You’re climbing a nuclear missile heading for Washington DC, hurtling towards the stratosphere, disabling it with seconds to spare, and then free falling right into the Oval Office, before becoming the president of the United States of America. It’s ridiculous, it’s far fetched, and it’s only the beginning of Saints Row IV.

Originally meant to be nothing more than a modest expansion for Saints Row: The Third, Saint’s Row IV follows the theme of kicking the stakes up a notch with each sequel. The question is, where do they go from Saints Row: The Third? In the last game the Saints had gone from street gang to all but owning their home city of Steelport, not to mention the fact that they’re famous and filthy rich to boot. The only logical answer was that the Saints now run the White House and must defend the earth from an alien invasion at the hands of Zinyak, a warlord from a race of aliens known as the Zin empire.

The Saints are quickly abducted by Zinyak and each forced into a virtual reality simulation of their worst nightmares. Once the boss manages to break free from his 1950’s sitcom virtual hell and wreak havoc on the alien spaceship while naked (because it wouldn’t be Saints Row without a booty out shoot out,) Earth is destroyed by Zinyak and the boss is placed in a simulated version of Steelport where it’s up to them alone to free the rest of the Saints one by one from their simulations and face Zinyak together as the last earthlings left.

The gameplay is the same open world sandbox that Saints Row has always been, but while the words “zany GTA clone” come to mind for the previous games, Saints Row IV finally takes a big step away from it’s main competitor with the addition of one brilliant new feature. Super powers.

Yes they really went all out with Saints Row IV, but when a series that previously had nothing to do with super powers suddenly makes a whole game based around them, there’s a lot of potential for things to go tits up. Luckily this wasn’t the case for Saints Row IV, and the super powers fit in snugly, complimenting the rest of the core game play like new mechanics should when they’re done right.

Included in the new arsenal of abilities are super speed, super jumping, elemental blasts, stomps, and buffs, and telekinesis. Elements include lightning, fire and ice, and once unlocked can be cycled through at will for each respective power. Basically, you have everything you need to be the super slammin’ badass you’ve always dreamed of being.

The best part of the powers is that while they add a lot to the combat, they don’t make your guns redundant, in fact the two of them actually have a lot of synergy. For example, one of my favourite things to do is to freeze blast a group of enemies and then shatter them with a shotgun, or super stomp them into zero gravity and then pick them off with pistols while they float there helplessly. It’s okay though, because most of the violence is in the simulation. Most of it.

Apart from that, it’s business as usual for Saints Row. The player character is fully customizable, or you can even import your character from Saints Row: The Third. You can still complete side missions to increase your hourly income, which can be spent on various perks that upgrade things like damage resistance, ammo stock and homies, which adds RPG elements to the game. The story is still full of the hyperbolic and dry Saints sense of humour, and blatant parodies of other popular games such as Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid.

While it is full of plot holes when you really sit down and think about it, this is a game that features a melee weapon called the dildo bat, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and as a result manages to be a wicked amount of fun. Saints Row IV is not only the perfect culmination of several games on an upward trend of absurdity, but also a really solid superhero sandbox game that makes the rest of the games in the series look tame.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Saint’s Row IV Review was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This title is exclusive to Nintendo Switch and was reviewed as such.

As someone who grew up playing what is now known as the first generation of Pokémon games, I always knew I was going into this game with rose tinted glasses. How could I not — Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition was the first video game I ever owned and played, and it’s no exaggeration to say I’ve been playing Pokémon since before I could read. It kickstarted a lifelong passion for video games that turned into something vaguely resembling a career in the industry, so you can imagine the emotional connection I had to this remake before I’d even popped the cartridge in.

If you’re not familiar with the Pokémon formula, that’s great actually — these games are probably a good entry point for those who didn’t grow up on the early games and want to see what all the nostalgia is about. Not only that, it’s something that a portion of the fans — especially the genwunners — have wanted for years now; a Pokémon game with modern 3D graphics set in Kanto with the OG 151 Pokemon. So how does it hold up against the game that was an iconic part of so many 90s childhoods?

