First Impression: Prey 2017 (PC – Steam) ~ This is the real one.

Wikipedia entry – Steam page

I love atmospheric shooters. Ever since I played games like Bioshock, Outlaws, Blood, Doom (2016) … I fell in love with shooters that are more than just your typical war or good versus evil shooters. One day, on a school friend’s birthday, he gave a pile of games he got for his birthday to me. It were a whole pile of shooters that he got as a present. He didn’t like shooters, and he knew I was a game collector. One of these games was the original Prey game. Now, that game ended on a cliffhanger and Prey 2 never released. Instead, 4 years ago now, we got a reboot of the franchise or a game with the same name called Prey. The only thing that those two have in common from what I can see is that they are both atmospheric fantasy shooters. But is this Prey 2017 game also good enough to be played, or should I have skipped this game? Well, let’s find out together in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of this article and/or the game.

The real one

In this game, you take on the role of Morgan Yu. A researcher in this alternate timeline where the Soviet Union found a special type of aliens. After doing some tests, you find out that your life is a lie and that you are living in a simulation. It doesn’t take long before the scary things start happening, and you find out that the base you are living was attacked. These attackers are quite powerful black blobs who can mimic anything. So, it’s up to Yu to find out what happened and to save the day if needed.

Now, trying to briefly explain what happens in the story if this game is extremely tricky since this game has a lot of lore and explaining too much might spoil some neat surprises the story takes. So, since I don’t like to spoil games in my articles, I’m not going to talk too much more about what happens in the story of this game.

As a big fan of the Bioshock franchise, I do have to say that I love the way this story is paced. I always wanted to play another game that resembles the gameplay formula but does a lot of things differently. Just like in Bioshock, this game takes you from area to solve puzzles, fight enemies and progress in the story. I felt right at home.

The voice acting in this game is excellent. I love how you can choose the gender of the main character, and they are both done by excellent actors. If you want to dive deeper into the voice actors, the page on Behind the Voice Actors lists them all quite nicely.

The atmosphere of this game combined with the amazing voice work really pulls me into the game. Like I said before, I felt right at home and I felt that my wish of playing another atmospheric shooter like the Bioshock games was coming true.

This game is a horror adventure shooter game. That’s the best way I can describe this game. I hesitate to call this game an RPG but then again, it has various elements of that. During your travels, you can find neuromods that can unlock abilities like being able to lift heavier things or resist more damage. You can compare it to the skill system that is used in the Tomb Raider reboot games.

Apart from this, you can also find junk lying around in this game that you can transform into usual materials you can use to craft more ammo or better weapons. But beware, all these items are in a shared inventory, together with your weapons, ammo, healing items and so on. Compare the inventory system to Resident Evil 4.

Exploration in outer space

Almost like DooM 2016, this game doesn’t really take place on Earth. It’s set in space, Talos I to be exact. Unlike DooM 2016, there are outer space sections in this game. Then again, DooM 2016 goes to hell and back. Anyways, you go through various locations during your adventure in this game, and you even have sections that are in outer space that gave a similar feeling to the underwater sections in Bioshock 2. But, I haven’t gotten far enough into the game to tell you what these “out door” sections are all about.

During this adventure, you can use a huge amount of weapons. So far, I have gotten three very different types of guns and various types of grenades. So, the most common enemies in this game are the mimics. These enemies can change into various objects in the space station. Thankfully, your weapons can be quite helpful. For example, your crossbow has reusable darts you can shoot when you suspect a certain object to be a mimic. Another example is the first gun you get in this game, the gloop gun. This gun can’t only stun mimics, but it can also be used to create ladders to climb walls.

I really like how open this game feels. With the various power ups you can unlock and the various uses of your weapons, this game feels like an open world game, while it is anything but. The levels/area’s are quite open and you can totally choose how to tackle them. So, I think the replay value in this game will be quite high all the while this game having a very linear story.

