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New Fire Emblem plot details and trailer released

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April 6, 2015

The first details of the Fire Emblem game for New 3DS were revealed alongside a new trailer that was shown during today’s Nintendo Direct.

To start off, much like the player character in Fire Emblem: Awakening, the hero of this new game will also be customizable. Unlike Awakening, however, the player character here will be the center of all the attention instead of just supporting the narrative lead.

Set in a world where two feuding nations are on the brink of war, the reason your character is so important is because although you were raised by the royal family of one of these nations, Nohr, a land bent on glory through war, you are actually part of the royal bloodline of the other nation, Hoshido, a more peaceful and honorable place. When this revelation comes to light, you will be forced to choose: blood or loyalty.

Not only will your choice affect the narrative, but also the difficulty. The Hoshido choice provides a more traditional Fire Emblem tale, whereas the Nohr choice will be a more harrowing experience.

This first Fire Emblem for the New 3DS will be released sometime in 2016.

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EGM Review: BoxBoy!

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Not thinking outside the box

I pride myself on being able to find enjoyment from a ton of different gaming genres. Whether it’s shooters, fighting games, RPGs, or sports titles, you’ll likely find them somewhere in my collection. Sometimes, though, the genre that really gets me pumped up is a good old-fashioned puzzle-platformer. So, when a little passion project from longtime Nintendo developer HAL Laboratory named BoxBoy! found its way on to my 3DS, I was more than ready to give it a shot.

BoxBoy! stars a walking square named Qbby who must use his ability to make box-shaped extensions of himself to overcome nearly 200 different obstacle courses on the way to repairing his damaged homeworld. Qbby can make bridges to cross gaps, create shields to block lasers or spikes, or build makeshift stairs to reach higher areas.

Unfortunately, especially with the illustrious pedigree of HAL behind the game, I was surprised to find that BoxBoy! feels empty inside. I mean, sure, there’s technically a ton of content crammed in here: hundreds of stages, unlockable challenge levels, and a score-attack mode where you use Qbby’s powers to collect emblems. But by the time I’d reached the fourth world—or after less than an hour of playtime—I’d already grown bored.

You see, BoxBoy! does nothing to innovate on the puzzle-platformer. Admittedly, it’s not the worst thing in the world to use the same traps and gimmicks we’ve seen dozens of times before—teleporters, gravity fields, lasers, and spikes. Disappointingly, though, the game never pushes your cognitive process beyond using the same handful of box creations you learn at the beginning to overcome every situation, so the gameplay starts to feel very monotonous very quickly, even when new obstacles are introduced.

BoxBoy! doesn’t offer any depth-of-field puzzles, since the game isn’t compatible with the 3DS’ 3D feature—it’s a wholly 2D world. The game doesn’t even include any physics-based puzzles. Every time I thought I might be able to use something like momentum to get through a puzzle or place a box where I needed it to be, it would almost immediately sink down in a straight line, like throwing a crumpled-up piece of paper instead of an object that actually had some weight to it.

Eighty percent of the game just feels like HAL got into a “rinse and repeat” mindset with the stage design until they got close to a triple-digit number. Each new level introduces a new impediment, but often instead of combining them with ones seen in previous levels, you only have to bypass the latest one. This fact only compounds the monotony since it feels like you’re you’re playing the same puzzle a handful of times before being allowed to progress to the next one. The stages work, but there’s nothing truly interesting about a single one.

At least until you get close to the end of the game, that is. At that point, there’s a drastic spike in difficulty that makes the last two levels boring and hard. It’s not that I couldn’t overcome them, but after walking through the previous 15 stages like they were nothing, this sudden change of pace was jarring—and not in a good way, considering how ill prepared I felt at first.

And one would think that part of the reason BoxBoy! has such a simple motif—black-and-white settings and characters, with every object in the world including a right angle—that HAL would’ve crafted more inventive puzzles to take advantage of this and defend the decision to keep the look so modest. But everything about BoxBoy! just feels bare bones.

I honestly can’t recommend BoxBoy! even for someone who loves puzzle-platformers. There’s a clear lack of creativity here, whether it’s the art style, story (or lack thereof), gameplay, or level design. I kept wondering when the game would finally start to pick up—and then, before I knew it, it was already over, with the entire experience clocking in at only a few hours. I suppose I should be thankful it only took one sitting to beat and didn’t consume more of my time, because almost from the start, BoxBoy! felt like a waste of it.

