First Impression: Dragon Quest Builders 2 (Switch) ~ Illegal Building Is Fun!

Official website

When I played Dragon Quest Builders on the Nintendo Switch, I was highly surprised by the quality of the game. Now, granted, not everybody enjoyed the game and some Dragon Quest fans even disliked the game quite a lot. Take for example my buddy Drakulus, who gave the game a 5/10. Another friend of mine, FalconGameReviews wrote a more lukewarm review of the game. And then you have me, giving the game the full marks. While I won’t deny that the original had some flaws like the lacking combat, I heavily enjoyed my time with the game. After I had beaten the original game, I certainly wanted to play more and when I saw the trailer for the sequel, I was extremely hyped. So, now that I was able to play the game for a while, I can give you my first impressions on it. So, what did I think of the game so far? Let’s take a look. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Illegal Building Is Fun!

The events of the original game took place in an alternative universe of the ending from the original Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest Builders 2 takes place a few years after Dragon Quest II. In the 2nd Dragon Quest game, the hero Erdirck takes on Hargon and Malroth. Their followers, the children of Hargon want revenge and make sure that nobody is allowed to create anything. But during the story, you teach the brainwashed citizens that building is still fun while trying to avoid being caught by the children of Hargon.

So, they paint builders as a sort of criminal. You start on a ship where you learn the ropes of the game and get a tutorial on the basic game mechanics. When the ship actually crashes, you wake up on an island together with a person named Malroth, that has no memories of his past.

The story so far has been quite enjoyable. The charm of an actual Dragon Quest game is still here. The humor and great writing are still here. Also, in this game, the story is a bit more in-depth. It takes some various turns and it’s more expansive than the original one. Story-wise, I personally think that the story of the sequel is a lot better than the original. It plays more on the central theme of the story but it also has a lot of side stories and side quests to keep you occupied.

The only negative about the story is that the pacing is a bit slow. Personally, I don’t see this as a big deal but I think that this can be a turnoff to some people. Sadly enough there no way to skip the dialogue outright. Or there is no way to look at the previous dialogue, like if you accidentally pressed a button and skipped a part of the dialogue while you were reading.

Now, while I was enjoying the story, I noticed something that worried me a bit. While I was playing the game, either in docked or in handheld mode, the Switch’s cooling fans kick into high gear. My Switch actually got extremely hot in the middle. Also, the Switch is blowing out hot air, which was an unwelcome thing while I was playing this game during a heatwave…

Expanded

A ton of mechanics in this game got expanded to aid you in building the town or doing your quests.

First of all, you don’t need Chimera Wings anymore to fast travel back to your base. There is a new fast travel mechanic that makes life a lot easier. It’s a huge improvement over Dragon Quest Builders 1.

The gilder feature is a godsend. I loved it in Breath of the Wild and I love it in this game. It’s an amazing feature that aids a lot with traveling and exploring the vast and open world in this game.

The Builderpedia feature is an extremely welcome feature as well, it’s a sort of mini wiki inside the game that can help you when you want to build a certain room in your base and you don’t know which items you need to have in your room in order for it to register as a certain room.

The new builder tools like the handy builder’s glove is also an extremely welcome feature. When you misplaced a block, you don’t have to mine it out anymore. You just pick it up again with the glove and place it where you want.

A big complaint about the original game was the camera. Now, the issue was that in tight spaces or in buildings with multiple floors, it was sometimes a struggle to center the camera on your character. In this game, they have a brilliant solution to that problem. With the simple press of a button, you can go into the first-person mode and more easily explore around.

Another great feature is the autosave. The game autosaves after a while of playing. Also, you don’t have to go to the village center to save it anymore. You can easily do that from the menu.

There are a ton of amazing other additions in this game that make this game even more enjoyable to play. From more easily creating rivers and lakes to changing walls into another block with the click of a button… If I would be talking about all the new mechanics and how they improve this game, I would be here all day.

Now, there are a few things that got downgraded. First of all, cooking. While it’s unique and somewhat fun that you need to cook your food on a campfire, you can’t cook in bulk anymore. Meaning that you are unable to easily get all of your food cooked.

While that is negative, the new cooking system allows for more experimentation. Since in some cooking stations you are able to throw ingredients together to make something unique like in Breath of the Wild.

Something I also missed from the original game was the fact you could keep blueprints in your inventory after building a certain room. It would be so handy if I was able to just reuse a blueprint somewhere else. For example, when I wanted to rebuild a certain bar from the main story on the Isle of Awakening, I had to either take screenshots or reference the Builderpedia several times.