The bulk of the game remains largely unchanged; players must travel Kanto challenging the Pokémon gyms to collect the eight badges that allow you to take on the Pokémon league, catching various Pokémon and training them through Pokémon battles along the way. The secondary objective is to catch many different species of Pokémon along the way to fill out the Pokedex, a digital encyclopedia given to you by Professor Oak — pretty stock standard Pokémon stuff for long term fans.

So what’s different, you ask? A lot actually, but the biggest and most obvious change is the way you hunt and catch wild Pokémon. Random encounter battles are a thing of the past, and are now replaced with what is essentially the Pokémon GO capture system. Players can see wild Pokémon and start encounters with them in the overworld, then must catch them by throwing pokeballs using the Switch Joy Con’s motion controls. I didn’t really know what to expect from this feature, but was pleasantly surprised with how well it fits with the rest of the game, and what it does for the pacing. First of all, it makes the game a helluva lot less grindy, removing hours of tedious wild Pokémon battles in favour of a lighter minigame that if anything improves on the tension of trying to catch a Pokémon. After all, if you spend too long trying to catch a Pokémon, it will run away, leaving you empty handed and down few pokeballs. Being able to see Pokémon in the overworld is also a nice touch, meaning you don’t have to push through battles with random wild Pokémon just to try and find the ones you want or don’t have, and this ability to pick and choose (Pikachus?) makes trying to fill out the Pokédex a lot less hassle.

Otherwise, the Pokémon battles with other trainers remain largely unchanged. Your party Pokémon gain exp when you catch wild Pokemon or defeat other Pokémon in trainer battles, which makes them level up, learn moves, and of course evolve. One mechanic that has been removed from modern battle system are Pokémon abilities, which usually grant passive effects in battle, a controversial choice, but one that I feel reflects the back to basics feel of the original gen one games that didn’t have Pokémon abilities. I feel it’s a change that was also necessary to keep the game balanced due to the somewhat limiting nature of only having the original 151 Pokemon — more on that later.

There were some changes though, that were slightly disappointing, if not just downright strange. The best example I can give is the game corner in Celadon City. Now I can understand why they might want to remove the slot machines, because 20 years ago people weren’t as concerned about the idea of children learning to gamble from handheld video games. I did still expect them to at least replace it with some other minigame, especially considering they turned the game corner into a video game arcade rather than a casino. Instead, there’s nothing special to do in the arcade, which I suppose was little more than a nice detail and time killer in the original games, but still something that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

One thing that I did notice going back to Kanto, is how limiting the original 151 Pokémon are in terms of variety, and while 151 sounds like a lot, when you take into account Pokémon in the same evolutionary families, that only leaves roughly 80 different species to choose from, a handful of which are unique legendary Pokémon. What this means is a lot of tedious and repetitive slogs through trainer battles in some areas. One that comes to mind is Pokémon tower in Lavender Town, where almost every trainer exclusively uses Gastly and/or Haunter, not to mention that most of the wild Pokémon you encounter tend to be Gastly as well. Back in the original gen one games, this was an accepted limitation of the technology at the time, but it’s an issue that’s highlighted in the remakes, especially after being spoiled for choice with the staggering 800 or so different Pokémon that now exist — a number I had to double check because I lost track a couple generations ago.

In terms of presentation though, Game Freak have really outdone themselves. The art style is modern and colourful, but simple, and captures the feel of the original art style perfectly. The cinematic cutscenes are nothing short of charming. The 3D Pokemon models have been reused from other modern games, but they do a good job of representing the 2D character designs they were based on. The cherry on top though, is the modern reprises of the original sountrack, with fresh rousing tunes that do their original 8 bit counterparts justice, and are enough on their own to send you into a euphoric nostalgia coma.

Looking back on the game now, there’s probably one question that most long term fans want answered; is it “dumbed down”? To which I’d say, dumbed down isn’t the right term. Some elements have been simplified, yes, such as the wild Pokémon encounters, but they work to the game’s benefit, and ultimately offer a more rounded experience with a lot of the bloat of the modern games left out, stuff that mainly exists to cater to the competitive scene anyway, making for a more casual and dare I say comfy approach to a long standing formula that the games have become known for. Is this how I’d want future main series games to be? Not really, but for what it is — a charming, colourful, retelling of where it all started, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! offers an experience for all Pokémon fans from old to new.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! Review — A Modern Classic was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This title was reviewed on PS4, but is also available on Xbox One.

