Author: M. A. Ligocki

  • Review: Foreign Sun (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Foreign Sun (Nintendo Switch)

    Foreign Sun had spelunking back and forth between a settlement, a sewer system, and a competing settlement; running around shanking anyone foolish enough to cross beam-sabers with me; getting ready for another attempt at the boss. Turns out I still wasn’t ready enough.

    I spawned back in to find the settlement I’d been buying my mods at raised to the ground, its inhabitants butchered by some black-clad, mask wearing weirdos who were also wiping out anything breathing in the competing settlement. I imagine they did the boss in as well?

    Did this happen because I failed to beat the boss too many times? Because of a prisoner I helped free a little earlier in the game? Questions whirled through my mind but I carried on. And just when I felt the need for a map, lo and behold there was an NPC selling them for the low, low cost of my soul. What could possibly go wrong, right?

    Choices with consequences – a bold claim many games make yet very few achieve. Even fewer with consequences that make a discernible difference to the game world around you.

    It’s not difficult to understand why that doesn’t happen all that often. Games are complex beasts, full of varied systems already struggling to work together in harmony. But every so often, a game comes out of left field that makes you go; “Wait? What just happened?”

    And that is exactly what Foreign Sun made me do. Now I love replaying games that I enjoyed, but I rarely have the urge to restart them or play a New Game+ as soon as I’d finished it. But even before I was at the halfway point through Foreign Sun‘s world, I already found myself wondering “What if?”

    What if I’d beaten that boss on my first or even second attempt? What if I hadn’t visited that suspicious prisoner? What if I hadn’t sold my soul just for a quick way to figure out where I was or had yet to visit? What if?

    So much so that I’d considered starting a new save file just to see how much of a difference my decisions would make. And that’s when I knew Foreign Sun had me hooked. Even with the tough boss fights and the more than a few moments of feeling like I was butting my head against a wall trying to figure out where to go next. Yeah, Foreign Sun captured me, so much so that I’m still thinking about it. Still wondering “what if”?

    Developed by Final Scene dev, Foreign Sun is both the spiritual successor and rework of the developers previous game, Biomass. What started out as a visual update has evolved into it’s own pilgrimage to the Lighthouse.

    Set in a flooded, post-apocalyptic world, where survivors eke out a miserable existence in the drowning remains of skyscrapers, Foreign Sun is a Souls-vania swimming in a variety of influences. From odd mutations to cyberpunk-ish leanings, it’s a melting pot of ideas all rounded out with a heavy Spaghetti Western feel. And as a pilgrim with no name hoping to reach The Lighthouse and cross the Meridian Gate, your journey across a new, wild world is only just beginning.

    With choice being such a huge part of the narrative, seeing everything Foreign Sun has to offer will require multiple playthroughs. The game seems tailor made for it in essence, with multiple endings that reveal more about the world, change characters, and open up new routes and boss fights.

    With that requiring a fair amount of time investment, it’s a good thing the game is both intriguing and plays well. In essence the basics of Souls-likes is here, with light and heavy attacks, ranged attacks, and mods that upgrade your health and stamina. There are machines to reconstitute at when you die, where you also buy your mods from, but stat specific upgrades don’t exist, making this a more streamlined experience in the Souls genre.

    You can block and parry attacks, but what you can block and parry is based around the type of attack used. Some attacks, like AOEs, can’t be blocked. Others will drain your stamina bar and a little bit of your health. Some attacks can even parry bullets back at enemies.

    Close combat is the name of the game here, with bouts designed around weapon clashing. In function it’s a form of parry, but one that needs to be hit back-to-back to drain the enemy’s posture, leaving them open to one hit kills for regular enemies and large damage dealers to bosses. With all your melee weapons plasma-based, the Star Wars inspiration is clear and quite awesome. Timing is paramount, but when you do get the flow right and clash multiple sword attacks together in one sequence, it’s a spectacular-looking (and sounding) sight.

    The combat system is simple to use but has enough nuance so that it is hard to master while paying attention to all the small details that can turn the tide in a fight. Clash weapons too often with not enough success and you can overheat, leaving you open to attacks. Sneak up on enemies and you can do a one hit kill. Regardless, paying attention is highly important as the combat flow in Foreign Sun is incredibly fast. You’re going to need speedy reflexes here to survive fights. Even more so in boss fights.

    It does bring me to one of Foreign Sun‘s flaws: it’s just a little too hard for its own good at times. Bosses can be very challenging and even standard enemies can wreck you in two or three moves. Even with health mods, you get wiped out very quickly. I think the game needs a little more tweaking on the difficulty and damage dealing mechanics, especially for bosses where it can feel like you’ve hit a roadblock until you finally manage to beat them.

    Atmosphere is one thing that Foreign Sun excels at. The fantastic soundtrack combines wonderfully with the ominous, washed-out, sun-drenched visuals and dark, mutant infested corridors. Even with NPCs around, there’s a feeling that you’re a lone gunslinger on a long, lonely journey, reinforcing that Western feeling. And dripping over it all, a sense of melancholy and despair that permeates the whole journey. The games audio is also wonderful. Beam weapons sound fantastic – even more so when you’re clashing at high speed.

    Games that come around and really surprise you are increasingly rare. Vanishingly rare are the ones that make oft used mechanics feel fresh again while also surprising you. For its few faults – namely the high difficulty and obscure moments on where to go next – Foreign Sun is one of those games. It’s an atmospheric, lovingly crafted, melancholic Souls-vania with haunting, hidden depths that I can recommend to all indie fans.

    Pros:

    • Choices you make have weight
    • Fun, fast and deep combat
    • Fantastic atmosphere
    • Great soundtrack

    Cons:

    • Some hefty difficulty spikes
    • Can feel obscure at times where progression is concerned

    Score: 9/10

    Foreign Sun was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC.

  • Review: Skautfold: Moonless Night (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Skautfold: Moonless Night (Nintendo Switch)

    Welcome to the 1900’s. Welcome to the Angelic Empire of Britannia. Welcome to Skautfold: Moonless Knight. And welcome to the end of the world.

    If that sounds like a heavy opening, that’s because it is. And that’s because Skautfold, as a whole, is as well. Set during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the Skautfold series is a full-on Cthulhu Mythos, Lovecraftian, Cosmic Horror action-RPG franchise that, sadly, you probably never heard of. Initially released for PC in 2020, Moonless Knight is now allowing console owners to pit the Knights of the Empire against eldritch horrors with this penultimate chapter that propels the series towards its apocalyptic conclusion.

    For this entry, the series switches location from the horror-plagued streets of London to the shores of Japan and its Dawn Empire. As part of a delegation sent to negotiate with the Emperor in response to the looming end of the world, you take on the role of Gray, 2nd Knight of the Empire. Alas, things do not go well, and the negotiations are sabotaged by a group of Eldritch God worshipping Lunatics. Taking shelter in the Imperial Palace, it becomes your job to route the cultists, win the Emperor’s trust and delve into the legends of the Oda clan and what lies hidden beneath the Palace – possibly the only thing capable of saving the remnants of humanity.

    Like the Darksiders games, the Skautfold series has played around with different game genres for each instalment. From survival-horror to Metroidvanias, the developer has explored diverse mechanics and perspectives. What has remained true for each instalment is the heavy cosmic horror focus along with RPG and Souls-like elements. And that remains true for Moonless Knight as well.