Developer: HAL Laboratory • Publisher: Nintendo • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 04.02.15
4.0
HAL Laboratory fails to innovate at all within the puzzle genre and throws many of the same obstacles at you over and over again—to the point where BoxBoy! is as plain a platformer as its monochromatic motif.
The Good A ton of levels and side content.
The Bad The gameplay is as plain as the design, with a surprisingly sharp spike in difficulty at the very end.
The Ugly BoxBoy! feels like it might’ve had a place on the original Game Boy—not on the 3DS.
BoxBoy! is a Nintendo 3DS exclusive. Review code was provided by Nintendo for the benefit of this review.
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Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China – Video Hands-on Preview

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I had a chance to go hands-on with Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China and get an early, firsthand look to see if the open-world action-adventure gameplay of Assassin’s Creed could transition into a 2.5D side-scrolling world. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is the first in a series of three new, standalone downloadable titles from Ubisoft and developer Climax Studios.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China will be downloadable to your PS4, Xbox One, or PC starting April 21. The next two chapters in the series, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India and Russia, were also just announced and will be available sometime later in 2015.

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EGM Review: Axiom Verge

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No school like the old school

When compared to some of the EGM Crew, I’m admittedly kind of slow on the Indie uptake. Something that helps motivate me to take notice of the latest Indie darling that’s burning up the popular forums, though, is when it’s dripping with nostalgia from my 2D-game upbringing. The latest offering that fits that bill is a result of the one-man development wrecking crew that is Thomas Happ and Axiom Verge.

The action-adventure shooter puts players in the lab coat of a scientist named Trace. When one of his experiments accidentally triggers an explosion in the lab, Trace is knocked unconscious. Upon waking up, he finds himself on an alien world that proves to be quite hostile—and he has no recollection of what happened after the blast. Trace must now explore this unfamiliar landscape in the hopes to not only piece together his fractured memory but also find a way back home.

Trace’s story isn’t the centerpiece of Axiom Verge, though. In fact, it’s far from it. I only ever got small nibbles of the carrot that is solving the issue of Trace’s mysterious appearance on this alien planet, and many questions remained unanswered in the process of my playthrough. Normally, this would have me pulling my hair out. I’d be ready to come up with any number of loose connections to fit together what little plot I came across, filling in the blanks and creating a coherent timeline in my mind as best I could. Instead, Axiom Verge reminded me time and again, through its novel twists on stereotypical gaming devices and old-fashioned design, that the story is never the focus here—it’s always on the gameplay.

Axiom Verge is like a love letter to the original Metroid. It’s exploration tempered by a healthy dose of shooting all kinds of alien life-forms with a pinch of platforming, a wide assortment of weapons, and just enough narrative hooks to keep pushing you forward. Collecting a cornucopia of items that would open up more of the ever-expanding map, lengthening Trace’s health bar, or beefing up the various bioweapon blasters he comes across was a thrill as I watched my completion percentage climb. Deducing the patterns of gargantuan bosses with pixel precision became more and more of an obsession as I played, flashing me back to my childhood and the great gun battles of my gaming glory days. This is as solid a gameplay base as it gets.

In some aspects, however, Axiom Verge tries too hard to stay true to its gaming roots, and it could’ve take a page from other modern games in the genre to deliver a more pleasant overall experience. A prime example? The map system. The game would’ve been well served to include some sort of marker feature that I could’ve used to remind me the location of items I missed or areas I wanted to explore so that I could more efficiently plan my paths—especially considering the sheer size of the world.

A fast-travel system would’ve been welcome as well, because once I reached the 12-hour mark and collected around 80 percent of the items, I got really tired of schlepping back and forth across a map that features more than 700 unique rooms, gunning down the same enemies over and over. In fact, I pushed forth with the endgame sequence before hitting that magical 100-percent mark to prevent what had been a wonderful adventure up to that point from starting to feel like too much of a grind.

To that end, I realized that Axiom Verge truly shines when it breaks away from the restraints of the past it emulates and instead builds on top of those gameplay foundations. For instance, one of the most powerful weapons you get early on in your adventure is best described as a “glitch gun.” Firing its waves of distinctive radiation at walls comprised entirely of blocks of retro texture glitches from games of yesteryear will reveal new paths or items. Lambasting enemies with this gun, though, can have a wide array of effects—they might turn friendly toward Trace or simply become easier to defeat. When under the influence of the glitch gun, some enemies even open up new pathways; unwitting foes barrel through obstacles that would be indestructible by any other means. Taking an unwelcome by-product of past hardware limitations and development issues and turning it into a critical game component only encouraged more experimentation with each new room I entered, and it was a welcome twist on traditional 2D exploration.