If there’s one thing about the cowboy era that people take for granted, it’s baths. All that writhing around in mud, blood, and horse crud is enough to make anyone smell like a Smash tournament venue. Yet Red Dead Redemption 2, the much anticipated sequel that’s actually a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, presents the dying days of the wild west in every dirty detail, and couldn’t make it seem more appealing.

Players assume the role of Arthur Morgan, a straight talkin’ cowboy and member of the Van der Linde gang led by Dutch van der Linde at the turn of the 19th century (1899 for you city folk), as their wild west lifestyle becomes less and less welcome in the face of western industrialism and federal law. Acting as less of a gang and more of a family, the Van der Linder gang are constantly on the run from federal agents, grasping at the last days of the American Frontier, and by extension, their way of life. As such their campsite and base of operations is constantly shifting location, bringing them to new environments and towns on a regular basis, where Dutch is always promising that the gang’s last big score is just around the corner.

The World of Red Dead Redemption 2 is an utterly awe inspiring expanse of dirt roads, rolling hills, winding rivers, and vast woods, dotted all over with towns, settlements, and farmland just waiting to be discovered. When you get a chance to stare out over the natural vistas of late 19th century rural America, it’s easy to get swept up in the overwhelming sense of natural beauty that constantly emanates from the map in this game. What really brings the whole thing to life though, and makes it more than pretty wallpaper material and cinematic trailer bait for the marketing team, is the amazing attention to detail that adds depth and life to the world around you.

Rockstar have taken the Grand Theft Auto V approach of filling this world with copious amounts of mundane detail, but in this setting it contributes so much more to the organic feel of the game rather than making it feel bloated like it did in GTA. I spent an obscene amount of hours in Red Dead Redemption 2 doing simple activities such as playing poker, hunting, fishing, horse riding, and just generally meandering, seeing what random events and encounters would pull me in — and they never failed to surprise. Whether it’s saving a strangers loved one from bandits, or just hucking sticks of dynamite at klan gatherings, the random occurrences mean there’s always something interesting happening around you, with new things to do and new people to meet.

The characters you do meet all tend to feel like they’ve got their own stories going on, with their own goals and ambitions, and each mission you undertake with them gives you what feels like a small fragment of a bigger story, which is a hallmark of great storytelling. This applies especially to the colourful cast of characters that make up the camp, such as Hosea Matthews, Leopold Strauss, Sadie Adler, Susan Grimshaw, Josiah Trelawny, Lenny Summers and many more — characters so memorable and complex, I actually remembered them by name instead of referring to them as “Gunslinger lady” and “Top hat guy”. Even John Marston, main character of the first game gets some more development, as we’re given an insight into his backstory and family life, including the relationship with his son, Jack. Seeing them all grow and forming attachments to these characters is what makes it all the more gut wrenching when they start getting gunned down and dropping like flies at an NRA meeting, something the writers seem to have understood well and implemented effectively.

When all of this comes together, along with the incredibly fitting soundtrack and clever use of colour palettes and varied environments, what you get is a rich, authentic feeling atmosphere that so few games, if any, have ever pulled off to such a successful degree. It’s a game that uses everything it has to create a certain mood to compliment the events taking place, and it’s easy to find yourself being completely absorbed by this. So much so, that Red Dead Redemption 2 is the only game I have ever played with a fast travel system that I didn’t use once because I didn’t want to miss a single thing this game had to offer — and if you know how impatient I am, that’s a real achievement.

That’s not to say that there was nothing that tested my patience about the game. The first and most obvious being the Rockstar trademark of clunky controls where everything handles like a horses ass, including the literal horses ass. While I’m of the opinion that mastering the way the horses and vehicles handle is all part of the experience that reflects the nature of learning to ride a horse, that leaves no excuse for the on foot controls, and the cover system that likes to take the piss — Uncharted managed to iron this out after a couple of sequels, whereas the Rockstar engine doesn’t seem to be getting any better at it.