    Moonless Knight ditches the survival-horror mechanics of the original, instead focusing on gameplay mechanics and styles from other games in the series, creating an isometric action RPG with Souls-like mechanics. Unlike most action-RPG’s however, the Skautfold games focus firmly on storytelling while taking a step back to focus on almost hardcore, tactical Souls-like combat. There’s a bit of Metroid and Legend of Zelda mechanics thrown in for good measure to create a melting pot of strangely addictive gameplay.

    The story itself is great and paints a pretty, or not so pretty, picture of the stakes here at the end of the world. It’s certainly one of the games highlights, filled with plenty of dialogue and enough creatures to make the Lovecraftian fan in you happy. From Night-Gaunts that operate shops, to the Mi-Go running a smithy, to certain frozen statues highlighting the form of a certain Mighty Messenger, there’s a veritable who’s-who of the Mythos here for the aficionado.

    One of the nice things about the Skautfold series is that you can jump into the games at any point. While the story, albeit focusing on different protagonists, is continuous, you don’t have to have played the previous game in the series. And the same goes for Moonless Knight. There’s more than enough exposition for you to figure out what’s going on but I would recommend picking up on this series from the very beginning, if you haven’t already.

    The world is a little bit Metroidvania in design, with plenty of locations blocked off by skills you may not have, and alternate routes and paths that need to be unlocked. Exploration is important on your first run through an area as there are upgrade materials, money, and skill increases scattered across the environment or found in chests. There is a level of repetition that does set in as you do travel across the same areas a bit too much. For me, this aspect of the game felt less like a Metroidvania and more like a dungeon-crawler when taking into account the back and forth and room layouts that add to the labyrinthine and maze-like feel of the environments.

    Skautfold: Moonless Knight makes use of one of my favourite ways to level up skills in a game and that is, by using them. Blocking, dodging, and your weapon are improved by using them. It’s a really satisfying progression mechanic that does a great job of showcasing your increasing prowess. You can also find skill upgrades in chests and at the games merchant. Your weapons, which range from a standard sword to dual wielded blades, can also be further levelled at the smithy. This not only increases your damage output but, eventually, completely changes the weapons form.

    Empowering you further are relics scattered across the environment. These not only add another tool to your arsenal but also help in navigating the environment. These relics also come into their own in boss fights with specific ones working better against some bosses than others. Finally, on the offense scale, you’re saddled with a familiar to help you in combat that also levels up as it does its job.

    Where Moonless Knight really shines, and where it got its hooks into me, is in the combat. The various rooms may not be overly populated, but almost every fight is a tactical contest for survival even as you get stronger. This is due to the game favouring positioning, perfect dashes, and perfect blocks to keep you alive, and it’s all driven by the Guard mechanic.

    Moonless Knight employs a Guard bar, which is a combination of a stamina bar and a shield. All of your actions drain some of the Guard bar, whether that’s swinging a sword, blocking, or dashing. At the same time, the bar protects you from damage and once it’s empty you start taking damage to your health. Each fight is a taught affair of managing this bar while paying attention to the enemy tells to determine whether or not they’re going to block or attack.

    Damaging an enemy means having to chew through their Guard bar before you can rain hell down on their health. While the bar recharges on its own, blocking at the right time will recharge the bar while pulling the same amount out of your opponent’s bar. The Guard bar is also tied to your health: the lower your health, the lower the Guard bar.

    The best part about this system is that the enemies, even bosses, are governed by it as well. So, while bosses may have inflated health and guard bars, and you have to learn their attack patterns along with which relic is best for the encounter, the combat system and encounters never feel cheap. Ultimately it comes down to you increasing your strength while reading every encounter carefully because, even as you level up, a string of poor moves can punish you all the same. And if you read the room right, you can walk through it without a scratch.

    While I liked Moonless Knight‘s pixel-art visuals, especially the death animations as enemies are cleaved in twain amidst gushes of blood, it does bring me to one of my few issues with the game. And that is that in certain maps, specifically the Imperial Palace, I found it hard to tell the difference between walls, support pillars, and the floor. This is down to everything been constructed from wood and there was more than one moment where I had to stop and wonder whether or not that was a wall or floor before me.

    My other issue is the room design becomes more and more labyrinthine the further you delve beneath the Imperial Palace. It’s fun enough for exploration, but once you have to start running through the same area multiple times, especially if you want to get somewhere quickly, navigating it becomes a repetitive chore.

    That said, Skautfold: Moonless Knight is a wonderfully fun delve into an alternate, Cthulhu Mythos-infected world that builds upon its earlier instalments. The dungeon-delving nature of the game may get repetitive at times, but it’s made up for with a great story and some truly fun and infectious combat mechanics.

    Pros:

    • Good Cthulhu Mythos inspired story
    • Fun, gripping combat mechanics
    • Levelling up abilities through use is always a great mechanic

    Cons:

    • Some tile-sets make it difficult to discern walls from floors
    • The maze-like aspect of later areas gets tiring to navigate

    Score: 7/10

    Skautfold: Moonless Knight was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.

  • Review: City Hunter (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: City Hunter (Nintendo Switch)

    My introduction to Ryo Saeba’s adventures came not through Tsukasa Hojo’s original City Hunter manga or the anime series or even the movies, but rather through the 1993 Jackie Chan City Hunter live-action adaptation. A movie a I absolutely adore. So much so that it’s my second favourite Jackie Chan movie. It was that adaptation that got me to delve deeper into the previous adventures of the lecherous private investigator and his underground City Hunter business.

    Now, after thirty-five years, the only official licensed game of the classic manga – not counting Ryo’s appearance in other crossover games – has been brought back to modern consoles and PCs with a somewhat slightly remastered version courtesy of Red Art Games and the original developers SUNSOFT. This also marks the games official debut outside of Japan.

    City Hunter Nintendo Switch 2

    Originally released in 1990 for the PC Engine – or the TurboGrafx-16 in the US – City Hunter is a mostly traditional side-scrolling action game. It’s highly reminiscent of Taito’s Elevator Action, Ocean Software and Eurocom’s Lethal Weapon, and just about any other retro side-scroller. You run to the left and right of the screen, shooting endless enemy spawns as they come towards you from off-screen while trying to complete your objectives.

    Across the three missions the game has for you, you’ll find yourself running and gunning through office hallways, warehouses, labs, and industrial areas. Each of the levels are full of doors leading to other areas or to empty rooms and there’s a lot of back and forth between sections. To the developer’s credit, they’ve tried to add some depth to the game by implementing NPC’s that either update your objectives, heal you, or give you a new weapon. This does change the missions into a bit of a run around as you hunt down someone or something to get that next keycard but that does very little to mix up the base gameplay of shooting the ever-loving snot out of anything that happens to wander on-screen.

    City Hunter Nintendo Switch

    Like most retro games, City Hunter is very much a product of its time. And of licensed titles of the time as well. Which is to say that while the action is fun enough for the short time it will take you to blast through this – in a perfunctory sort of way – there just isn’t enough done with the City Hunter license to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. Sure, Ryo can get health back in the presence of a scantily clad woman, and the anime’s iconic closing theme is here for the opening, but the bulk of what makes City Hunter City Hunter simply isn’t here – specifically the jokes.

    This version of City Hunter is less of a remake or remaster as much as it is a straight-forward port of a thirty-five-year-old game. Which is nothing to be disappointed with where preservation and saving obscure retro titles is concerned, but it could have done with much more love than what few features have been added that are now standard for retro title remasters. It also comes with all of the original’s problems too. From flickering sprites to unfair enemy spawns that always result in cheap hits (specifically when you’re exiting a room), to lacklustre background art design that makes each mission look identical, this really is the same game it’s always been.

