Neverending Nightmares First Impressions.

Neverending Nightmares First Impressions.

I first came across this game about a year ago when it was on Kickstarter, and several YouTubers were playing the demo. After watching them play the demo and getting thoroughly creeped out, it really caught my interest because of its art style and general scariness. After playing about an hour of the full game, I can easily say it is very creepy and extremely tense.

The creator of the game, Matt Gilgenbach, has said he’s drawn inspiration from his real-life struggles with obsessive-compulsive-disorder and depression which gives this game a much more personal feel, this really helps with immersing you as you know this is something he’s had to deal with, and not just a story based around it. The actual story of the game is revolved around a man named Thomas who has nightmares, and keeps waking up into another nightmare, hence the name of the game. It’s this perpetual thought of ‘what’s going to happen this time?’ that kept me going forward, regardless of whether or not I was scared. Thomas will ‘wake up’ once you reach a certain part of the area or when you get killed, the latter meaning you’ll have to play the area again. Thomas can’t really do much either’ he can walk, run for a small period of time, and interact with certain objects. You’ll spend most of the game walking however, as when Thomas get tired from running, you’ll have to stop to catch your breath which will leave you vulnerable.

The most striking feature about this game when you start is the ultra-simplistic black and white art style, which looks as though it’s been drawn with pencil strokes. The only things in the world that have colour are items you can interact with, like a candle, or the very red blood. Because the art style is so simple, it makes the little details much more prominent when you notice them. While the simple presentation is certainly memorable, the sound design is arguably even more so as it sets a tone of suspense and dread throughout. While the games soundtrack isn’t really conventional, it works amazingly because of subtle tones and sound effects; like a crying child or someone whispering your name. The entire time I’ve played this game, I’ve been on edge almost entirely due to the sounds. The game has a dedicated ‘headphones mode’, this supposedly enhances the sounds made to make the experience a lot more tense, but sadly when I tried to activate it the game crashed; but that’s probably because my MacBook is quite old. Either way, the game is definitely best played with a good pair of headphones for the best experience.

To summarize then, even though I’ve not played a lot of Neverending Nightmares, it’ll certainly be a game I’ll see through to the end because of it’s premise, presentation and stellar sounds. If you have even a fleeting interest in the horror genre of games, then there’s no excuse not to pick this up.

Neverending Nightmares was developed by Infinitap Games, and is available on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux. The price is currently £9.89/$13.49 for its opening week, then £10.99/$14.99 after that.

Senran Kagura: Burst Review

Senran Kagura: Burst Review.

Developed by Marvelous AQL, Senran Kagura: Burst is one of those games that you might be aware of, but the chances of localization seemed very unlikely to never happening at all. However, publisher Zen United (Xseed Games in the US) have taken a punt here and decided to get it localized and given a release. Leading up to the release, this game was the centre of a bit of controversy in regards to sexism due to its depiction of women. I’m going to try my very best here to not get tangled up in this argument, because honestly, there’s no point trying to argue either case. With that out of the way, lets get to it.

My experience with the Senran Kagura series outside of the game isn’t that much; I read the first volume of the manga and watched two episodes of the anime. After a bit of research, the main story of the game is the same as the anime, which is essentially your basic good versus evil plot; the girls of the Hanzo Academy or the good shinobi are Asuka, Katsuragi, Ikaruga, Yagyũ and Hibari. And the girls of the Hebijo Academy (the evil shinobi) are Homura, Yomi, Hikage, Mirai and Haruka. All of these characters have their own distinct personalities, which for better or worse are the typical anime tropes; Asuka is the cheery likeable airhead, Katsuragi is the pervert of the group and tries to cop a feel whenever she can, Ikaruga is the serious girl, Hibari is the younger and more innocent girl and Yagyũ has a slight infatuation for Hibari. I won’t go through the other girls since you’ll be able to figure them out straight away.

