Category: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly)


Injustice 2 Roundtable Roundup

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August 23, 2016

Sometimes, when time is tight, or the event is a bit larger than life, you can’t always get that important one-on-one time you need with a developer to really take a deep dive into their game. Under these circumstances, journalists are bunched together, and several of us at a time have to machine gun fire questions. That happened this past weekend at San Diego ComicCon, when just a couple hours before Friday’s Injustice 2 panel, a couple dozen other journalists and I met with some of the voice cast and NetherRealm Studios’ creative director Ed Boon to chat about the game. Here are the choicest things each person had to say.

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George, can you tell us a little bit about Superman in Injustice 2?

George Newbern, voice of Superman
Well, the first game ended with him in that [red light prison]. In terms of where Superman is in this story, there’s a lot more shades of gray going on this time around. Superman’s not in charge, and it’s not as simple as Superman is good and Batman is bad or vice versa. Depending on what is going on, you’ll side with one or the other and there’s a lot more gray this time, I think.

Laura, you’re playing Supergirl in Injustice 2, but you’re also Catwoman in Telltale’s Batman. What’s it like to hop between these two DC characters in these two very different games?

Laura Bailey, voice of Supergirl
They are such completely different characters. Supergirl is pure. She’s young and impressionable, and when she comes into this story, she’s learning about everything that is happening and has happened. Selina is old hat—she’s been doing this for years. She’s playing everyone, and is always in charge of the situation she’s in. So yeah, the [vocal] range might be similar, but the approach to all the dialogue is very different.

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Phil, Aquaman has for a long time never been taken very seriously in the DC Universe, but the first Injustice game and your portrayal helped the character turn a corner, lending him some credibility. How was it to be part of that, and what was your inspiration?

Phil LaMarr, voice of Aquaman
For me, it’s about the writing. [NetherRealm] has come up with a really cool take on the character—that’s the thing. For so many years, you had this character that is ostensibly one of the most powerful heroes, but who just wasn’t cool. And they finally figured it out. He’s the ocean personified, but he is also a man. And also, I think, for me, the hook is the kingliness. He is a ruler. He has power, but he also has responsibility, and for him it’s always about that. Either personal responsibility, or to the people of Atlantis, and I think the battle stuff of Injustice is what really put him over the top. Because you had the character conception, but then you have the trident, and the power of Poseidon, and the baddest kill move ever. And if you have great writing, it almost acts itself really. I just have to make sure I get all the words right.

Ed, what was the inspiration for the armor system in Injustice 2 and how will that change gameplay?

Ed Boon, creative director of NetherRealm Studios
If you look back at Mortal Kombat X, we had three variations of every character, and that’s for players to choose what’s their favorite version of Raiden, their favorite version of Scorpion. It’s a little more personalization in it for each player, and we wanted to take that even further. So, in Injustice 2, here are a bunch of different costume pieces. You arrange them as you want, and they power up your characters in different ways. Some might increase offense, or defense, or special abilities, the damage they do with interactive objects, etc. And you piece together a costume to make your custom version of Batman, Superman, Aquaman, whoever. And you’re in a constant process of rearranging those pieces, finding better boots that increase your damage even more for example. So that continued customization and personalization of characters really kind of separates this one from our previous games.

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George, Superman is traditionally the All-American Boy Scout and we only see deviation from that in these Elseworld-like takes. Do you enjoy these alternate Superman roles a bit more because they allow for more nuances?

George Newbern, voice of Superman
Yeah, I think so, and I love that. I’m working on a TV show right now called Scandel on ABC where I play an assassin. Just a normal guy doing these terrible things, and you don’t suspect it. In the same way, Superman is most fun when you get to go a little bit outside of the cut, square corners. It’s more fun.

Laura, you’re also in Gears of War 4 this fall, and mentioned during that panel how you and the cast recorded together for some scenes, which is more of an animation style. You also recorded with the cast for Telltale’s Batman. However, you recorded solo for Injustice 2. Do you think video games will start moving more towards that animation style or that it just depends on the project?

Laura Bailey, voice of Supergirl
It’ll depend on the project. Video games by nature are very different from animation because of the option of dialogue there. So, the recording process can be strange, and even harder with other people because for so long it revolves around what one player is doing. So, it would probably be a waste of money for companies to bring in multiple people for a session. So, it’s never completely inclusive. Even for Gears of War 4, when I did my battle dialogue that was a solo session because Liam [McIntyre] or Eugene [Byrd] didn’t need to sit there while I screamed for a couple hours at a time. But definitely for the cinematics, I think a lot of games will start doing groups, and so many projects I’m doing now have motion capture and I feel like more and more projects will start going towards that because what you can do with that is so epic.

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Phil, how hard is it to jump into the middle of a fight, but not have anyone actually there to play off of?

Phil LaMarr, voice of Aquaman
It helps to be a video game player, because you understand, for example, when your line might be right before you attack, to give it that oomph. But yeah, it’s tough sometimes, because you don’t know exactly what the context is. The other side of it is, though, if you do enough different lines, enough different versions of it, then they can fix it in editing. I’ll give you everything I got, and you put it in the right place…so we don’t end up with Resident Evil 2.