Complaining out of love

It might seem that I’m complaining a lot about this game. That’s because I’m highly enjoying my time with this game while still being a bit frustrated at several mistakes that make this game less enjoyable. Now, if I would score the game, I would still give it full marks.

One of the reasons why this game gets full marks is the visual presentation. This game looks amazing. I’m so glad that there is photo mode and a screenshot button on the Switch so I can make screenshots of the amazing landscapes and gorgeous visual presentation of this game. Together with amazing animations, this game really comes to life. I especially like little details like when you move the camera from under weather to above weather, the camera appears wet and various water droplets roll off your screen.

Like every Dragon Quest game, the music in this game is fantastic. I haven’t played a Dragon Quest game where I didn’t like music. That said, I do have to ask the Dragon Quest fanbase a question. Does the soundtrack of this game have original songs or does it also reuse classics from the previous Dragon Quest games, like the original Dragon Quest Builders? I was unable to find more information on that.

Together with amazing sound effects, the audiovisual presentation is excellent. In addition to that, the stable 60FPS framerate of this game is just a blessing. The game runs and plays extremely smooth. I can even say that I rarely had a slowdown. In some rare situations, I didn’t see the animation of a block-breaking but that happened so rarely, I don’t think it’s a huge problem.

Now, let’s talk about the controls of this game. The controls are still excellent. While I played the original with the Nintendo Switch Joycons, I did play this game with a wired Pro Controller. And I have to say it’s great fun.

Even with great controls, the combat is still quite generic. Not a lot changed when you compare it to the original. Now, when I read other reviews, I see a lot of people complain about basic combat. To be honest, personally, I don’t see this as that big of a problem. The game isn’t focused on combat with enemies, the game is more focused on building and crafting a world and your town. So yeah, the basic combat doesn’t bother me that much.

Something that did bother me and got me in a lot of trouble was the fact that I was sometimes unable to eat my healing pots during combat. I’m under the impression that there is either some delay on it during combat or some sort of cool down. Quite often I had to walk away from a battle to eat a healing pot.

Now, a feature that I love quite a bit is that after scripted battles, your citizens actually repair your city. Yes, if monsters manage to destroy your city or parts of it, it gets fully repaired to the way you actually build it. This is an amazing tweak and one that saved me a lot of headaches. Since one time I actually rage quit a boss in the original game simply because it destroyed around 75% of my town.

This might be just me, but I have the impression that this game is easier than the original. So far, I have fought several bosses in the game and quite rarely the gave me trouble.

A minor complaint that I have with this game is that there is only one save slot. Compared to Dragon Quest Builders 1, you had 5 slots per chapter. Granted, this game isn’t split up into chapters, but I really miss the 5 save slots.

This game is an excellent sequel, it builds upon the original game quite a lot. From a central island where you bring all of your befriended villagers and build your own paradise to unlocking new blocks and various other things with the gratitude you receive. There are also monsters you can tame and ride, you can swim… You can quite easily change your look in-game and let’s not forgot to mention the multiplayer functionality that this game has.

It’s no wonder that various people who are playing this game got addicted to this title. For me, it got to the point that I even put other games aside. Games like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Fire Emblem – The Three Houses… While this game came out, I was lending my friend’s PS4 since she has Uncharted, a game series I always wanted to play. And nope, I kept playing Dragon Quest Builders 2.

But to whom do I recommend this game? Well, easy. I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys open-world games like Breath of the Wild or Skyrim. I also recommend this game to people who enjoy Minecraft, Terarria or games of that nature. If you have enjoyed the original Dragon Quest Builders, this game is for you as well. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is the overheating of the Switch. The other negatives don’t affect my enjoyment with this game that much.

So, yeah. I’m in love with this game. There are high chances that this game will be in my top 10 games I played in 2019 list. To be honest, so far it’s even on my list as a contender for Game of the Year. But let’s just wait and see, the second part of 2019 has a lot of amazing titles that will come out. And also, the game will receive DLC later this year, so my opinion might change on that…

I may talk a bit more in-depth about this game if I ever write a review on this game but for now, I think it’s about time that I end off this article right here. I thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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NekoJonez’s June 2018 Update

It’s almost time, time to start the summer of 2018. But, today I want to talk to you guys and girls. My readers. I want to share some things that are happening behind the screens and what you can expect from my blog for the remainder of 2018. Since this is quite an important update article. So, here we go. As usual, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and such. 