There’s also the fact that the game has no sense of balancing income, and as such you tend to be making more money that you can manage to spend once you get a fair amount of story missions under your belt. After a certain bank robbery I found myself with more than enough money to upgrade all of my guns, fully upgrade camp, and buy enough supplies to break my horses back with still enough left to pay off the bounty for robbing the bank 20 times over. This is a bit of a common problem in video games, but in this instance it really undermines the whole story of Dutch waaahing on about how the gang needs just a bit more money to retire from crime for good when I have enough whiskey money to last 3 lifetimes.

So have Rockstar done it again? Not only that, they’ve done it better than anything else they’ve done before, as Red Dead Redemption 2 has easily become my favourite Rockstar game of all time, which is a take so hot I’m willing to fight any Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas fanboys who disagree. Between the jaw dropping detail in the open world, the fascinating characters, and the rousing soundtrack, Red Dead Redemption 2 creates an immersive fantasy world better than any fantasy game on the market could hope. If only the development team were still alive today to see the fruits of their labour, it would bring a tear to their eye, god rest their souls.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Review — Boy Howdy was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This title was reviewed on Nintendo Switch, but is also available on Android, iOS, Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

The King of Armello has contracted the Rot, the disease spreading throughout the lands which corrupts body and soul. His days are numbered, and so the Great Clans send their best heroes forward to try and claim the throne any way they can. With the King in ailing health, and descending into madness, it’s only a matter of time before a new King or Queen sits upon the throne. The only question is; who will it be?

Developed by Australian indie collective League of Geeks, Armello markets itself as a digital role-playing strategy board game, and certainly lives up to the genre(s?). The game board is similar in a way to the Sid Meier’s Civilization games, in that it is made up of different tiles each with their own terrain that all come together to form a map, which players move their hero around in order to explore dungeons, complete quests, capture settlements, and ultimately battle each other in a chaotic struggle for the throne.

So how does one claim the throne? In Armello, a simple dibs is not enough, but there are plenty of paths that lead to the palace. Victory conditions include defeating the King in battle, collecting four Infinity Stones Spirit Stones to become the Spirit Walker and cleanse the Rot, acquiring a higher Rot score than the King and then defeating him, or by simply being the King’s favourite (represented by having the highest Prestige score) when he dies. Not only does this system add a lot of depth to the strategy of the game, it also means that there’s always the potential for an opponent to swoop in and snatch an unexpected victory from another player’s grasp.

As you may have guessed, a lot of this is easier said than done. The King, in his corrupted state, spreads perils throughout the lands, these perils being challenges that the heroes can overcome to secure an advantage, or fail and pay the price. Each challenge relies on one of your hero’s stats, fight, body, wits, or spirit, and grants a dice pool equal to your current level in the stat, which is where the tabletop RPG elements begin to come into play. Does this mean you can have less dice than the skill check requires? Absolutely, so approaching a peril requires careful consideration about your character’s stats, and by extension, the kind of build you’re going for in the early to mid game. However one thing you can do to cut down on the RNG is play your cards right — literally.

Cards are another major mechanic in Armello that can help or hinder you or your competition, depending on how they are used. There are item cards which provide bonus stat points and perks to your character for as long as you equip them, spells that grant temporary beneficial effects, follower cards which provide passive aid in various circumstances, and trickery cards who exist only to fuck over your opponents. As well as their normal effects, each card has a symbol that corresponds to a dice roll result, and cards can be “burned” at the start of an encounter or peril, which involves destroying them to secure a specific dice roll result.

It may be beginning to sound like the game’s mechanics are a bit bloated, and I definitely felt that way myself at times. However, removing any of these mechanics would take a lot of depth out of the strategy of the game, and believe it or not, they actually come together really well, complimenting and influencing each other rather than causing a disjointed mess. For example, the total amount of cards you can draw into your hand is based on your wit level, which feeds back into the peril system — the higher your wit score, the bigger the dice pool you have for wit based perils, and the more cards you have to burn to secure a desired result.

All in all, Armello does impressively well at finding its niche and excelling at it, even more so considering the game is a debut title for League of Geeks. Whether you enjoy board games, DnD, or just strategy games in general, Armello has a decent amount to offer, including a healthy amount of replayability at a reasonable price point. They also seem to be going for what is known as the Skyrim publishing strategy, releasing on as many platforms as possible, meaning it will be easier than ever for you and some mates to destroy your friendship over another board game.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Armello Review — Oh I Just Can’t Wait to Be King was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Yet another nostalgic turn based RPG served up hot on the 3DS recently was Crystareino, curiously by the same developers of Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector, Hit-Point Co.,Ltd. While you don’t collect kitties in this game, you do collect a lot of strays in Crystareino, in the forms of friends and allies that fight with you, the Hero.