Ed, how will the armor and customization affect balancing for competitive play and tournaments in the game?

Ed Boon, creative director of NetherRealm Studios
Well, it makes our balancing task way bigger. Also, there’s the possibility of a player who has been leveling up a character since day one, and then another who picks the game up three months later, and how does the newcomer compete with the day one purchaser? So, our matchmaking is also going to be critical to make sure people who are in the same range are matched. And then, just our job of balancing is going to be a huge challenge. But the experience of constantly changing and molding your personal character, the novelty of playing with your character will always make it feel new as opposed to playing with the same character over and over again eight months after buying the game.
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10 minutes of new Paper Mario: Color Splash gameplay from San Diego ComicCon

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July 24, 2016

I had a chance to check out a couple of demos of Paper Mario: Color Splash at the Nintendo Lounge at San Diego ComicCon 2016. While I did go hands-on for a time with the game, Nintendo refused to let this particular demo be played by anyone but one of their representatives. At the very least, it does mark the first time we are seeing this footage of Mario exploring the Dark Bloo Inn, where he has to exercise some Toad spirits and battle some Sledge Bros.

Paper Mario: Color Splash is coming to the Wii U on October 7.

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Ghostbusters (video game) review

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Worse than crossing the streams

I love Ghostbusters. I’ve spent probably an unhealthy amount of my life memorizing lines from the movies, collecting action figures, and watching the cartoons. And yes, before you even ask, I am a god. I even enjoyed the brand new reboot with Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig—it’s not perfect, but it was surprisingly a lot of fun. So, it was nothing short of painful to have to apply our review process to Activision’s latest licensed dumpster fire based off the aforementioned reboot.

In the Ghostbusters game, the four ladies from the movie have taken their show on the road and are busting ghosts for the president in Washington D.C. However, they couldn’t just up and leave New York City defenseless incase there were any more paranormal problems. So, before they left, they recruited four brash afterlife aficionados like themselves onto the team to man the firehouse in their absence. And, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as the ladies leave, a handful of hauntings pop up.

Ghostbusters is an arcade action-shooter, done in an abstract art style reminiscent of cartoons like Extreme Ghostbusters. It works well enough, at least in terms of character design. The ghosts, ghouls, and even the ‘busters exaggerated looks and hard lines work to pop off the screen, even considering the high camera angle.

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Unfortunately, the rest of the game’s design is a disaster. The levels themselves are boring and bloated, lasting anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes, completely jettisoning the speed you’d expect from the genre—not to mention you have to traipse through the same generic graveyards, subways, and interiors the entire time. To make matters even worse, the gameplay itself is as repetitive as the level design. Each character carries three weapons: the classic proton pack, specialty guns, and grenades. This helps offer a little diversity between each character, as the shotgunner with the electric grenades has to play differently from the proton mini-gunner with the slime grenades. There are also dual proton pistols and a proton assault rifle, but once you get past the weapons, it all boils down to blasting away the same handful of enemy types after you turn every corner.

Sometimes you’ll come across a more powerful ghost who you’ll have to throw in a trap. From there, a ridiculous minigame starts, which requires you to pull in the reverse direction of the ghost and button mash for score multipliers—an idea that quickly becomes as dreary as everything else the game tasks you with. At the merciful conclusion to each stage, you tally scores and get awarded experience points that help boost the strength of your characters, but only human controlled characters can keep their points.

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When playing four-player couch co-op, this isn’t much of a problem—beyond the fact that you have four people bored out of their minds instead of one. (Misery loves company, but I’ll have to make it up to my fellow EGM crew members at some point for subjecting them to this torture.) Playing by yourself, the game is easy enough to get through, but the AI does absolutely nothing to help you out. In fact, they tend to get stuck on invisible walls more often than they do anything useful in regards to busting ghosts. From my solo and co-op play sessions, it feels like the game was balanced for one-player, since more human players speed up the push through each level (still not enough to make the experience tolerable). So, Ghostbusters doesn’t even scale difficulty for multiple players.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, it only gets worse with the story, which basically copies the movie’s plot nearly point for point. You have to catch all the ghosts the ladies let get away in the film, with only two original bosses added to flesh the game out. The boss battles are a nice change of pace, but considering it is literally hours between them, they can’t salvage what appears to have been a forcibly lengthened experience to try to quantify a ridiculous price tag.

Ghostbusters tries to channel the spirit of old-school, arcade action shooters of years past, but it fails to capture any of the fun those games are known for. Even the addition of four-player couch co-op can’t save this from being a boring mess of an experience. Ghostbusters comes off as nothing short of a lazy, hastily thrown together movie cash-in attempt that can’t satisfy even the most hardcore fans of this iconic franchise, and all copies should be locked safely away in a containment unit somewhere. Light is green, trap is clean.