The second half of 2018

I can’t promise that I’ll be able to write 1 or 2 articles/day during this summer. The reason for that I’ll get into later. But, I do have some plans for the second half of 2018. d

First of all, I have finally found all the writers for the Tomb Raider project. If you still want to aid me in an amazing blogging journey about the Tomb Raider franchise, you can still contact me. But, that means you might get a special task.

When is the Tomb Raider project going to release? Well, for the moment I can’t say a date since I have to work out everybody’s schedule and I need to find the time for that myself.

So, besides the Tomb Raider project, what will you see in 2018 from me? Well, the big issue is that I have played a ton of games I have written about in the “First Impression” format. In addition to that, the play sessions I had with some games weren’t long enough yet to have a review. In addition to that, I have something that’s the total opposite of a writer’s block.

There is such a huge list of games I still want to write about but I haven’t gotten around to it. It’s such a huge list, I actually don’t know where to start. Besides that, the garage sale season has started and I have expanded my collection with a lot of games. So, my best guess is that soon you will see articles on those games.

Something you won’t see in the near future is me publishing a press kit. Looking at the numbers those articles pull in, I’m certain that people not really like them. For now, I’m not going to publish press kits for a while.

If you want to have my latest updates, I highly recommend you follow me on my Twitter. If you aren’t following me on there, this might be a reminder to do so. I’m quite humbled to see that I almost 500 followers on there.

Also, I have no idea if I’ll still be able to log in to 2018. Since the new EU copyright laws are going to make things extremely difficult to link articles, use pictures of games… Please, read up about it since content creation for the smaller people is going to become difficult. If I’m misunderstanding things, please tell me in the comment section down below what’s happening. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are three articles about this issue of Article 11 & 13.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17482554/eu-european-union-copyright-filter-article-11-13-passes-juri-vote

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/20/eu-votes-for-copyright-law-that-would-make-internet-a-tool-for-control

https://www.eff.org/nl/deeplinks/2018/w06/eus-copyright-proposal-extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia

That’s all about my blog, now, I do have a few personal things to share in the next section of this article.

Personal life and stuff

So, the World Cup is happening. And I do have to admit, I’m a fan of watching those games. As a matter of fact, while I was writing this article I was also watching a game. Now, I think it’s quite clear for which team I’m mostly rooting for. It’s the Red Devils from Belgium, my home country.

While personally, I don’t see them actually winning the cup, I see them going to the semi-finals. I can’t wait to see their game versus England in a few days since that’s going to be one of the most enjoyable games to watch during this World Cup. For those who don’t know, a lot of the Red Devils actually play in the English Premier League.

That said, something else is going to eat up my time as well. Since I pass the final subject of my degree, I’m going to start my final project this summer. That means I have to make writing a huge paper and do some networking. Starting from November till December, I’ll have to go 3x a week to class while working full time. That’s going to be nuts. Oh, and during that time, I’ll have to write that paper and do all the research.

At the moment, I have put in a proposal for my final project. If it’s accepted, it’s going to be a dream of a project where I’m allowed to do various experiments to upgrade a network and expand it. Also, the mentor of that project is an amazing guy. He taught me a lot of the tricks in computer science I still use to this day. So, here is me hoping that my proposal gets accepted.

If I get a passing grade on that paper in December, I finished my graduate degree. So, apologies in advance if there is a “drought” of articles from now till December. My final project and my personal life are going to eat up most of my time. I might try to write up some backlog of articles where I can just change the date and hit the publish button, but no promises. That’s why I said earlier in the article that I can’t promise a 1-2 article/day period during this summer.

Now, there is something else I wanted to talk about. While all of this is happening, my own mental health is taking a nosedive. Due to, what I hope are obvious, privacy reasons I’m not going in-depth about it on this blog but I’m not doing well lately. There are days that I feel like an emotional wreck and there are days that I get easily pissed off. I’m working on it, but it’s heavy.

2018 has been an extremely rough year for me. There is a bit too much happening to keep up with. While you could argue that I could take a break from writing but it’s actually helping to keep me sane. The issue is the motivation, on certain days I don’t feel motivated to anything productive. So, please, don’t hate me if I delay some articles because of that reason.

If you have questions about my mental health, feel free to ask them to me in private chats. But, you don’t have to worry about me too much. I’m around me befriended bloggers who are there to aid me when things get rough and I’m also in a great network of (professional) people who are helping me to get better.

And that’s all I want to say publically for now about my mental health. I hope you understand I won’t go into details.

