First Impression: Coromon (Switch) ~ Modern Nostalgia In The Making

Official website – Wiki

When you read my blog, it’s no real secret that I enjoy all types of games. But when a game promises to bring back the nostalgic feelings of old school 2D Pokémon adventures with a modern twist… You get my attention right away. It didn’t take me long to buy Coromon when I noticed it in the Nintendo eShop not too long ago. Today I want to talk about this game. Did this game take me back to my childhood nostalgia of grand 2D adventures or is this a game we should all pass upon? Or is it somewhere in between? Let’s find out in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

A journey through the world

When I was attending elementary school here in Belgium, we got the first three Pokémon generations. The 4th generation was right when I went from elementary to secondary school (For the Americans, it’s I mean high school). I can tell a lot of childhood stories about Pokémon. So, when I read the description of Coromon and read the official website and got the impression that this game was like the first Pokémon generations, I was intrigued. Now, Coromon has various different mechanics that make this game stand out from Pokémon. But I’ll talk more about that later in this article. First, let me talk about the story of this game.

In this game, you play as a new battle research in the world of Velua. It doesn’t take long before you get tasked to gather all the Titan Essences spread across the whole region. There are 6 in total, and you’ll to travel over the entire region to find and secure them. Why secure them? Well, there is an evil force going after them as well.

I could be very critical and say that the story doesn’t have a lot to it. But where the story lacks meat around its bones, it makes up for it with a lot of charm. There is no voice acting in this game, but there are emojis that can be displayed above the characters in their head. These are used quite sparingly as well, and they add so much charm to the game. You also don’t play a silent character!

The way the entire story is set up makes the game just quite charming and adorable. It doesn’t really go in depth or make you sit on the edge of your seat, but wraps a warm blanket around you on that cool winter morning when you woke up to watch that new episode of your favorite cartoon. It’s charming, familiar, and relaxing. You know what’s going to happen in the story and can see it from a mile away. But the execution and childlike innocent charm to it just makes it all work amazingly well.

Here, have some Zelda too

So, if you think that this game is only a Pokémon “clone” or Pokémon style game… You’d be very wrong. Sure, at it’s core this game is a creature collecting and raising game that hits a lot of the same beats that the first 3-4 Pokémon generations did. But, something that took me by surprise is that there is also a bit of The Legend of Zelda thrown in.

Yes, you read that correctly. This game combines old school Legend of Zelda & oldschool Pokémon to create something extremely unique in my opinion. First, let me talk about how this game compares to Pokémon.

As you can clearly see from the screenshot in this section of the article, the battle system is turned based. If you are familiar with the battle system of Pokémon, you’ll feel right at home with this one. The unique change in this game is that your Coromon don’t work with powerpoints but with SP for their attacks. Now, what does this mean? Well, each attack costs a certain amount of SP to execute. So, you’ll have to manage your SP quite well.

But, what if you run out of SP? Well, then you can use up a turn to recharge 50% of your max SP. And not only you have to do that, your opponents also have to do that. So, sometimes you’ll have to get lucky or hope that your opponent needs to charge their SP, so you basically have a free shot.

There are also healing items that can heal both HP & SP which makes things more interesting. Since, do you want to heal your health and magic or only one of the two… The strategies you will need to use in this game blow a breath of fresh air in the battle system that I’m really interested to see expanded upon.

Something that this game does better than Pokémon in my opinion is how the XP Share actually works. In modern Pokémon titles, after each encounter all of your Pokémon receive XP. This is something that breaks the game a bit in my opinion. It makes the game a bit too easy. In Coromon, they found an amazing solution. There are these gems you can equip your Coromon with that basically act like an XP Share. If you want all of them to also gain XP, well you’ll have to give all your Coromon a gem. There are different levels of gems as well, giving different amounts of XP. But oh wait, this means that your Coromon can’t carry berries or stat boosting items that can help in battles. So, do you choose to play it safe or risk it for XP?

Now, there is a mechanic made the strategy layers even more interesting. Just like in Pokémon, your Coroman have stats. Apart from gaining XP points after each battle or capture, your Coromon also gain potential. When that potential reaches a certain max, you’ll get three points you can use to increase in one or more stat. You can build your Coromon to your liking. It’s a highly simplied version of EV training in Pokémon but now built in to the core of the gameplay instead of being more reserved for the meta.

Something else quite unique to Coromon is how the four move limit is handled. Just like in Pokémon, each Coromon can have four moves to their disposal. When your Coromon wants to learn a new move after those 4, you’ll have to forget a move. Now, in Coromon this works quite differently. When a new move can be learned, you go into the move menu of that Coromon and set the 4 moves you want. This eliminates the need for a move deleter and a move relearner guy in the world. Since, you can choose the 4 moves you want at any moment outside a battle. So, when you catch a wild Coromon, and they don’t have good enough moves, you can look at their list and adjust it to your playstyle.

The side quest system is a lot easier. When you find a trade, it’s logged in your quest log. In there you can also see the status of your main quest, so you can get right into the game when you haven’t played for a while or when you get stuck.

You also get rewards for reaching certain milestones. These rewards give you points and after a certain amount of points, you level up. Each level has its own useful reward, and you can get to level 50. Currently, I’m going after the 5th Titan, and I’m level 37 out of 50.

The options menu is also a blast! This game actually implemented the difficulty system in a way that Pokémon fans are wishing for in modern Pokémon games. Also, you can change some default behavior of the game after catching a Coromon for example.

I’m certain that I can keep talking about this for quite some time. But all in all, this game is quite unique and charming. My bar was set quite high when I wanted to get into this game, but it’s blown out the water for me especially since it also has some oldschool Zelda mechanics mixed in.

So, the locations of the Titans basically replace your gyms in this game. But, each of those locations could as well be a full-blown Zelda dungeon. Some puzzles aren’t puzzles you expect in a creature collecting game. Sometimes you also need a unique item or gadget to open or get through the dungeon.

You also get a sort of “Shiekah Slate” armband that has several functions that can interact with the world. This armband can help you with quite a lot of things. Like making it easier to find the very plentiful hidden items (and store coupons) in the world to destroying rocks that block your path or even push fallen down trees.

Not only that, each Titan area is unique and has its own mini-story to tell. So yeah, I personally can’t explain it better than Coromon is a mixture of oldschool 2D Zelda and Pokémon with their own unique twist and modern inventions.

It’s so close

I find it very surprising the amount of layers this game has in its gameplay. If I want to talk about the other elements of this game, I think I better move on before this whole article is about the gameplay.

Let’s talk about the controls. This is something where this game shines again. Since this game is multi platform, this game can be controlled via the Joy Cons or even just with the touch screen alone. The controls are quite easy to master and learn and I rarely to never had problems with them. The only tricky thing to get used to is that some buttons have a different feature depending if you hold them down for some time or just press it once. This timing to be sure it’s a short of long press very occasionally tripped me up.

The music in this game is amazing. The music is composed by Davi Vasc, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m a bit sad that I didn’t buy the game on Steam. Since, I would be able to buy the soundtrack and add it to my playlist. The soundtrack of this game fits the game like a glove. While it reminds me quite a lot of the older Pokémon games, it also sounds modern. Just give it a listen, it’s really well done.

The sound effects are pretty good as well. I really got used to certain sound cues this game gives during solving its puzzles and battles. You know you did something right when the sound effects are easy to understand and learn without having a tutorial about it.

All in all, this game hits it out of the park with a lot of unique mechanics whilst combining the gameplay of old school Pokémon and old school Zelda. The fact that this game also has three save slots so you can have three separate adventures is amazing.

This continues to show in the visuals as well. The pixel art of this game add to the charm of the story. I honestly think that if this game would be turned into an anime, a bit of the charm of the pixel art would be gone. The animations of this game also don’t go overboard but help to make the game come to live.

The attention to detail in terms of the visual presentation is amazing. I mean, take this example. There are over 100 different Coromon in this game and each Coromon has their own unique shiny variant and ultimate variant. Tripling the amount of variantions you can have. And each time, the colorsheme of the Coromon just works to make it stand out from the default version. Another example of the great visuals is how each unique area also has unique visuals. It’s almost they created an unique tileset per region instead of recycling parts. It gets a thumbs up from me.