The Hero has been destined to protect his homeland from a great threat, and has yet to finish training under the guidance of the sacred beast Eppol when he is suddenly transported to another world at the behest of the King of Rodwaal in order to stop the Demon King. Left with no other choice, the Hero and his sacred beast set off to defeat the Demon King in the hopes that it will break the seal preventing them from returning to their home world.

Along the way, many characters will join and leave the Hero’s party, inspired by their aura to fight their hardest against the influence of the Demon King. I actually really enjoyed this aspect of the game, because frequently changing the party dynamics meant that your approach to combat encounters is also constantly changing. This was an interesting way to prevent combat from becoming repetitive, in what would otherwise be a pretty generic turn based combat system. Otherwise, the encounters tend to be a bit of a breeze for most of the game, until you hit the difficulty spike where it just begins to throw boss after boss at you, by which point I had lost too much interest in the combat to come prepared with a synergistic party.

The downside to having so many characters come and go is that many of them never really get a chance to shine in the storyline, and often you’ll only get a snippet of their backstory before they’re suddenly shelved again until later on in the story. This is only for the characters that actually get a backstory by the way, since there are also random mercenaries that you can hire in taverns to fill up your party when the other characters have better things to do than preventing the apocalypse. As a result, many of the side characters are forgettable, besides Eppol, who is the only character I’d want to forget. Besides looking like a Pomeranian that stuck its chops in a candy floss machine, they serve as the exposition for the silent protagonist, and a result means they get plenty of useless and annoying dialogue that make me wish I could just swap them for a nice sword or something and be done with them.

The dialogue in general tends to drag on a bit at times, a common problem for indie RPGs, but it’s an issue that tends to be a bit compounded when your party is built like a revolving door at a cosplay convention. If your attention span is as short as mine, you’ll be finding yourself speed reading dialogue so you can get to the next save point semi regularly. This only makes the instant dialogue speed setting even more blessed, since at least you’re not forced to read at the text scroll speed.

Besides sounding like it was named by Ned Flanders, Crystareino does stand up as a solid RPG experience, but a lot of it is just too generic to keep my interest for very long. For those wanting a simple throwback to the early days of turn based RPGs, you’ll probably find a lot of things to like about this game, and it has the potential for you to get deeply involved in the finer mechanics. However for me, it’s a hard Crystarei-No.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Crystareino Review — Bland as Flanders was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My opinion of Infinite Dunamis has been a bit of a roller-coaster to say the least. At first glance, this appears to be your standard generic fantasy turn based RPG, so I went in with pretty low expectations. Anticipating an indie grindfest of encounters, a generic story, and a Mary Sue protagonist, I was surprised at how quickly my expectations were subverted, and reminded of an old saying about judging books.

Infinite Dunamis is set years after the robot uprising, which forced former enemy countries Eleftheria and Valtenia to unite and overcome the threat of the machines. Although they succeeded, over a decade later they are left with a tenuous peace treaty, and rising tension between the two begins to cause political uncertainty.

Meanwhile, a young engineer by the name of Luke is scavenging for old machine parts in an abandoned cave when he comes across Estelle, a half robot, half human android, as she is being attacked by bandits. Defenseless and lying in scattered pieces, Estelle is at the mercy of these bandits when Luke steps in and sends them running, before almost walking off and leaving Estelle behind.

You see, it’s important to understand that Luke is a massive dickhead. I don’t just mean he’s careless and cold hearted, I mean this guy seems to get off on purposely acting as antagonistic and abusive as possible to the people around him at any given time. It’s like he’s actively putting in a conscious effort in to be an asshole, like an edgy 15 year old trying to emulate Rick Sanchez. I cannot stress this enough: Luke is the biggest prick you’ve ever met. Initially I wrote this off as bad writing, thinking that Luke was meant to be an edgy self insert character, but after witnessing some of the profound things said by NPCs, I realized that he was really just written to be a massive turd.