The gameplay twists don’t end with just the weapons, though. You can use many items to bypass barriers—years of gaming experience has ingrained in us the need to hit a switch or acquire a key to make areas accessible, but that’s not the case here. Axiom Verge goes out of its way to remind you of the multitude of tools that open up the paths before you.

While on the subject of all those tools, though, Happ may have gone a little overboard in regards to how many items he crammed into Axiom Verge. One of the other reasons I gave up on that 100-percent run was that it dawned on me about halfway through my playthrough that a lot of weapons and items are useless. I’d say three-quarters of the guns are style over substance and offer little to no value in terms of furthering your exploration or combat proficiency.

And if you get stuck at any point—like I did toward the end of the game before finally figuring out one particular obstacle—and start doing literal laps around the world trying to figure out where to go next, it’s pretty damn frustrating when you stumble upon a secret room that you think may finally push things forward. Instead, you get a completely useless gun. It makes the otherwise tight design come off a bit haphazard, whereas the best Metroid-like games have a laser focus and no real overabundance of anything, especially when it comes to the weapons.

Working in the shadow of something as massive as Metroid and other games of that ilk is no easy task, though, and Axiom Verge does more than enough to earn its place among them. It manages to work within its limitations and still innovate in subtle-but-effective ways. Even with its classic motif, a little modern polish would’ve gone a long way, but it’s hard for me to be anything but immensely satisfied and impressed with Axiom Verge as a whole.

Developer: Tom Happ • Publisher: Tom Happ • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 03.31.15
8.0
A wonderful throwback to a bygone era, Axiom Verge’s focus on classic gameplay provides a welcome change of pace, even if it could’ve benefitted from a hint of modern design.
The Good Old-school side-scrolling shooter action and exploration that could give Samus Aran a run for her money.
The Bad Too many useless weapons; the desperate need for a fast-travel system.
The Ugly Uruku, the giant, gun-toting slug boss.
Axiom Verge is available on PS4, with PS Vita and PC versions coming later. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Sony for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Mario Party 10

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March 22, 2015

Party crashers

Mario Party is no longer the friendship-threatening, free-for-all party game it once was, and I think I miss those days. Mario Party 10 offers several new ideas that attempt to push the franchise forward, but now there’s a more peaceful coexistence among players on the living-room couch. Unfortunately, some of the new concepts don’t deserve a spot on the winners’ podium, and when combined with a clear lack of on-disc content, Mario Party 10 seems to kick off an awful trend for the series.

On the surface, Mario Party 10 should offer more than any Mario Party game to date, since it includes three primary options: the traditional Mario Party mode, a new 4-vs.-1 Bowser Party, and a new Amiibo Party. But once I played through each, I quickly realized that the game splits up and repeats an already limited amount of content among three different styles of play.

The Mario Party mode is the same as in Mario Party 9, with only minor tweaks. Instead of a Monopoly-style board, as in the first eight entries, (where players could go around as many times as they wanted), the boards are more like Chutes and Ladders, with a definitive beginning and end. This style does lends itself to faster games, usually concluding in 30 to 45 minutes. Though I miss the competition encouraged by older Mario Party games, I definitely do not miss the 90-minute marathons that sometimes broke out, and I find these shorter games much more digestible.

The only real difference from Mario Party 9 is that now in Mario Party mode, the Wii U GamePad allows players to keep track of Bowser, who serves as a looming threat on every board. Bowser does a lot more in his own personal mode, but here he shows up and steals stars from whoever unlocks him, which is done when the group, as a whole, lands on every face of the 1-6 die at least once. Whoever rolls the final side needed to unleash him suffers the unfortunate consequences.

While this omni-Bowser does make for an interesting new hazard, it’s really just another way to force every player to come together, like a persistent minigame. No one wants to unleash Bowser, because he can hurt the entire group depending upon how he acts.

It honestly feels like a waste of the GamePad, though. The main Mario Party mode plays out using just Wiimotes (the Pro Controller doesn’t work because of the lack of a gyroscope), and the GamePad is really nothing more than a second screen.

While the main mode doesn’t do a lot to differentiate itself from the previous game in the series, a lack of change in how Mario Party plays isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since I still found myself enjoying each board. My biggest complaint comes from the aforementioned lack of content.

Mario Party 10 offers two fewer boards than Mario Party 9—and nearly 20 fewer minigames. It’s hard to tear the minigames apart because, as always, some will resonate more with a particular player than others. I loved some and absolutely hated others, but the fact that the game offers so few compared to the last game is insulting.