Overall, I have nothing but praising for this game. But is this game flawless? Well, not exactly. This game does make some missteps that can get in the way. The first thing I have to mention is that sometimes, you’ll have to either grind or get quite lucky to defeat a Titan or some trainers. Personally, I didn’t find the grinding in this game too much of a bother honestly. Especially since when my Coromon where to low level, I usually went back to previous area’s to re-explore area’s to battle trainers I have skipped or try to check if I found all hidden items. But, it can’t be avoided. You’ll have to grind sometimes.

Another annoying issue is how the cloud saves work. You can enable the cloud saves in the options menu and it is a “set it and forget it” option. Now, usually I play my Switch also on the train to work. But, on the train I can’t connect my Switch to the internet. So, then I get almost every 2 minutes that annoying error pop-up from the Switch not being able to connect to the internet. I wish there was a sort of check built in that gave a pop-up message so you could easly disable that without having to remember, oh yes… Cloud saves don’t work right now. Or even, when the game notices that it can’t connect online, just don’t do cloud saves or warn the player in another way then every 2 minutes with the default “can’t connect online” system pop-up. It’s a small annoying thing that can easily be fixed in my opinion.

Another small issue that there are almost no moves that can attack two Coromon at the same time. So, this means that when you encounter two Coromon in one battle, you have to take them out one by one. I also find it strange that I can’t fight with two Coromon. These battles feel like as if double battles were going to be implemented but the devs ran out of time and took the double battles out and left this in. It feels a bit unfinished, underexplored of a mechanic.

A small usability improvement that can be made is to show a spinner icon when you have caught a Coromon. It’s a small feature I loved in Pokémon but now that I miss it, I totally understand the usefullness of it.

Another very minor improvement that could have been created is to show the player’s name on the main menu before you load the profile. Would make things a bit easier for families with a shared Switch.

When I read about this game online, I notice that a lot of people are writing it off as a Pokémon clone and lazy. But honestly, I have to disagree. I look at this game from a different angle. It’s another take on the Pokémon formula with some interesting twists like the SP system or Titans instead of gyms. And lazy? I mean, you can use your save file across platfroms. Or there is a nuzlocke mode built in?

I can agree that this game looks on the surface a lot like the first few Pokémon games but what’s so wrong with that? It’s the execution that counts and this game does it amazingly well. What’s wrong with more content/gameplay of a formula that works? If the game followed the exact same path like also in the story and settings… Then it would be a different story. But, Coromon stands proudly on it’s own two feet. I’m happy that I gave this game a try since I’m quite enjoying myself with this game. While it has some flaws, they don’t really hamper the experience in my opinion.

So, if you enjoy old school Zelda or Pokémon, monster collecting games like Yokai Watch or Digimon, adventure JRPG games, I say, give the demo of this game a chance. Maybe you’ll also fall in love with the charm of this game.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game, I want to thank you so much for reading 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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Review: Dusk (PC – Steam) ~ Spinning Guns

Steam store page

I think I’m unable to hide the fact that I love playing retro-style shooters. I love the fact that a lot of new games are coming out in the genre since I like the genre quite a lot. I’m also crossing my fingers that no overload will occur. But, in any case, I think it’s high time to introduce the game I’m going to take a look at today. It’s name is Dusk, developed by New Blood Interactive. And let me tell you, I have set the bar quite high for since game since the producer of this game was the director of the Rise of the Traid (2013) reboot. Well, let’s get into the town of Dusk at dusk to shoot some monsters. But before we do that, I want to invite you to write a comment with your thoughts on the game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: this review has been written after the Dusk Halloween 2020 update. 

Spinning guns

Most of the story of this game is told through the environment. Yet, some details are told the DLC comic. Let me give you the gist of it. This game takes place in the fictional rural town Dusk, Pennsylvania. A huge network of ruins are discovered underneath the town. Those who were researching these tunnels got possessed and it’s up to you, DuskDude, to save the town from destruction. Yet, you are a treasure hunter and you want the riches that are rumored to be hidden in the town.

The influence of the original Doom is quite clear. In terms of story, this game takes the Doom story/setting and puts an Lovecraftian spin on it. I could talk more in-depth on the story but I want to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. The only thing I’ll say is that the story is an amazing homage to several famous horror movies and amazing shooters.

Now, let me tell you. If you expect a deep story with a lot of lore… I think you might have to look elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, the story and setting is extremely well done but this game focuses more on the gameplay and creating unique scenario’s then on telling a deep story.

Something that’s quite interesting to note is that there is some voice acting in this game. Something that surprised me is that the voice actor for this game is the legendary Andrew Hulshult and he is also the composer for this game. I heard his work before in Nightmare Reaper and now I have the pleasure to hear more work of his. But more about the soundtrack later. The voice acting that Andrew did in this game is amazing. You can feel that he leaned into the role and made the characters come alive.

While the story doesn’t have a lot of depth, the voice acting and the pacing the story was able to draw me in. Something that this story does quite well is that giving you the smallest amount of details that are enough to let your mind wonder and fill in the details and the rest of the story yourself.

Anyways, I have been rambling a lot about the story for now. I think it’s high time to talk about the gameplay. Is this game fun to play with a DuskDude that doesn’t have to reload his guns and spins them when you reload them.

The running slide

Your goal in this game is to get to the ending of the level without dying. In order to do that, you have several weapons at your disposal. You start off with the sickles, these are your melee weapon if you are out of ammo. In my playthrough, I rarely used these. I found that they weren’t effective enough to conquer the various amount of enemies in this game.

Before I continue to talk about the weapons, I want to mention the cigar. This is an item that’s in your inventory at all time and you can use it to slowly recover health. I discovered that fact through researching this game. So, rest assured, this game can be beaten without the use of the cigar. To be honest, it’s annoying to use since it’s slow and has a cool down, which is a good thing mind you. Image having a health pack to quickly heal you, on you at all times. That would break the difficulty curve so fast.

Anyways, the weapon selection in this game has your standard pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, hunting rifle and rocket launcher guns. There are two types of shotguns and rocket launchers. On top of that, there is also a sword and a crossbow in this game. Managing these weapons and deciding when the use them is the biggest mechanic of this game. Also, don’t forget that DuskDude can pick up items that you help you to save ammo. Also, some items may be stronger then you think. 

So, you can fight your enemies by shooting or throwing stuff at them. Earlier I talked about the fact that you can spin your weapons. Hitting your enemies with a spinning weapon does ten points of damage to them. Of course, there is also the possibility that you can let them start in fighting. But I have seen this happen quite rarely during my playthrough. But, the crystal of madness holds some secrets about that.

During your quest to find the keys that open the doors to the ending of the level, you can also find various secrets. Some of them are in plain sight and others are hidden behind fake walls. If you are secret hunting, pay close attention to the environment and don’t destroy boxes since they can be used to jump higher. And each secret is worth it, let me tell you. Some secrets saved my skin during my playthrough. 

There is one mechanic in this game I’m honestly missing in other shooter games and that’s the slide mechanic. When you are running and press the crouch button, DuskDude does a slide. This feels so gratifying to pull off and helps quite a lot during combat. 

There are also power-ups in this game that enhance the gameplay quite a lot. My two favorites are the Fast Fire Totem and the Wall Climbing power-up. The Fast Fire Totem just reduces your weapon cool down to 0. It’s ridiculous and using it on a large group of enemies felt so enjoyable to do. Also, the Wall Climbing power-up is used in excellent moments and set pieces that made it a lot of fun to use. 

In terms of gameplay, this game is a well built shooter and it controls amazingly well. I never had a moment where I felt that a death was the game’s fault. The only nitpick I had with the controls is that picking up items and moving them is sometimes a bit tricky when you are getting things from between tight spaces. 

The Steam achievements were fun to get while exploring the various landscapes in this game. Visually, this game looks right out of the early 90’s. The visual style has been nailed perfectly with blocky models and everything. Yet, surprisingly, the game is quite detailed and feels like a real dystopian landscape. 

In terms of animations, this game hits another nail on the head. I highly advise you to learn the attack animations of your enemies since they can save your life in certain spots. Some enemies are a big pain to deal with but when you learn their patterns and animations, they can be worked around. 

To top this all off, you have an amazing soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult. This soundtrack adds so much to the game, it’s amazing. While the game gives off a horror and Lovecraft vibe, you can rip and tear with the epic metal soundtrack in the background that even gets moody at certain moments. That in combination with great sound design makes it fun to hunt down your enemies, avoid their attacks and shoot them. 