All in all, this year is going to be nuts for me. I’m thankful for all the support I got throughout the years and I can’t wait to talk about the games I have played recently. With the Tomb Raider project and my final project for college, I have quite a busy end of the year. But, 2019 will be a more relaxed year for me. At least, I hope.

In any case, thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Game Quicky: The Last Tree (PC) ~ Now with the Full version

Official Steam page

So, do you guys remember when I wrote a preview about The Last Tree a while back? Well, the game has been released on the 31st of May. So, it’s time to take a look at the finished product. I have to say, that I got a review code from the developer, but I have to stress that he didn’t ask for another article. So, in this article, you will get my full honest opinion. As usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article. 

The bad

To be very honest, I think the main menu is a bit flat. While the menu does what it’s supposed to do, I think gives an uninteresting look and is quite boring. It could use a bit more decorating. My suggestion is that it has the title card with the menu options underneath.

Something I wish that could be added is an options menu. In this menu, you can do the following things. Mute the music and/or sound effects, change the controls and make the game windowed or full screen. It would be a great feature.

The controls itself aren’t bad, but I like to use the “Z,Q,S,D” keys. And here in Belgium, we have the AZERTY-keyboard layout. This game doesn’t work with that layout.

In terms of the visuals, I would make one minor change. I would change the texture of the collapse floors to a cracked version. This gives the player a better reason to not stand still on those platforms.

This might be a nitpick, but when you reach a save point, quit the game and start the game up again and you click on “Continue”, you start again at the start of the level.

One more thing, I think it would be great if there was a jump sound effect. It would give this game a bit more punch. Actually, I think that this game could use a bit more sound effects, it would make the game come more alive.

The good

The price for this game is really low. You would expect a really bad game for 2€, but this isn’t true in this case!

I really like the visual presentation of the new levels. The presentation is very well done.

Gameplay-wise, I think the game is less “boring” when I compare it to the demo I played in April. The obstacles are more spaced out and you have more time to learn new obstacles and mechanics.

The music of this game is pretty good. Yet, I can understand why some players wouldn’t enjoy the soundtrack all that much. But, I enjoy the music myself.

The game is quite lengthy. With 32 levels, I think that this game has more than enough content for the price of the game. There are also Steam achievements and trading cards. The achievements are to check your progress in the game, but hey, there are triple A games that do that too!

Gameplay-wise, I think this is a really enjoyable casual game. You have to run and jump around. There are two unique mechanics in this game. You move from the right to the left AND the time slows down as you move. You can use this in order to jump over enemies and look if you can make a certain jump. I find myself returning to this game here and there. To play one more level.

There is a story in this game, this story is to raise awareness to the deforesting of the planet. Yet, it isn’t forced upon you. You can read up on the story by stopping at the notes floating around the levels, but you can also run straight passed it when the story doesn’t interest you.

That gets a thumbs up from me, but it’s your loss that you don’t have the enjoyable writing and jokes that the developer put into this game.

Also, a great feature of this game is the Steam Cloud feature! I really love this feature since I can continue to play the game on my laptop when I’m on the go without me loosing any progress.

This might be a personal thing, in case you don’t know it already, the developer actually quoted my preview article on the Steam Store page.

Thank you so much for that. 🙂

Conclusion

Is this game worth your time? I think so yes. This game might have not a lot of depth, but it’s a well-built game that can be even better with some polish. All the problems that I talked about in this review, are fixable.

Also, a game with this amount of love and effort put into it for only 2€ is a great deal. If the issues I mentioned get fixed and the game gets a bit more sound effects, I think that this game would be even more enjoyable.

Currently, I think that this game is one of the best cheap games I have in my Steam library. I’m having a lot of fun with the game and the mechanics and can’t wait to beat the game completely.

That’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on this blog, but until then; take care and have a great rest of your day!

Preview: The Last Tree (PC) ~ Save The Trees

Official website

So, today we are going to take a look at a preview of “The last tree”. A game that is created by Ungrodo. It’s a game with a message. The message might be pretty clear when you read the title. It’s about the deforesting of our planet. Which is in my opinion a real big shame. Because I sometimes go to the forest and sit there. I put my headphones on and listen to some calming music to get some rest. These moments are so relaxing to me, I wouldn’t want to miss it! I go there when I feel I have no inspiration or motivation to continue. But hey, we are getting side-tracked. Let’s take a look at “The Last Tree”. And as usual, I encourage you to give it a try for yourself. Also, as usual, feel free to give your opinion about the game and/or the content of the article in the comment section down below. 