The game is split up into two separate stories with 5 chapters each and 12 playable characters; two of which you’ll have to unlock. The first story is recommended for first time players and follows the adventures of the good shinobi. The second adventure follows the story of the evil shinobi; and while principally they are both the same story from different perspectives, the second story is the more interesting of the two for reasons I won’t spoil here. Each story will take about 4-6 hours each to finish depending on whether you decide to take on the various side missions you’re given. It is generally a good idea to do these missions since you gain EXP from every mission, side or main, that you complete. This EXP goes towards leveling up your character, even if it is the most basic stat progression system, leveling up will grant a few points into each stat, HP, Attack, Defense, Speed and Endurance.

The gameplay is your typical side-scroller beat ‘em up with visual novel pieces thrown in to better explain story elements. The action segments are reminiscent of arcade beat ‘em ups, where you move to the right, enemies appear, kill all the enemies, an arrow appears saying ‘GO!’ and you proceed until you win the mission. Games like these often have a combo system, whether simple or complex; and Senran Kagura opts for the simple system. You can easily get through most missions by mashing the Y button while dashing from time to time. While the combo system isn’t as complex and elegant as something like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, you can still get some good aerial juggling and high combo counters reaching into the thousands. Also available is a special bar, this fills up while you are fighting enemies and when a segment fills up you can perform a special attack by pressing L and Y. These attacks can usually clear the screen of enemies or at least do a substantial amount of damage to them.

There are two ways you can play missions; Yin or Yang. Yin, or Frantic Mode as it is also called, strips your character down to their swimsuit that decreases their defense by 90% but raises their attack power and speed by 750% (numbers were taken from the game manual). Using frantic mode makes the first two chapters an absolute cakewalk, but when the third chapter starts you may have to reconsider. Yang mode keeps your character fully clothed, but when you fill up the special bar for the first time, instead of performing an attack, your character will transform into their shinobi form; and of course this being an anime game, you get a transformation sequence, complete with close ups of the girls, um, assets. While you are in shinobi form you do more damage and can take more damage, however when you take a certain amount of damage, your clothes will start to tear off until you’re just left with a bikini top and very torn up skirt, the downside to this is that every time your clothes get torn, you’ll take more damage; this means that you’ll want to avoid damage to keep your clothes on.

The presentation in Senran Kagura: Burst is nice and keeps with the style of the show, and makes effective use of 3D. And not just for the reasons you might think, the 3D makes the special attacks really stand out from beginning to end and just makes it feel that more intense. The character models look good, but their animations do leave a bit more to be desired; the 3D does make them look better, but the jiggle physics haven’t been perfected; with every movement its like they’re on the moon and no-one is wearing a bra, gravity (or lack thereof) is just having way too much fun which kind of ruins it for everyone else.

There are also unlockables in the game that you’ll steadily get by completing missions or fulfilling certain objectives like killing a boss without taking damage. These unlockables include pictures, music from the soundtrack and cosmetic items and outfits you can put on the girls. These include a maid outfit, (because all anime has at least one maid right?) animal themed pajamas and a shirt that shows off a cleavage you could fall into. There are no shorts/pants with that last outfit; it is literally just a shirt. You can try these costumes from either the story hub or from the main menu in the dressing room; a place where the hardcore fans of the series will probably spend most of their time as you can zoom in/out and the girls will act all embarrassed about changing.

Overall then, Senran Kagura: Burst is a competent action game. The action is decent, the story is somewhat clichéd and the characters have predictable personality traits. However, this game was clearly intended for a niche audience; and they’ll definitely get their moneys worth from this. If you’re not a fan of the type of fanservice that this game portrays, then it definitely isn’t for you. If you’re indifferent either way, then it’s worth buying if you find it in a sale. Just try not to be too embarrassed when you take the case to the counter.

Senran Kagura: Burst was developed by Marvelous AQL and published by Zen United (Europe) and Xseed Games (US).

Retail price is £24.99-£29.99 (prices taken from GAME and Amazon UK) Also available to download via Nintendo eShop for £29.99/$29.99

Thanks for reading this review, if you liked it or if there’s anything I could’ve done better be sure to let me know on Twitter: @itsmattwilmott

Super Mario 3D World review.

Super Mario 3D World Review.