So far I have been praising this game, like the additional fun I had when I messed around with the cheats in this game, but I’m sad to report that this game does drop the ball in some area’s. Let’s talk about them. 

Nostalgic loading screen

Let me first start with the biggest bummer of them all. I wanted to try out the multiplayer in order to be able to write about it. Sadly enough, the multiplayer is quite deserted at times. I’m not the best in shooter games but I felt that the balance was all over the place. In the few matches I was able to play, I got spawn killed quite often. Maybe I need to give it another chance but I have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth so I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Thankfully, the single player is more then fun enough to play through and there is were the focus is at. 

I was about to complain about the lack of the weapon wheel, but this is coming in a future patch when the console versions are released. In addition to that, we are also getting custom weapons, co-op and mod support. So, these things might help in fixing some of the issues I have with the game. 

Something I didn’t like is that this game is quite short. There are 30 levels in this game and you can finish this game in give or take 10-ish hours. This game has so much potential and it’s over before you know it. I was really getting into it nearing the end and then I was fighting the final boss. Oh well, this game is somewhat replayable due to the secret hunting you can do and trying to beat your fastest time. 

You know, I don’t want to do this but this game does drop the ball in something that’s a big pet peeve of mine. This is the UI. While it works and is easy to use, there is some major polish that needs to happen to it. Let’s start with the lack of a map. I got lost several times in some levels because I was unable to bring up a map. Some of these levels are huge and without a map, you can get lost if you didn’t pay attention during a fight. 

If you use your mouse wheel to scroll in some menu’s like the save/load menu or in the language menu, the scrolling up is quite broken. Sometimes it works and other times it refuses to work. 

Speaking of the save/load system, the save and load system isn’t good. I hate the fact that the list of save files is alphabetical and not sorted by the latest save you made. I always had a hard time finding my most recent save when I wanted to continue the game. Also, when you saved the game for a second time in a level, it doesn’t ask you to overwrite your latest save… It takes the name of the latest save and starts adding lines to it. 

When selecting a save file to load, you get the level name and the time stamp of when you saved the game. I wish I was able to see how long I was in the level as well. That way I would how far I was in the level. 

Now, this game doesn’t do an autosave when you enter a new level. You have to save manually each and every time. Thankfully, you can start at the beginning of the level through the main menu quite easily. 

All of these things are such a shame. Since it puts a blemish on quite an interesting game. A game that does a lot right like an enjoyable endless mode where you have to keep being fast and efficient since there is a huge lack of health pickups. Something else this game does well is setting the atmosphere with the fake DOS-loading screen and sound effects. 

But then strange mistakes happen like your controls settings not carrying over from single player to multiplayer. Or the custom cursor not working all to well in the multiplayer menu. 

Also, there are things like when you use your double barreled shotgun and you have only one bullet left, you can’t shoot your shotgun. But here is the thing that annoys me, when you are out of ammo for all your other weapons, DuskDude switches to another gun. And guess what he doesn’t do in the situation I described earlier? But of course, switch weapons! 

Now, there are moments where DuskDude flips upside down. During swimming moments or in certain levels. And let me tell you, the sudden camera movement was quite disorienting for me sometimes. One timing during my playthrough I even had to stop playing since I got a major headache… But that might be just me… 

So, with all of this said, I think it’s high time for the conclusion of this article. Time to wrap everything up in a nice TL;DR and give my final thoughts on the game. 

Conclusion

The good:

+ Addictive and fast gameplay.

+ The amount of homages and easter eggs are amazing.

+ The audio and visual design is excellent.

+ Andrew Hulshult’s soundtrack is a big plus.

+ …

The bad:

-Can be a bit short if you don’t go 100% it.

-The multiplayer is a bit eh, in my opinion.

-Some UI issues.

-The save/load system is somewhat broken. (The UI)

Final thoughts:

Dusk is an amazing game that takes you back to the times of the original Doom, Quake and other old school shooters. It’s an enjoyable shooter to play through and I had to a lot of fun from beginning to end. 

It’s clear that a lot of polish and love went into this game and it shows. This game is a labor of love that turned out quite well. It’s a shame that some UI issues (especially in the SAVE/LOAD system) are a blemish on an otherwise amazing game. 

I can forgive the game being rather short since you can go secret hunting or try to beat the game on a higher difficulty or beat your fastest time. Also, for the price of only 25€, you get an additional 26 page comic and the whole soundtrack by the amazing Andrew Hulshult. That dude has the shooter soundtrack creation nailed to a T. 

Would I recommend this game to fans of (retro-style) shooters? I think that’s a no-brainer YES, OF COURSE! The positives highly outweigh the negatives for this game. And with some updates on the horizon, this game might only get better and maybe some of the UI issues I mentioned in this article might be fixed in the future. Who knows? 

So, if you would excuse me… I think it’s high time I continue to shoot some of these enemies that are calling me a heretic while I wrap up this final paragraph. I want to thank you so much for reading this article. 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!

Score: 90/100

Community Award: Real Neat Blog Award from Frostilye

I have won an award with my blog. Well sort of. Remember the time you got those chain emails where people ask “send this to X amount of people to…”? In the blogging community, we gave this concept a unique spin. We have community/tag awards. The idea is that bloggers promote each other by passing an award. In March, I got tagged with the “Real Neat Blog Award” by Frostilyte (who also created the picture you see at the top of this post). Man, I’m always so thankful when other bloggers tag me in these kinds of posts since I find it amazing to see how we as bloggers stick together and help each other but also recognize each other. So, it’s time to follow the rules of this kind of posts where I thank the tagger, answer the questions and ask my own questions for the people I tag. Oh, also feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of the article and/or maybe your own answers on the questions if you want to. 

1) Have you ever been really excited about a game only to be disappointed by it?

I think the way I select the games I want to play actually helped me to avoid being really disappointed by a game. When I start a game, I’m always going in with an open mind and telling myself that it’s possible that the game isn’t going to be my cup of tea.

Of course, there are games that I’m extremely excited about and weren’t the best they could be. But, let’s be honest here, there is always something in a game that you find disappointing and it can range from a small or minor thing to something that affects the whole game.

For example, I really enjoyed The Legend of Zelda – A Link Between Worlds but I’m not that big of a fan of the art style. Yet, there are a lot of people who really liked the art style of that game.

Another example is Etrain Odyssey IV, the thing that I found disappointing is that there wasn’t any voice acting. Yes, no voice acting. Now here is the thing, usually, there is no voice acting in the franchise apart from 4 out of 10 games in the series. So yeah, it’s an extremely silly reason since I loved playing Etrain Odyssey on the DS and that game doesn’t have voice acting either.

Or, The Legend of Zelda – Breath Of The Wild. I was beyond excited about the game, but when I played it, I found that the game shifted a bit too much from the usual Zelda formula, but after a while, I really started to grow on me.

I could talk way more in-depth about this topic, and maybe I should in another article. But I think that I have to answer the question with “no, I haven’t or I can’t remember.” Since there are always aspects of the game I enjoy and aspects I’m not that fond of.

2) Is there any aspect of your life, big or small, that you’re not completely content with and that you frequently think about changing?

It’s a cheesy answer but I’m going to give it. Life is far from perfect and there will be always things you want to change.

I know that my English isn’t perfect and that I often write mistakes. It would be easy for me to hide behind the fact that English isn’t my native language. My native language is Dutch and I also know French and a small bit of German. But, I’m always content when people point out mistakes. It helps me improve my writing and my English skills.

I know that I tend to procrastinate a lot. Sometimes a bit too much. From small to big projects, for some reason, I love to do things at the last minute for some reason. There are moments in time that I don’t procrastinate that much, but that’s not always the case.

Then again, when I’m really honest with myself. I find that myself quite content with my life and where things are going. If I keep up the good work I’m currently doing, I think I will be able to realize my dreams.

3) Can you tell me a joke?

You know that I love to tell stories, so let me tell you an amusing story. I think I was around 10 years old and my family and I were on our yearly trip to the seaside. In the vacation park, we were staying at, there is a football field (I mean for playing soccer. Not for American Football.). Well, more like a farmers field since it was quite uneven and you were able to see puddles when had rained. Keep that in mind, the field is anything but even.