    City Hunter Gallery

    What’s new to this revival version spans the gamut of what is now mandatory for the preservation of old games.

    Visually, the game supports CRT filters and multiple aspect ratios, specifically 4/3, widescreen, pixel perfect, and native resolution. The visuals themselves look exactly the same as the original games, featuring some nice 2D animations – though they might be a tad cleaner than the original release.

    There are three flavours of gameplay: original, enhanced, and hard. Original speaks for itself and it’s the game as it was back in 1990. The Enhanced version is meant to have refined enemy behaviour, more responsive controls, and improved gameplay but for the life of me, I couldn’t pick up any major differences between this mode and the original. Hard is, as it implies, stronger enemies and a higher difficulty which should suite those wanting get every ounce they can out of the game when tackling a new scenario.

    As is now super popular across retro game compilations, there’s a nifty Rewind feature that let’s you undo your mistakes. Sadly, it doesn’t do anything to nullify those cheap hits from enemies that spawn right outside a door that you’re exiting. You can also save and load your progress at anytime which is really great when you need a breather and is vastly superior to the original password continue system.

    City Hunter Bunny Girls

    Finally, there’s my favourite feature of any retro title: the Gallery. While not as robust as I would have liked, City Hunter’s Gallery lets you take a look at key artwork, anime stills, the original games CD Box and inlays and, finally, listen to all of the music.

    When compared to a lot of the recent retro collections, City Hunter is a little on the anemic side. It’s not the longest retro title and hasn’t aged all that well in the gameplay department, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an appreciated effort in making sure that another relatively obscure game doesn’t disappear into the annals of gaming history. As such, it’s a game that hardcore retro collectors and fans of the original game, manga, or anime will get the most out of.

    Pros:

    • City Hunter finally receives a worldwide release
    • The crisp animations still hold up
    • The anime’s closing musical track is included

    Cons:

    • A slightly barebones retro release
    • Repetitive stage design
    • Design bugs lead to cheap hits

    Score: 6/10

    City Hunter was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 1/2 using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PS5 and PC.

  • Review: The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest (Nintendo Switch)

    The mind, as they say, is a terrible thing to waste. Even more so if you’re the creative type. And that’s the problem facing Fletcher, a burned-out game developer who needs to reignite that creative spark. When a hypnotherapy session goes wrong, Fletcher’s world goes full meta as he finds himself trapped within the labyrinth of his own mind and his current creation. The only way out is to spelunk through the job that has bled into his subconscious and defeat the demons within holding him prisoner.

    As such, Fletcher’s quest puts you in the shoes of a game developer who has to reckon with his own profession by living through what he’s designed. And in this case, it’s a 2D platforming title with vague hints of Metroidvania-ness at its core. As is developer Elden Pixels go-to through the course of their career, The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest is a retro-inspired platformer that could have easily stepped out of the past with its, initially, challenging design.

    Fletcher’s story is full of bizarre, fourth-wall breaking humour that intends to poke fun at the game design process. Quirks, bugs, poor design, it’s all fodder for the developers to use to elicit a smile through this surreal adventure. Not all of the humour lands, but when it does, it’s a nice slice of grin-worthy meta-commentary. But the humour is even better when those poor design choices are thrown at you as obstacles to be overcome. Be warned though, there’s some serious adult language and jokes on display here, from pixellated nudity to Samuel L. Jackson level of profanity bombs. If you’re thinking of handing this one over to the kids, you may want to reign that horse in for a bit.

    Visually, The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest is a bright and almost cheerfully colourful game, despite the adult subject matter. The game uses a lovely looking pixel art style that is both charming and wonderfully animated from the characters to the backgrounds. Between the character and enemy designs and the stage design, it very much resembles bright, colourful, children’s cartoons from the days of yore. There are wonderful little details scattered across the place, from the squinty eyes that peak out of boxes until you get close to them, to the lovely boss designs such as a giant surfboarding shark with colour changing trunks.

    The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest Shark Boss

    The games audio is no slouch either. Sound effects are great, but it’s the games soundtrack that comes in kicking with a pop cowboy/Western themed tune that will worm its way into your ear long after you’ve stopped playing. The boss music is really great though and represent the best tunes in the game.

    The gameplay is where The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest will, most likely, polarise many gamers. It is, initially, quite tough and a bit on the unbalanced side.

    Progression through the game uses some Metroidvania design, with a world map and layout that’s evocative of so many games in the genre and areas blocked off until you gain new abilities by beating a boss. But that’s as far as the Metroidvania impact goes as the game is broken up into small, self-contained challenge rooms that are a mixture of platforming, combat and timing to get through. Each room is like a little mini-puzzle in survival that requires fast reflexes along with the patience required to work out the patterns in enemy movement and attacks while making sure you don’t get skewered by the many sharp environmental objects, like tacks, that are littering the world.

    The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest Gameplay

    Adding onto the game’s difficulty is the use of light procedural generation. Now while the overall map shape remains the same and certain specific rooms and gauntlets remain in place, the bulk of the room layouts will differ both between new runs and, even, reloads. While procedural generation is supposed to give you the feel of a new run each time, it’s not long before you’ll see rooms repeating, even if they’re not in the same place you originally encountered them.

    It’s that procedural generation though that really throws the games difficulty all over the place. The randomisation means that you’re just as likely to run through one, long series of frustrating rooms to reach the next save point as much as a whole bunch of easy ones. Worse yet, are the areas where you’re hitting a weird combination of hard and easy rooms that completely destroys any sense of finely-tuned difficulty progression. Stepping out from a save room could land you in a really hard room, followed up by two easy rooms and then three hard or so. I’m sure you get the point by now. Now while this keeps you on your toes, and you have to be because you can only take two hits before dying, it does the game no favours early on and set me up with a sense of increasing frustration by the time I hit the first boss.

    The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest Randomised Rooms

    Here’s the thing though. There’s a point, right after that first boss actually, that The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest just clicked for me. Perhaps it was earning the double jump which made navigating the rooms faster and with a little more finesse that did it. Or getting a second bullet so you could fire two shots at once instead of just one and waiting till you’re bullet either hit something or disappeared off-screen before you could fire another. Either way, this is when the game really came alive for me and, dare I say it, became a whole lot more fun.

    Sure, the procedural generation and its difficulty skewing dynamic sticks around. And yeah, the multi-phase boss fights can be a bit much, but somehow, this is when it just starts feeling right. There’s a sense of finding your groove once you understand the mechanics at play that makes even the umpteenth death just another learning experience. And believe me, I died quite a bit.

    The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest Premise

    If it’s all still a bit much, there is an assist mode available. There’s no description in-game on what this does, but it appears to me that with it enabled, when you die, instead of respawning at the last save point, you respawn at the entrance of the room you died in. Super useful for sure, even though save rooms are liberally placed across the map and you can warp from one save room to another. This just streamlines moving forward and not having to hassle with reaching where you died when the last place you saved at was five rooms ago.

    If you can overlook the procedural generation and its issues and get on board with a truly ancient slice of game design, The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest is a lovely looking and fun old-school, arcade platformer with a humourous narrative that just needed a little bit more fine-tuning to reach greatness.