Full disclosure: this article is written to raise awareness for this game. This isn’t a sponsored article at all. 

Warning: I played a more completed version then the demo version provided on the site. This game is still under development and is subject to change. Things might be different in the final release. 

Demo and stuff

Update after publishing this article: I totally forgot to mention that the developer is planning to release this game on various platforms like Android and iOS. So, keep an eye out for those!

The developer of this game gets a thumbs up from me. I ran into some issues with the first build I got from him. I emailed him back telling him about it and after a few days, he emailed me back with a new and improved build. Seriously, I love when developers do that. Really listen to the feedback of the people who play their game.

The game is being developed in the Unreal 4 Engine. In this simple 2D game, time moves when you move. A trailer for this game can be found on YouTube. The story in this game is charmingly simple. It has to be since it’s a platformer.

The year is 2092, and the tree called Ungrodo is the last tree on earth, and everybody’s chasing him. He has very special skill – TIME SLOWS DOWN WHEN HE MOVES.

The story is being told by little floating notes. The game doesn’t force you to read the notes. But in most of the notes, the text is so short, you don’t have to stop in your tracks to read everything. I would recommend the developer to shorten some notes, since they stop players dead in their tracks if they want to read everything. I can image this would cause some players to not bother with the notes and skip them. The writing for this game is decent and it would be a shame if players skipped this aspect of the game. Also, I think it would benefit the atmosphere if you added some animations in the background to aid the story telling.

The screen is on fire!

Visually, this game looks pretty nice. But there are some things I would like to see improved in the final build of the game.

First of all, the game uses amazing fire effects, but they look disconnected for the visual presentation of the rest of the game. I think it would be nicer if you give the fire a more drawn look like the rest of your game.

Secondly, and this is only a minor thing, remove the lines in the menus. The reason why is: when you have a “R” in there, the line makes it look like an “A”.

Thirdly, there is a great checkpoint system in place in the game. But I would recommend a bit more visual animation when passing through the checkpoints. Sometimes, I hardly noticed I passed a checkpoint.

And finally, while the mechanic of time slowing down is great and becomes very interesting in the game, I would try and avoid the wobble effect you get when you stop moving with the character.

The controls of this game are pretty well done. The game doesn’t provide a tutorial on the controls and it doesn’t need to that, since the controls are so intuitive that they explain themselves. The only thing I would recommend is an option menu to let people to rebind their keys. Since I don’t think everybody wants to use the arrow keys to move in their games.

This game autosaves with each checkpoint. And that’s a great plus in my book. Since I’m somebody who would forget to save and shutdown the game. So, thanks for that. But speaking about saving, I have two issues with this.

One, why is there a restart game option in the pause menu? I would rather have an option to return to the main menu and restart from there.

And two, why isn’t there a prompt saying “are you sure you want to restart your game, since your save data is going to be lost” when you select, restart the game?

Run to the … left?

So, the gameplay of this game is really simple. Go from right to… left? Yes, a reverse 2D-platform. Neat.

You will have to jump over enemies and obstacles. You can’t fight the enemies since, well, you play as a walking tree.

I love when you died and you return quickly enough, you still see parts of the animation from when you died. This is an amazing touch.

Also, I love that the danger isn’t gone when you jump over an enemy. Since they turn around when you jump over them. Adding to the immersion of the game. Since the character in this story is hunted upon.

Speaking about enemies, I think it would be a bit more fair if you don’t combine too much enemies with the blade traps. Since it’s pretty difficult to make a jump over an enemy and a blade. A good fix for this would be a sort of life-system. Where you are able to take a few hits before you die. And staying in the theme of the story, the main character could lose parts of his(/hers?) body when hit. Like the enemy or the blade was successful in cutting off a piece of him(/her?)

The soundtrack of this game really suits the atmosphere the visuals are building. I think it would improve the game if the sound effects would be changed to fit the character a bit more. Like jumping up is a branch that is being picked up out of leaves or something along those lines.

In any case, I said everything I wanted to say about this game, so it’s time to wrap this article up.

Conclusion

I think that this game has a lot of great ideas as a base, but needs a lot of polishing up. The menu system needs to be more expanded upon. The game idea is excellent. It’s a platformer that can stand out if they polished up a bit more.

The basic game is already there. It just needs some more work to expand the game and improve it.