There was this guy, let’s call him Dave,  who always got angry when we were playing with a leather football since it was extremely dangerous. His reasoning, you were able to kick out a window with them. So, in the summer evening, there were a lot of kids and teenagers playing football.

Dave was playing tennis on the road next to the football field together with his brother. Everything went fine until one of the kids brought a leather ball. When Dave saw that leather ball, he got so pissed that he pointed at the ball with the tennis racket he was holding. But, his grip… oh man, his grip. I think you might see what’s coming next.

Dave swung his arm with the racket towards the leather ball and lost grip of the racket. The racket went off flying with some speed towards the football field. The metal side of the racket hit an uneven part of the football field and almost crashed into a window. And yes, it was the window of his front door.

Yes, that was extremely funny to see. I remember that moment extremely well. I wish I had a smartphone that day to record the whole event but back in those days, we all had those PDA-type phones. Those old-school Nokia’s. So, yeah. The moment will live on as a memory instead of a movie.

4) I recently read how evil a company directly correlates to how honest and heartfelt the company tries to appear in its advertising. Do you think there is any truth to this?

That’s an interesting question. But, I think there is an issue with the question. For starters, try to define “evil”. On top of that, find me one company that creates advertisements that present their brand or company in a negative way.

The statement/conclusion doesn’t sit well with me. I feel like I’m missing context. So, it could be that there is some truth to it, but it could also be that there isn’t any truth to it.

5) We all have post styles, or series that we create on our blogs. What is your favorite post style/series on your blog?

I try to use the same or a similar writing style on my works and posts. I just love talking about games and giving my opinion on it. Now, I’m quite proud of The Legend of Zelda – Bloggers Journey. It started off as a simple idea and now that this style of post happened for 3 different series: Mario, Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider; I’m just so happy to see what it has become.

The thing I love to see the most is the change in my writing style. I love to see how my writing style evolved over the years. I’m really interested to see how my writing style is going to be in a few years. Am I still going to explain why certain things or mechanics don’t work, pointing out flaws in games? Am I still going to talk about games? Only the future will give an answer to that question.

6) Light theme, or dark theme?

When I have the option to pick a theme, I prefer to fiddle around with the options to fit my personal needs. Now, my favorite color is gray/silver and the dark theme fits more to that. Apart from that, I feel that the dark theme feels easier on the eyes when looking to a screen for a long time. And since my job involves a lot of computers, I’m quite happy with the recent trend of adding dark modes everywhere.

7) What’s something you accomplished in the past several months that you’re really proud of?

The simple fact that I was able to find my dream job. I always dreamt of working in a school and helping teachers and students to have the best time possible. I also love to work with computers and technology. I’m part of the IT Staff in an art school and I love it.

I’m really proud of myself that I was able to land the job and that I’m able to work in my field of passion. Since it’s something that I adore doing, and to be honest, sometimes it doesn’t feel like work to me. My tasks include maintaining the website, fixing problems with the IT equipment, explaining how tech works to teachers…

Maintain a website, well just look at this blog. I already do it as a hobby, so yeah. Fixing problems with IT equipment is something that I already did on the side for friends and family. And explaining how tech works to teachers feels extremely rewarding when you see teachers being able to use the tech to improve their classes and make life easier for them and the students. Could you ask for more?

My questions

1. If I start a new retrospective collab project like my Zelda and Tomb Raider project, which series should I pick and why?
2. What’s the most difficult part of being a blogger according to you?
3. With YouTube being so big, do you think that written articles still have a place in the current entertainment industry?
4. Did games become easier or have we as gamers become more skilled?
5. What are your favorite (gaming related) April Fool jokes?
6. Which series/game would you love to see revived?
7. Do you think there is still a place in the gaming market for handheld gaming or did the smartphone market take it over? Or are those two the same market?

And the people I tag:

Matt from NormalHappenings

Robert from AdventureRules

Kim from LaterLevels

Shelby from FalconGameReviews

All my mage buddies over at the WellRedMage

Omar from Pete’s Corner

KillerRobotics

And with that said, I have left out a ton of amazing video game bloggers. I highly recommend that you check out everybody linked here since they all write amazing things and have interesting viewpoints on the gaming world.

But, I also want to thank you all for reading. I’m always so happy when people read my articles and interact with them. It makes my day. I’m writing this blog as a hobby and being able to review games from indie developers and being recognized by other bloggers for the work I put in my blog is such a rewarding and great feeling. Thank you!

Thank you again 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!

 

NekoJonez – The Versatile Blogger Award #2

Every so often, I receive something that I call “a tag award”. These tag awards are a special way of other creators to show recognition to each other. It always puts a smile on my face when I get selected for these “tag awards” since I’m able to answer some interesting questions or talk about something interesting. This time, I got the Versatile Blogger Award from TwoTall4uFool. An award that I also got in 2013 and the rules haven’t changed since then. So, if you want to read up on the rules, you can read them in that article. So, it’s time to get into this award.

TwoTall4uFool

If you are interested in reading articles about newer games and various accessories, I highly recommend that you give his blog a read. His blog mostly focuses on the gaming and tech niche, like myself, but there are also articles on movies and other subjects. Here is a link if you want to check out the amazing writing of TwoTall4uFool:

https://twotall4ufool.com

The seven things about NekoJonez

So, I have to tell 7 things/facts about myself. To make it a bit more interesting to read, I picked 7 different things than in the 2013 article. So, here we go!

I enjoy wearing watches

A comment I often get is either: “As a tech guy, why do you still wear a normal watch” or “As a tech guy, why don’t you buy a smartwatch?”

Well, the reason I still wear a “normal” digital watch is that I find it easier to keep the time instead of pulling my phone out of my pocket and looking at it that way. Besides that, I’m rarely at my desk at work and just having a watch is handy when I forget my phone on my desk.

Besides that, I have been wearing a watch since I was a kid and I honestly never stopped wearing a watch. On top of that, the past few plays I was in, I was able to use the fact I had a watch. For example, I had to play an irritated and annoyed waiter in a tavern and I was able to use my watch pretty well then.

The reason I haven’t bought a smartwatch yet, well, that’s quite simple. I don’t find any benefits for it for me personally. So, just to buy a smartwatch to use as a gadget… Nah, I rather spend my money on other things.

I call my gaming style: “Expert casual”.

In my collection, you can find a game in almost every genre. Even in the genres I dislike playing or in genres, I’m not too skilled in. My least favorite genres are racing, rhythm and fighting games. My favorite genres are an adventure, RPG and visual novel games. Besides that, I enjoy playing (grand) strategy games, tycoon games, action games, casual… You name it.

So, because of this, my playstyle is what I call the expert casual. I rarely play games to have the most efficient or most challenging experience. I rarely to never play on the hardest setting. I just play games to enjoy myself and have a great time.

It really shows when you ask me to play multiplayer. For example, I’m a real pushover when it comes to Pokémon battles to other players. I’m terrible at remembering meta gameplay. But, I don’t mind that I’m not that good at that. The actual experience is what counts for me, having fun with my friends talking about games and creating memories is what counts.

That is a big benefit of my playing style. Because my playstyle is “jack of all trades, master of none.”, I have played a LOT of games and had some many different experiences, I can talk about almost every style of game.

Evening person

I’m a very big night owl and an evening person. I feel more creative and productive in the evening. That’s why I always write my articles after 5 or 6PM. At those moments, I find that I can write more easily than in the morning.

I especially noticed this when I was writing the write up for my final project this year. I noticed that a lot of sections I wrote in the early parts of the day had more mistakes or had more structural issues than the parts I wrote in the afternoon or during the evening.

I also have trouble waking up. I always have several alarms programmed in my phone to make sure I actually wake up. And when I have to go to work, I wake up an hour before I have to go to the station, so I can wake up calmly and prepare myself without rushing myself. I hate rushing myself in the morning because I know that it’s something that makes me cranky for the rest of the day.

Other media

My biggest hobby is playing video games. Apart from that, I tend to write this blog and I’m also a hobbyist actor in one of my local theater groups. Now, sometimes I get the question to give my opinion on a recent novel or in a recent movie. More often than not, I have to pass on those questions.