If the main mode encourages players to work together, Bowser Party downright demands it. In this new mode, a fifth player joins the action by grabbing the GamePad and playing as Bowser, already out of his cage and trying to chase down the four-player caravan in a race to the finish. It’s just the latest example in the 4-versus-1 gaming craze, and if Mario Party mode was a light snack, then Bowser mode is just starving itself. Three of Mario Party mode’s five boards repeat here, mildly repurposed to allow for Bowser, who can roll four dice every turn to catch up to the other four players. And while Mario Party mode offers 60-plus minigames in Mario Party mode, Bowser Party offers a whopping seven.

That’s not a typo, folks. You want repetitive, unbalanced gameplay? Jump into Bowser Party, where you have to play the same seven minigames specifically tailored to Bowser’s abilities again and again. What’s more, each board’s minor tweaks are set so that the four normal players are always at a disadvantage. It’s called “Bowser Party” for a reason—he’s usually the only one having any fun.

At the very least, though, the limited content in the Mario Party and Bowser Party modes comes packaged in the game. The same can’t be said of Amiibo Party. Nine amiibo figurines are compatible with Mario Party 9: Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Rosalina, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, and Toad. Now, if you already have amiibo from Super Smash Bros., you can just reuse them here for Mario Party. Eight of the nine figures listed have Smash Bros. equivalents.

If you refuse to get any amiibo, however, this mode is locked away. You see, each figurine contains a Mario Party 1-8–style board themed around that character. The more compatible amiibo you have, the more you can mix and match corners of each board to create all kinds of game setups. You could have one with Toad, Mario, Luigi, and Peach corners or just a fully formed Yoshi board.

But, of course, to do this, you’d need to drop the cash to get each amiibo. Nintendo may not do a lot with DLC, but this might actually be worse, since getting all nine amiibo will cost you more than $100. The boards are cute, and longtime fans might appreciate the throwback nature of them, but that’s a lot of money for some extra game boards in a party game that’s so desperately lacking.

I mean, even if you count the minor Bowser Party variations, the game only includes eight non-amiibo boards, and nine potential amiibo boards can be unlocked by buying the figures. Also, since Bowser isn’t a normal character on the roster, if someone uses the Bowser amiibo, you can only play the seven minigames from Bowser Party—and you’re locked out of the other 60-plus in the game.

Mario Party 10 is a decent game at its core, but it sabotages itself to the point where it’s barely worth playing. Mario Party mode is still fun, even if it’s mostly the same as Mario Party 9, and it’s easily the best balanced of the game modes. Bowser Party is an interesting idea, but it needs a lot more work to make the win/loss ratio fair. But I just can’t get behind a game that has half its content locked behind the amiibo figures, not to mention fewer minigames and game boards than the previous entry in the series.

Mario Party 10 is a disappointing debut for the series on the Wii U, and I can’t help but wonder if Nintendo tried to do too much and ended up doing nothing worthwhile instead. The bottom line, though, is that all Mario Party 10 made me do was wish for the days when I got into fights with my friends after every round of mini games.

Developer: Nd Cube • Publisher: Nintendo • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 03.20.15
5.0
A lack of content and a failure to properly execute on some of the new ideas had me longing for the days when Mario Party games would result in brawls in my living room.
The Good The new game boards are fun and certainly keep players on their toes the first few times around.
The Bad Relying on amiibo to boost the game’s diversity; poor balance to the new Bowser mode; lack of overall content.
The Ugly What would happen if the next Mario Party tried a different style of board game—like Settlers of Catan?
Mario Party 10 is a Wii U exclusive. A retail copy and several Amiibo were provided by Nintendo for the benefit of this review.
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Star Wars Battlefront to debut at Star Wars Celebration in April

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Star Wars Battlefront will be taking part in this year’s Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, California, from April 16-19, EA announced this morning.

While rumors have been swirling around for months about Star Wars Battlefront, this should finally shed some light on the game since it was first officially announced last E3.

Traditionally, Celebration is a convention held by Lucasfilm to either celebrate the upcoming release of a new Star Wars movie or the anniversary of an older one. For example, the first Celebration was for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999, but Celebration V in 2010 revolved around the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. This year’s Celebration is the tenth overall, the seventh on American soil, and the first to take place in Anaheim.