    Pros:

    • Nice, colourful pixel art style
    • Good soundtrack
    • Fun gameplay once you get used to the mechanics
    • Memorable bosses

    Cons:

    • Procedural generation messes with the difficulty curve
    • Very frustrating initially

    Score: 7/10

    The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 1/2 using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC.

  • Review: Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster (Nintendo Switch)

    There has to be a point where, when considering the work done by Nightdive Studios in remastering, we should immediately acknowledge the stunning work the company is doing in updating and preserving classic games – some of which were considered lost to time – and making them playable for modern machines. Using their custom KEX Engine, they haven’t just made the games playable on modern hardware, but updated them as well with better visuals, quality of life changes, behind the scenes extras – if those production goodies are still available – and even going as far as creating new expansions, in conjunction with other developers, for certain games. Their track record is nothing short of… wait for it… legendary.

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster Intro

    Not ones to rest on their laurels, Nightdive are constantly jumping into forgotten gaming libraries and pulling out gems to work on; usually multiple titles at a time. Right now, we’re going to focus on one of their latest efforts: the Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster.

    Outlaws might be one of those games you have heard of. Lord knows it’s flown well under my radar for many years, even though it has an illustrious pedigree behind it.

    And that pedigree? None other than LucasArts themselves.

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster Intro Cutscene

    While most will remember LucasArts for their classic point-and-click adventure games and numerous Star Wars titles (with the enduring legacy of Monkey Island still going strong), but their FPS legacy didn’t begin and end with Star Wars: Dark Forces. Two years after LucasArts gave us one of the best Star War FPS’s, they used the same engine to power a nostalgic trip into the Wild West with Outlaws.

    Heavily inspired by Westerns, particularly of the Spaghetti kind, Outlaws was a surprisingly narrative heavy FPS that took us through Frontier towns and tumbleweed-filled gulches across a lawless land of bandits and land barons. A year later, the free expansion, Handful of Missions, was released to further extend our stay in the lawless frontier. Although Outlaws wasn’t a major commercial success, it managed to gain a cult following as well, along with community-created level packs, and is regarded as the first game to introduce a sniper zoom on weapons and reload animations.

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster Visuals

    Like most Westerns, this is a story about revenge. When retired Marshall James Anderson’s wife is killed and his daughter kidnapped by the minions of a ruthless land baron, the good Marshall sets out to get his daughter back and deliver frontier justice to the men that took her.

    While this may be a simple story, Outlaws tells it with a surprising amount of cut scenes and dialogue, chronicling Anderson’s bloody journey across the West. LucasArts tells that story with serious cinematic flair, featuring a wonderful opening sequence heavily inspired by Spaghetti Westerns and some fantastic lingering landscape shots. It doesn’t hurt either that the surprisingly dark story is rounded out with a soundtrack that fits right up there with the best Westerns.

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster Gunfight

    The audio design is great overall, with wonderful sound effects for gunfire and reloads – though I did get a little tired of hearing the same; “You’re outnumbered Marshall!” sound byte playing throughout the campaign.

    Featuring a combination of hidden secrets, large multilayered maps, light environmental puzzles, and fun shooting, Outlaws plays like any number of FPS’s from the 1990’s. It may not feature the smartest of enemies, but they fill the role of shooting gallery goons well enough. The Wild, Wild West motif, coupled with the game stunning score, goes  a long way to giving Outlaws its own flavour. Overly complex it may not be, but it is incredibly stylish and fun.

    There are an assortment of items to pick up, from the typical key variants to open locked doors, to oil canisters and throwing knives for combat. Most weapons have an awesome alternate attack. For the double-barrel shotgun, as an example, it’s the classic ability to fire either one round at a time or both. My favourite, however, was the revolver alternate, which lets you quick fire with a fanning technique – that’s slapping the hammer back repeatedly with the palm of your hand. If you’ve watched enough Westerns, you’ll have seen that move often enough.

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster Alternate Fire Modes

    If I have one nitpick about the games combat, it would be that important enemies, or bosses if you will, often aren’t all that discernible from regular enemies beyond how much damage they take to go down. More than once I had a level end as I capped someone, only to have a cut scene play showing that I’d just taken down a wanted target when I thought I was blasting just another cattle thief.

    The Handful of Missions expansion, meanwhile, is just that: a handful of missions. Only they take you back into the events that made Anderson the Marshall that he becomes. Across the Civil War battlefield, to hunting down and trying to bring in wanted felons alive, the expansion is a nice continuation of the game for those wanting more High Plains shenanigans.

    As for Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster itself? Well, what is there to say? Nightdive have once again worked their magic to make this the best version of the game to play without spoiling the original vision. Most noticeable, of course, are the reworked, high-resolution visuals which gives the game a lovely, crisp look. You can switch between the original visuals and the new with the push of a button – a feature I always love – but this is one time I certainly do prefer the reworked art assets.

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster River Level

    There’s also cross-play multiplayer, both online and locally, and a Vault for you to take a gander at the games production artwork, script, and development documents. And if you love the soundtrack as much as I do, you can listen to each of the games tracks in the Vault as well. Rounding out the package are a set of Achievements to be earned.

    Overall, Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster is an excellent remaster of a really fun Western-themed shooter long-relegated to a clunky and buggy PC version. It may not be visually or mechanically complex by today’s standards, but it’s still a great FPS featuring a strong narrative and a fantastic soundtrack, that still proves that sometimes, simplicity is the best design.

    Pros:

    • Reworked textures and higher resolution
    • Can switch between original and reworked visuals at any time
    • Excellent soundtrack
    • Fun gameplay

    Cons:

    • Some overused sound bytes

    Score: 8/10

    Outlaws + Handful of Missions Remaster was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 1/2 using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, and PS4/PS5.

  • Review: Kaku: Ancient Seal (Xbox Series)

    Review: Kaku: Ancient Seal (Xbox Series)

    While Kaku: Ancient Seals bills itself as an open-world, action-adventure RPG, in reality – and spiritually – it feels a lot closer to the PS2- and PS3-era of large zone, action-platformers, like Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank. Just with a sprinkling of modern ARPG mechanics. Make no mistake, that’s no slight against Kaku and developer BINGOBELL’s aspirations, as Kaku certainly goes big in just about every way it possibly can.

    Set during some primeval era, Kaku throws you into the shoes of young Kaku himself. A quest to capture a flying piggy leads him to a bigger quest to save the world. Kaku is the anointed one and the future of the world – now split into four continents by way of a catastrophe – needs some serious saving. Kaku has to use his newly acquired godly powers and return elemental balance to the world.

    Kaku: Ancient Seals Story

    And Kaku’s quest isn’t just big, it’s massive. Because Kaku’s world is massive. There are four continents for you to run across to set things right in, populated by primeval creatures of all sorts, like savage tribes and elemental Lords that need to be taken down to right the elemental imbalance. All of which is rounded out by side-quests to take on, both brain teasing and environmental puzzles to solve, platforming challenges and puzzles, and lots and lots of combat.

    If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Like many open-world games, Kaku perhaps throws a little too much at you to do, a lot of which becomes repetitive by the time you’ve reached the second continent and the play-style and story-flow is established. So while I did eventually wear myself out on finding shrine keys and collecting all the various items you need for upgrades and crafting, the exploration and platforming still managed to keep me hooked. And a lot of that is down to the games world design.

    Kaku: Ancient Seals Visuals

    Each continent is home to a different biome, from wet marshlands to dry-as-bone deserts and freezing glaciers, providing a nice variety of gorgeous locales to explore. Because each area is so large, Kaku is dotted with teleportation pillars for you to unlock via a fun puzzle game that has you sliding blocks to certain positions within a set number of moves.