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Developer: FireForge Games • Publisher: Activision • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and older • Release Date: 07.12.16
2.0
Ghostbusters is a bloated, boring piece of trash that forcibly lengthened an already miserable experience to try to justify a ridiculous price tag. We can only hope to return it forthwith to its place of origin—or the nearest parallel dimension.
The Good I don’t have to play it anymore.
The Bad It is the worst kind of licensed video game. It is a cheaply thrown together, boring, repetitive mess that isn’t worth anyone’s time.
The Ugly I think I’m starting to develop PTSD from all the awful Activision licensed games I’ve had to review over the years.
Ghostbusters is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Activision for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Song of the Deep review

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Not much lies hidden beneath the waves

At this point in my gaming career, I’m more surprised when Insomniac Games doesn’t try something different. Whether it’s the over-the-top mayhem of Sunset Overdrive, the creepy atmosphere of VR games like Edge of Nowhere, taking on superhero projects like the new Spider-Man game, or just the insane weaponry in almost every other game they’ve made over the years, Insomniac is one studio that is never afraid to take risks. Unfortunately, not all of those risks turn into great games, and that happens to be the case with the latest step outside their comfort zone, a metroidvania called Song of the Deep.

Song of the Deep follows a little girl named Merryn whose fisherman father has been lost at sea. After having a vision of her father still being alive but trapped beneath the murky waters, Merryn realizes she’s the only one who can save him. She gets to work putting together the most rickety submarine you’ve ever seen, and unable to be deterred, Merryn plunges beneath the waves.

The story is a short but sweet one, and the need to help a loved one is an easily-relatable plight, lowering the bar of entry for anyone worried about playing as a 12-year-old girl—a definite step away from the norm in terms of gaming protagonists. Dynamic narration helps us get inside Merryn’s head by timely chiming in to help flesh out both the world and her thought process when she comes across points of interest or complex puzzles. Pace-slowing cutscenes are saved for only the most important of plot points, such as meeting key new characters. It all adds up to make our unlikely heroine a stronger character than you might expect.

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The world beneath the waves that Merryn discovers is in many ways as charming as the story itself. Ancient ruins, lost cities, mammoth caverns, and ship graveyards are rendered in bright, contrasting color schemes that make it seem as if you’re playing through a painting, and every locations tells a narrative all its own.

Song of the Deep’s beauty is only skin-deep, though. While swimming along the bottom of the beautiful, briny sea, you’ll quickly realize the world in Song of the Deep is much smaller than you’d expect from most metroidvanias. This torpedoes much of the exploration that typically comes in a game like that, and when you need new items to reach inaccessible areas, they’re often very close by. It felt like the game was forcing me through it as quick as can be, making this adventure come off as unusually linear. I never felt compelled to go back and explore areas I had already been to on my own, only ever backtracking during a couple of plot-related fetch quests. This led Song of the Deep to be one of the shortest metroidvanias I’ve ever played; even with collecting most of the items, my first playthrough barely clocked in at the five-hour mark.

I might have been able to forgive the scale of Song of the Deep if the gameplay inside that small world was the least bit interesting. That is not the case, however, as even in only a five-hour experience, I couldn’t have been more bored. In regards to the dangers Merryn will face under the sea, most of the enemies fall into one of four categories: jellyfish, urchins, anglerfish, or crustaceans. As you play, you’ll constantly run into them with only varying color schemes offering up any differentiation within species. The swim and shoot combat with these aquatic denizens quickly grew stale, and it wasn’t long before fighting enemies became a chore altogether. At a certain point, I came to prefer swimming quickly through an area to try to reach the next puzzle than bother fighting them. Even the game’s two bosses—yes, there are only two bosses in the entire game—were pushovers, only made slightly difficult by them flooding the screen with smaller enemies.

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The other major gameplay aspect of Song of the Deep is traversing its underwater world. While it was an interesting change being able to freely move in all directions in the submarine, it also felt slow and plodding most of the time unless I was boosting. I upgraded the sub’s boost speed first and foremost whenever I could, and even then I felt like I was often crawling along. This becomes especially evident with some barriers, where you’ll have to drag bombs to blow up otherwise impassible gateways. It took me forever to get the idea of the underwater physics right, trying to cruise along at the right speed to slingshot bombs with the sub’s grappling hook, and often blowing myself up instead.

Not all of the game’s puzzles or barriers deal with weird physics, however. In fact, the light-based puzzles in the game, where Merryn must leave the sub (made possible by another conveniently placed upgrade) and move mirrors to reflect different colors of light around several rooms were a lot of fun to figure out, while also providing an adequate challenge. If the game had more of those puzzles, I might’ve enjoyed myself more on the whole.

Song of the Deep is a very basic, paint-by-numbers metroidvania. It’s got some puzzles, combat, upgrades, and a tiny bit of backtracking, but it doesn’t do any of them particularly well. Where the game does shine at least is its endearing story and colorful world. If you’re desperately looking for a metroidvania fix, Song of the Deep might suffice, but there are so many better ones out there that should be played first that I’d only recommend it after exhausting all other options.