As a child, I also loved reading books. But, since I discovered the power of visual novels, I have stopped reading books. I feel that I get more pulled into the story when I’m able to either interact or visually see the story. Something I hated while I was reading where the long, and in my opinion boring, descriptions of how people actually look like. When I write stories, I rarely spent time in describing how the world or the characters look like. I love leaving it up to the readers’ imagination.

Now, I have periods of time that I play a lot fewer video games and I tend to be more interested in watching movies and series. I mostly watch anime when it comes to series. I feel that those more appeal to my style of humor than other shows. But, I also watch other series outside of anime; I love watching police series like CSI or other similar shows. A show I also adore is Relic Hunter since it reminds me of a lot of my favorite movie series Indiana Jones.

A TV-show I watch every year with my family is “Wie is de mol” (Translated: “Who is the mole?”). It’s a game show that is quite big here in Belgium and the Netherlands. I have linked the Wikipedia page of the English version if you want to read more about it.

Yet, I find myself mostly enjoying video games. I think it’s because in video games you can interact with the world and makes the experience more personal for me. The only difference in experience when you read a book or watch a movie is how you interpreted it. Maybe that’s a bit of a weak argument but it’s what I think.

Motivation

Now, at the start of the year, I have been chosen as a creative director in a dream development team by LaterLevels. How am I able to work full time, write an article on a new game every week, be a part of an acting group, taking care of live stuff, collecting video games, improving my tech skills… without burning myself out?

Honestly? I have no clue to be quite honest. I just found a workflow that fits me and helps me to get things done. I also try to be as efficient as possible. For example, I never take notes during my play sessions to avoid breaking my flow and to avoid that I focus too much on the smaller details in my review instead of the overall game. Another example is that I play a lot of the games I want to review during my travel times to and from work.

Besides that, I mostly focus on the things I’m passionate about. It’s obvious when you read my blog that I adore playing games and that I seriously enjoy writing. The fact that people actually read my work makes me proud. Even when my article gets read by only 5 people, I’m happy.

Reading

An extremely strange fact about me is that I don’t read that often. Here and there, I read other people’s blogs or various articles on things that interest me but I get bored easily if I have to read a lot of text on a screen. Something that makes this even stranger is the fact that I love playing through visual novels that have long bits of dialogue.

It has been a year since I actually started reading a book. It was a book about cybersecurity and how you can protect your network against malware and phishing. The last time I read a novel was 4 years ago, I read a police thriller about a murder in an online roleplay.

If the text doesn’t catch my interest, I just stop reading. Even when it’s about a topic I’m really interested in. I do have moments where I sit down and read things but they are quite rare. And most of the time, they are other people’s blog posts of authors I know to bring an interesting point of view on the subject.

Rapid-fire facts

Let’s give a few facts that don’t need to have a lot of explanation/story to them:

My favorite color is the color that the metal silver has. I’m really drawn to that color.

I highly dislike swimming. When a pool uses chlorine, I get very itchy and sometimes even sick.

I use my right hand to write. My handwriting is a mess and it gets even worse with my left hand.

My mother tongue is Dutch (well, Flemish actually… But, not everybody knows the difference between Dutch and Flemish. It’s a bit like you have British and American English.), besides English I can also speak French. I also have a basic understanding of German.

Besides games, I also love collecting old computer software. I just love messing around with old computer programs to learn about the history of computers and just because it’s fun.

Something I have a love-hate relationship with is the trackpads on laptops. I dislike using them but I love them whenever I’m somewhere that doesn’t have room for an actual mouse.

Nominations

Now, here are the 11 people I nominate for the award and invite to write an article about this. I’m so sorry to all the friends I leave out.

Reaper Interactive

Sheikah Plate

Triform Trinity

Ambi Gaming Corner

LaterLevels

Adventure Rules

Drakulus

The Well-Red Mage

OverThinkerY

LividLightning

Games With Coffee

Wrapping up

So, thank you for reading this article. Thank you, everybody, for the support that my blog gets. I’m extremely thankful for everybody who talks to me about games that I have talked about on my blog. Thank you for leaving a comment and or liking a post. It really makes my day when I see that somebody enjoyed reading through my article or my blog and maybe discovered a new game to play.

I can spend hours thanking everybody, but I think I made my point. Thank you 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!

Gamer’s Thoughts: Gaming Style & Reviewing

The question I’m asking today is: “Does the gaming style influences the reviews of the games a reviewer played?” and more importantly, should that influence the review? How subjective or objective do you have to be to write a good review? Let’s have a chat about this topic. While I won’t be able to cover everything, I invite you to a discussion down in the comment section and who knows, a part 2 of this article might be written. So, let’s try and answer these questions. 

Gaming style & reviewing

I recently finished Super Mario Odyssey. While it’s on my “write about” list, I haven’t written a review about it yet. Because I do have a big problem with it and that is the jumping controls.  Don’t get me wrong, they work amazingly, but I can’t for the life of me do those jumps using Cappy to go over further distances.

I have always been terrible at platforming. For my birthday, my best friend gifted me a copy of the game Celeste on Steam. A sort of Super Meat Boy inspired game where you climb a mountain while doing tricky jumping.

I didn’t get too far into the game before I got too frustrated with the game. I did enjoy myself and had a great time, but I haven’t played it too much since I closed it.

Now, how would I describe my gaming style? Well, I’m a jack of all trades. Since I’m a retro game collector, I play puzzle, racing, fighting, adventure, action, shooter… But, I don’t have a lot of genres I excel at. The genres I struggle the least with are puzzle & adventure games.

I also rarely to never play a game on hard mode. I can’t explain why, but I like to play games on normal mode and if I want more challenges, I play the game on hard mode. I think this is because I don’t want to get stuck in the game. I’m always afraid that when I play hard, I get stuck on a part that I have to do over and over again. I know that’s the point I’ll get frustrated and stop playing the game.

These are things that influence my review. Now, before we break open the whole Cuphead Demo thing again, where a reviewer was so bad at controlling the game; he was unable to get past the tutorial, I’ll always do research. For example, I wouldn’t criticize the Super Mario Odyssey controls too harshly because I wasn’t able to do the Cappy jump while almost every other reviewer was able to do it without an issue.

The gaming style influences the review for sure. That’s why I dislike reviewing games of the genres I rarely play. I only review games in genres I know I enjoy playing. Now, do I think that you need to be good at the game to review it? Well, that’s a tricky question. A very tricky question. More on that later in this article.

Objective vs subjective

Should you be objective or subjective in a game review? To be honest, I think you should be both. At least, that’s what I do in my reviews.

If I would be writing the Super Mario Odyssey review now, I would say something along the lines of: “While the jumping controls are excellent and work well, I wasn’t able to figure out how you do the dive and/or double jump with Cappy. Maybe I should look through the excellent list of tutorials again. Since I feel like I’m the only one who is unable to do that jump.”

If you stay 100% objective in a review, I dislike reading it. These reviews are playing it safe and don’t have any personality. I love reading and watching reviews because I want to know how somebody felt about a game.

Now, when does a review become a bad review? Well, I think I can explain my point with this example. What if I wrote this about the Cappy jump in Super Mario Odyssey: “The Cappy jump is too difficult to execute if you aren’t a master with the controls of the game. So, if you want to get these moons, you will have to make some frustrating jumps or grind for coins and buy them in the shops.” This is something nearing the edge of being a bad review.

I always recommend that you look up other reviews when you are creating your own. You can agree or disagree with what the masses are saying, but don’t assume things like: “you need to have mastered the controls of game X to execute Y.”

Now, does a reviewer need to be good at a game in order to be able to review it? Here are my two cents: sort of. I have seen various reviewers make the mistake of saying: “A game is easy or you can do X and Y to make things happen.” if they are very skilled with the game. This is a mistake because of one simple reason, not everyone has the same skill set as you.

Today I have been comforted by a perfect example. I showed my godchild how 3D adventure games work like Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. An amazing game that I know inside and out. A game I even dare speedrun here and there. Something that comes extremely naturally to me is running around in a 3D space and using Aa running start to jump over big pits. My godchild wasn’t able to make that jumps and had to try several times. Yet, she still enjoyed playing the game and wanted to see more of the adventure. And before you ask, I was 11 (or something like that) when I had beaten this game for the first time and my godchild is 15 at the moment of writing.