    Although you can approach any continent at any time (even jumping between them during missions), Kaku’s environments are less open-world and more open-zone, as each continent is broken up into different regions and temples that you load into. This is a good idea as it helps to make each area more navigable, while providing greater variation and themes. Invisible walls do, unfortunately, pop up when you reach the edge of the games map, which both looks and feels awkward.

    The platforming, which is one of the games highlights for me, is very traditional, with the ability to double-jump and air dash to navigate the pitfalls around you. We’re talking moving platforms, spiked and fire platforms, and switches you need to hit while riding platforms that are moving or falling apart. In short, it’s fairly traditional stuff for 3D platformers but it is done well.

    Kaku: Ancient Seals Traps

    Combat is where you start to see more modern mechanics with enemies that have massive health and stun bars. Kaku has a light attack, an arm guard attack that damages the stun bar, and a wide range of combat skills to unlock, These range from more melee attacks, ranged attacks, and what is, essentially, a super mode that heals you while giving you access to godly weapons and damage output for short durations.

    The said, combat is easily the weakest aspect for me. The enemies being bullet sponges are just one of the many combat issues that eventually had me kiting enemies from a distance when I could, or just avoiding them completely when I could. A lot of that comes down to Kaku’s combat speed and animations that feel too slow coming out of or transitioning between attacks. When you combine Kaku’s slow move-set with enemy attacks that briefly stun you and many enemy attacks, especially projectiles, that are really fast, all too often you get stuck in stun-lock loops and pummelled in mobs. Enemies also do pretty hefty damage, even when you start to upgrade Kaku’s stats.

    I also found a fair amount of cheap enemy placement in environments that require lots of platforming with deadly drops beneath you. Large enemies on small ledges with little room to manoeuvre is just a giant no.

    Kaku: Ancient Seals Traps Boss Fight

    Boss fights tend to go big with giant enemies that have multiple health bars and attack patterns you need to pay attention to. While they’re generally more fun to engage than common mobs, they’re still plagued by the same combat issues which can be aggravating when you’ve taken a boss down to it’s last health bar, only to be stun-locked and knocked off a platform to your instant death, and have to restart the entire fight.

    One thing you’re going to have to do is upgrade to keep Kaku alive. If you don’t, you’ll quickly watch your health disappear in a flash while dishing out single points of damage to groups of enemies.

    There are a fair amount of crafting materials to gather: from shards that drop from enemies you use to upgrade your base abilities, to various ores and plants for healing and inventory expansion. There’s a very light crafting system for cooking beneficial foods and creating elemental ammo for your slingshot. Armour and weapons can’t be crafted or upgraded; instead, they’re dropped from bosses or picked up from chests and have buffs associated with them The most you can do is socket them with ruins that add incremental perks like ten percent more health.

    What you really want to do is rapidly upgrade Kaku’s inventory limit, how much food he can carry, his health, stamina, attack, and defence – everything really. Attack, defence, and item limits are easily upgraded in a sort of spirit realm, where you channel crafting items into unlocking higher tiers of damage and defence. Kaku’s skill tree has a variety of useful attacks and you can also only upgrade them here (at launch, the skill tree video is bugged though as it plays the same video for each of Kaku’s skills instead of showing the correct one per skill).

    Following in Breath of The Wilds footsteps, there are small puzzle-platforming temples in the spirit realm you need to complete to upgrade health and stamina. These formed some of my favourite moments in Kaku, as they required you to use the bulk of your platforming skills in bite-sized moments that didn’t outstay their welcome.

    That said, upgrading doesn’t make the combat and it’s surprising difficulty, any better but it does make fights shorter. Even when I’d upgraded Kaku’s damage output to its fourth tier, I still preferred to avoid fighting unless I had no other choice.

    Kaku: Ancient Seals Xbox Series X

    Returning to the positives, Kaku is a mostly gorgeous game. While I don’t think the cut-scenes do a great job of showcasing this, the scenery when you’re exploring Kaku’s world are, oftentimes, quite stunning. There’s a wonderfully massive sense of scale captured by the environment design that always made it a  pleasure for me to see what was around the next bend.

    While Kaku has some issues and kid-friendly visuals that belie its high combat difficulty (and the occasional frustrating platforming moment), BINGOBELLS adventure still manages to feel like a fun return to action-platformers of old. If you can overlook the frustrating combat system that could do with some fine-tuning, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in its primeval world.

    Pros:

    • A massive multi-zoned world to explore
    • Beautiful environments that create an epic sense of scale
    • Fun platforming, puzzling, and exploration gameplay

    Cons:

    • The combat feels overly difficult and mechanics need fine-tuning
    • Some poor/cheap enemy placement
    • Repetitive area side-quests and tasks for upgrades

    Score: 7/10

    Kaku: Ancient Seals was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5/Pro.

  • Review: Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian (Nintendo Switch)

    My journey into Gusts long-running, cozy Atelier RPG’s may have started a little late in the series life but in that time, I’ve come to be enamoured with the games. Each game usually tells a standalone story and falls firmly into the JRPG bracket. However, what set the Atelier series apart for me was its focus on stories that rarely had anything to do with saving the world and instead focused on saving or making your community better. It’s a series that’s about friendship, community, and the journeys you go on together, one in which alchemy makes the journey that much better. And it’s a concept I’ve found to be thoroughly refreshing.

    Later games in the series have delved into larger themes beyond the borders of mere community, with some even changing tone and direction. With twenty-seven titles in the series, some change has to come along somewhere down the line. But it’s always the games based around characters and friendship that bring me back to this enchanting series. And with Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian, Gust have brought the series back to it’s cozy and uplifting roots.

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian Cutscenes

    Set after the events of Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and The Polar Night Liberator – sadly a mobile and PC Gatcha title that reached the end of its life earlier this year – The Red Alchemist throws you into the shoes of dual protagonists, Rias and Slade, who come together by chance in the depths of some ancient ruins. Their discovery of an Atelier and Rias’ gift of a natural born alchemist puts them on a long journey together to restore their hometown of Hallfein, which was damaged in a mysterious incident some twelve years before.

    While tragedy and the makings of something darker add depth to our heroes, The Red Alchemist firmly places its storytelling boots in what got me interested in the Atelier games to begin with: the light-hearted and heartfelt desire to make life better for others. Slade may be on a journey to decipher his father’s secrets, but Rias embraces the role of becoming a better alchemist so that she can use that skill to improve the lives of others.

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian Storytelling

    Along the way, they’re joined by an assortment of amusing characters. New party members join and there are various cameos of major characters from other Atelier games, popping up to keep the story light-hearted and fun. There’s a lot of cut-scenes, fully voiced dialogue, and story bits here that keep the game progressing at a steady enough pace and it’s all wonderfully engaging.

    That story is backed up with some addictive gameplay that made it hard to put The Red Alchemist down. There are a whole bunch of systems at play here, from turn-based battles, to harvesting mechanics and even running a shop – all of which you’re going to have to contend with. For the most part, the developers have made most of the systems easy to understand and link them together towards one of your main goals: rebuilding Hallfein.

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian Cast

    When you first get to Hallfein, damaged buildings and mostly empty streets meet your arrival, but as you begin to fix the place up, new shops open, more people appear outdoors, and more customers come to your shop. It’s a nice visual showcase and satisfying feedback for all your hard work.