In terms of difficulty, this game isn’t the easiest nor the hardest game I have ever played. Depending on the things you unlock in the skill tree, this game can become easier. But don’t get me wrong, this game kept challenging me in quite unique ways. Quite often, I had to think outside the box to solve certain sections or to find secrets. I loved reading the various lore books scattered around the levels. They gave so much more depth to the story. Those were quite rewarding secrets to find.

I have to admit that I find this game quite addictive to play. This game feels like an amazing cross between amazing elements of great games like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, DooM, System Shock and Bioshock. And it works together so amazingly. I had to adjust the default control scheme a little to suit my AZERTY keyboard lay-out a bit more, but the fact that it recognizes my AZERTY keyboard made me smile. Speaking about the controls, they are excellent. I always felt in control of my character, and every death felt like my mistake and not the game cheating me out of it.

Peek-a-boo!

The AI of the enemies in this game is excellent. The amount of times I was chasing a mimic while it disappeared on me… for me having to turn the corner and suddenly a chair transforms back into a mimic and attacks me… Well, I can’t tell you how much something along those lines happened.

This brings me to the visual presentation of this game. I’m so glad that this game runs so fluently on my GTX 1050Ti, so I can experience the visuals of this game in all its glory. Just look at the screenshots I chose in this article. The environmental details in this game are amazing. Together with the excellent animations, moments like I described above work so well in this game. This space station really feels like it would have been a real work and living space for some, many people, making the atmosphere more realistic and more enjoyable.

I have jumped out of my chair several times while playing this game. Especially when the mimics suddenly attacked me or when a big mimic monster started to follow or attack me. But, there were also moments where I was extremely impressed on the presentation this game has. I think this game is going to hold up visually quite well in the future, it looks that good in my opinion.

But, what is an amazing visual presentation without sound design and music? I’m happy to say that this game also delivers on that front. The techno-dance / orchestral soundtrack of this game only adds to the atmosphere. The soundtrack is done by Mick Gordon together with Ben Crossbones, Matt Piershall and Raphaël Colantonio. These composers did an amazing job on this soundtrack and made some amazing soundtracks for other games in this own rights.

And yes, the sound effects are also amazing. I always feel like I have to be on my toes while strange noises fill the empty and scary hallways of the space station. I think I might repeat myself again here, but I felt on edge while playing this game, in the good way. Almost everything in this game falls into place just right for me. I actually had a hard time writing this article since I wanted to keep playing the game more than I felt like finishing this article.

So far, I have been praising this game quite a lot. Are there things that I didn’t like about this game? Sadly enough, there are a few of them. The first is that the crafting process of ammo is a bit silly since you can’t mutli craft. Seriously, when I want a ton of gloo gun ammo, I have to craft them one by one.

Secondly, the amount of healing items is a tad bit too low in this game. I felt that one mistake gets too harshly pushing. One time in the outer space section, I bumped into an explosive that took out almost all my health. So, back inside the station… A strong enemy is waiting for me. Oh well, this might have been my bad luck or more moments where you can heal would be nice.

And to be honest, that’s it in terms of negatives. I could complain about the game sometimes lagging a bit, but that’s mostly because my system meets the recommended specs quite well. My CPU is a lot stronger, but my GPU is just one generation newer.

Do I recommend this game? Oh heavens yes, I do. If you enjoy games like I mentioned in this article, shooters, horror games, Dead Space… I think this game is going to be one for you! When I bought this game, I knew that I was going to enjoy this game, but I didn’t expect the game exceeding my hype and hopes for the game. I can’t wait for my summer holidays to start since then I can start on finishing this amazing title. I’m also glad that I’m playing this game after the technical issues that this game had at the start with save games. According to howlongtobeat.com, this game is going to take around 40-ish hours to beat, and I currently am 5 hours in. So, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to be pulled into the mystery of the mimics and phantoms and what happened on that space station. But I’m not going to be the Prey… right?