Not to be mistaken with Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, Super Mario 3D World is the first Mario game on the WiiU that isn’t 2D; not that there’s anything wrong with the 2D games, it’s just that the ‘New Super Mario Bros’ games can only carry you so far, so it was up to Nintendo to put out a fully 3D Mario game, akin to games like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. At this stage in their lifespan, and given the unprecedented amount of success and high accolades the previous 3D Mario games have received; Nintendo would have to do something pretty substantial in order to mess things up now. Thankfully, they haven’t. What they have managed to create is not only an excellent game in its own right, but possibly one of the best Mario games period.

Story is typically not what you think of when you play a Mario game; standard procedure is ‘Bowser kidnaps Peach, go rescue her, maybe she’ll bake you a cake’ and it’s not really different here except that instead of Peach being kidnapped, Bowser has gone after fairies and imprisoned them in bottles, and now its up to Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad to go and rescue them. So essentially one damsel has been swapped out for 8 smaller ones; but nobody really plays a Mario game for in-depth storytelling, so lets start talking about what makes the game great.

The overworld maps in Super Mario 3D World are setup very much like the maps in Super Mario Bros 3 for the NES; in that they look “open” (note the very heavy air quotation marks) but are actually as linear as the world map in Super Mario World for SNES. The way this is achieved is that levels are dotted around the map area and you have to walk to the next level, but while you aren’t being forced down a set path, but there is really nothing to do on these world maps as they are fairly barren save for Toad houses and special levels (which I’ll get to later on). To actually make progress in the game, you’ll need to collect green stars to unlock later levels. Each level has 3 of these stars either in plain sight or hidden away in the environment, needing a power-up in order to collect it.

I find that there are two main pulls for any Mario game, one more important than the other but both are still factors into how much you’ll enjoy the game. The first major pull is level design, no matter how high the production values in a game are, if the levels aren’t fun to explore then it’s all resources wasted. The other pull is power-ups, this clearly isn’t as important as level design but how you can change your character can greatly impact how you play the game, and therefore how you explore the levels. So in terms of level design, Super Mario 3D World is just a fantastic place be to and the various worlds/levels are just plain fun to run around. Of course you have the standard world types like the grass world and the fire world, each world presenting more challenges and enjoyment. For example, in one level you might be in inky darkness and you’ll have to use a Fire Flower to light torches so you can see, and another level is basically a homage to top-down shooters. Of course as you might expect the late-game levels can be on the higher end of the difficulty curve, resulting in a more than a few deaths, but this is definitely a case of blame the player not the game when you die so you can’t be too mad when you encounter a level you find particularly difficult. Of course the WiiU GamePad had to be utilized in someway, and while you will have to use the touchscreen and microphone features to advance in some levels, these segments are few and far between so when they are used, they don’t feel very forced of gimmicky, which was always the danger. If for some reason you want to try something else in the game, there are special ‘Captain Toad’ levels which task you to collect a set number of green stars before time runs out; the catch being that Captain Toad only moves/turns in a grid based fashion and you can’t jump. Given these restrictions, the levels are a lot of fun and it’s a shame that there aren’t more of them.

Another major part of every Mario game are the power-ups; there’s always the standard Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, it wouldn’t be a Mario game without them, but it’s the inclusion of new power-ups which grabs peoples attention. One power-up has garnered more attention that any other this game; the bell, which dons Mario in a catsuit. This allows him to run on all fours, climb a certain distance up walls, and also dive from a jump to cover more ground. It’s easily the most prominent power-up in the game, and I found myself finding it constantly throughout the game. Another new power-up in this game is the Double Cherry, which as the name suggests, creates another character; so you’ll be in control of two Marios, and if you pick up another cherry it’ll be three Marios and so on. Bosses are another key part of the game, and while they may not be the most difficult bosses to defeat, they’re still fun to battle. The only real challenging fight, appropriately, is the final boss fight with Bowser as it has multiple phases which will most likely test your endurance as well as your platforming skills.