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Developer: Insomniac Games • Publisher: Insomniac Games, GameTrust • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 07.12.16
5.5
Song of the Deep isn’t a bad metroidvania; it’s just very basic. It doesn’t do anything particularly well, outside of maybe its endearing story, but it isn’t absolutely unplayable either.
The Good A nice story and some clever puzzles.
The Bad Repetitive enemies, lack of challenge, underwater gameplay needs refinement.
The Ugly Proof that it’s not better down where it’s wetter.
Song of the Deep is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Insomniac Games for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Fru review

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Bending over backwards for Fru

It’s hard to argue the fact that the Kinect is the latest in a long line of failed gaming peripherals. We could be here all day talking about why, but one of the main reasons is that in the nearly six years since it released, I can barely name a handful of good games for it. Most were too gimmicky, too unresponsive, or just simply weren’t fun. Although the Xbox One’s second generation Kinect was better equipped to deal with these shortcomings, it couldn’t do enough to warrant the system’s higher price tag, helping to turn away many would-be early adopters. Even those of us who took the plunge with Kinect 2.0 have either packed it away or simply use it as a quick way to sign-in and enter download codes. So, I was downright flabbergasted to find one developer still working on a Kinect game (even though we hadn’t seen it since E3 2014), and even more so when that game turned out to be pretty damn enjoyable.

Fru is a puzzle-platformer that tasks players with guiding a small, masked girl through a mysterious world. Over the course of the game’s 110 stages, you’ll come to learn what happened to this world, what the girl is trying to reach, and why you, the player, have the ability to help her through this adventure.

There’s really not a lot to Fru’s story, which is definitely one of its drawbacks as it tries to differentiate itself from the failed, gimmick-driven games of the Kinect’s past. All told, there are only eight sentences of narrative in the entire game, and a few short scenes that string together the simple story. But for what the story lacks in depth, the gameplay makes up for in spades.

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There are only two controls in Fru: running and jumping. You can run with either joystick on the Xbox One controller, and jump with either trigger. The reason for this is it allows you to play the game one handed, which is not only a great test of coordination (since many of us will have to fight hard against our gaming muscle memory), but also a necessity, as in all of Fru’s stages, your body will act as the catalyst that allows the little girl to advance.

You see, your silhouette—as detected by the Kinect—will activate switches, reveal hidden platforms and collectibles, block hazards, and even at times serve as a pool of water the girl can swim through. Each of the game’s four chapters adds more complexity to your responsibilities as the girl’s shadowy guardian, which also adds to the fun. In many instances, I found myself contorting in ways I didn’t know I could to help the girl advance. Whether literally rolling on the floor to adjust my position, arching my back to cut a wall in half and create makeshift stairs, doing squats to hit multiple switches at once, or even (almost) doing splits to fill up most of the bottom of the screen, I was ready to do whatever it took to create the perfect position for each puzzle. And as gimmicky as it may seem on the surface, I was hooked, not to mention impressed by the amount of depth Through Games was able to concoct to never make any of the game’s 110 stages feel cookie cutter or boring.

Unfortunately, what might be Fru’s fatal flaw is that it won’t last longer than a few hours for most players, even with all those aforementioned stages. Once you get past the ingenious interaction with the Kinect and solve all the puzzles, there’s really little reason to come back to Fru—a problem that hurts puzzle-platformers that already aren’t fighting the Kinect stigma.

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There are 24 collectibles scattered in the game, which do up the difficulty a tad, but I was able to collect them all on my first run through. There’s also a bonus mode that was spawned out of Fru’s tech demo, which offers a two-player option. Giving a friend a chance to play side-by-side with you is nice, but the mode is really only a short offering due to the tech demo nature, and not nearly as deep or as polished as the main game.

I did find some replayability in the game when showing it to friends at least. If it was fun rolling around trying to solve the puzzles by myself, it was just as entertaining to watch someone else do it. We even passed the control around to others, offering up some unintentional multiplayer and impromptu teamwork as one player would pose while the other would use the controller to guide the girl across the screen. It still remained a short affair, however, thus torpedoing its party-game possibilities as well.

Even with its lack of depth, Fru succeeds in showing us that the Kinect may have never reached its full potential. The puzzle-platform genre adapted for the device worked well, adding a pleasant surprise to the lineup of dance, music, and workout games that seemed to work the best with the peripheral. The sad fact of the matter is that Fru still has a couple of issues, and as fun as it is, it’s not something that can lift the Kinect back up to a state of relevancy. If you have a Kinect, Fru is a good way to get a couple more hours out of it. Otherwise, we all can just lament over what could’ve been.

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Developer: Through Games • Publisher: Through Games • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 07.13.16
7.0
It’s sad that Fru came out so long after the Kinect was a viable gaming peripheral. Had it released closer to the Xbox One’s launch, we might’ve been able to laud it as a reason to own a Kinect. As is, it’s a solid little puzzle-platformer that might be worth a look if you haven’t packed your Kinect away—assuming you ever got one in the first place.
The Good Inventive take on the puzzle-platformer that keeps finding new ways to test you.
The Bad A little on the short side, and not much really in terms of story or replayability.
The Ugly This is the game the Kinect needed all along. It’s a shame it’s probably about two years too late.
Fru is a Xbox One exclusive (Kinect required). Review code was provided by Through Games for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Furi review

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Bullet hell meets Bushido

The concept of a gauntlet against boss characters, or “boss rush,” has been around for almost as long as modern games. Franchises like Mega Man had you face all the game’s bosses again in quick succession before fighting Dr. Wily; Shadow of the Colossus was set exclusively against mammoth monstrosities; classics like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time added the mode in later re-releases; the idea has even permeated the Indie scene with games like last year’s Titan Souls. So, when I first heard about the latest boss rush Indie darling, Furi, I was curious to see if it could do anything that would differentiate itself from that crowd. And, after playing it, I can attest that it falls in line with other great boss rushes of the past—but also offers enough distinctions that allows it to stand on its own.