Now, would my godchild write a bad review of this game? Well, yes and no. She would complain about how strange the controls feel and how the enemies scare her in a 3D-space. I think those kinds of reviews aren’t bad reviews per se, to be honest. I don’t think that a reviewer needs to be able to be one of the best players to review the game but they shouldn’t be one of the worst players. I have actually declined a few review requests because I wasn’t able to even beat the first levels. I didn’t want to review those games since I felt I couldn’t do the game justice.

You should at least be able to perform all the basic mechanics of the game before you should review it. Otherwise, I think you shouldn’t review the game. Even when you write the review based on the input of other people who are good at the game or know more about the genre, you can have a malformed article, since the soul of the review isn’t there.

You can still enjoy a game even when you aren’t good at playing the game. Another perfect example is Pokémon. I just catch the Pokémon I like and use the same six throughout the whole adventure. I rarely swap my Pokémon for another one. When I have a water type in my party to beat the ground and fire, I’m happy. Even when it’s the weakest water type. This isn’t the best strategy and I always have a lot of trouble defeating the elite 4 or my friends in battle. Yet, I still enjoy Pokémon quite a lot. That much, that I still play it to this day. Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire and Gold & Silver are my favorite Pokémon games ever.

There is one huge thing that I haven’t mentioned throughout this whole thought exercise and that’s the goal of the review. In my opinion, you have two main types of reviews. One is the review to entertain and the other is the review to inform. Some people read reviews of games because they want to know if a game is good or not and/or if it’s something they want to play. Others read reviews because they enjoy reading them. I mostly fall in the latter category and I try to write for both categories.

Does the goal change the fact you need to be subjective and objective? No, not at all. The balance of the two changes. If you write a review to entertain, I feel like you can be more subjective. If you write a review to inform, you should be more objective.

Now, what’s a review to entertain and what’s a review to inform? That depends on the reader and which audience the writer is aiming at. I like people reading my content and coming back for other articles, so I try to make it as entertaining as possible. While I have seen reviews in the newspaper which are written to inform parents if the game is too violent or something of that nature. And the reader’s taste plays an important role here as well. I think that is self-explanatory.

Now, this was an interesting thought exercise. Should reviewers be good at a game? Well, the shouldn’t be the best player in the game but they shouldn’t be the worst. Should you stay 100% objective? No, some subjectivity in the article is good. So, what do you think? Let me know down in the comments. I’m rather curious about what you think and what you think about my opinion.

Thank you for reading my 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.

Preview: Shadow On Broadway (PC) ~ Let’s Solve This Demo!

Official website

Today we are going to talk about something quite unique. This game is created by a group of students and this is their first game. A more complete story can be read on their about page. The reason I decided to write an article about this game is because I tried to create games in the past with my friends. So, this story speaks to me. My games weren’t as fleshed out or developed as this game is. But, is this game any good or is this a project better left between friends and family of the developers? Let’s take an honest look at the game. I have beaten this demo three times, the first two levels are playable, so if you want the full game, you will have to follow them on Facebook for future updates. Also, as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of the article in the comment section down below.

Note: while I have beaten the game, I’m not going to label this as a review. I have chosen to label this as a preview since it’s a demo that shows off the first two levels of the game in an alpha stage.

A Mystery

In this game, you play as a P.I. named Jack and you must find Nancy. Together with Genevieve, you find a lead on which gang has Nancy. So, you can start to look for her.

While the setup for the story isn’t unique, what matters is how the story is written. The writing is okay. I enjoy detective/crime stories but I have read better-written stories. That’s not to say that this story is bad, the pacing is great but there are things left unexplained and things that don’t really “click” with the overall presentation.

Most of the story will be told while the next level loads. This will happen in nice black and white drawn panels. They are displayed like you are reading a visual novel. If you aren’t interested in the story, you can skip it by clicking after the level loaded. The voice acting will keep playing if you clicked until the cutscene transitioned into the level, but the comic book way of presenting the story won’t progress.

Speaking of the voice acting, it’s decent. There were a few things that could be improved in terms of the voice acting. Sometimes the voice acting lacked the emotion or the needed “punch”. To avoid spoilers, I won’t give specific examples but you will hear it once or twice. But then again, this might be me being too critical of a free game made by a group of people who just released their first game. Since the sound quality is amazing when it comes to the voice acting. It’s just that additional “punch” that is lacking.

There are also subtitles that show up on the top of your screen when the characters are talking. The only thing that annoyed me about them is the fact that a lot of subtitles are missing the “.” at the end of the sentence. You also get a sort of tutorial, where the keys are explained. These show up above the health bar in red while you hear the sound of pressing keys on a typewriter while letter per letter is shown.

This brings me to the sound design. The soundtrack of this game is good. The music is good and helps a lot building the atmosphere. The sound effects are overall good with a few exceptions. The sound effects of hitting enemies and them dying is just bad.

The sound of hitting the enemies is just annoying. When I heard it the first time, I just imagined a room full of them and them dying all at the same time. The sound of the enemies dying didn’t fit the enemies at all.

Solving it

The gameplay of this game is pretty good. You play either as Jack or Genevieve. Both have different abilities that are unique to them.

Jack can roll to dodge attacks and Genevieve has a few magical moves. Their moves are easy to get used too since the controls are responsive. Yet, I have a few complaints when it comes to the controls.

The first problem with the controls is something I’m annoyed by if games do this. I live in Belgium and we have an “AZERTY”-layout in our keyboards. Usually, the game rebinds the “WASD”-movement keys to “ZQSD” but this game doesn’t do that. Thankfully, I could use the arrow keys as a replacement but this made it awkward for me when I had to fight. Since my arms are so close to each other. Oh well.

This brings me right to my second problem. Because of that, some keys were too far from my fingers to use. This became a problem in the second level when I was playing around with the magic abilities of Genevieve.

And the final issue I have with the controls is the lack of a rebind option and the options menu. You can’t rebind the keys and the options menu for the “controls” only shows a few of the keys. This needs to be a bit more worked out.

This brings me to the menu system and the UI. Something I pay a lot of attention too. And in this game, the menu system is okay apart from two things. I think that when you open the pause menu, it should make the menu more the focus. Now, it’s just displayed on top of the level.  My second “issue” with the menu system is a very small one. But, why is there on every menu “return” used to return to the previous menu but in the sound menu it’s “back”?

A small suggestion for the sound menu is, when you mess around with the sliders, it would be nice if you hear a sample so you can tweak it to your liking.

Now, I’m sorry but the UI isn’t the prettiest of things in this game. Now, am I saying the art chosen for the HUD and everything is bad? No, not at all. The problem is that it doesn’t fit the presentation at all. It would make the game so much better if the HUD blends in with the presentation a bit more.

Close, but no cigar.

Now, it might seem that this game is bad or mediocre. The thing is, the game is still in its early stages and it shows. I think it’s a wise move of the developers to put the game online and get as much feedback as they can to improve their game.

Something I really liked about the demo was the presentation. The atmosphere of the game is just perfect. The filter put onto the gameplay is pretty good. Yet, it bugs me that I still need to complain about something here. The animation still needs a lot of work. The animation of the first boss special attack is unfinished and the animation of some scripted events aren’t present yet. Which is a shame, since the character models are well made and detailed. But without things like lip synching or some more movement of the characters, while those scripted events play out, it gives the game a cheap and unfinished feel.

Since this demo is quite short and can be beaten in a few minutes, this game doesn’t have a save feature. In fact, I didn’t need a save feature in this demo since I never came close to dying. The demo is easy, some puzzles might stump you for a bit but a seasoned puzzle gamer will blast through them.  This doesn’t mean that the puzzles are bad, they are easy to figure out and they don’t slow down the gameplay.

Like I touched upon before, in this game you must explore and investigate an area. In this game, you must solve puzzles and defeat enemies. I just talked about the puzzles, so let’s talk about the combat. The combat is pretty good, it’s too bad that there weren’t more challenging situations in the demo to experiment more with the combat system of the game.

If the developers would use these two levels as the opening of the full version of the game, my only hope is that they make those two levels longer. It’s better to have a couple of longer levels than a bunch of short levels. Since it allows for more creativity instead of an incoherent mess of ideas. That’s my opinion.

In one of my playthroughs, a glitch stopped me in my tracks. The camera froze just before the cutscene of the 2^nd boss but I could continue playing the game. Blindly. The glitch stopped me from pausing the game too. I tried to replicate it several times, but I can’t tell what caused it.

