Category video game

2Awesome Studio brings us a stressful platformer where you race against time and must collect energy capsules to gain more time to explore. This is Aeon Drive!

Welcome to Aeon Drive, a two dimensional platformer from 2Awesome Studio and constant race against time. Each stage gives you 30 seconds and can be completed in that time or less if you are able to speed run it but if you are slower or want to explore there are energy capsules that will extend the time remaining if you collect enough. Hidden through the stages are also collectibles like hot dogs, diamonds, memory sticks and likely more.

Controls on the game are fluid, action is fast paced with a major sense of urgency with the looming clock in the upper right corner adding to the tension. Unlike most platformers, Aeon forces you to start the level over each time you die, means if you were having a perfect run up to your death you will need to do it all again. I found the game to be a mix of engaging, fun and challenging.

Have you ever applied jelly to your crops to create pet monsters? In Monster Harvest, from Merge Games, you will do just that.

Joining your uncle at his farm you quickly discover this is not your everyday farm in Monster Harvest from Merge Games. The game focuses on building the farm, exploring a dungeon-like cave and growing monsters by applying various jellies to your crops. Once you have your first monster, or any time you have one of yours following you, you can enter the nearby cave to fight other monsters, collect items and understand just a bit more about what is happening in this town.

I feel this is intentional but the game looks and feels like a knock off of the handheld Pokémon games, closer to the GameBoy Color version graphicly. The big difference between the playstyles however is that you can farm, clear a forest, have limited stamina and breed your plants with jelly to create new creatures, instead of just catching them or trading for them. Playing this game feels likes going to visit a friend you haven’t seen in ten years, there are similarities of what you remember but so much has changed you aren’t sure who this person sitting across from you is. Overall the game misses out on the wow factor and feels too much like other games to have a voice of it’s own.

Cardaclysm is linear RPG full of random maps, encounters and a specific order of bosses you will face. Can you make it to the realm of death?

Cardaclysm from Headup Games is an dungeon crawling roleplaying game where every map is randomly generated, enemies are pulled from a limited pool based on which boss tier you are facing and a book magic made to fit any play style. Players take on the role of a wizard where every fight adds a new card to your deck of monsters and spells. You also collect gold and orbs to determine how many and which of your cards you can play in a fight. As each card is played you will either summon a creature, monster or warrior to fight on your behalf or unleash an ability like poison arrows or fireballs. At most you can hold onto only four cards in your hand but with a properly assembled deck that won’t matter.

The game lets you know when it sees you are strong enough to face one of the bosses but does not force you to face them until you decide to, or if you aren’t paying attention. When the last foe is defeated in a map the boss is summoned and will chase you until you get to the exit or if you take a wrong turn and it catches up with you. Because of the way you build your deck, one card earned per battle, the game can be a bit grindy.

Playing the game I have now spent close to fifteen hours grinding and building my deck and points, now I learned from one costly mistake in that process. If you close the game and shut down your system for the night immediately you risk corrupting your save file, which happened to me about twelve hours into my journey. I learned (this was confirmed with my contact at Headup Games) that the game after being closed saves and updates where you were at in the game while on the Xbox home screen. You must wait at least 5 minutes before shutting the system down to avoid this happening to you. Despite this minor setup I have found the game quite enjoyable and am left with only one complaint- the gamer score choices. Nearly every game that has achievements uses a score that is divisible by five. With Cardaclysm there are a few that have odd scores, ending in two, seven, and and four. I know for some it’s just a number but for me I need my final score to still be divisible by five which means even if I didn’t enjoy this game I would need to play it to completion. Thankfully the game is quite a bit of fun and continuing this grind is not a negative thing.

Buka Entertainment Enterprises brings their latest title, Tetragon, where the world is manipulated by rotating it and moving platforms.