    Rias has a store in town that you can run and upgrade over the course of the adventure. The sales you make benefit one of Hallfein’s industries, from mining to nature. Running the store is easy peasy, especially if you hire fairies to do all the work for you. You can let them choose which products to sell if you don’t want to spend time picking them yourself, and you can customise the interior with wallpaper and products that boost sales.

    All of the products you sell can be found in the field through the games harvesting mechanics – which are just as easy. You will need to craft new harvesting tools to harvest from specific sources or get rarer and higher-level resources, but harvesting is as simple as pressing the action button and watching your character whack the resources into existence with one swing.

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian Exploration

    Combat is one of the games other joys. It’s traditional turn-based JRPG fare but with just enough depth to keep battles interesting and fun. There’s a timeline you can use to plan your attacks, which is very useful as sections of the timeline come with buffs that can affect you or the enemies. Interrupting enemy attacks can delay them but also let one of your party members make use of that buff attribute.

    There’s a front- and backline for party members and you can use technique points built up in battle to initiate combo moves that swaps their places at the end of the turn. Backline party member don’t take part in battles otherwise, but everyone receives experience from combat regardless.

    Once unlocked and a gauge has built up, you get an automatic combo attack by frontline party members that uses special attacks and, along with the swop-out mechanic, typically decimates foes in beautifully explosive displays. Even with Field and Dungeon bosses, The Red Alchemists combat may be too easy for some.

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian Combat System

    Personally, I loved the difficulty curve of the game (which gets a bit harder during the latter half) and the ease with which foes were decimated. It kept fights short, interesting, and fun, while making it feel like I was never grinding. In fact, this is one of The Red Alchemists strengths. Grinding, whether for XP or items, never feels like a grind at all because the game is just such joyous breezy fun to play.

    Alchemy does present a fair amount of complexity that I feel the game didn’t explain as well as it could have. There’s a lot to take in when trying to craft the perfect item. From colour-coded items that increase an items level, to various effects that can be crafted into it, along with a transmutation function that can be used to change one item to another. There’s a fair amount to wrap your head around, especially when you get a request to craft an item you don’t have a recipe for yet.

    One area that The Red Alchemist does drop the ball a bit on – along with showing its mobile roots – are the games Dimensional Path dungeons. These areas are procedurally generated rooms that take you across different floors of enemies to find more fairies, chests, items, and story snippets for Slade. They accomplish the goal of giving you more enemies and repeatable bosses to fight, but don’t have the strength of a handcrafted dungeon.

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian Alchemy System

    From a performance and visual perspective, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian runs at a stable and smooth 30fps on the original Nintendo Switch. I encountered no performance issues, but that smooth performance does come at the cost of the visuals. Make no mistake, The Red Alchemist does have its visual flair, especially in the character designs, but the visuals have a fuzzy, un-aliased look to them that we’ve come to expect from a lot of multiplatform Nintendo Switch games.

    With Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian, Gust have taken the Atelier series back to its cozy RPG roots featuring fun and endearing characters. And they’ve backed up those themes with highly addictive and fun gameplay that made the game incredibly hard to put down. Fans of the Atelier series will love Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian, while those looking for a new RPG series to dive into can do no wrong by starting with this stunning gem.

    Pros:

    • Fun gameplay that’s hard to put down
    • Endearing characters
    • Harvesting ingredients is easy
    • Surprising depth to the alchemy system

    Cons:

    • Procedurally-generated dungeons
    • Slightly fuzzy visuals on Nintendo Switch

    Score: 9/10

    Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox Series S|X, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

  • Review: Castle of Heart: Retold (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Castle of Heart: Retold (Nintendo Switch)

    With the original Castle of Heart, released back in 2018 as a Switch exclusive, developer 7Levels decided that they wanted to bring back really old-school action-platforming to the market. One that gave us the difficulty of yesteryear wrapped in a shiny new hardware package. Castle of Heart managed to earn a reputation for being quite difficult, but not always for the right reasons.

    Seven years on, 7Levels have half remastered, half remade Castle of Heart with a significant number of improvements, both visually and behind the scenes, to make this the definitive version. And they haven’t skimped on the difficulty in the process.

    Castle of Heart’s story is one we’ve heard countless times in the fantasy genre. An evil wizard gains too much power through shady, otherworldly dealings and begins to subjugate the world. One priestess dares to stand against him, earning the wizard’s wrath. And, when a brave knight stands up to the wizard to protect the priestess, the wizard abducts the priestess and turns everyone else into stone. But, don’t you know it, thanks to the priestess’ tear, the knight is only partly transformed. Grabbing his sword, he goes on a mission to rescue the priestess, slay the wizard, and, hopefully, undo the curse before it does him in fully.

    As the brave knight, you have twenty visually distinct levels to survive, along with a handful of bosses to slay on the way to saving your love and yourself. While the knight is mobile, the curse is still active, slowly turning him to stone as you fight your way to salvation. Health pick-ups from the environment and defeated enemies will restore a portion of your health, but you’re always on a strict time limit, watching it whittle away as you charge across each stage. And charge you will have to, if you want to make it to the end before crumbling into stone.

    As the knight, you can dual-wield weapons for extra damage, block attacks, dodge roll out of the way, and jump high enough to put most superheroes to shame. All of these skills you’ll need to chain together on a regular basis. You’ll want to dual wield, whether that’s with swords or crossbows, to deal extra damage because every little bit of health you save makes the difference between life and death.

    Castle of Heart: Retold Stone Mechanic

    With your health always depleting, losing too much of it causes your arm to shatter and eventually the rest of your body follows suite. Getting through enemy encounters and environmental traps as quickly as possible is therefore paramount to your survival. The stages are littered with health pickups and enemies drop slivers of health on death, while hitting a checkpoint restores you fully before the next section. However, between the damage dealt by enemies – which increases in later stages – and how long it may take to get through an encounter, you always feel like you’re on the back-foot. Even with gems hidden throughout each stage that increases your total health, it always feels like you’re one step away from crumbling to dust. The sense of urgency is very real.

    That said, enemy encounters have been retooled. Unblockable attacks now have a visual prompt, and early enemies don’t take as many swings to put down. You can get caught between them though, which makes for some troublesome times but, thankfully, your dodge roll also knocks down enemies to create some valuable breathing room. Enemy placement can be a bit of a pain and feel unfair at times, such as projectile enemies at the lip of a jump you need to reach or flying enemies just going about their business near a rope you need to swing on.

    Castle of Heart: Retold Platforming

    Stages are very linear, but the developers build upon each environmental design after they’ve been introduced in early levels. Before long, you’ll be swinging across large gaps to land on collapsing platforms, jumping over spikes, and leaping into a group of enemies. These are some of the best moments in the game and require you to be absolutely on point to make it through. There’s no room for even a tiny misstep in these sequences.

    That said, instant death haunts you on just about every step of your journey. Mistime a swing or jump too late from those floorboards, it’s curtains and right back to the last checkpoint. To mitigate the number of instant deaths in the game, the developers have liberally placed checkpoints around the stages and give you infinite lives. There’s no game over screen here, just another chance to get it right. While that is appreciated, it doesn’t mitigate how unforgiving certain instant death platforming sequences feel, such as having to make it to the top of a flooding mine before the water catches you were even a split-second delay in your response time determines whether or not you succeed.