So after finding out that Estelle is a robot and proceeding to treat her like subhuman garbage, somehow she convinces Luke to escort her back to the Eleftherian royal city, where it turns out she is actually a princess as well as an android. Reluctantly and after much vocal objection, Luke is convinced to escort Estelle on a diplomatic mission to Caesius, where a mysterious traveler named Vince and the youthful Witch of Caesius named Chelsea join the group, and are tasked with investigating the attack on Estelle, which, surprise surprise, may just involve a plot of subterfuge from Valtenia.

Besides Luke, I found myself quickly becoming quite attached to these characters, especially Vince, who seems to be the butt of a lot of jokes and the subject of much ire from everyone but Estelle due to his mysterious and vague backstory. This is despite being nothing but helpful and reasonable towards the rest of the party. Honestly, this dude just puts up with so much shit from these bratty kids, especially Luke, while maintaining an unfaltering friendly demeanour. While I appreciate the interesting group dynamics and the resulting dialogue, I can’t help but feel like any reasonable group of people would have told Luke’s miserable ass to get lost several snide comments ago by this point, but I digress.

As for the combat and random encounters, there are just enough interesting mechanics involved to keep it from being totally generic, but it’s not the most groundbreaking aspect of the game in any way. New skills and spells are learned by becoming proficient with different weapons and equipment, and achieving 100% proficiency with a weapon allows your character to permanently learn the skill associated with the weapon. This encourages players to constantly be on the lookout for new equipment, as well as trying out as many of them as possible.

There actually aren’t many bad things I can say about the game that aren’t due to the limitations of the RPG Maker engine it was made in, which comes down to things like cheap looking animation quality, a lack of enemy variety, and the fact that consumables and money are never a concern due to how common they are. Sometimes the game can also get a bit bogged down with the dialogue in some scenes, which is a common mistake to make in RPGs given how a game must be able to balance sufficient exposition without dragging on.

Going in with such low expectations, I was actually pleasantly surprised with the amount of depth in Infinite Dunamis, at least in terms of the writing and lore. It’s quite easy to see that the elements of a decent RPG experience are definitely present, which makes it all the more unfortunate that the game is held back by the medium of RPG Maker. Still, it’s a promising entry for developers Exe Create Inc at it’s price point of $10 USD, and hopefully they’ll be able to afford an Unreal Engine license someday.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Infinite Dunamis Review — Pushing RPG Maker’s Potential was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In my original review of No Man’s Sky back when it was released, I gave it a 6.5/10, which was generous at the time, but only because I could see that the game had potential. Following a steady stream of updates over the last couple of years, we now have No Man’s Sky NEXT — the biggest update so far, and a very important milestone; finally, the game contains everything that was promised by Sean Murray prior to launch.

Yes, just under two years since the game’s release, it has finally become everything Hello Games said it would, and more. Base building, land vehicles, economies, questlines, buried treasure, and cosmic mysteries — No Man’s Sky has finally hit its stride as an epic sci fi adventure. So how was it coming back to the game for the first time since release?

At first, the changes are small, but noticeable. As I spawned on my first planet, I noticed that it had much more of an atmosphere than any planet I’d been to on release. This wintry tundra land was much different than the barren rocky landscapes that I remembered. Between the vegetation and colour palettes, planets seemed to exude a certain mood. As I eventually took off to the stars, my first goal being to find a planet worthy of a permanent settlement, this was reinforced when I found myself on a dark and rocky planet that I could only describe as creepy. After a short and frankly unsettling stint, I decided to blast off in search of somewhere I could call home, or at least somewhere that didn’t feel like the galactic equivalent of a dingy alleyway.

First though, I needed to get together some scratch, a bit of moolah, to fill my coffers. So I did what I had learned to do on release — gather resources. After almost an entire evening of pointing my laser beam at rocks and trees, I realised that I wasn’t having fun. It was a grind, gathering resources, refining them using one of the new machines present in the game, and then schlepping them over to the nearest space station to sell them. It was an easy way to make money, but it was time consuming and tedious, and I felt like I was working a second job instead of being an intergalactic explorer. Sure, there was a main mission thread nagging me to go and build something, but I needed resources if I was ever going to get anywhere.