Thanks to this glitch, I learned that you can use your attacks during those scripted cutscenes. This was so nostalgic to me since you could do that in the old Tomb Raider games too.

I want to mention one other thing about the 2^nd boss too. Dress his arena a bit more. In the scripted cutscene, you show us walking to him while he is sitting on a stage in a theatre. But, when the fight starts, it almost looks like you are in an ordinary room.

If I may give a final suggestion before I go to my conclusion, I think there is a missed opportunity in the game. I think it would be a good idea if you put “Demo / Alpha version” somewhere in the main menu or as a message when you start the game. Since otherwise, people might think that this is going to reflect on the full version and that might put off potential players.

My conclusion for this game is a simple one to make. I think the developers Team Noir are working on something interesting here. The game looks promising but lacks a lot of polish. The HUD doesn’t fit the atmosphere, the animation needs some work, the story needs a bit more depth… but the fundamentals are there.

I have played a lot of good and bad free games in my gaming life and this is getting so close to the good category. I honestly think they released the demo too soon. This game could have benefitted from more polish. I have played far worse games where the game bugs out or the controls lock up. That doesn’t happen in this game. Apart from one glitch I couldn’t reproduce or trigger for a second time, everything works in this game like it’s supposed to be.

The content of this demo promises an interesting game. Developing a game is hard and requires a lot of work and skill. Looking at this demo, it’s obvious that the skill is already there. It just needs some more work.

That’s everything I wanted to talk about in this game/demo. 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 but until then have a great rest of your day and take care!

(12+) Waifu Fight: Dango Style (PC) ~ Featuring Priom

Official website

Some time ago, the developers from Waifu Fight Dango Style asked me to take a look at their game. So, today we are going to take a look at it. But, I wanted to do something special. I asked my friend Priom to also take a look at this game. He wrote his review over at Arpegi forum. I advise you to read his review first before you continue to read my article. So, in my article, I’m going to quote his opinion and then write mine. So, we are having a “fight” of our own. Before I try to force out a joke too much, let’s get right into the review of this game. Note, that I have put “12+” in the title. Since some visual elements aren’t for younger audiences. But, hey. Enough stalling. Let’s go reviewing. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of the article. One thing, I have to stress that this review isn’t a paid review!

Note: This game is still under development. So, the things said in this review might have been changed if an update gets released. We both played Alpha v2.18 for this review. 

Do you want to meet the developers of this game? They are going to be attending these cons: Corpus Christi Comic Con in Texas on 22nd – 23th July and San Japan X in Texas on 1st, 2nd and 3rd September.

Game Quicky: Galatic Warrior (Android) ~ This is for EARTH!

Official website

Today, I’m taking a look at a new Android game called Galatic Warrior. This game has been developed by two brothers from Spain. It started as a hobby and after seven months, this is their result. I have to applaud them since game development is hard. So, they mailed me and asked to give my opinion on their game, and as usual, I’m going to give my 100% full opinion on this game! Also, feel free to leave a comment on this article with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article. 

The good

For a game that’s developed by mostly 2 people, this game looks amazing. The visual presentation of this game is top notch. I really love the artwork in the game. The only minor complaint I have is that the current icon isn’t in pixel art.

The UI of this game is very easy to use. I only have one minor complaint about it. When I’m in the upgrade menu during gameplay, the buttons in the settings tab and the shop tab overflowed at the bottom. The other minor complaint I have is that in the credits menu, the Twitter icon looks ugly in my opinion due to the bird not looking right. But, that’s nitpicking in my opinion.

This game controls quite nice. The only advice I would give to the developers is making an option to flip the buttons. What I mean is that the joypad is on the right side and the attack buttons on the left side. I think left-handed people would be happy to see that feature.

This game is fun to play in short bursts. To play one quick round and try to earn some coins to upgrade your character. This game also auto-saves, so no worries about loosing progress. Your goal is to kill all enemies that come to you in waves. They get spawned in random places in the area. When you kill an enemy, you get coins that you can use for upgrading your character.

This game is free! This game has microtransactions, but in a surprising twist, the microtransactions aren’t way too expensive. For 8000 coins, you would pay 4€ in this version of the game. Compare that to other titles, and you would pay 20€ or more easily.

You also keep your gold when you die. That way you can grind yourself to better armor and gear in order to better survive the arena.

There aren’t too many ads in the game. This is a big plus in my book! I know that it’s one of the only ways to earn money with your product, but if you overuse it, gamers can get turned off. Thankfully, this isn’t an issue in this game.

This game is still in development, so that means that each negative I say can be improved in future versions. The developer told me that they aren’t only creating more content for the game but also working on improving the game.

This game has achievements that let you earn XP for your Google account. Neat. And the XP you get is quite a lot, and you can earn each achievement by playing the game.

The bad

The opening story always plays when you boot the game. I know you can skip it, but I think that this should play when you start a new game. And only once.

The difficulty in this game isn’t the best. In my playthrough, I wasn’t able to beat the first world after trying each level at least 20 or more times. I think the following suggestions would help to fix this issue:

• A pouch slot, where you can store either one health or mana bottle.
• Make the enemies do less damage in earlier waves. The further you are in the waves, the more damage the enemies do.
• Introduce a new type of enemies in a more “safe” environment. What I mean is that it should be the only enemy on screen. This way the player can get used to the behavior and the pattern of said enemy before mixing the enemy types.
• Archers are pretty OP in my opinion. I know you can roll out of the way to avoid getting shot, but when you are fighting, you can’t roll out of the way in time. Also, when you are walking towards them, they seem to be able to hit you at least once or twice. I think it would be fairer if they miss their shot in the early levels once or twice. Also, speaking about the archers, they can shoot in a diagonal line, but you can’t.
• Give the player a rest period after 5 waves. So, thoughts can be collected before he/she continues. Or at least, give them a chance to heal for eg 50% of their coins.

I know that this game should be hard, due to the story and setting of the game. The story goes like this:

“In year 2370, when fighting in the arena was universal sport, a boy from planet Earth dreams of fighting in it. He wants it since he was a child, he admire great fighters like his father. But since the day he became 18 years old… he could fight in the arena! It was time to carry out his dream…”

But, this shouldn’t mean that this game should have a very steep difficulty curve. Ease the player more into the game, so this way they get more interested in the game.

Something I think this game really lacks is a total wave counter. When I played the first level, I kept continuing in waves and I never know when the level would end.

Conclusion

So, should you play this game? In my opinion, yes! At the current version, the game lacks polish in the difficulty curve and some very minor issues. But, like I said, the developers are still creating more content for the game and they are going to improve it. So, the game can only improve from here. Also, it’s free! So, you don’t have anything to loose!

There is a lot of potential for this game to become a very good game. The current version (v0.212) I played isn’t even finished. Also, the development is quite active of this game, the last update releasing on the May 30th. I’m really curious to see how this game is going to develop. I’m going to keep an eye on this game and play it again when the game reached a future stage in development.

If you want to follow the development yourself, here are the links:

Google Play – Twitter – Facebook

In any case, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this article. 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!

Score (of this version): 3/5

First Impression: Prey (PC) ~ Pew Pew – Indian Style.

Wikipedia entry

Usually, I rarely play shooter games. There are the odd exceptions like TimeShift and Prey. I have never talked about this game haven’t I? That’s simply because I actually started playing it just recently. I got my copy when a friend of mine got this for his birthday but he doesn’t like to play shooters. Since he knew I collected games and played a lot of them, he gave it to me. I think I own this game for over 5-6 years now and I never played it. I’m quite surprised I didn’t, since yeah. It’s worthy to get an article! Anyways, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on my article and or the game in the comment section. 

Pew Pew – Indian style

So, why did I choose for the title “Pew Pew – Indian Style”? Since this game is at it’s core a shooter. The game also borrows some elements from horror since at certain moments it keeps you at the edge of your seat. But believe me, while there are some moments that hint at horror, it is no horror game.

That explains the first of the title, but not the second. It’s simply that this game also has an Indian theme. While there is in America a game called Police and Robber, back in the day I used to play Cowboy and Indian…. You guys too? Anyways, that’s why it’s so crazy to me that a shooting Indian is the main character in this game.