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in a future article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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First Impression: Soul Warrior Merope (PC) ~ Featuring The Developer

Itch.io page – Developer Twitter – Trailer

Today I’m going to write a special article. Last year, a friend of mine created a game called “Soul Warrior Merope“. At first, he wanted to create this game for mobile platforms but due to some technical difficulties, the game has been released on PC. I promised him to write an article about the game to promote and here we are. I’m sorry mate that it took so long for me to get around to it, but better late than never. So, I think it would be quite fun to review this game interview style. Yes, interview style. So, I wrote a sort of review where I asked the developer to respond to why he created the game in a certain way and things of that nature. So, introducing Priom from HatCatGames, the developer of this game.

Before I begin, I have to give some disclosure. I have helped Priom testing a previous build of the game while he was developing the game. I only gave him some advice to improve the quality of his game. But, this was when he was still developing it for mobile platforms.

Editorial note: Some friends call me Neko, others call me Jonez. If Priom mentions Jonez, he means me.

Jonez: Before we start, feel free to introduce yourself Priom. Tell us a bit about yourself and why you started developing games. Have you created other games before Soul Warrior Merope? How long was the development process for the game?

Priom: Well, I’m Quazi Fahian Muntakim. Better known as Priom or Bear Gril if you only know me on select social media platforms. I’m currently a university student from Bangladesh and a hobbyist game dev.

As for how I got here, well, I think you bore witness to some of it, Jonez. I love video games always have. Fun fact, our family was one of the earliest to adopt a computer for consumer use in Bangladesh. So I always had a love for games. Especially Side-Scrollers and RPGs.

But I think the want to make my own game for others to enjoy. And to weave interesting stories that can only be done in this medium. I think that idea started in 2012 when one of our mutual friends introduced us to RPG MAKER. And that desire kept growing until I joined the GMTK Game Jam 2017 and felt like I wanted to make something that’s available for just about anyone to play!

Jonez: Visually, this game looks like it was created on the NES or with a sort of pixel-art style in mind. I quite like the visual style of the while. Why did you choose for this visual style? I noticed that the castle has a lot of darker tones and the outside is more colorful. Is the art style inspired by other games or franchises?

Priom: Well again, much like you, I love retro games. Some of my fondest memories come from the GBA, which also had a lot of ports for SNES games. So of course, I wanted to follow that style. Other than that I feel like pixel-art has become an art form in itself in recent times, rather than being a product of limited hardware. So choosing this particular style was a no-brainer.

As for inspiration, I can think of 2. Team Cherry’s “Hollow Knight” and Bombservice’s “Momodora” franchise. Both of them have a cutesy yet somewhat grim art-style which I absolutely adore. Other than that, I have had people mention the castle interiors remind them of “Prince of Persia” for the DOS. I wasn’t exactly trying to replicate that but perhaps it was a subconscious decision, hmm?

Jonez: The game tells a story about a young strong lady Merope looking for two missing children. A mysterious figure called Madd has something to do with it. So, are you in Madd’s castle or lair? How involved is the story, is it extremely present or does it take a backseat while the visuals and gameplay tell most of the story?

Priom: Well, since it is at the very start of the story. I guess I could tell you. The castle belonged to Arthur, the tiny glowing spirit following you around. But he and his people have been long dead. So Madd is using Arthur’s castle as a hideout.

As for the story, I was going for a bit of a free-fall route. The idea was to make an opening with a strong yet simple premise that I can add on to later. So the story’s presence is like that too. Where there’s a lot happening at the start after that you get to experience the story at your own pace while exploring the castle.

I’d like to mention that I do want to make games with more plot later on. I’ve actually gotten into the habit of having a notepad on my person and taking notes whenever ideas pop up.

Jonez: So, you can name your own price on Itch.IO for this game. Basically, the consumer can pay anything they want. Does this decision have a special reason?

Priom: The reason was simple. As this is the first game I made public like this I wanted as many people to play it as possible! It also provides an opportunity for more people to provide feedback. And I have been receiving useful feedback. So it all works out.

Jonez: In some cases, the game is a bit rough around the edges. Like hitboxes of objects only reacting to the tip of the sword or not having a jumping animation. Game development isn’t an easy task and there are so many things to keep in mind while creating a game. What did you focus on while developing?

