanted a more involved DLC this might just seem like more fluff added for completionists of the game. Don’t get me wrong this ‘fluff’ is as well scripted and polished as the main game and adds an semi-interesting story line to the game, but I just felt like it had no affect on anything outside of itself.
If Bastard’s Wound has one saving grace it’s that the newly added companion loyalty quests are pretty good. There are only three which is a shame, but none the less they help to flesh out the characters a bit more and build up their individual stories. In general though the decisions you make don’t feel like they carry as much weight, the characters you meet are not as memorable, the DLC as a whole is quite short much like the main game when compared to it’s peers. Bastard’s Wound is a nice enough addition to the main game but I feel nothing would be missing if you didn’t happen to pick it up. For those who are looking for more Tyranny, it has some decent missions and delivers exactly what you would expect from a 10-15 hour DLC.
The Verdict – On Target
Platforms Available – PC
Platform Reviewed – PC
Please see this post for more on our scoring policy. Steam review code supplied by PR.
So here’s a question for people who like that kind of thing. What exactly is an evil man? Surely good and evil are simply decided by which side of an army or faction you are born into? Maybe it depends on which views you are brought up with or what you come to believe to be true on your own terms. Or is evil a more personal thing, something that is defined by your actions no matter where you come from or what your background is? Paradox Interactive’s new RPG Tyranny really poses this question to you from the get-go by allowing you to choose your backstory in the lead up to actually taking control of your character. The army of Kyros under which your loyalties lie, have taken over most of the known world aside from one small peninsula in the south. As one of Kyros’ leaders in the eventual occupation of these lands, you begin the game by deciding exactly how your armies go about capturing the district. I won’t spoil any of the important choices for you, as this intro literally shapes the game you play and choosing the level to which your evil or mercy extends is half the fun of the early game.
What I will say is that as with other Paradox games the writing and character development in Tyranny is of a very high standard. Rarely does it feel like you’re reading a piece of filler text but instead insightful and interesting dialogue and backstory, and taking part in decisions that literally shape the game and characters you are playing in and talking to. Just be prepared to do a LOT of reading. If reading is really not your thing, then I would seriously consider your attitude towards this game as skipping text would, in my opinion ruin the enjoyment of the overall game.
In a majority of games in this genre party interaction is something that I often find tedious and an endeavor that has no meaningful outcome. Party conversations in Tyranny however hold weight as each character that you talk to will react differently to you depending on your choices in game and the ways in which you interact with them on an individual level. You can gain fear or loyalty from them, making their own actions change according to yours. This is the same for larger factions and NPC’s in the game, who you can also gain and lose reputation with depending on your actions. This certainly makes conversation choices a lot more meaningful for me and means if you want to role play the evil guy you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. The only disappointment from the party members is that there is not a whole lot of depth to them after conversation. You may visit an area in the game that they have a connection with and they will hardly even talk. There’s also not much in the way of ‘loyalty quests’ or anything to connect them personally to these places and I feel like they lack a bit of depth in that department, which is a shame. A personal quest or two that included each of the characters you can add to your party would go a long way to solving this problem.
The voice acting is also of a high standard when it shows, but not all interactions are voiced. I’m not sure if this was due to me playing the early review release of the game which im told would be missing the odd bit here and there or if they decided that it just wouldn’t be practical to have every section of the game voice acted. Certainly the main story line arc was mostly voice acted and if I think about it long enough that’s probably enough for me.
There’s a lot to take in to account when getting into your first few proper combat situations in Tyranny, although if you have played Paradox’s other game Pillars of Eternity, you will feel semi-familiar here. Once you build up a party and level them to suit your play style things get a little easier, but initially I found it a touch hard to manage the ability overload you are faced with. There is the option to let AI manage your party members but this is best turned off if you’re thinking about tackling one of the harder difficulty levels as sometimes they can be infuriatingly slow to react, especially when switching between targets that are further apart from each other. Thankfully you can pause combat and manage each characters abilities and if things are moving to fast for you in real-time, there’s an option to toggle slow combat speeds.
