Blink: Rogues (Review)

Source: Review Copy
Price: £5.79
Where To Get It: Steam

There is a common misconception among folks relatively new to vertical or horizontal shooters (or shmups, as they’re called) : That the Japanese ones are more difficult than the Western ones. While this certainly can be true (Hello Gradius, Hello Touhou!), there are still Western Shmups that are, for want of a better phrase (haha, not really), “Bastard Hard.” Jamestown. Raptor: Call of the Shadows. Xenon 2. They’re slower paced, for the most part, but enemies can be nasty.

Hrm, now how am I going to murder all eight of these enemies efficiently?

And so it is with Blink: Rogues, which combines some elements of the older European Shmup style (Slow paced, health bars, enemies are bullet spongey to the basic attack) with other ideas known to the genre, like enemies that can only be murderised with one of the three special weapons you have, flipping your craft to fire backwards, and a feature I haven’t seen outside of one other game (Dimension Drive) : Swapping between two different playfields, both because there are enemies to kill/avoid in both, and there are obstacles in both, some of which can only be avoided by blinking between sides.

Which would make the game more interesting, if it wasn’t for a lack of flair to it all. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like me a low poly aesthetic, I love it contrasting with painted characters and nice, clean text. And I love little touches like parts that come off when you shoot them, even if it makes the enemies that little bit more bullet spongey. But the projectiles, the music, the enemy explosions… They can best be described as “workmanlike.”

I do like a bearded older man with a cigar and a naval uniform sometimes…

Add in that there’s no UX scaling for the main, shooty bits, and no reminder as to what the special weapon keys are. Yes, I forgot. Regularly. Colours? No. Keys? Yes. I’m also not certain as to its colourblind friendliness (being Red, Blue, and Green), so maaaybe different shield animations would help there? In any case, it’s not quite as accessible as I would like, and while the story is reminiscent of old arcade games and the DOS shooters that had story (Short conversations and collectible journals), it’s also somewhat workmanlike.

I don’t know, maybe I’m jaded. In any case, the difficulty ramps up reasonably well, although a big part of that is that death doesn’t lose you the mission, but instead takes you out of the fight for a whole 3 seconds (and, if you were in the middle of a wave, 3 seconds is a loooong time), and lose your multiplier. That’s pretty much it, although it does make reaching the star goals of a level that much harder if you die (Kill 50%, 75%, and 100% of enemies, sometimes with an extra modification like “You have to kill all the red beacon ships!”)

Rocks. Cuboid rocks, but… Well, they are rocks, I’ll give this mission that.

Despite that workmanlike nature, it’s not a bad game, by any means, and a multiplayer mode (local, whether against another player, or an AI with 5 difficulty levels) with several story missions that don’t outstay their welcome (and now, survival levels afterward, presumably on a “One life” basis) helps give it that little touch of replayability once you’re done (Whether that’s “Beaten all the levels” or “All the stars, all of them!”), but… As mentioned, it’s workmanlike and low key, and I can perfectly understand why that would be a turn off to folks.

The Mad Welshman once had a successful 100% run of the Monty Python DOS game. To this day, he doesn’t quite know how.

Become a Patron!

Children of Morta (Review)

Source: Review Copy
Price: £18.49
Where To Get It: Steam

Children of Morta isn’t a game you progress in easily (unless you are good at ARPGs), but, even with not progressing as far as I’d like, there is… A lot to like about this one.

I’ve been there. Sometimes, y’just gotta bite the bullet.

The general story is one you’ve heard before: Yada yada corruption, yada yada pilgrimage to holy sites to clean said corruption, yada yada monsters and bosses along the way. What makes this interesting, however, is that it’s also the ongoing story of The Bergsons, guardians of the land, who, despite having trained for generations, find themselves struggling, not only with their path to find and defeat the source of the corruption (hopefully for real this time), but also in bringing the family together in a time of crisis… A family that had, like many families, had its fair share of drama. Uncle Ben finds himself struggling with his own bitterness between him and Sheila. Kevin struggles with finding acceptance among his own family, because he wants to help, being a good Bergson.