Priom: Well, the game was rather *experimental* is how I’d put it. If there was anything I wanted to try that could help me further later on then I took it as being worth it. Which might have resulted in some things being a bit subpar than others I’d admit. But I’d like to think even the shortcomings are valuable learning experiences. You don’t realize certain things until others point them out or you relax your mind a bit.

Jonez: Now, I have a sort of related question. Let’s say that you had all the knowledge, time and resources to change a few things in the game. Which things would you change and why would you change them?

Priom: The checkpoint system. It would’ve gone bye-bye in exchange for a more standard system. It was fine at first but it managed to create more and more restrictions as the game got more fleshed out.

As for additions, I would probably just made the castle bigger with more visual lore added. I’d add a better catalog of info and a more informative UI. Along with lots of tweaks for the melee combat from experiences I gained from Game Jams I joined later down the line.

Jonez: The game plays like a Metroidvania, where you have to get new abilities and get stronger to progress. Was it easy to find mechanics that set your game apart like using lives for your special abilities or did you had to try a lot of ideas?

Priom: As I said. Soul Warrior Merope was born from the GMTK Game Jam 2017. Which was a 2-day jam where you have to make a game under a theme? The main theme of that jam a single mechanic with multiple functions. The other abilities kind of grew from that original idea.

Jonez: Let’s talk about the music and sound design. While there aren’t too many sound effects in the game, how did you decide which sound effects to include or not include?

Priom: I think there are 8 music tracks in total. An intro, 5 for the five major areas, the boss theme which has 3 variations based on which boss you’re fighting and a track used for a very specific ending. All of the tracks are long enough so that you’ll pass through the area before the songs loop too many times.

As for sound effects, I actually like to believe that you should have enough recognizable SFX that someone can make a guess as to what’s happening blindfolded. In that sense, I would’ve preferred to add more SFX if I had more time too. But what’s chosen is the ones that are absolutely necessary to convey what’s going on, granted as long as they don’t sound bad.

Jonez: So, you told me once that you were creating the game in YoYo Games’ GameMaker: Studio. Why did you choose that engine? Apart from that program, which tools did you use and for what? Did you run into any trouble?

Priom: Well, I think it was in 2015 or earlier when my younger brother told me that Game Maker Studio’s Standard Edition was free. I was still using RPG Maker at that time but found it rather restricting. I did not, however, have much coding knowledge since my educational curriculum at that time only involved some basic C++ and HTML. So, a programmable engine for free was a generally risk-free investment. After using it I found a YouTuber by the name of HeartBeast who has some amazing tutorials that I definitely recommend for people starting out. And well I kinda just got used to the engine and bought the pro version.

Other than that, I used Piskel & Paint.Net for the art, LMMS+Audacity for audio and my younger brother, who was responsible for some of the art such as the UI and menu icons, used Aseprite.

As for the issues we faced, as time’s going on Game Maker Studio 1.x is becoming more and more obsolete. Google’s new policy doesn’t allow 32-bit apps on the play store anymore which means the game couldn’t be put into the platform. Not to mention, it didn’t provide me with a proper description of why the Android export stopped functioning too. It’s still pretty good for PC games though.

Jonez: The game isn’t that easy, you really have to learn the various abilities of your character and explore around. How did you decide to balance the game?

Priom: Well, that was the reasoning behind letting the player explore around so many of the different areas from the get-go. The game is actually less linear than initial impressions may imply. The idea is that if you get stuck in a certain place it’s perfectly fine to explore another place and through the use of the abilities you have at that moment you might be able to take a completely different route than the intended route of the game.

Jonez: Do you have any plans for the game? Do you plan on updating the game with new content, bug fixes, improvements…?

Priom: Initially, after making the game public like this. I wanted to keep it like that. But I’ve mentioned on twitter recently that I haven’t coded anything in the engine for a while due to my PC being broken. So changing certain things based on all the responses I received might be good for me to get back on track. But that all is uncertain. I do have plans on making larger and more polished games using the valuable lessons learned from the experience of making Soul Warrior Merope though. So I’d like to end this by thanking everyone who decided to give the game a shot. Thank you!