Buka Entertainment provided a review copy of their latest game, Tetragon. As you progress through the world you will solve puzzles by either rotating the entire world or manipulating platforms to move to the exit or to some sort of collectible. The biggest “pitfall” with this puzzler is that the hero has a limited fall distance before instant death. The good news here though is that you return to the same puzzle but it is reset each time. The resetting of the stage can actually help the puzzle as you may make mistakes the first time around- I know I did on several of them and the reset made correcting those mistakes much easier.

Controls feel a bit clunky as at times you cannot rotate the screen certain directions when you could before or some platforms don’t move until the camera is rotated a certain way and there are no visual indicators, that I noticed, to indicate when this is happening. Visuals are more advanced than the retro 8-bit style but not significantly and the story comes in pieces but left me intrigued. The puzzles in this game are creative and sometimes require more thought than I expected but after two hours of gameplay left me feeling like the game is meh. I plan on playing another couple of hours to see if this changes but experience with the game so far tells me it won’t significantly.

Foreclosed, from Merge Games Ltd, is a cyberpunk game that feels like a living comicbook.

In the Merge Games’ title, Foreclosed, the world is more advanced than what we currently experience but some of the same pitfalls remain. The biggest pitfall being falling in debt further than you can afford. It’s easy to do in the real world but in Foreclosed you are already starting at this point. Through your own cybernetics you attend the court hearing for your debt as soon as you start the game. You learn that your debt has been purchased by a corporation and as you leave your apartment you learn there is more going on than just the settlement of your debt. Corporate thugs are trying to kill you and your debt is causing paths to be blocked from you. You learn that some software has been installed in your cybernetics and they want it.

Graphically it is not the most gorgeous game but the art style is original and works very well for the game. The story is quite intriguing and draws you in immediately. Controls are easy to learn and gameplay is both forgiving and yet unforgiving- turning down the wrong path leads to instant death but you respawn nearby and can try a different path. The game so far is quite engaging and sucks you in. I am really looking forward to investing more time into this game.

Pile Up! Box by Box is a puzzle platformer from HandyGames where you play an adorable box that uses other boxes to complete puzzles.

HandyGames is back with another family friendly title, Pile Up! Box by Box, a platformer where collecting boxes and keys are your goals. You play as a box that navigates a world of water and cardboard to solve puzzles. Visually the world looks very similar to that of Paper Mario and there is nothing that would make me question if my children should be allowed to play it.

Puzzles are quite simple in the solutions but trying different approaches makes them more worth it. One of the levels has a puzzle that requires moving four boxes from one area to another and each area has bomb boxes. Picking up bomb boxes cause them to explode but if you nudge them you can get them into place without having to find all of the intended boxes. There does not appear to be a story for the game outside of the quests you must complete per level but those are more of a guided objective. Controls are easy to pick up but hitting the wrong button at the wrong time is always a concern. I found the game to be quite enjoyable and I am looking forward to sharing this with my family!

CD Project Red has been on the receiving end of gamer’s frustration with Cyberpunk 2077 but is it actually warranted?

Back in 2012 CD Project Red announced their most ambitious project yet, Cyberpunk 2077. Eight years later it was finally released. Most projects are not made public so early in their process, or at least it seems that way in most cases. To say the least this game is massive with layers upon layers of storytelling and gameplay. That’s not even to mention the plethora of Easter eggs and branching dialogue trees and missions. The complexity to this game is is deeper than any I can recall every playing.

Before we get to my thoughts on the game, let’s discuss some of the complaints. Almost all of them resolve around the number of glitches found in the game, most of them random and inconsistent. Cars vanishing while driving, floors in buildings vanishing, models stretching and twisting in ways they shouldn’t. Thinks like that. What I have never seen though is a “polished” FPS (first person shooter) where there are never any glitches. I did experience some of these glitches and even had a couple force the game to close. Reloading the game and performing the exact same action resulted in the glitches not repeating themselves in nearly every case. At least that was my experience.