They’re lives that make sense, even in this topsy turvy, high fantasy world of ancient evil, goblins, trolls… And while the gameplay is interesting indeed, I find myself just as impressed at how the narrative of the family tugs at the heartstrings. It helps that the narrator has a solid voice for fantasy narration, and that the soundtrack is… Melancholic, in its way. Peaceful when at home, tense when in the dungeon, but, at home, there is this sense of sadness hiding in the music.

That statue looks relatively innocent in this screenshot, but it pulses with gravity waves, and yes, those are spike traps.

Visually, the game is also solid. Although you only realise what certain dungeon features are once you’ve unlocked them, or encountered them for the first time, they’re easily identifiable, especially the ones that show up on the mini-map. Enemies, similarly, are interesting, and the pixel stylings are good.

And finally, we have the mechanics. As you might have guessed, this is the incremental sort of RPG, where upgrades and treasure gained are carried over, but in-dungeon items, for the most part, are not. Upgrades are unlocked as the game progresses, as are characters to play, and while everyone has some sort of dodge move, and quickly unlocks a damaging effect or upgrade to their abilities, each character has their own feel.

And when the family is united… Oh, that would be a terrible day for evil…

Kevin, for example, is an assassin, striking faster and faster the more his blows hit, but losing steam if there’s no-one nearby to kill, encouraging a rushdown style in which you’re looking for someone to fight. Kevin, after all, is not only trained, he has something to prove, as much to himself as his family. Meanwhile, Linda, the bard, is an archer, who can fire while moving, but does more damage, faster shots, if she’s still, raining death on her foes while needing to move away with the nastier enemies. In general terms, it feels somewhat like a twin-stick Diablo, complete with that “Ohshit, Runrunrun!” when an Elite or an ambush appears. But nobody dies, being saved on the brink of death to try, try again.

Children of Morta is definitely one I feel like coming back to, as individual runs are short, the story is charming and soulful, the aesthetic is good… It has a lot of character, and I would definitely recommend it to ARPG fans.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t root for nonspecific forces of evil. If you aren’t cackling wildly while giving away your secret plan, I’m not bothered.

Become a Patron!

Horizon Chase Turbo (Review)

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £15.49 (£17.53 for game+soundtrack, £3.99 soundtrack)
Where to Get It: Steam

Arcade racing games can be beautiful things. They don’t even have to be twitchy, they just have to feel twitchy. And the best of them appreciate that all you really need is steering, acceleration, brakes, and boost.

While the number of racers seems intimidating, there is some level of avoidance on starting, so with a little care, it’s fine.

Okay, that one’s subjective, but hey, less controls means more accessibility, and on the controls front, Horizon Chase Turbo definitely fits the bill. Everything is accessible on keyboard with one hand. And, while the game definitely has some twitchy sections, a lot of it is, essentially, the art of the overtake. Turning corners hard may get you round that corner for sure, but if you want to pass that car in front instead of bumping their rear end… Well, ease off on the turn a little, you can edge by ’em!

Now, the thing with Horizon Chase Turbo is that, apart from completionist stuff, mechanically, it is very much “Does What It Say On The Tin.” The most complex part of it is boost starting (Have your revs in the green, not the red when the count hits 0, you get a boost), and everything else is aesthetic and track design… And the base track design is good. Good aesthetics, and only a few nasty surprises in the form of a couple of high chicane tracks early on.

A lot of overtakes feel… Really close on reflection. But damn, they feel good…

No, where it likes to get challenging (sometimes downright nasty) is for the completionists among us. You see, there are tokens. Get all the tokens and place first, you get a super trophy. Get all the super trophies, and a gold in the Upgrade race (Permanent buffs for all your cars, two stats at a time), and you unlock a new car. But these tokens have been the biggest source of retries for me, as some are placed in such a way you have to get each row, each lap, some are placed so it would be very difficult to get both rows in one go, and one track in particular in the early game raised my eyebrow a little, as the tokens are on the inside of one curve to the outside of the next. In driving terms, this is basically the hardest kind of line you can try to follow.