In Furi, you play as a man simply known as “The Stranger.” Imprisoned for crimes unrevealed, you spend your days in isolation and constant torment from a three-faced being called “The Chain.” After regaining consciousness one day, an odd man with a rabbit mask named “The Voice” loosens your restraints. Finally free, The Stranger reclaims his sword and must fight his way through each layer of the prison (each protected by a powerful jailor) if he, and in turn The Voice who follows closely behind, are to escape and reclaim their freedom.

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The story isn’t the main draw for Furi. You’ll learn more about the world in-between each epic bout—and even the jailors themselves—from The Voice who seems to have a personal connection with everything around you, but these are easily the slowest moments of the game. The Voice’s dialogue is intriguing, but it comes during the only time players are given control of The Stranger outside of combat. There’s nothing to explore here—you simply walk along the world’s narrow path, from one battle to the next. You can even forgo the small amount of interaction you have during these scenes by pressing a button to make The Stranger walk on his own, saving you from having to control his progress with the analog stick. I can’t help but question why proper cinematics weren’t used to bridge the gap between fights, as it could’ve provided more artistic and focused moments for driving home the game’s few narrative points. A very weird decision for a game stylized in almost every other way. At the very least, this time gives you just enough backstory to hook you early on—revealing enough about why you were captive and The Stranger himself by the end to have made the experience worthwhile—but there are clearly more effective ways to tell a story.

Luckily, the star of the show makes up for this lackluster downtime: Furi’s aesthetic design. Furi is quite simply dripping with style. If boss names like The Chain, The Line, or The Beat weren’t enough, its neon-infused visuals and an original electronica soundtrack—provided by artists like Carpenter Brut and Waveshaper among others—should get the point across.

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And that’s just the opening. When the action truly starts, boss fights up the ante, constantly trying to find new ways for color to explode off the screen as every confrontation blends the high-pressure feel of a one-on-one showdown with the fast and frantic movements of an arcade shooter. Each successive boss not only brings new patterns for you to learn and attempt to overcome, but a new theme to the fight as well. The Stranger will go from fighting a battle akin to ancient samurai clashing swords on the beach, to taking on a medieval knight in a lush forest—all sharing in the purpose of trying to lock you away again.

As slick as Furi looks, all the amazing character and world designs would be for naught if the gameplay wasn’t there to back them up. Although not as powerful as the visual motif, Furi impressively blends hack ‘n’ slash melee with the projectiles and speed of a bullet hell shooter—but unfortunately fails to provide as much depth as one would hope.

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Each boss has its own unique tricks in how they try to put The Stranger back in his cage, but gameplay all boils down to two phases. The first phase of each boss’ lifebar revolves around them flying around the screen, firing all manner of energy projectiles and waves at The Stranger, creating scenes reminiscent of busier shoot ’em ups. You can deflect some of these projectiles, but since your own lifebar is limited, dodging through or around them is a far more effective course. You counter with your own laser pistol, often having to chip away from far off distances as you flit around the screen like a dragonfly on a placid pond.

Once the boss has taken enough damage, the camera will shift from overhead to a more intimate third-person side view, with both The Stranger and the respective boss constrained to a small circle they must battle in. Here, besides continuing to dodge, parrying and attacking with your sword are your two primary moves, with a heavy emphasis on the former. Parrying is critical to not only opening up the bosses for short flurries of offense, but also is often one of the few ways to regain health regularly in these fights. A rare (at least for me) perfectly-timed parry not only gives health, but rewards you with a special animation and guaranteed hit from The Stranger.

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I found combat overall to be very simple, considering the complex moves I was asked to constantly deflect or find ways to work around. There were some other options—like charged blaster shots, charged melee swipes, and charged dashes—but the time it took to actually charge them up often left The Stranger far too open, and provided too small a reward for using them. I ended up abandoning those techniques after the second boss, leaving me often wishing I could do more with the tools the game gave me.

This isn’t to say Furi wasn’t still fun, though. Learning the punishing patterns of each boss on the path to my eventual freedom became an obsession that I couldn’t walk away from. Each fight made The Stranger feel more like a legendary Ronin, sword in hand and looking to reclaim lost honor on the field of battle. With each defeat, I was only galvanized to push my thumbs faster on the next attempt. No fight ever felt the same, and what amazed me even more was the intensity each battle provided, as I whittled away each subsequent lifebar of the bosses. Some fights would feel like they lasted hours, and I’d be shocked when I would look at the clock and realize only a few minutes had passed.

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Furi will initially grab you with its visual style and original soundtrack, but it’s solid gameplay and decent narrative will be what keeps you coming back from every death in each punishing boss battle. It may need a little more depth in these areas, but if you’re a fan of action games, then Furi serves as a great summertime fix.