Star Wars Battlefront is slated for a holiday 2015 release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

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Mortal Kombat X has become a family affair

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Back when the game was first announced, if you told me that “family” was going to be one of the key themes of Mortal Kombat X, I’d have looked at you like you had two heads. This was the franchise that 7-year-old me lied to his parents about the level of violence in order to get the game for home consoles. This was a series built on the decapitated heads and severed limbs brought about by countless arcade players with nimble-enough fingers to pull off some impossible Fatalities. I never thought something as wholesome as “family” could fit into Mortal Kombat.

But leave it to the developers at NetherRealm Studios to turn even this concept on its head. At GDC 2015, I learned that Johnny Cage would return as a playable character in Mortal Kombat X, and I briefly got to go hands-on with him in the first chapter of the game’s story mode.

I’ve always enjoyed playing as Johnny Cage, but part of his charm as a character has always come from his interactions with his beloved Sonya Blade, since she acts as a grounding force for Johnny’s over-the-top bravado. To my delight, she was present throughout many of his cutscenes, too. It’s always nice to see one of gaming’s earliest power couples reunited (and doesn’t CageBlade sound infinitely more badass than Brangelina?). Throw daughter Cassie into the mix, and you’ve got the whole Cage bloodline present and accounted for here.

As the story begins, Shinnok, the fallen Elder God and master of the Netherrealm, tries to invade Earthrealm. Among Shinnok’s army of winged, fire-breathing demons are the reanimated, undead bodies of Sindel, Kabal, Stryker, Jax, and others controlled by Shinnok’s necromancer disciple, Quan Chi. As the world goes to hell around them, Johnny, Sonya, and Kenshi take a helicopter toward Raiden’s temple (where Shinnok is focusing his attack) in the hopes of possibly ending this war at the source—but, as you can imagine, things don’t go according to plan.

Mortal Kombat X’s story mode plays out similarly to Injustice: Gods Among Us. You’ll control a character for several fights that clump together as a chapter; that moves the story forward, and you’ll then take over as another character on the roster. This way, players can become familiar with multiple fighters if they’re new to the series, as well as experience the story from multiple points of view.

In Johnny’s case, his chapter consisted of four fights before I switched characters—or I would have, but the demo ended before I found out who would pilot Chapter Two. Johnny’s signature moves like the Shadow Kick and Green Flame were present and accounted for, and I even got to try out some environmental hazards, such as jumping off a wrecked car to close the distance on a far-away Scorpion and deliver a jump kick.

The game looked like one of the best new-gen titles yet, with each level providing an exquisite amount of detail. Whether it was Raiden’s temple or a destroyed city street surrounded by crumbling buildings, Mortal Kombat X looks nothing short of gorgeous. How it plays might be another story, however.

For example, I was a little taken aback that Johnny Cage felt slower than I remembered. I adapted by the end of the demo and delivered some solid combos by the time the chapter was over, but I don’t know if Johnny’s just gotten slower due to his age or whether the game as a whole is a half-step off, since I only got to play as him in the demo. Of course, it’s also difficult to judge based on only four fights.

Aside from this, it felt really good bashing people’s faces in, and I couldn’t help but get more amped up for the final game, where I can mess around with some Fatalities and Brutalities. Since we had only a limited amount of time, however, I only pulled off an X-ray maneuver.

In regards to the little bit I saw of the actual story, I’m also curious to see where all that goes. Kenshi and Jax were confirmed as appearing in-game during my playtime (Kenshi in cutscenes, Jax as one of Johnny’s opponents), and their kids are playable characters, too. There’s also Kung Lin being related to Kung Lao somehow, and even Scorpion has a fatherly relationship with Kenshi’s son, since he trained him. From what I saw, there seems to be a stronger emphasis on character relationships in the story here than in any previous Mortal Kombat game.

I imagine I’ll get some sort of payoff once I get to play the entire story mode come review time, but for now, this theme of “family” in Mortal Kombat X’s story is an intriguing one. It could serve as a welcome continued evolution of the series, or it might end up as an overplayed premise that makes the experience more cheesy than cool. As someone who’s been a fan since that very first chapter back in 1992, though, I think giving these longstanding characters more depth can only be a good thing.

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EGM Review: Ori and the Blind Forest

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The last guardian

Ori and the Blind Forest speaks to the best of what video games can offer. It’s rare that you find a game that’s not only beautiful to look at and to listen to, but that also delivers a poignant, powerful story—which is told while providing a wonderfully tight platforming experience that pushes your reflexes to their limits.