End of the interview

And with that all said, I found this quite an enjoyable experience to write an article like this. Maybe if I have the time, I might write another one on a different game. In any case, I want to thank my buddy Priom quite a lot for giving me the chance to be a part of his dream and giving me the chance of writing this special article with him.

So, I highly recommend that you give this game a try. It might be a bit experimental and a bit rough around the edges but I honestly think that this won’t be his last project and any constructive feedback you send him, he can use to become an even better developer. On top of that, his very first game is pretty enjoyable and has quite a lot of charm.

And with that, 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 a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Review: Nintendo Pocket Football Club (3DS – eShop) ~ Let’s Play This Match

Official website

From time to time, I tweet about a match I’m watching or I just watched. I’m a casual soccer fan. When a game is shown on TV, I go to my grandfather to watch. Apart from that, I don’t follow a lot of soccer. When I saw a Nintendo soccer game a few years ago on store shelves, I was interested but never bought the game. Until a few weeks ago, when it’s was on sale in the Nintendo eShop and I bought it with the money I had left over. And now, it’s time that this game plays it’s most important match, the review match. I’ll be the referee of this game, so I hope you are ready! If you want to shout something to the referee; especially your opinion on the game and/or my decisions in this match, go ahead in the comments! 

The goals

So, this game scores a few goals. Let’s take a look at what goals this game scored.

In the first few minutes, this game scored with the visual presentation of this game. The artwork and the sprites blend together quite well. While the animation during the matches can be somewhat lacking sometimes; I think that changing them would destroy the charm of the presentation. That makes the 1-0 for the game.

The game scores a 2-0 with the overall gameplay during matches. Each match can go in many different directions. One time, I didn’t save after a match, restarted the game and replayed the same match. I did this five times, each time I got a different outcome. You will never know what you will get. During the matches, the game can be very tense. It’s a balancing act in when to substitute players, changing tactics and hoping for the best. There is an additional layer of strategy since you can only change your strategy when you substitute your players or during the break period of the match. And during the break period, you have more options to change your strategy so your decision will count.

Not only that, you need to balance your team as well. The 3-0 goes to the training system. This is done with trainer cards, which I will expand more on later. But, you need to make sure that you don’t lose players since they rarely played or played too much. To manage your team well and who knows, you might be able to transfer more expensive players to your team.

The 4-0 is scored by the random element in this game, called the trainer cards. During a match, you gain a certain amount of random player cards. You can use these player cards to improve your players. If you combine them, you can make special combos which improve the player’s stats more than if you would use them separately. Also, you need to think about what stats you need to improve. For example, you don’t need to learn a keeper how to dribble, since he almost never needs to dribble. But, it’s a great idea to improve the jump stat of your keeper.

Surprisingly, the game scores a 5-0 with the sound design. Personally, I wish that there was music playing during the matches, on the other hand, I’m glad that they didn’t. Since it adds to the realism of the game. The only complaint I have about the sound design is that the goal scoring jingle doesn’t always play when your team scores when you are the “away” team. Minor nitpick really.

The game also scores a 6-0 with an interesting in-game manual. The game also explains some terms for players who aren’t that well known with soccer. Neat.

The 7-0 is a goal with the customization of the game. You can design the shirts of your team, the logo, and the name. When you want to redesign or rename your team, you can do that when you want, when you aren’t playing a match.

The kicks to the woodwork

So, this game could have scored more points but they missed a few chances in this game. Let me start with the first one.

The backing system is where they had a missed opportunity. While I really like the concept, I’m really displeased with the fact that you loose backing when you play either a draw or lose a game. Personally, I think that you shouldn’t lose backing when you draw a game. Also, I think that you shouldn’t lose backing when you lose a game on certain occasions. For example, when you lose 1-0 from a team that is placed in the highest league when you are in the lowest league, that’s a big accomplishment of your team that shouldn’t go unnoticed, since, in the real world, fans would be happy with the play of their lower ranked team.