Developer: The Game Bakers • Publisher: The Game Bakers • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 07.05.16
8.0
Furi excels in some areas, serving as an audio/visual treat as you work your way through the game’s world. Its narrative and gameplay could use more depth, but both provide more than enough value to make this a worthwhile experience if you love action or boss rush games.
The Good Intense boss rush gameplay that pushes your reflexes and pattern recognition to its limits.
The Bad The long, boring path between boss fights.
The Ugly The agony from the narrow defeats is greater than the joy felt from the narrow victories.
Furi is available on PS4 and PC. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by The Game Bakers for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Inside review

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Nowhere to run

When Limbo appeared on the gaming scene six years ago, it was a revelation for many. It’s minimalistic visual style combined with its tight gameplay and open-ended finale left fans pointing to it as a shining example of why games are art—with some still arguing the finer points of its potential message today—and the viability of the gaming Indie scene. So, it’s no wonder the industry has been abuzz since we found out about Inside, the second effort from Limbo developer Playdead. Inside may be a bit more colorful than its grayscale predecessor, but it still delivers a powerful experience.

Inside has players in the role of a small boy who finds himself running from forces who wish to restrain and capture him, bringing him back to one of any number of facilities where inhuman experiments have been carried out on less fortunate souls. Over the course of his adventure, the boy will move through factories, forests, farms, train yards, and even sunken labs via a one-man submarine. What compels him to continue on, though, is the core of a mystery that will keep you playing well past the ending, searching for secrets that hope to help fill in the blanks to another one of Playdead’s purposely vague worlds.

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It is in this familiar-yet-strange setting that we find the true star of the game. Although visually simplistic, with the gameplay never leaving the 2D-plane and much of the world painted in muted tones, the 3D backgrounds paint a macabre picture of forces at play that are beyond our understanding. It is this moody, atmospheric backdrop that shines more brightly than any potential narrative device could, and is at the core of what makes you want to keep playing Inside. It begs you to ask the question “what happened here?” and there is no greater force that makes you want to keep pushing right on your joystick to find out.

The scenery is simply the foundation for the macabre environment, however. A tale within a tale is told through the NPCs, puzzles, and death traps we are forced to navigate while playing. The gameplay is simplistic on the surface, with only three inputs needed on the controller: jump, grab, and run. Our young hero’s ability to interact with the environment around him then empowers players in a way games with more complicated control schemes often fail to do. Whether carrying and moving all sorts of items around, pressing switches to change the landscape of a room, blending in with the faceless crowd, or even using some of the facility’s still active experiments to your advantage, a beautiful layer of complexity quickly evolves from these humble mechanics.

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The evolution of said mechanics in the environment is also done at a perfect pace. Although the difficulty never reaches anywhere near Limbo’s levels, since Inside seems to want to tell a story by having players move more slowly and carefully through the world instead of testing them via trial and error, the puzzles do advance and teach players at a natural rate so you never feel overburdened. If you replay certain sections like I did searching for secrets—and yes, Inside has its fair share of secrets—the stark difference between the start and end of the game in terms of how intricate the puzzle solutions are will quickly become evident at that point.

What might be most impressive about Inside, though, is how your thinking might change as you play the game—not just in terms of puzzle-solving, but in terms of your character’s purpose. Even with over a dozen special secrets to find in Inside, everyone gets what appears to be a rather finite, closed-book sort of ending, a definite departure from the interpretations Limbo afforded. Where things changed for me with Inside was what the motivation of the boy was. I stopped thinking of him as running from something, and more possibly running to something. And this is where Inside’s value truly lies. There is so much that can be left open to analysis, that can be played and replayed, and every person can experience things in a different way, bringing something new to the conversation.

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Inside can be looked at as a mirror-image to Limbo. Whereas Limbo focused more on punishing puzzles, Inside deals more with meticulous movement. While Limbo’s simple graphics made it easy for players to focus on the task at hand, Inside distracts them with a world that is as much a character as the protagonist. And as Limbo left its conclusion up in the air, Inside might have you questioning the purpose of your journey when you reach the fixed ending. They share a common thread, however. You are told almost nothing at the start, but will come to explore a brilliantly designed, but dangerous world that will suck you in from the beginning and never let go as you fall down another expertly crafted rabbit hole from Playdead.

Developer: Playdead • Publisher: Playdead • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 06.29.16
9.5
Inside is a brilliantly crafted game that will keep you talking about it long after you’ve finished playing. Its moody, atmospheric world and terrific puzzle-platforming are simply the hooks to first draw you in.
The Good Moody, atmospheric puzzle-platformer that digs its hooks into you from the second it starts.
The Bad Puzzles never pose any real challenge.
The Ugly My desire to discuss this with other people, but I’m the only one in the office to have played it thus far.
Inside is available on Xbox One and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Playdead for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Mighty No 9 review

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Mighty isn’t the word I’d use…

You will be hard-pressed to find a more rabid Mega Man fan than me. For years now, my cries to Capcom for a new game in the series have fallen on deaf ears. When Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune decided to leave Capcom several years ago to start his own company, and it was announced that one of his first major projects was going to be a spiritual successor to the Blue Bomber, you can imagine the joy I felt. I clearly wasn’t alone, as the Kickstarter to back the project raked in just over four million dollars. Flash-forward nearly three years later, and after countless delays, finally, Mighty No. 9 is here. And—for both better and worse—I can tell you this isn’t your daddy’s Mega Man game.

