Tag Sometimes You

In a cyberpunk world where corporations control everything you play as Jenet in Cybertrash STATYX from Sometimes You.

You begin Cybertrash Statyx as Jenet, waking up in a facility that is testing your body against numerous stressors. Things like being forced to run an obstacle course during the middle of the night when you should be sleeping. It’s obvious this corporation is EVIL because they are intentionally ruining your sleep. That is sacred. For that, they must pay! You are tested in challenge after challenge while the scientists and corporate bosses watch on.

The game is a two dimensional side scroller from Sometimes You and Uncle Frost Team where your goal is to survive this corporate run world by using their own tools and enhancements against them. Maybe you’ll even uncover a greater conspiracy while you’re at it?

The game looks like a classic title from the days of the Super Nintendo with solid combat mechanics. However where the game really fails is the movement controls. They can be quite sticky at times, especially when trying to jump and move forward at the same time. This has caused me to die more times than any failed reaction by falling short and running into an enemy. Being able to see cinematics and dialogue featuring the heads of the evil corporation make the story more engaging. This in turn makes the events around Jenet make more sense as well as she is fed only the most basic information. The poor movement mechanics do detract from the gameplay but the combat mechanics were surprisingly solid. Being able to switch weapons from item points allows you to better control the combat and made the game enjoyable.

Cat and Ghostly Road is a point and click adventure from Sometimes You and BOV featuring BOV’s actual cat as protagonist.

For most of Cat and Ghostly Road you play as a white cat that is adopted by a local painter. The painter “falls ill” and it’s up to you to save him. Specifically after you drift off to sleep, a demon appears and steals the soul of the painter. It’s up to you to follow the demon and get it back. The premise of the game, at least to me, sounds pretty awesome already, however point and click adventures rarely keep me engaged enough that I don’t drift off to sleep at some point due to their tediousness and slow sections. Is this as awesome as I hoped are did I fall asleep part way through? Keep reading!

BOV and Sometimes You teamed up to publish the title, with the main character modeled after BOV’s real cat that they recued from under a bridge. This was about fifteen years ago. Observing this cat they were inspired to create this game, specifically from the fact that the real feline reminded them of a moon cat and they went from there. The game suffers from the typically slow paced monotony that most point and click adventures are plagued with. The quirky nature of the cat does help with some of this but isn’t enough to make it enough to keep me awake or hold my attention for two long, one of the downsides to my ADHD. If you enjoy point and click adventures or an excuse to play as a cat then this will be right up your alley. The thing this game gets right is the puzzles, some require you to essentially play minigames to resolve their objective but unfortunately these were few and far between. I found the game to be cute and easy to play and master but with just a little too much tedium.

Music Racer Ultimate is a racing game about music and enjoying the drive, despite the random obstacles and some absurd vehicles.

Sometimes You has ported over another title for the current generation of consoles and this time they set their sights on Music Racer Ultimate. The focus of the game is to enjoy the drive while enjoying the music you’ve selected. Each map is modified based on the choices you’ve selected between song, gameplay style and the course theme itself. As you drive you need to collect little white bricks, they look like frets on a guitar, and doing so earns you points. These points are then spent on new vehicles and tracks and each of those unlocks nets you an achievement (on Xbox).

With most rhythm games I have a tendency to panic and hit the wrong button as notes appear but with Music Racer Ultimate it is much easier. Unlike other rhythm titles where you are penalized for missing notes in MRU you are only penalized if you crash into an obstacle. For achievement hunters this game is quite easy but time consuming to achieve the perfect Gamerscore. The easiest way to grind this out is to choose the vehicle of your choice, the track of your choice and set the mode to Zen. Doing this removes all obstacles which means double points at the end of the map and you can literally just leave your car in a single lane to collect points and do something else at the same time!

My biggest complaint about the game is the music options. You are limited only to the titles that came with the game and none of them I have heard prior to playing the game. The first song in the list seems to consistently get the most points without having to move the vehicle at all. If you are after the three star achievement I suggest doing what I suggested but on the Retro map as it is the easiest to see where the notes are ahead to capture more of them in a single turn without much effort. Overall I found the game to be enjoyable but a bit tedious with having to grind what feels like close to a million points to unlock everything.

35mm is a survival horror game centered around two travelers and taking photographs in a Post-Apocalyptic Russia.

Sometimes You has ported over Sergey Noskov’s game 35mm to the current generation of consoles. The world has been ravaged by an epidemic that crippled most of the infrastructure throughout and the timing of this rerelease feels almost prophetic considering we are still coping with our own global pandemic these days. As you and your partner navigate the new landscape you will find abandoned settlements, homes, cities and will need to escape the dangers of this new world, the first of which is a massive bear.

At nearly any point you can pause time and use your trusty 35mm camera and the mechanics of which feel incredibly accurate. You can adjust the focal length, depth of field and exposure, all to make sure you capture the perfect vision of your target. The story is mostly delivered through discussion with your companion and he walks incredibly slow. The plus side is you can still hear the conversation as the companion continues the defined path while you explore the surrounding area. The ambiance in the woods can be a bit off-putting as everything is a bit muted and some parts seem completely void of life.

Going into the game I had no idea this was a survival horror title but when I stumbled on an abandoned cabin I learned quickly. There weren’t grotesque scenes of butchered bodies or anything like that but something about it was extremely eerie. Overall pacing of the game is quite slow but it left me with feelings of anxiety and trepidation as I explored, realizing quickly that the wrong turn or the wrong step could be my last. Once you outrun the bear, or fail to a couple times like I did, you learn to be more cautious pretty early. For survival horror fans I can honestly say this game is worth picking up even though the graphics have not been updated for newer consoles.