The game begins when a freak storm catapults a young guardian of light named Ori from its home among the branches of the greatest tree in the Forest of Nibel. Found by a citizen of the woods, a bearlike creature named Naru, Ori is nursed back to health and quickly looks to Naru as a mother. While it’s seemingly innocent in nature, this turn of events serves as a catalyst that will shake the whole of Nibel to its very core. Ori must set off on its own to reclaim its purpose as a guardian of the light before Nibel succumbs to an encroaching darkness.

From the opening cutscenes to the end credits, the one thing that consistently amazed me about Ori and the Blind Forest was its beautiful look. The game offers a variety of different locales—icy caverns, flower-filled grottoes, volcanic mountaintops, barren woodlands—and they all look stellar. The exquisite hand-drawn art style offers a bevy of bright colors that seem to jump off the screen and make each area feel special.

Once you start playing, though, it might be easy for the graphics to fade into the background as the story takes hold. Complemented by a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, Ori and the Blind Forest tugs on your heartstrings in such a way that it stays with you long after beating the game. At its core, it’s a coming-of-age tale plainly divided into three acts, but the themes the game conveys about life and death, falling from grace and finding one’s redemption, and persevering in the face of adversity are all things that we, as humans, can relate to. And they’re driven home all the more emphatically when playing as the undersized Ori, alone in a world on the verge of being torn asunder.

As good as a game may be creatively, however, it can always easily come undone if the technical side doesn’t hold up its end. Fortunately, Ori succeeds on this front, too. With an emphasis on puzzle-solving and exploration, the game offers only a limited combat system, forcing you to instead focus on deftly guiding Ori through a labyrinthine world full of traps and hazards.

The game also incorporates some RPG elements, and Ori can learn a dozen different moves over the course of its adventure that will help open up new areas and allow for more efficient traversal across previously discovered locales if you decide to backtrack. The Forest of Nibel is a massive world, but I found that with Ori’s full complement of powers, I could run from end to end in no time flat.

I also enjoyed the fact that combat only came in short bursts—usually just enough to put me back on my heels a bit. This allowed me to better appreciate the overall design. As a platformer, Ori and the Blind Forest toes that fine line between being too forgiving and too punishing. I died more than 300 times on my first playthough, which took me about eight hours—an average of one death per 90 seconds of gameplay. Not once did I feel frustrated during my entire time playing, though. Some sequences, of course, skew these numbers, where you’ll likely die a lot, such as in the seemingly Metroid-inspired dungeon-escape sequences.

What also helped quell any possible annoyance was Ori’s quicksave system, a rarity on consoles. Just by holding the B button down, I was able to place a marker almost anywhere in the world that would serve as a makeshift save point. So, if I saw a harrowing-looking cave filled with spiked walls up ahead, I’d just drop a quicksave. Admittedly, it took some time to get used to the game not having any sort of traditional checkpoint system—and I sometimes had to play large sections over because I forgot to save—but once you get used to it, this method allows you to be a bit more reckless than normal, which is especially nice when exploring new areas.

Unfortunately, unlike Ori reaching its full potential by game’s end, Ori and the Blind Forest slightly stumbles in a couple of key areas. For example, I experienced some noticeable framerate drops at various instances—almost two dozen times during my playthrough, most often when moving quickly through different areas.

The most grievous issue, however, may be the fact that, once you complete one of the game’s three main dungeons, you can’t re-enter them, leaving any possible collectibles you missed lost. This goes the same for the end of the game—if you finish, you can’t replay that particular adventure and instead must use one of the other three save slots and start completely over. Consider this a warning for all you completionists out there.

If you’re less worried about seeing 100 percent of the game, though, and just want to have an action-packed adventure, Ori and the Blind Forest fits the bill completely. It’s the kind of story that knows how to find the soft spots in even the most hardened of gamers (like me!), and once it digs its adorable claws into you, it’s polished enough to rarely break the immersion it inspires. Ori and the Blind Forest had me coming back just to reexperience all the wonder and fun I had along the way the first time through, and it’s one of my favorite titles of 2015 so far.

Developer: Moon Studios • Publisher: Microsoft Studios • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 03.11.15
9.0
A terrific blend of story, gameplay, and graphics, Ori and the Blind Forest is an unforgettable debut for indie developer Moon Studios.
The Good Beautiful world, amazing soundtrack, and an unforgettable story.
The Bad Similar-feeling powers; occasional framerate issues.
The Ugly Forgetting to quicksave before tackling a spike-infested area.
Ori and the Blind Forest is available on Xbox One and PC, with a version for Xbox 360 coming later this year. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Microsoft for the benefit of this review.
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Outer Wilds and Shadow of Mordor come out on top at 17th Annual Indie Games Festival and 15th Annual GDC Awards

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Outer Wilds won the 2015 Independent Games Festival’s grand prize and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor took home Game of the Year at the 2015 GDC Awards.