    Castle of Heart: Retold Set-pieces

    Castle of Heart: Retold has been rebuilt with better textures and materials, improved meshes and geometry, and significant lighting improvements. It is, quite simply, gorgeous with much of the game falling into the screenshot worthy status. The 3D world with a 2.5D perspective making for a stunning spectacle, with multiple layers of scenery adding tons of depth to each location. Animations have been improved as well, for both our hero knight and the various enemies you’ll encounter, making the game feel closer to a remake than a remaster at times.

    While it seems that the bulk of the original’s issues have been addressed – such as combat difficulty, control issues, visual quality, and a complete script rewrite – Castle of Heart: Retold still has some issues that keep it from old-school greatness.

    While enemies may be visually distinct, with each area introducing new ones that fit the biome, attack patterns are repeated. Later encounters less about learning and exploiting new move-sets, and more about dealing with more incoming damage. This may make it easier to use the same tricks to defeat them, but between the escalating damage and your life draining away, I found it made more sense to just jump over enemies and rush past those that I could.

    Castle of Heart: Retold Updated Visuals

    Another issue that increases the difficulty is a common problem that most multi-layered 2D games suffer from: foreground elements obstructing the action. That happens in quite a bit in Castle of Heart: Retold, especially in the sliding sequences. Yes, it makes the game look beautiful, but when that tree trunk or rock in the foreground hides the edge of a cliff or drop from a roof at any point in a long platforming sequence, it can feel infuriating.

    On the whole, Castle of Heart: Retold is a great remake/remaster of an existing game that focuses on fixing the original releases problems, while bringing back old-school action-platformer difficulty. With a beautiful visual upgrade and plenty of tense set-pieces, it will suit those in the mood for significant challenge from their platformers.

    Pros:

    • A gorgeous visual remake
    • Some nicely constructed platforming sequences
    • The turning-to-stone premise keeps you on the edge of your seat

    Cons:

    • Some sequences can be very frustrating, especially when the environment can obscure your view
    • Later enemies just feel like reskins with the same move-set

    Score: 7/10

    Castle of Heart: Retold was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

  • Review: Space Adventure Cobra – The Awakening (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Space Adventure Cobra – The Awakening (Nintendo Switch)

    Space Adventure Cobra… there’s a name I’ve not heard since the IP peaked in late ’90s. And, since we have to go that far back to the last time it was relevant, it’s best to give you a little rundown on what Space Adventure Cobra is (in addition to reviewing the videogame that you’re currently checking out).

    Back in 1978, Buichi Terasawa created the manga known as Cobra, a pulpy, SF action-adventure series that placed you in the shoes of treasure hunter and lovable wise-cracking rogue, Cobra. Cobra, along with his partner in crime, Lady Armaroid, travelled the galaxy searching for adventure and putting a stop to evil doers. To escape his enemies, the Space Pirates Guild, Cobra faked his death, changed his face, and erased his memory. But you can’t hide forever, and the past always catches up. Cobra once again finds himself going up against the Space Pirates Guild across a galaxy of adventure.

    Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening Anime Cutscenes

    In 1982, the manga was adapted into the classic Space Cobra anime, followed up by a movie, two OVA’s in the ’90s, a reboot attempt in 2010, and merchandising that included videogames. The original anime was a colourful extravaganza. Terasawa’s creation was inspired by a variety of media, most notably samurai movies, Spaghetti Westerns, and a healthy dose of James Bond. It’s a melting pot of ideas that shines through in its Saturday Morning Cartoon look. Make no mistake, as with many older anime and manga, darker themes were just as present in the source material and show, but they never diminished Cobra’s cavalier and playful pulp spirit.

    And that spirit has made the transition into the videogame as well, along with its bright, shiny, cartoon-esque visuals and design. Now, despite taking its name from the movie, which I do think sounds better, Space Adventure Cobra – The Awakening faithfully adapts the first twelve episodes of the original 1982 anime. Licensed IPs are notoriously difficult to get right and the amount of poor licensed videogames, including those still filling up landfills, is a testament to that. But Space Adventure Cobra bucks that trend with a game that is not only faithful to the source material, but a really fun adaptation of it.

    Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening Switch Combat

    As Cobra, you’ll be tearing through the anime’s story in a classic side-scrolling action-platformer. For a game based on an old IP, the developers have used old-school gameplay designs to bring Cobra’s antics to digital life. You’ll be running, jumping, air-dashing, and sliding your way across a variety of locales full of environmental hazards and enemies galore. More often than not, you’ll be expected to do all this while avoiding the oodles of blaster fire coming your way. It makes for a pretty challenging game right out of the gate.

    But Cobra isn’t useless in the combat department, In fact, he’s downright formidable. Keeping in line with the source materials Bond-ian inspiration, Cobra has a variety of gadgets at his disposal to even the odds. From a grappling hook to exploding cigars, and a revolver that disables shields, you have all the tools you need to take down the endless goons of the Space Pirates Guild. But it’s Cobras signature weapon, the Psychogun, that is your greatest ally.

    The Psychogun – basically a laser rifle that takes the place of Cobra’s left arm – is powered by the user’s mental strength and, along with Cobra’s life, one of the most coveted prizes in the Space Cobra universe. You have a high fire rate, a charged shot, and (the cream of the crop) thought controlled shots that let you guide the Psychoguns beam to its destination, usually through multiple opponents. Finally, you can build up a super meter that lets you unleash the Psychogun in one explosive, screen-clearing shot that decimates every visible enemy.

    Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening Animations

    One of the aspects that I really enjoyed is how the Psychogun turn encounters into small little puzzles that challenge you to clear out a section of enemies efficiently with the controlled shot. You can run and gun you way through each encounter in the most basic manner, but I don’t recommend this. At least not on the default difficulty which puts up a pretty stiff fight, especially in the later stages where caution and exploiting all of your abilities is the key to survival.

    Depth has been added to the game and it’s stages by making sure there are plenty of power-ups and unlockables scattered across the environment. These range from items that increase your health and damage output, to artwork that can be used to customise Cobra’s spaceship, The Turtle. Some areas can only be reached once you’ve gotten the requisite gadget and this adds replay value for those looking to 100% stages.

    Credit goes to the developers who have managed to keep this formula feeling fresh throughout the games runtime by varying up the way in which levels are laid out, so you rarely feel like you’ve just done the same thing you did only fifteen minutes ago (even though you have). There are multiple bosses to fight in each level – some of which do get overused – and they rely on the tried-and-true method of pattern recognition plus fast player reflexes.

    Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening Switch Visuals

    I really love the way in which the developers have integrated the anime into the game as well. Each of the levels is presented like a TV episode, with original clips providing all the story meat. But, instead of just having a clip at the beginning or end of a mission, multiple clips play throughout each level, with each gameplay sequence leading in and out of the clip, thus making each section feel like a natural extension of the anime. And there’s a lot of video here, so if you’re not familiar with the anime and its art style, consider your education taken care off.

    Watching the anime clips, I’d also say that the original Space Cobra anime seems to have aged well. The animation is great, the voice acting is excellent, and it captures the golden age of anime and its spirit wonderfully. Enough so that I’m tempted to jump back into the show again.

    The games 3D visuals and environment design follow on nicely from the anime’s look. Each new are feels pleasantly distinct and the animation does a lot of work helping Cobra’s personality shine through in his moves. I particularly love the animation for dodging an attack in mid-air – the one with Cobra doing the splits to avoid whatever was coming his way. For the most part performance is pretty good on the original Nintendo Switch, but there are some moments of slowdown when things get too hectic and in a few spots where some fancy camerawork has been employed to highlight the environments.

    Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening Cinematics

    Cobra controls pretty well for the most part with snappy, responsive movement but I do have some issues with the control layout that I think could have been better thought out. For one, being unable to crouch just feels odd in a game where so much blaster fire is headed your way and crates or rocks litter the environment. Cobra is also a little on the twitchy side when jumping and I’d occasionally over-jump or miss a platform.

    My biggest peeve, however, has to do with aiming. You have a 360-degree field for shooting around Cobra and can do so while moving, but aiming is also tied to the left thumbstick that moves him. This makes for some frustrating run and gun moments when you’re avoiding enemy fire while trying to hit enemies above, below or at an angle to you. You can hold down the L button for precision aiming, but this locks you into place while firing which is an issue with so many laser blasts heading your way at any given time. I feel like this needed to be thought out better – perhaps put control of your gun hand on the right thumbstick that lets you pan the camera slightly up or down. It becomes incredibly frustrating during boss fights when you have a small window to hit the boss, but you can’t stand still to do so because there are too many projectiles filling the air.

    I’ll be among the first to admit that I wouldn’t have thought to make a game based on Space Adventure Cobra, but I’m certainly glad that Magic Pockets has done so. Space Adventure Cobra – The Awakening has some control issues that need work, but the care, attention to detail, love, and inventive use of the source material is on display throughout the game’s fun and carefully constructed design. Not only have they created a rare videogame adaptation that does the source material proud, but they’ve also managed to rekindle my interest in an IP I haven’t thought about in ages.

    Pros:

    • Excellent use of the original anime to tie together gameplay sequences
    • Fun but challenging game design
    • Good story
    • Great visuals and animation
    • Amazing voice work

    Cons:

    • Some slowdown on the original Nintendo Switch
    • Having aiming use the movement stick can get very frustrating

    Score: 8/10

    Space Adventure Cobra – The Awakening was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

  • Review: Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree (v1.6 Update)

    Review: Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree (v1.6 Update)

    With the release of Patch 1.6, we finally got to give Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree a go. As with most modern games, the game has received a number of post-launch changes, both in terms of quality-of-life features and new content. However, before we get into what the patch has added, we’re going to take a quick look at the game itself and give it the gameblur review treatment.

    If you missed it at launch, Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is a dark-fantasy action-RPG Metroidvania with Souls-like elements. If that sounds like a lot of ingredients thrown into the mix, that’s because it is. Mandragora packs quite a bit of diverse DNA in an attempt to set it apart from the pack, which also goes a long way to make sure it doesn’t quite sit on one genre completely.

    Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree Story

    The world of Faelduum is on the brink of annihilation. Dark forces besiege the land and the only hope for its people lies in the hands of the King Priest and his army of Inquisitors. You are one of these Inquisitors, sent on a mission to find a witch after you made a move without the King Priests orders and unleashed a dark power within yourself. But your journey will neither be simple nor quick, nor prone to keeping the dark truths of this world hidden.

    Mandragora presents a large world which, in traditional Metroidvania fashion, requires you to beat bosses, collect keys, or gain new abilities to fully explore the interconnected locations. Unlike most Metroidvanias, platforming is less of a focus here than the combat. That isn’t to say you aren’t going to be leaping around the place, but you won’t find hardcore platforming challenges. Instead, it’s used to give the fully 3D world viewed, which you view from a 2D perspective, a sense of depth that it works really well.

    Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree Beautiful Visuals

    Combat and exploration are Mandragora’s focus and you’d best be prepared to fight a lot. Combat is also where the games Souls-like elements come into play. You’ve got your melee attacks, spell attacks, a block if you’ve chosen the appropriate class, and both a dodge and dodge-roll. Stamina governs your melee and dodges, while mana powers your spells. So far, pretty much par for the course.

    Enemies drop loot and crafting materials on death and, while it’s nice to collect a specific set of armour with their own stats, what you really want are Mandragora’s equivalent of souls as collecting enough allows you to level up. Each level up gives you one skill point that you can invest in massive class skill trees. This is where the game gives you leeway for character building, as there’s a whole bunch of stats to pay attention to, along with passive and aggressive skills to unlock.

    Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree Upgrade Trees

    One aspect that I do appreciate is that the game only locks you out of the other skill classes until you hit level 25. At that point, you can start unlocking alternate skill trees and class abilities, including their weapons to further augment your character. With two weapon load-out slots, you can, essentially swop between two classes at any time or mix and match your favourite weapon with your favourite projectile spell.

    As with most Souls-like titles, dying drops all the souls you’ve collected and you’re going to have to make the trek back to regain them. Between these mechanics and respawning enemy locations, the Souls-like elements are limited and Mandragora is nowhere, at least on the first run, as challenging as traditional Souls-likes. Yes, you have to be careful in combat and the multi-phase boss fights require you to pay close attention, but I never found the game hitting that Souls-like ceiling of brutality. Combat is fun and relies on having fast reflexes while memorising enemy attack patterns, and gets better as more build options open up.

    Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree Classes

    The RPG aspects far outweigh the Souls-like mechanics. The story, while not chock full of hard-to-spot revelations, remains front and centre throughout the experience. There are plenty of NPC’s to speak or listen to, sidequests to complete, and a whole bunch of power levelling to engage in. You get your own little encampment, complete with quirky shopkeepers and the ability to craft or enhance gear in various ways. In many ways, we’ve seen all this before, but Mandragora still manages to make it feel fresh and engaging – so much so that I made the effort to go back to camp on a regular basis to level up the shopkeepers and grab new bounties.

    It’s also worth highlighting that Mandragora is a gorgeous game. While the 3D models may not look as detailed as we’ve come to expect from modern titles, the stylised art style – made to look like a painting – breathes life into the characters and environments. Life that is emphasised by some great animation work and plenty of screenshot-worthy locations.

    Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree Combat

    Focussing on the version 1.6 update, the developers have addressed a whole bunch of bugs while rebalancing many enemy encounters and boss fights. Certain quests have had their rewards improved, while quality-of-life improvements have been across the game and its interface. Most notable is that you can now refund spent skill points and abilities if you feel like you want to re-spec for a tough encounter.

    Three new weapons have been added to acquire for your collection and a promised mode has finally made it’s debut: New Game+. This is significant for players who want more challenge than the games first run, as each NG+ cycle offers enemy levels that will scale with your own, along with random buffs and attributes for a higher challenge and better reward drops.

    Mandragora: Whispers of The Witch Tree Queen Of Smiles Boss

    There’s a significant amount of changes made we won’t list here, but these are the most important ones for improving the experience. That and some changes to environmental hazards and world geometry. The NG+ modes are always a great way to expand the lifetime of a game, especially for those who like stiffer challenges.

    All things considered, Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree crams in plentiful mechanics that make certain it comfortably straddles multiple genre. Better still, they’re all executed wonderfully to provide a fun and interesting take on the dark fantasy RPG genre. The visuals and world design is gorgeous, while the many sidequests and skilful combat make running across the land worth the effort. When you factor in the NG+ mode, you have a fantastically fun game that’s set to drain hours from your life.

    Pros:

    • Fun, skill-based combat
    • Great world design
    • Wonderfully stylised, painterly visuals
    • Expansive skill tree for diverse builds
    • New NG+ modes expand the challenge

    Cons:

    • Some surprisingly adult language that feels out of place
    • The main story is predictable

    Score: 9/10

    Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.