One feature that I haven’t been able to test out is the multiplayer portion of the game; essentially it’s a drop-in/drop-out style where a player can choose a character and start playing. After watching videos of 4 players trying to play, it looks like mayhem and also a lot of fun. Unfortunately the multiplayer is local only, but if you’re only buying this game for it’s multiplayer component, then clearly you don’t understand that Mario is primarily a single-player experience. Another cool feature is that you can choose to play as any character you want; Mario, Luigi, Peach or Toad. Each has their own special abilities that make them better than other characters, Mario is an all-rounder, Luigi has a higher jump, Peach can float for a small amount of time after jumping and Toad can run faster than everyone else. The controls in Mario games are nearly always spot on and the same holds true here; the only gripe I have is how running works. To run, as in all games, you hold the run button then your character gains momentum before reaching top speed. However in this game, when you hold the run button you speed up to a jog, then a few seconds afterwards you’ll break into a full run.

In terms of presentation, it looks and sounds great. Not only is it one of, if not the best looking game on the WiiU, however it can easily hold its own against games on more powerful systems like the PS4 and Xbox One. Obviously the WiiU can’t match the technical prowess of the other two, but it still looks amazing. The soundtrack is also fun to listen to, although while not as grand and fantastic as the orchestral soundtrack to the Galaxy games, there will definitely be a couple of tunes you’ll find yourself humming even when you shut off the game.

Overall, Super Mario 3D World is a great experience and easily one of the best games of the WiiU. This game reminds us that Nintendo is capable of amazing things when they put their minds to it, and can also make some of, if not the best first-party games around. Now if Nintendo could just make a new online F-Zero…

Super Mario 3D World is available through various retailers for around £34.99-£39.99, or you can download it though the Nintendo eShop for £49.99.

Crystal Catacombs Beta First Impression.

Crystal Catacombs Beta First Impression.

Before I start, please bear in mind that this game is still in beta and aspects of the game are subject to change, and I still don’t understand fully how the game works as I’ve only played roughly 2 hours so take my thoughts/criticisms with a pinch of salt. With that formality out of the way, let’s begin.

Crystal Catacombs is best described as an action-RPG with roguelike elements; this is due to the worlds/levels being randomly generated every time you play, ensuring you get a different experience with every playthrough, similar to games like Risk of Rain and Rogue Legacy. The visuals are somewhat reminiscent of another roguelike action-RPG; Legend of Dungeon, except here you are restricted to a 2D plain rather than being given free-reign of all 3 dimensions. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as one thing I found cumbersome with Legend of Dungeon was lining up hits in 3D when all of the characters are 2D 8-bit sprites, whereas you won’t have that trouble with Crystal Catacombs.

The story of Crystal Catacombs is fairly simple but gives a reason as to why you’re exploring these worlds; you play as a treasure hunter who is travelling in his airship, when suddenly a malevolent alien that looks oddly familiar to a Beholder from Dungeons and Dragons appears and captures you. This alien then forces you to explore these dangerous worlds that it has captured so you can defeat the bosses and find treasure. 

It won’t come as a surprise to roguelike fans that Crystal Catacombs puts up quite a challenge, you will die constantly until you eventually power through with items/XP points or just blind luck. The draw of roguelike games is this promise of challenge; that you have to earn your victory and that it feels rewarding when you defeat that one boss that has been killing you over and over. The player gaining XP points for killing monsters and leveling up represents the RPG portion of the game; but with my experience leveling doesn’t work as normal. In a regular RPG, traditionally your character levels up then your attributes increase by a set amount or by an amount chosen by the player. However here, unless I’m being totally ignorant of character changes (which is entirely possible) nothing really seems to happen. You won’t even be able to increase one of your attributes (HP, Attack, Defense or Mana) until you hit level 3-4.

There are 3 bars at the top right of the screen that represent your health, mana and XP. However I’ve never found an item that uses mana in anyway so far, but that might be me being unlucky with item drops. There are also gems you can collect which act as the games currency, although you’ll be lucky to find a shop before the last level of each world. There are item rooms on every level, and these can contain anything from a map for the entire level, which is very helpful, to a mystery potion that can do anything, and I mean anything. I drank a potion in one game that turned the entire world upside down and reversed the controls for a certain amount of time. Another pressing matter in the game HUD is the hourglass, which acts as the games timer; unfortunately this doesn’t actually tell you how much time you have left in the level. If the time runs out, then the Beholder alien will appear, chase you down and kill you instantly. But to soften the blow somewhat, every time you play you are given three lives, you can find more in shops and from killing tougher enemies but once you run out of lives, all of your upgrades are gone for good and you’ll have to start from square one.