Mighty No. 9 takes place in a future that could be a result of people watching too much Battlebots. Robots do their fair share for humanity in this time, but many have the primary purpose of simply fighting in the local arena for entertainment. The most powerful of these, known as Mighty Numbers, are the brainchild of one William White. When a mysterious virus causes all the robots—including the Mighty ones—to go haywire, humanity looks ready to succumb to their new metal masters. Dr. White has one trick up his sleeve, however: Beck, his newest Mighty Number. Beck’s power allows him to assimilate other robots, and has seemingly left him immune to the virus. It’s now up to Beck—with a little help from his robot sister Call—to save the other Mighty Numbers and find a cure for this virus.

I admit, when I first started playing Mighty No. 9, I fell into the easy trap of looking for reasons why this game either could or couldn’t suffice as an entry in a series that dominated my childhood. The truth of the matter is that while there are some striking similarities—from the aforementioned story to many of the gameplay elements I’m going to speak on—Mighty No. 9 is different from Mega Man, but that alone does not lift up or condemn this title.

As a throwback to a bygone era of pinpoint platforming accuracy being a necessity, Mighty No. 9 does an admirable job of trying to scratch that nostalgic itch. Once I got over expectations and accepted the game’s mechanics for what they were—using my blaster to weaken enemies and then assimilating them by dashing through them—I found the level and enemy design to be familiar, and a bit on the bland side, but still enjoyable.

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Several new features also give the tried-and-true Mega Man formula a bit of a tune-up. All the characters in the game have voice acting, and while some are better than others (sometimes due to the writing falling flat), at the very least, Mighty No. 9 tries to offer more depth to the characters and world than Mega Man ever did. Some levels, like Call’s single stage and the lair of Mighty No. 8 (a robot named Countershade—think Search Man from Mega Man 8), try to branch out from the standard formula, giving you objectives to complete before proceeding deeper into the level.  There’s also a meta-strategy with assimilating certain enemies to give you boosts to attack, defense, and speed, and assimilating multiple enemies at once will give you score multipliers—offering surprising depth to what robots you destroy and when.

Speaking of scores, setting high scores at the end of each stage gives Mighty No. 9 a greater arcade feel than its inspiration. I used to challenge myself to speed runs of the old Mega Man games all the time, even completing Mega Man 6 in less than two hours once. Mighty No. 9 already promotes that with not needing to destroy every enemy outside of bosses, and offering up many shortcuts that take advantage of the dash mechanic. I am happy to report that my first playthrough of Mighty No. 9 only took three hours and thirteen minutes.

Unfortunately, Mighty No. 9 then begins to falter. Beating the game for the first time on Normal will then unlock harder difficulties, but it still felt easy, and Hard isn’t much better; only the Hyper and Maniac (one hit and you’re dead) difficulties really start to give your thumbs a workout. Sure, there are those insta-kill spike traps that will make every Mega Man fan grind their teeth, but Mighty No. 9 falls into a very modern trap of holding players’ hands at times when not playing those higher difficulties.

Abundant one-ups litter each level, special powers recharge on their own without items, and when you defeat a boss, the game even goes as far as to tell you what other boss is weak against that newly acquired weapon. I wouldn’t have guessed that Battalion (think Mega Man 10’s Commando Man) was weak against Cryosphere’s (Ice Man, Blizzard Man, or any other cold combatant from over the years) powers until the game offered that up to me, and once that cat is out of the bag, it’s really hard to forget. The only thing worse about the special powers is not assigning the trigger buttons to easily switch between them all on the fly like in later Mega Man games.

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Mighty No. 9 also has a couple technical issues, the worst of which is the horrendous load times. Whether waiting for a reload after dying, switching in-between levels, going into or out of cutscenes, or even just opening the menu, Mighty No. 9 spends as much time loading as it does allowing you to play. Considering how long this game has been in development, and how much it actually should need to load, the amount of time players will spend waiting for something to happen is atrocious. We’re not talking Skyrim size worlds here, folks.

There are also challenge, co-op, and versus modes in the game, most of which are blamed for the game’s countless delays. Unsurprisingly, these modes feel mailed-in at best. Challenge mode offers up a variety of single-player time trials and target quotas that will test your skills in no way close to the way the main game does. Co-op allows a second player to join in and play as Call in a similar set of lackluster objectives and levels. And finally, there is Race Mode, where players can compete directly against a friend in the game’s levels for the same objectives. Not a bad idea, but I’d rather just be put in an arena against a buddy at that point along with a roster of the Mighty Numbers, and duke it out the old fashioned way. Besides, you’ve already got leaderboards for scores and times in the other modes, so Race Mode seems redundant.

Mighty No. 9 had some big metal shoes to fill, and nothing short of the hopes of an older gaming generation on its shoulders. Beck and company may still be in the shadow of the Blue Bomber after this first adventure, but although not perfect, this isn’t a bad start. Mighty No. 9 might be a little easy, a little short, and have side modes that are absolute wastes of time, but the core is solid, and there’s definite room for growth and improvement that will at least keep me from calling Capcom so often anymore.