If you enjoy unique platformers, I would highly recommend to take a look at this one and take a look for yourselves.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog. But until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

NekoJonez’s October 2016 update

So, quite a lot is happening lately. And I honestly think it’s time to update you guys and girls. Since there are a few things I want to talk about on my blog but don’t really fit into a gaming article. We are nearing the final moments of 2016 and I have to say, time really flies. While we have two and a half months to go, this year has been quite an adventure. A lot has happened that made my life more exciting. So, be ready for an update with a lot of good and some bad news. And at the end of the article, I’ll reveal what game I’ll be writing about next week! So stay tuned.

My desktop issues

Warning: this part of the article can be a bit PC tech-heavy. I’ll indicate when I stop talking IT. Since, give or take, ten days ago, my desktop started to act up. I was playing Bioshock Infinite again, and suddenly my screen goes black and when I look towards my desktop, I noticed that it had shut down. After a few seconds, it reboots. My desktop can easily handle Bioshock Infinite on very high settings. Since my rig is better than the recommend specs for the game. So, since that crash, my sound jacks refuse to play sound.

I have reinstalled drivers from the official website and the CD that came with my motherboard, and nothing helps. To make things even stranger, when I connect a HDMI cable on my graphics card, the speakers of my monitor are able to play the sound. So, I honestly think that my sound chip on my motherboard hasn’t died since it can pass sound to my graphics card and so to my monitor. But when I try to record the sound of my speakers with using Stereo Mix, Audacity can’t pick up any sound. At all. So, I’m totally confused.

Since the reboot of my PC was caused by my graphics card. So, how can it cause the sound chip to misbehave? Also, I have reinstalled Windows and checked the cables on my motherboard and checked my motherboard for damage; I can’t find the cause. Thankfully, there are very cheap fixes for this issue. There are USB-sticks that can act as a sort of external sound card. I bought one for 20€ and I got the same sound quality as I got from my chip on my motherboard.

But that wasn’t the end of my problems. So, for some reason, games I was able to run flawlessly like Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Bioshock Infinite now shuts down my PC after a few minutes (most of the time less than 5 minutes) of gameplay and then reboot it. And to make things even stranger, when I play older games, I have no issue at all. But hey, I’m trying to look for a solution. So, I can play new PC games again, so I can talk about them on my blog. I hope I find a fix soon, without having to buy new parts. End technical talking.

So, the TL;DR, ten days ago: Bioshock Infinite crashed my whole PC. A game I’m supposed to be able to run on ultra settings. After it has rebooted, my sound chip started to act up to the point of me buying a USB external soundcard to have sound and mic stuff again. But, now I have a problem with high demanding games. I was able to play them, but now after less than 5 minutes of gameplay, my PC shuts down and reboots.

The reason why I talk about this is if you read this and you have an idea what could be the cause, feel free to get in touch with me. I would love to hear possible solutions I can try. Thanks in advance!

So, what will the rest of 2016 bring?

So, this last week was a special week for me. I won’t go into details on my blog here but the people who know me personally know what I’m talking about. To make a long story short: besides writing, blogging and gaming, I have another hobby. And that is being a part of a theater group. We wrote a play ourselves, and beyond all expectations of everybody, it was very successful. So, we got the opportunity to play it for schools. This was a very interesting experience. Sadly enough, we performed the play for the last time yesterday. Anyways, enough about that. I want to focus now on what 2016 will still bring for my blog.

Now, my schedule is still pretty filled up with activities and evening classes & work. I honestly hope that I don’t need to cancel too many articles.

While I have to admit that I have been playing games I have already reviewed and talked about in the past couple weeks, I have also played games I’m going to review in the next couple of weeks. In the past few weeks, I have also been playing games I have started and still need to finish.

Also, I have received a few interesting e-mails in my inbox that can possibly turn into articles. I’m really sorry to the people who mailed me in the last two months for the late replies but I had a very busy schedule.

So, what have I planned for 2016? Well, I have been thinking about some console and handheld games I still have to review and talk about on my blog. I have been considering to use the rest of 2016 to write about games I have played in the past but I haven’t reviewed yet. Or to talk about a game from a series I haven’t talked about yet. Like last week’s article. I have talked about so many Zelda games, but one of the most important Zelda games to me, I haven’t talked about yet. But, I fixed that last week with talking about the Phantom Hourglass game.

Before I close off, I want to reveal the game I’ll write about next week. And that’ll be a first impression article about Paper Mario Color Splash. And I have the game for the week after that also in my mind. So, I’m working on two articles at the moment. So, stay tuned for that!