Gameplay was fast paced, controls were fluid and graphics (when working as intended) were amazing. The story was better than any other game I can remember playing. With the issues with the glitches I believe that most people had their expectations too high and expected the game designers to be more godlike than man/woman. I have never played a AAA title free of glitches and yet they are given the courtesy of lower expectations because they are a bigger studio that can publish games more frequently. This game is a higher quality product than any other FPS I have had the pleasure or displeasure to play and I will say this it is by far THE BEST GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED! If I could take the team out for a round of drinks to thank them for the experience I would.

In Frostpunk the world has essentially ended in a permanent winter that some believe is the end times foretold by the Vikings, but are they right?

11 Bit Studios released Frostpunk a while ago but not so long ago released the complete Console Edition which includes all available DLC and this will help bridge the story of the original game and the eventual release of the already announced sequel. The world has succumbed to what seems to be a permanent winter, some survivors believing this is Fimbulwinter- the winter before Ragnarok that brings about the end of the world. The game is split into different story arcs, each with their own pitfalls and goals.

At it’s heart the game is a city management sim where the focus is not to let your citizens perish to the cold. Where most city management games the focus is one powering all of your structures as you build the city of your dreams this is more of a rush to keep everyone warm and alive while trying to expand. The first time I played the game my “captain” was exiled because more than half of my people froze to death within ten minutes of starting. The second time as I learned the menus better was more successful and after 3 hours they were still alive. The game has great graphics but is not very stimulating for the eyes, however trying to manage everything efficiently will keep your brain going into overdrive. I found the game to be fun but not something I would find myself playing more than half an hour at a time due to the lack of overall excitement.

HandyGames brings us Skydrift Infinity, a racing game with striking similarities to Hydro Thunder Hurricane, but with jets and planes instead of boats.

Recently HandyGames shared a copy of Skydrift Infinity with us for the purpose of this review. As with all of situations we have agreed to share our thoughts on the game but have not agreed to any predefined opinions. Similar to most other racing games you start with a single course and as you place in that race you then unlock others. Experience earned goes towards unlocking skins and other planes/jets as do various challenges that need to be completed. Unlike most racing games this one is more similar to the Mario Kart games in that you pickup power ups as you fly and use them to either remove the others from your path or give you some sort of edge against them.

Visually the game is sleek and the terrain is full of features that will distract your attention from your flight path. The controls are fluid, allowing you to move about the course and around obstacles without too much effort. Of course if you fail to avoid an obstacle and crash you respawn seconds later pointed in the correct direction, allowing you to resume the race with minimal fuss. There really is no story to speak of but the gameplay overall is fast paced and quite a bit of fun, even better is when playing with your friends.

This game is a must for racing fans or fans of flight simulators, especially if you enjoy dogfighting because the powerups make attacking the other planes on your course more enjoyable than winning the race itself and with enough bullets you’ll be able to do both (most of the time)!

It is rare to find a game where you are blind and not from a lack of information. The Vale is the first I’ve played without any visuals.

Falling Squirrel Inc have not only envisioned a game where players must rely on senses other than sight but have delivered on their goal. The Vale: Shadow of the Crow is the finished product of that endeavor and we were given a copy to review. As with every game we either received or purchased we put in at least one hour of gameplay before sitting down to write our thoughts and in this instance we played for two.

When given the opportunity to review a game we rarely read many of the press releases and as such when it came time to play my expectations were that this would be some sort of RPG (Role Playing Game). I was shocked when I started the game to be greeted with a screen that was almost entirely black save for a handful of floating sprites. I went on to listen as the story was told and then expected to defend myself against wolves. I feel like the concept for this game was meant to give players a truly blind immersive experience. With the right sound setup you would get a three dimensional cue where threats are attacking from and be able to meet them in kind, however most people rely on television speakers and this advantage is lost. Players can find foes eventually by audio cues indicating when they are hit and then able to keep hitting them but without the immersive feel it falls flat. The audio work on this game is a much higher quality than most games, but it isn’t able to give players the true feel of the game. This game has a lot of potential but not in a two speaker world.