Outer Wilds was also the most prolific winner of the Indie Games Festival, pulling home a second award for Excellence in Design in what was a field of wide-ranging games in all categories.

Shadow of Mordor, meanwhile, only took home one award, but it was the biggest one of the night for the GDC Awards, which immediately followed the IGF. Monument Valley actually walked away with the most trophies, though, with three. Other notables include Alien: Isolation for Best Sound and Destiny for Best Technology.

Aside from the nine awards given out in specific categories, the GDC Awards also recognized Brenda Romero with the Ambassador Award for her over 30 years of service in the games industry. David Braben was also honored with the Pioneer Award for his work in the game Elite from the early 1980s. And finally, Hironobu Sakaguchi was recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Award for creating the Final Fantasy series.

At the IGFs, This War of Mine received the Audience Award as voted on by the fans.

For all of the nominees in each category, you can check out the list below. Winners of the various categories in the Independent Games Festival also received cash prizes for their victories. Winners from both events have been bolded.

Independent Games Festival: 

Excellence in Audio
Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure
Phonopath
The Sailor’s Dream
Shovel Knight
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Thumper

Excellence in Design
80 Days
Framed
Invisible, Inc.
Killer Queen
Outer Wilds
The Talos Principle

Excellence in Visual Art
Donut County
else Heart.Break()
Lumino City
Memory of a Broken Dimension
Metamorphabet
Oquonie

Excellence in Narrative
80 Days
Coming Out Simulator 2014
Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration
PRY
This War of Mine
Three Fourths Home

Nuovo Award
BECOME A GREAT ARTIST IN 10 SECONDS
Bounden
Desert Golfing
Elegy for a Dead World
how do you Do it?
Plug & Play
Rooftop Cop
Tetrageddon Games

Student Showcase
a-part-ment
Close Your
Downwell
Even the Stars
Gemini
Interloper
Rooftop Cop
Stellar Smooch

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
80 Days
Invisible, Inc.
Metamorphabet
Outer Wilds
The Talos Principle
This War of Mine

Game Developers Choice Awards:

Best Debut
The Astronauts
Respawn Entertainment
Stoic Studio
Upper One Games
Yacht Club Games

Innovation Award
Bounden
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Monument Valley
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
This War of Mine

Best Technology
Destiny
Elite: Dangerous
Far Cry 4
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Wolfenstein: The New Order

Best Audio
Alien: Isolation
Destiny
Hohokum
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Transistor

Best Visual Art
Alien: Isolation
Bayonetta 2
Child of Light
Hohokum
Monument Valley

Best Narrative
80 Days
Kentucky Route Zero: Act III
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
This War of Mine

Best Design
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Shovel Knight

Best Handheld/Mobile Game
80 Days
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Monument Valley
Super Smash Bros. 3DS
Threes!

Game of the Year
Alien: Isolation
Bayonetta 2
Destiny
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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EGM Review: Helldivers

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment

Hell ain’t a bad place to be

The twin-stick shooter is one of gaming’s oldest game types—and one of the hardest to make stand out among its contemporaries, especially given the genre’s recent resurgence in the Indie scene. Helldivers’ unique metagame feature, though, helps separate what would otherwise be a rather generic game from the pack.

Helldivers puts players in control of a run-of-the-mill soldier fighting for the glory of the unified Super-Earth. Ruled under one “managed democracy”, the inhabitants of Super-Earth feel it’s their duty to expand and spread the message of this way of life to all they come across in the universe. Several races, however, wish to stand in the way of Super-Earth’s all-powerful government, so conflict erupts on an intergalactic scale.

It’s here where the metagame aspect takes place. Besieged on three fronts, the Helldivers branch of Super-Earth’s military must perform missions on a series of planets, pushing each enemy race back across several sectors of space, until finally reaching a homeworld in the hopes of conquering it.

Each respective planet in those sectors is procedurally generated, which means that you’ll never play the same mission on the same terrain twice. The game offers almost a dozen different random missions types no matter the planet, such as demolishing enemy fortifications or setting up and protecting oil pumps to help support the war effort. Combine this with the dozen different difficulty rankings among the planets—from Level 1’s “Dive in the Park” to Level 12’s “Helldive”—and Helldivers features possibly the most variation you’ll find in a top-down, twin-stick shooter. Only when everyone pitches in to successfully complete missions can you make any real progress in the campaign.