In any case, I think I said everything I said everything I wanted to say in this update blog. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this. If you know anything that might help me fix my desktop, feel free to leave a comment/tweet me or mail me. I also hope you are interested in next week’s article. Until I may welcome you in another article on my blog but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

First Impression: Bully – Scholarship Edition (PC / Steam) ~ It’s a game at least.

Official website

My current studies, at the moment of writing this article, in college are to become a teacher. So, honestly, I was quite interested in this game. I was curious how they would address the problems of a bully. Knowing the developer, the first impression of this game is that this game actually gives bullying a “good vibe”. But let me explain in this article why I think the game is actually not even worth it. How they totally missed tons and tons of opportunities. If you follow me on my Twitter, you know that I tweeted out to Q that this game left me ‘meh’.  In other words, I’m not extremely interested in beating this game. There are just too many flaws in this game that it isn’t even funny. And it’s an extreme shame, Rockstar Games are known for amazing games, but they failed on various parts in this game. I kinda feel like a real teacher now, sometimes repeating this same information but in different ways. Hah! Food for thought. Something my colleague teachers will understand. Anyway, while I do realize that I can possibly get hate on this article, I honestly only care about people who can say their opinion with respect. And I invite you to post a comment with your own thoughts on this article and or the game. 

And I haven’t played yet.

When you have games like GTA under your belt, you expect quality things from the developer. But the download on Steam was just finished, and I noticed that the game was going to be a major let down.

I researched the problem, and I wasn’t the only one. The game has freezing issues at the start-up loading screen. I repeat, the start-up loading screen. Yeah, and I haven’t played the game yet. And we are off to a great start. And sorry Rockstar, you have no excuse! At the title screen it says “1,200”. Assuming this is your version number, this means most likely that you released 2 patches. Ignoring that issue is a shame.

Then the main menu, I seriously thought that I was going to pull my hair out. The main menu on the Steam version is terrible. It has an interesting design behind it, but it barely has any options you expect from the main menu. To configure most options, apart from video (If I recall correctly), have to be done when you loaded your save.

Sadly enough, the problems don’t stop there. The game can be played with an XBOX360 controller. And honestly, I recommend playing it with a controller. Why? Because the controls feel stiff and awkward. The controller’s controls are an improvement but not that much. And how can a big studio not program the recognition of the controller? I found this out in mid-game. So, I plugged in my controller and I have to reboot the game in order for it to work. And here is the fun part, when I unplugged it mid-game, the game didn’t react to keyboard input!

Nice try guys.

Graphically this game is pretty okay. It isn’t anything amazing but thankfully they used some detail. But then, the developer got GTA in their heads and the designing a school got a “GTA upgrade”.

You can buy new clothes to wear instead of the uniform. I facepalmed hard right there. If you missed why, look up the definition of a school uniform. You have to wear that uniform and nothing else. Okay, it’s to rebel, I understand. But you easily get in trouble in real life if you break rules.

Now, the animation. Do I truly have to? Well, here we go then. The animation of this game is just awful. Please tell me when I can come out of hiding after the hoard of angry fanboys went by.

The game is riddled with animation problems. From twitching characters to people falling upwards, they got it all. As if this game has been thrown on Steam just to have some more cash. This game is pretty bad at hiding its issues. In cutscenes, you can see the issues popping up. In the cutscenes! I mean, come on. If you know your engine has issues, use movies like in the old days as cut scenes.

More issues

I might start talking again about the design and the animation of this game in this article, but if I don’t, I’ll surely talk about it in my full review if I ever write one.

Another BIG issue I have to address is the sound. From the music to the sound effects. The music, honestly, is bland. I always listen to the game’s music when writing articles. It helps my brain to get into the mood and feel from the game. But the music is nothing special. I find it hard to even remember tunes from the game. While I can easily recognize many tracks of other games I played. But that might be because I didn’t hear everything yet.

And the sound effects, my lords. Are they bad! The sound of students stepping sounds like they clapped two coconut shells to each other. Or those old plastic pots with cords that you walked around with on the playing ground. It breaks the immersion quick.  I had it happen often.

And don’t get my started about the students. They are loud and thanks to that you can barely hear what’s said in some cutscenes and what your reply was of a student you praised or said bad things too. Also, they sometimes give you awkward replies or the same one over and over again.