The game also hits the goal post with the trainer cards. While they are quite interesting to use, you don’t have a list of what cards make a combo. When you select a card, other cards will sparkle if you used them to make a combo in the past. But, when you have never made that combo, you won’t see them sparkle. Also, on my playthroughs, I noticed that I get a lot of the same cards each and every match.

Something that isn’t present is an autosave feature. Which can be a be a blessing and a curse. To me, it’s a blessing since I can restart a game when I’m not happy with the outcome of a match. But this can be considered cheating too…

The goals of the opponent

Sadly enough, the game got a few goals in their own goal as well. Let me talk about those.

The 7-1 is scored due to the lacking controls sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this game has unuseable controls in any sense of the word. But, sometimes the controls are so picky that you lose a lot of time with it.

For example, you need to confirm when you change players from a location in the field. Also, on the screen where you decide to swap players, the “L” button bugs out sometimes. When you go the bench with using the down arrow, the prompt of the “L” button changes when I’m at the 3rd player.

The 7-2 is scored because the UI lacks some information sometimes. While the UI is very well put together, I really wish I was able to see the stats of the player I wanted to replace. But, you can only see the stats of the player your cursor is on. In addition to that, when you use the “Y” button to swap players, you can’t see the stats of the players.

Outside of the matches, the UI can be annoying sometimes. I think that the biggest issue is that the game lacks some information screens. Like, how many times a player scored in the “players to watch” screen. Or on the screen where the players ran, you can’t see where the keepers ran.

The 7-3 is scored because I think that the offside rule is programmed a bit strangely. I’m under the impression that when a ball is going towards another player and when a player is running offside, the fault of offside is given. This is very frustrating.

After that, this game suffered another goal; making the score 7-4. This is due to the lack of options for the game. You can’t change the length of a match. When you leave a match early, you don’t get a lot of player cards and most of the times, your team automatically loses. Also, you can’t see in the history of a rival team to see how strong other players are and who to watch out for. You need to base your judgement on the stats of the players that you can only see at the start of a match. Oh well.

It can be very repetitive when you need to sit through each and every match. The 7-5 is made by the lack of “simulating” the match or just give you the result.

But, the biggest flaw of this game is the 7-6, that’s the extremely harsh difficulty curve. What I mean here is that you don’t get enough information out of the game to improve your team and find out where your team is lacking. Minusworld says that’s it’s an uphill battle sometimes.

The game can be very difficult and unforgiving sometimes, to the point that I wish there was a rollback feature. Sadly enough, this isn’t present.

The 7-7 is scored because I feel that the game doesn’t explain some mechanics enough. How do you make a player not have the “balanced” play status? What’s the best combination for a midfielder? Those things are for you to find out and you don’t get any hints for the game about this. This should have been handled better.

And that concludes the match, now it’s time to give the final analysis of this game.

Final analysis

So, due to the structure of this review, I won’t be listing off the positives and negatives like I usually do in other reviews. I’m going to close off this review with my overall thoughts on this game.

I think that this game isn’t great nor bad. The game sits somewhere in the middle for me. If I would need to give points, this game gets a 65/100 for me. While I expected more about this game, I really had a fun time trying to survive with my team and try to find out what works and what doesn’t work.

Each playthrough, you learn more about the pitfalls of the game and you learn more mechanics. While the game can be repetitive from time to time, watching those matches of your team makes the game exciting.

A very important thing to remember is something that MinusWorld also said in his article about this game. You need to remember that you aren’t 100% in control of your team. You can set the general strategy and such, but you don’t play the matches themselves. If you look at this game more as a sort of casual-ish football club manager sim than a football game, I think you will get more enjoyment out of this game.

This isn’t a bad game, but the harsh difficulty and the lack of explaining certain game mechanics can be a real deal breaker for some players. Give the demo a chance and decide then if the game is for you or not.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed it 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!