All of this makes for a game that may not stray too far from action-RPG or even roguelike conventions, but it is still a very fun ‘come back for more’ kind of game. The only way to buy the game currently is through the developers website, you can pay $10 which gets you a DRM-free copy of the game on release, $15 gets you the game on release, a manual and the soundtrack (which I forgot to mention is really good), and for $20 you get all of the above as well as access to the latest beta builds of the game up until release. You can also vote for this game on Steam Greenlight, so if you want to see this game available on Steam in the future, go to their Greenlight page and give them a vote. I know I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this game and how it’s progressing, and I hope it gets more attention, as it really deserves to.

Crystal Catacombs is available for $10/$15/$20 from the developers website: http://levelsorlives.com/

You can vote for Crystal Catacombs on Steam Greenlight here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=211648956

You can follow the developers on Twitter here: @LevelsorLives

If you enjoyed my first impression of this game, please feel free to have a look at my other reviews and let me know what you think, what’s good and what’s not. You can also follow me on Twitter at @itsmattwilmott

Jazzpunk review.

Jazzpunk Review.

Developed by Necrophone Games and published by [Adult Swim] Games, Jazzpunk is almost certainly unlike anything else you’ve ever played, for better or worse. The best way to describe Jazzpunk is as a first-person adventure/exploration game; the adventure aspect relates to the games primary story, you play as a secret agent who is tasked by your director to carry out missions like infiltrating a consulate and stealing a data cartridge. The secret agent profile is definitely more Austin Powers than James Bond however.

It might not look it, but this man is The Director and his office is in a train.

The exploration factor is the real meat of the game however, you can easily just follow the path the game gives you and complete the objectives until you see the end credits, but if you explore you’ll find so many objects and people to interact with, they might give you side-quests, talk nonsense to you or in some cases even take you into a new game entirely. Side-quests include tasks like shooting pigeons out of the sky with an electromagnetic device, beach combing with a metal detector and even squeezing cheese into a billionaires mouth; however these quests don’t have a direct impact on the storyline and usually serve as nothing more than a distraction, but nevertheless they are really good fun.

That doesn’t sound like a very good time. Unless you’re into that sort of thing.

The graphical style of Jazzpunk is very colourful and bold in regards to its character portrayal. NPCs you can interact with have details like eyes/clothes/facial hair etc. while other NPCs are essentially shadows that seem to only be there to fill up space. When you talk to an NPC white subtitles will appear in front of them explaining what they are saying, although they may actually talk for quite a while longer that you anticipate. The environments again are a breath of fresh air with its vibrant colours and cool settings. The music, while not what I’d call jazz punk, captures the mood of each location perfectly.

Well, at least you’re open about stealing them…

Depending on whether you fully explore the environments, Jazzpunk will take you around 2-3 hours to see through to the end. That might seem like a raw deal to some people, seeing as though the game is $15/£12 (or $11.99/£9.59 for its opening week sale) and I will agree that the price is maybe a bit steep for what you get in terms of length, the content and comedy you get from it alone will make it a good purchase.

However I might suggest if you are interested in picking this game up, try and refrain from watching gameplay videos before you buy it as it will almost certainly ruin the experience for you. In this regard Jazzpunk is similar to The Stanley Parable. In that game, the player had to make choices to progress, whether it was to win the game or break it entirely; the magic of self-discovery is lost if you watch something like a Let’s Play before playing it, and I think the same goes for Jazzpunk. If you watch a full run of the game before playing it yourself, you’ll know where all the jokes are and it won’t be as fun as if you’d discovered it yourself.

To summarise, I think Jazzpunk will definitely divide the crowd; some people will love its referential humour and oddball characters while others won’t be able to see the funny side to any of it. I had a great time playing this game mainly because this humour is exactly my sort of thing. The price point may be an issue for some but if that’s the only thing holding you back, just wait for a Steam Sale.

Jazzpunk is now available to buy on Steam for Windows/Mac/Linux for $11.99/£9.59 in its opening week sale, and $15/12 after that.