Is this game junk? Well, no not completely. The gameplay is somewhat interesting. But please, anything but the classes. While they could have showed the fascinating part of teaching they replaced the courses by simple mini-games. And English class is such a pain for a not native speaker. Trying to make words with the letters given. I had to struggle a lot. My native language isn’t English, it’s Dutch. So, that’s a spot where they missed something they could have done gameplay wise.

Anyway, I think I’m going to leave it here. I might play this game a bit more to research it, but that’s my current opinion on it. If you want to try it, know it didn’t talk in depth about the graphics, design, gameplay and control. That’s something for you to discover. But I warn my readers, think this one through before you buy it. You might be let down by the sheer unpolished elements in this game.

Review: Fury Racing 3D Real Speed (Android) ~ Still In Alpha

So, I got the honor of the developer actually mailing me to review his Android game. It made me speechless for some time. When I got home from college and when I had some free time, I tested this game for a few hours. Honestly, I don’t like racing games. Yet, for this special first request, I did an effort. While this game is in its alpha stages, I had some troubles with it. Maybe my tablet wasn’t strong enough, but it ran extremely laggy, and I had to use my Android emulator that I had lying around from the time I was still studying computer science. The app ran a bit more smooth on my gaming laptop. And it’s not the emulator’s or my laptop’s fault since it can run games like Alan Wake or Minecraft at 100+ FPS. The game also crashed various times on my tablet, and it consumed memory like it was its only feature. My cleaning app suddenly said that 90%+ of my memory was in use. And I closed EVERYTHING. Besides that, there was a light issue. The game was dark. And still on my emulator it had some problems with it. Since I haven’t finished the game and since it’s an Android game, this article might be shorter than you’re used to me. Anyway, let me think what your thoughts are on the game and/or this review in the comments.

Issues

Let’s dive right into the issues first. Honestly, for a game looking so impressive as this, the menus are just terrible. They are straight forward, yes, I give it that. But I can’t help to think that this game would benefit so much from a much more clean menu. It looks a bit cluttered. With an options bar to the side. And since the Android games their first impressions are the ones of the menu or the first few minutes, this game’ll lose a lot of its customers.

Also, maybe this is a bug, yet the first two tracks are unlocked from the first stage. If this is intentional, that’s a pity. Since smart players are going to play directly the 2nd track instead of the first. Since it wouldn’t unlock anything more.

Also, when you wait long enough, the music on the menu just dies. I had the game open on my 2nd screen, and it just stopped when I started writing this paragraph.

Sadly enough, the menu isn’t the only biggest problem with this game. There is an issue that I often see returning, on the Android market, Reddit and various other locations. The controls aren’t smooth. Even when playing it on my tablet, the controls to move to the sides didn’t respond. I’m maybe guessing that this game doesn’t support multitouch very well.

Bad impressions

This game feels and looks like that it has huge potential. The graphics are extremely well done, and the gameplay is interesting. Yet, the game needs a lot of work. An awful lot. At the state the game is at now, this game is a disaster. Full of great idea’s yet not worked out.

Another example of the issues are the fact that they talk about power-ups. Besides the speeding up one I haven’t seen any other one. And this is a big problem. This feels like false advertising. And I swear that my ship flew through various items without getting a bonus.

The timer is also lagged. It jumps. And it bugs the crap out of me. I feel that the timer in a racing game should be the first part that works flawless. And I checked if it wasn’t an issue of my emulator, my tablet does the same thing. Also, I truly advise the developer to move the health bar of the ship. Since when you speed up, you barely see it. And makes for much confusion.

The game has a low FPS. It wouldn’t surprise me that the graphics eat too many resources which doesn’t leave a lot of left for other processes in the game.

In short, this game needs a lot of work. From more music tracks to a radar, those are features I feel this game would benefit a lot from.

And that’s all for this review, let’s go on to the conclusion!

Final verdict

The good:

+ It’s free.

+ It’s looking extremely nice for on Android.

+ No too annoying ads.

The bad:

– It’s released too early which makes the game lacking a lot of features.

– Hideous menu.

– Low FPS.

– No pause menu.

– Bad controls.

Conclusion:

I want to thank the developer for giving me this chance. And I wish I could have given a more positive review for my first review request from a developer here. I think they are really courageous to ask reviewers like myself to ask to review their alpha product. It’s a move that more developers should do. 

Yet, this game feels extremely unfinished and that’s such a shame. It needs a lot of polishing work before it can be called a final game. I’m not going to score it since it’s an alpha version, yet I might revisit this game after a year to see how it has grown.

Thanks for reading and hopefully until the next time!

Score: 3/5