As the standpoint of a writer, the story is actually pretty neat. It’s a story of somebody who doesn’t want to accept his family roots and he wants to save his girlfriend after being kidnapped by aliens. There are some flaws in the consistency actually. Suddenly you can see the translation of the alien writing and the can suddenly speak English. Maybe this gets explained but I was rather confused when it happened. Oh, let’s not forget how our hero is able to suddenly fire alien weapons, quite strange.

But the story isn’t perfect. I feel that some characters aren’t used at their full potential. Also, there is barely any development in the characters as far as I have seen. And I have played I until somewhere in the middle of the game. I have just beaten a boss.

Alien scum

So, let’s look at the other things in this game apart from the characters. The setting of this game is an alien ship. I’m so pleased that they didn’t went for a stereo-typical design.

The creatures all look alien, a bit scary and out of this world. Sadly, they look humanoid. This is something that I don’t really like, since then my mind wonders off sometimes that it are mutated humans, like in Half-Life. Oh well, the curse of my creative mind I guess.

 The weapons are actually quite fun to use. While it’s not clear if some weapons do more damage then others, I just enjoy using them. The fact that they made such animated guns is just amazing.

The level design is extremely linear. You go from point A to B. But the game is challenging. Some obstacles come back and can catch you off guard quite easily. This game is one of the few games where I see that weaker enemies from earlier levels come back. This gave me the feeling that the ship was somewhat alive and that you were at an actually alien ship. The atmosphere can be easily broken if the enemies only get stronger and stronger. The game gets more difficult, but doesn’t only rely on new strong enemies, they get more crafty with them.

The gameplay is just one of a kind. There are quite a few games where you are able to change into someone to solve puzzles, but the take Prey took is quite unique. You can actually leave your body to attack enemies unseen. Also, barriers won’t stop you and you can’t die while in spirit mode.

I haven’t seen the game over screen yet, since if you are quick and you can shoot moving targets quite well, it’s impossible to die. Does this take the challenge away? Not really, it makes the game more accessible to non-veteran shooter players as myself.

Just wow

So, the game controls quite nicely. If you press the button, the happens on screen. Something that amazed me is that this game still recognizes the additional buttons on my gaming mouse. For a game this old, I wouldn’t have imagined it would work.

Also, in some parts you can walk on walls and such. The camera follows you excellent. Also, the voice acting in this segments is just excellent, it’s just how you would react yourself. One minor nitpick is that the voice for the grandfather sounds a bit too young to me. But that might be just me.

Through-out the game, you can play mini-games. When there is a slot machine in a bar, you can actually stop your adventure and play a round. That’s some attention to detail there.

Oh, I’m almost running out of time. The final thing I wanted to talk about is the music. It sets the mood so nicely. The orchestrated music makes me tense and on my toes. You would expect from horror games a more slow, creepy soundtrack. The soundtrack for this game is anything but. It gives a Two Steps From Hell-vibe. It’s quite nice.

In any case, I think I’m going to close off this article right here. I haven’t said everything I wanted about this game but I think these things are better said in the review. You may be sure that I will write a review of this game when I have beaten it. I’m enjoying this game quite a lot. I only wish they didn’t cancel the sequel. I just cross my fingers that they return one day to make a new game in the series.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed as much as I enjoyed writing it. Have a great rest of your day and hopefully until your next visit!

Types of gamers

Thanks Nhi for creating this.

Well, it’s a big pain if you always need to explain which games you like and which you don’t. You can lazily say that you are for example a casual gamer or a shooter guy. But if you think about it, there are a million names then. I started to look around and think about which types of gamers I think exist. Because this subject is mostly opinion based, feel free to give me your opinion. I’m not wrong, since it’s my opinion. I can be mistaken and needing to correct myself. That’s a totally different cookie to crumble. If I had to tell which type of gamer I am, I would have an issue. Be warned, the types of gamers I talk about are the main games they play, exceptions are always there. Also, let me know with which type you can relate the most. 

Type 1: Casual Free Timer

Finding a picture where they are both presented well was such a trouble.

You mostly see these gamers at a busstop or in a doctor’s waiting room. They have a tablet or a mobile to tap away on.

You also could find them on Facebook playing games where you need to reach easy objectives like switching jewels or collecting coins.

Many other types of gamers don’t recognize these people as gamers. Sadly enough, since they are gamers. But they don’t devote their lives to games. While it’s possible that they buy an app here and there, it’s not the end of the world for them if they can’t play a game.

They also sort of avoid other games that require an other device or controller. It’s possible that you can also find them with an emulator on their phone to mostly play handheld games from their childhood.

Type 2: Die Hard Fanboy

Some minecrafters and Call Of Duty players are a major example.

These gamers don’t care much about other games. They devote their whole life at mostly one game. Games that dare to be similar to their “holy” game are called names and they give them bad rep.

I’m not going to get ranty about the Call Of Duty players so spare me there please. I don’t do easy targets.

What I mean by that is that these type of gamers are the best troll bait you can get. Since they go out of their way to be the best in the game they play. Some go as far as bullying or making somebody feel bad if they are defeated.

They are also the living version of WikiPedia about their game. Some even dream to go working at the company which produces the series/game they love so much. They also get extremely excited as soon as a new title in their series is announced. They are also the first to rant when there is too much change in the sequel.

It’s also possible that they are a fanboy of one company. And they praise everything that they release. Since for them, everything their developers touch turns into an emptier wallet for the fanboys.

Type 3: Old school & retro gamers

Pixely retro-goodness?

This type of gamer doesn’t care about the time the game is released. They just play what ever catches their eye on various gaming websites and blogs.

For some retro gamers, the older the better. They are also the style of gamers that play in texture packs to make the game look older.

They always love the original and think that the new entries in a series are killing the series.

Many under them are big collectors, sometimes of one company or system. They start playing a game but sometimes don’t finish them since another game caught their interest.

Angry responses they give when somebody starts nagging about graphics. (I get even annoyed by graphic junkies) Since they don’t really care about that.

Most retro gamers want to know the ins and outs of the system so that they can explain what happened if a game isn’t working and that they maybe can fix it. Or replace something when it’s broken.

There is no real difference between old school and retro since they are pretty much the same.

Type 4: Platform/genre gamers

It feels great to be a gamer.

I don’t mean here people who play platform games. Not only that, platform and genre gamers are people who only play on one platform.

They see other consoles as less worthy to play and often say bad things about them. Pointing out their flaws or saying that their platform is better.

You can also have gamers who only play on consoles or handhelds.

PC gamers are a prime example. Devoted PC gamers will build their own PC and buy the PC version of a game even when there is a console version.

The genre gamers try to play as many games from one genre as they can. Most (in)famous of these guys are the shooter fans. They have loads upon loads of games of the same genre and are mostly extremely good at it.

They also have a certain game in the genre that is their absolute favorite. They often compare other games to the holy game of them.

Type 5: Mainstreamer

The mainstream guys are the ones who sometimes buy all the consoles. Buy all the things. A new console by Google? Oh, that doesn’t stop them. They go out and buy it.

They follow the latest gaming news and always want to play the newest of the newest. If it’s not new, they don’t play it. If it isn’t hyped, it’s no point in the schedule for them.

Mostly triple A title (expensive games to create. Big name games too.) games. Indy games they don’t care much about.

Wait wait, stop there.

Hold on a second, what am I doing here? Something doesn’t add up here. If I continue with this, I can find a piece of myself in each type. To me it’s extremely pointless of trying to see which types of gamers there are.

Many issues raise up. First, personal preference. You can like a series and it suddenly dies out. Then you can go from a mainstreamer to an old school gamer.

There are in fact, three main types of gamers. Mainstream, Old school and Casual. Since let’s face it, if you don’t follow the mainstream you either play games on Facebook or your mobile. If that’s not the case, you play games on your DS or other platforms.

Secondly, you can always merge types of gamers. You can be an oldschool NES gamer. Does this makes the two types of gamers actually one type?

Thirdly, the gaming market changes so quickly that this article can go out of date in matter of months if I truly continued in this fashion.

Before I go on a big rant, finally there is the issue of time. Yup, the older you get, the less time you get to play games sadly enough.

All in all, I think it’s silly to put gamers into groups. We all have one thing in common, we play games to pass our time and enjoy them. Some might devote more time on it then others. Some will even go blogging or/and collecting them.

Anyways, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments. But for now, NekoJonez out!