But the thing is, apart from that, Horizon Chase Turbo is really enjoyable to play. Its simplicity means you’re paying attention to the race, its music is good driving tunes, from rocking synth guitars to instruments that remind me heavily of Amiga soundfonts (The Amiga had a lot of racing games), it’s visually pleasing and clear, and, for the devs among us, there’s the fun note that Horizon Chase Turbo mimics the visual style of outrun (Which used sprite scaling to imply distance) by… Scaling the models as they become visible, essentially doing a 2D trick that was necessary into a 3D trick that isn’t, but adds directly to the feel. That’s classy.

I dunno, random dialogue… There’s a certain… y’know, joo noo say kwah about lapping the person who was first…

For a good look at a good way of doing an Outrun style arcade racer, or if you’re looking for a racing game that doesn’t have you tearing out your hair, Horizon Chase Turbo is definitely worth a look.

The Mad Welshman enjoys good arcade racing so much, he forgets release dates. Ah well, it’s good stuff.

Become a Patron!

Katamari Damacy: Re-Rolled (Review)

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £15.99
Where To Get It: Steam.

It says a lot about how well Katamari Damacy has aged that, years after its original release, I still sing along to Katamari on the Rocks with the same enthusiasm as when I first heard it, and I just nodded when the keyboard controls were WASD for left stick, IJKL for right stick.

Ugh, SERIOUSLY, DAD? DO YOU KNOW HOW DENTED MY KATAMARI IS CLEANING UP AFTER YOU?!?

And, of course, when it came time to play again, I swore in much the same places.

For those who never saw Katamari Damacy before now, it’s a fun arcade game in which you, one of the Princes of All Cosmos, are cleaning up your dad’s mess (He broke all the stars in the sky), by rolling a sticky ball around the Earth, gathering up as many items as possible in a time limit to create new stars. Anything the same size as your Katamari can’t be picked up, anything bigger than you actively knocks items off your Katamari when they hit you (or vice versa), slightly smaller things may take two rolls, one to knock them over, another to pick them up.

Why yes, a lot of the things you roll up are people. I’m sure they’re fine with being turned into a star!

Although part of this is that “Collect Specific Object” levels can be devious. That’s not a Swan at all!

In any case, this is essentially a remake, fixing some of the problems of the earlier, and, at the time, somewhat ambitious game, while retaining everything else. A light hearted soundtrack,varying from triumphant a-capella, to smooth and jazzy. A solid, low-poly aesthetic, even carried into its animated cutscenes, where the strangely cuboid family witness the events from a slightly different perspective. Even the interesting writing, which varies from light-hearted, to light-hearted covering a darker side (The King of All Cosmos is, overall, a terrible dad at this early point in the series. And, you know, turning Earth into a variety of stars, piece by piece, in order to fix the mistakes of the parent.)

Improved, meanwhile, is a bit of responsiveness, adding keyboard controls (Although this is one of those games which was definitely designed for twin-stick gamepads, and so, it’s preferable to play with one),and takes advantage of the extra performance it can squeeze out so that the larger, more filled levels no longer slow things down.Which, overall, means it’s a solid rebuild of a classic and interesting game with a unique aesthetic, and no more needs to be said, right?

NEWS: Strange King Hangs Over Earth. Also Some Stars Came Back.

Not quite, although what’s left are, essentially, annoyances. Video and sound settings are not accessible until the tutorial is completed, and the game essentially throws you right in. Beyond this,however, there’s enough quality of life improvements, and the game’s formula remains pretty fresh, that yes, even for £16, I would recommend Katamari Damacy fans give this rebuild a go, be that on PC,or on the other platforms it’s released on. Even the local multiplayer has been preserved.

The Mad Welshman appreciates a good aesthetic. Almost as much as he approves of the wanton, joyful chaos.

Become a Patron!