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Developer:  Comcept, Inti Creates • Publisher: Deep Silver • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 06.21.16
7.5
Mighty No. 9 has a strong gameplay core that isn’t better or worse than Mega Man—it’s just different. The further the game deviates from that core, however, the worse it becomes.
The Good It takes time to get used to the dash mechanic to defeat enemies, but once you do, you realize the game is really well designed around it.
The Bad Challenge, co-op, and versus modes are wastes of time; surprisingly long load times.
The Ugly All that mighty number family drama.
Mighty No. 9 is available on Xbox One, PS4, PC, Wii U, Xbox 360, and PS3, with 3DS and PS Vita versions coming later. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review copy was provided by Deep Silver for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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Mighty No 9 Power Plant video walkthrough

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EGM’s Ray Carsillo had a chance to go hands-on with Mighty No. 9 and here is a walkthrough of Mighty No. 3’s Power Plant level. Using the dash mechanic, Beck will have to overcome myriad obstacles on his way to assimilating Dynatron’s power.

Mighty No. 9 will release on June 21, for Xbox One, PS4, PC, Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, Mac, and is coming later for Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita.

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Just Cause 3: Mech Land Assault review

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Understanding the gravity of the situation

After an unfortunately low bar was set with Sky Fortress—the first piece of Just Cause 3’s three-part expansion pass—I admit I wasn’t expecting much from part two, Mech Land Assault. A lot can change over three months, however, and it seems that at least some of my issues with the first part have been addressed—although this DLC add-on is still far from perfect.

Mech Land Assault opens up with Rico stumbling across a cargo plane being loaded with prisoners (as evidenced by their orange jumpsuits), and gets word from his old buddy, Tom Sheldon, that international mercenary group The Black Hand have been rounding up prisoners like this for weeks. Knowing the Black Hand can’t be up to anything good, Rico stows away aboard the plane and uses it to sneak through the protected airspace of an island just to the north of Medici. Here, Rico will uncover a Black Hand plot that involves an abandoned eDEN research station (bringing back unsavory elements from the last DLC), as he tries to free the Black Hand’s captives and get to the bottom of the illegal operation.

As usual, the story is really just an excuse for you to blow more stuff up in the open world Avalanche Studios has created. The true main draw for this DLC is that, as part of Black Hand’s operation on this new island, they’ve retrofitted advanced gravity-wielding construction equipment with auto-cannons, and are using them as makeshift walking tanks. Early on, Rico gets his hands on one of these new mechs—and, suddenly, you have your greatest chaos-causing weapon yet.

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Each mech can send out a powerful shockwave, as well as rip objects up from the ground (like prison walls and trees), turning them into deadly projectiles. My personal favorite, though, was lifting up a goat and launching it several hundred feet off a cliff—a great ride, at least until you get to the landing. This is the kind of mindless fun that has always been at the core of the Just Cause experience, and I’m always amazed at the new goodies Avalanche Studios continues to come up with, not to mention how seamlessly they are integrated into the game’s pre-existing open world.

Another plus with Mech Land Assault is that, while the gravity gun may seem all-powerful, it is actually very well balanced with the world around you—especially when facing off against other gravity tanks. Unlike Sky Fortress’s jetpack, which made you almost god-like in that DLC (and actually still comes in handy at several points here), your mech is still susceptible to the ever-present danger posed by the Black Hand and their occupying force. The new island Rico finds himself on may be full of plenty of things to wreck with your new toy, but this vulnerability provides a challenge that only makes the experience more enjoyable overall.

Where Mech Land Assault begins to stumble is reminiscent of where Sky Fortress also ran into problems: a clear lack of content being offered. While you do get the benefit of being able to take your mech tank back into the main portion of Just Cause 3, one new vehicle and a small additional island are meager offerings in a for-pay DLC pack. All told, Mech Land Assault does add a dozen or so new outposts to be liberated, but with only two story missions and two gear challenges, you can one-hundred percent this add-on in two and a half hours maximum. There’s also then the fact that the few cut scenes presented for the story missions are, once again, just art stills accompanied by voiceover.

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Just Cause 3: Mech Land Assault is a fun little add-on for Avalanche Studios’ latest sandbox adventure, but considering the overall lack of content and its relatively steep price point, you might need to be really desperate to get back into Just Cause 3 if you’re using this as your excuse. Still, what is here is enjoyable, and much better balanced than what we saw in Sky Fortress, showing Avalanche Studios is at least moving in the right direction with this post-launch content—and giving me hope for the final chapter in the three-part DLC season pass.

Developer: Avalanche Studios • Publisher: Square Enix • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 06.10.16
7.5
More fun and better balanced than the first DLC in Just Cause 3’s season pass, Mech Land Assault suffers from the same issue of having just an overall lack of content to hold your attention for very long.
The Good The gravity mechs are fun new vehicles for Rico to play with and don’t mess with the balance of the game.
The Bad A lack of overall content.
The Ugly You ever try discus-throwing a goat?
Just Cause 3: Mech Land  Assault is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Sqaure Enix for the benefit of this review. EGM reviews games on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 5.0 being average.
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