The idea of working together to win goes well beyond just Helldivers’ metagame, though. With four-player local and online co-op, it’s easy for players to team up with friends or strangers to tackle the game’s objectives. Unfortunately, you’ll be forced to if you want to have any hope of completing the hardest difficulty levels. I found it impossible to beat anything beyond a Level 4 difficulty by myself, and we couldn’t beat anything past a Level 6 without a full four-player complement of Helldivers.

It was here where I found myself the most frustrated, as often, I couldn’t find enough players to successfully conquer the game’s hardest terrain and objectives. Sometimes, I couldn’t find enough players willing to take on the Level 12 worlds and was forced to muck about in the lower-level ones. Even though they’re procedurally generated, locations started to feel simple and repetitive as I quickly mastered the necessary techniques to use to finish my missions. The lack of an option to play with bots—and allow me to play how I wanted to play—made the game feel way too reliant on co-op, and I found my progress severely restricted by who was or wasn’t online.

Of course, sometimes even when I found a full group of players, the mission would still be doomed from the start. Similar to Arrowhead Game Studios’ first project, Magicka, friendly fire is a constant threat and can’t be turned off. This does offer an extra nuance to the game’s substantial inherent difficulty when you find a competent team of people who want to work together, but someone with an itchy trigger finger who wasn’t the greatest team player would often ruin the mission for us. We could’ve booted them, but then we’d be back to being down a person in a game that doesn’t lend itself well to fewer than four players.

If you can get that right mix of players together, though, Helldivers provides a memorable twin-stick-shooter experience. Whether it’s the unusually fleshed-out universe for this type of game—including Super-Earth’s propaganda being pumped across the news feed in your home base and a full encyclopedia’s worth of baddie rundowns—or the responsive controls, Helldivers shows the potential of how great this ancient gaming genre can still be, even on modern consoles.

There’s also a strong strategic element that you don’t always see in shooters like this. Figuring out where to drop in pre-mission and which objectives to tackle first were often just as important as working well as a team. Sure, there were moments when one player would have to act as a decoy to expose the weak point on the rear of a tank enemy, and without that teamwork, the day would’ve been lost. But dropping in away from known enemy encampments, using the terrain to protect one side when defending a point, or just bringing the right gun to the fight were as critical as working well with other players.

And while Helldivers may be classified as a twin-stick shooter, there’s also more to the gameplay than just pointing and shooting at one of the three alien races. The game incorporates several RPG elements into the experience to help your individual character still feel unique enough among the thousands of other faceless soldiers.

Each Helldiver is mildly customizable, with a handful of different armor pieces given to you at the start, and more can be unlocked as you level up. The armor is purely cosmetic, though, and actually, so is the process of leveling up. The game doesn’t offer any stat boosts—not even for HP. All you can get is a new gun, cosmetic armor piece, or access to a harder set of worlds.

The real rewards for playing the game actually come from conquering planets, which allow you to earn new Stratagems—the equivalent of special powers. Each Helldiver can carry four into battle, and these could be as simple as calling in an ammo drop or as game-changing as having a vehicle, turret, or mech-battle armor delivered in order to help turn the tide of a battle or beat a hasty retreat. The Stratagems add some real diversity to the gameplay, and being able to utilize them at opportune times often means the difference between defeat and victory.

And since the balance relies so much on four-player co-op, that means the best Stratagems are unlocked mostly behind the game’s hardest worlds. These are easily the most interesting part of customizing your character, but tying them to planets instead of levels makes the RPG elements feel somewhat worthless.

I found issue with how much of Helldivers’ accessibility and difficulty is balanced for the four-player co-op experience—when, realistically, it’s not the easiest thing for everyone to pull off. If you’re fortunate enough to have that tight-knit co-op crew you can always go to, Helldivers is one of the better top-down, twin-stick shooters I’ve seen in a while.

Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios • Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 03.03.15
7.0
Helldivers’ metagame campaign and variety of gameplay are more than enough to keep you entertained, but only players with a tight-knit group of co-op buddies will be able to get the most from the experience.
The Good The metagame aspect makes you feel more like an actual soldier in an army, working toward a greater goal.
The Bad Tacked-on RPG elements; lack of AI bot options.
The Ugly Getting ambushed by alien bugs—but you’re too distracted by twirling your cape around to fight back.
Helldivers is available on PS4, PS3, and PS Vita. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Sony for the benefit of this review.
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