Once you get into the thick of the stats, abilities and equipment management, it’s actually quite enjoyable if you like that kind of thing. The spell system allows you to essentially create your own spells and assign them to any character, with higher cost spells being restricted to characters with high lore values which are normally casters anyway. Spells are created with a ‘Core Sigil’ deciding what element or type of spell it will be, an ‘Expresion Sigil’ deciding how the spell will effect the target and an ‘accent’ which modifies anything from casting range to the strength of the spell or how long the effect of the spell will take place for. Each sigil has a lore value and this is what restricts you from just giving the strongest spells to every character. For your mage assuming you have one in your party, spell creation is something of a strong point in the game, allowing you to entirely shape the type of combat style you want later into the game once you’ve collected a lot of sigils.
On top of the spell system each character has their own skill tree with multiple options from which they can learn new abilities or improve combat traits like armour penetration or health. Certain pieces of equipment can also provide abilities but are mostly for stat improvement and aesthetic value. Overall the combat and ability system is fairly in depth and as a person who enjoys tweaking optimal stats and abilities I enjoyed the system that Obsidian have put in place here, certainly when compared to other games of the same genre which almost seem to shy away from making these things in any way complicated for whatever reason. In a game that isn’t entirely about combat it makes sense not to completely overload the player with combat based decisions and I feel this medium depth level worked well at not spoiling my enjoyment of everything else that Tyranny has to offer.
Graphically and in terms of level deign Tyranny is a really good looking game much on the same terms as Pillars of Eternity, which makes sense when you take into account that the same team developed it and it’s made with the same engine. The levels are really well designed both visually and the way in which they can be transversed and interacted with. It’s almost as if concept art has been improved upon by artists and designers leading to some stunning scenes and intelligent design. Throughout the whole game I don’t think there was a single area of the game where I thought the designers had slipped in quality.
Ultimately Tyranny is a game about making decisions and unlike some games who promise a lot it really makes these choices count. During my play I compared my choices and outcomes to that of a friend and I’m happy to say that there was no illusion of choice, your actions really do change things like the people you meet, the areas you visit and smaller sub areas that you may or may not have access to, how people react to you, what people call you, items you find in the game and probably much more than that.
To sum things up Tyranny is a well designed and enjoyable RPG that makes decisions count, has enjoyable combat, interesting characters and well written dialogue. It places itself in a fairly unique setting and certainly makes being evil a lot of fun. Above all of that I think the thing I like most about Tyranny is that it’s not very often in a game that I get to actually make the decision I want. In most other games I may be provided with options but certain game world rules mean that none of them suit exactly what I want to do in that situation. In Tyranny however I can happily kill off an NPC, slap someone in the face, throw them off a building, show mercy, save their life, take a bribe, or basically anything I want if I deem it necessary as I am literally the law bringer and in the end this is what makes it most enjoyable for me.
The Verdict – Red Mist
Platforms Available – PC
Platform Reviewed – PC
Please see this post for more on our scoring policy. Steam review code supplied by PR.
Niffelheim is a 2D side-scrolling RPG currently in development in Steams Early Access Program. In it you play as a Viking who’s soul has been diverted on its was to Valhalla. You can craft armour and weapons, collect resources, upgrade your home base and defend it against numerous foes. Niffelheim is a true early access game in the sense that there are a lot of features still to be released, but the games developers are hard at work and keep in regular contact with the players via the Steam forums.
To see what the game looks like click the video below where I go through
Niffelheim is cuurently available on Steam for £14.99 link can be found here.
If you’re looking forward to a holiday on Mars this year, and fancy something with a different pace to Doom, you might just want to check out The Technomancer, an upcoming RPG from Spiders and being published by Focus Home Interactive. Unless I am very much mistaken, The Technomancer is sharing the same universe as Mars: War Logs, a game which I thought was interesting, but rough around the edges when I reviewed it a few years ago. I enjoyed the setting and story that Spiders were trying to tell in War Logs, but it was lacking in polish and a second chapter which dragged its feet. Judging by the gameplay trailer below, The Technomancer has received a bit of spit and polish, and hopefully makes more use of the morality system where your choices will have clear consequences later in the game. …