That’s when I decided to check out something new — buried treasure. Using the scanner, players can find underground caches with blueprints and nanites — a currency used to buy equipment upgrades. While the main purpose was to use blueprints to unlock new building components for bases, I found a better use for them; selling them off for an insane amount of credits at the local space station. Within an hour of this new business venture, I was already a millionaire, and I’d never have to mine again as long as I could just buy any resources that I need. Work smarter, not harder.

It was then that I ran into an almost game breaking bug. You see, one of the first things I bought with my newfound wealth was a better starship, but this was before I had unlocked the hyperdrive tech that would allow me to travel to other star systems. This can cause a glitch with a main questline that means the quest doesn’t register that you’ve fueled your hyperdrive, and traps you in an endless loop where an NPC gives you hyperdrive fuel but the quest never completes. You can’t actually use your hyperdrive until the quest is completed, effectively trapping you in the star system where you started.

Luckily I found a solution on reddit that only involved uninstalling an expensive hyperdrive upgrade that came as part of my new ship, and while I’d rather lose that than an entire save, it was still pretty bullshit that such a critical bug is still present in the latest update.

Digression aside, I made it to a new star system where even more opportunities to make cash arose, the first one being bounty star ships. I spent a brief amount of time hunting space bounties, most of which was me getting readjusted to starship combat. At first, it’s disorienting, but once you get a grasp on it and install a couple more weapons systems in your ship’s arsenal, you’ll feel like Han fucking Solo in no time.

This was when I caught wind of an even easier way to make cash — scanning wildlife. After making it to a certain point in the game which I won’t divulge due to spoilers, I was rewarded with a huge cache of nanite clusters, which again are used for purchasing equipment upgrades. I headed straight to the nearest space station and bought the best scanner upgrade module I could afford. Once I headed planetside again, I scanned my first animal, and realised I would never have to worry about credits again.

You see, when you scan wildlife and plants with the default scanner, you would usually get a couple hundred credits for plants and maybe a couple thousand for animals if you were lucky. With this new module, I was gaining tens of thousands of credits for each plant that I scanned, and sometimes hundreds of thousands for each animal. Within touching down on a new planet, I could make a few hundred thousand credits within the first few minutes, all by literally just staring at things for a couple seconds each. I was now living the high roller life, and not even the sky was the limit.

What can I spend my riches on now? Well, I’ve yet to decide. There’s the obvious — a better ship so I could pursue bigger bounties, better weapons, better mining gear, starship and exosuit upgrades, I could buy the materials to make a bigger and better base, set up autonomous mining and manufacturing operations, or I could buy my very own freighter ship, and take it on expeditions, or just create my own ortibal space station HQ.

My point here is twofold. First, while there is still a bit of a grind involved in the early game, there are now many more viable playstyles that will earn a living and help you achieve your goals in the vast universe without needing to sit there and laser rocks for 20 hours, whatever those goals may be. Sick of mining? Instead earn your keep through exploration, or become a daring space pilot, hunting bounties in the dizzying depths of space.

Second, is how easy it is to inadvertently create your own narrative within the game. Take my experience for example — the story of an entity looking for his new forever home above the stars, a journey that saw me become a miner, a treasure hunter, a bounty hunter, and eventually, a modest scientist cataloging life forms in all corners of the galaxy, with my next adventure and career prospect just a whim away.

This is all complimented by the fact that the game now has a spark of life that seemed to be missing from the release version of the game. On top of the aforementioned improvements to planet atmospheres, NPCs now populate space stations in large numbers, each of them having their own unique interactions with the player. You can recruit NPCs to work at your base, with questlines that they reward the player for completing. Fauna tends to look like the result of evolution within an ecosystem rather than just randomised abominations most of the time.

Multiplayer is now present as promised, although I only had one experience with it, which is that someone ended up in the same star system as me, and proceeded to goose guard the space station I was in so they could try and shoot my ship down when I left. Honestly, I don’t know why I was expecting anything else but for other players to be the biggest assholes in the galaxy.

Not only has No Man’s Sky improved immensely on what was initially released, it is now a universe ripe for exploration, a universe that feels lived in. A place where players can carve out their own story, a new frontier amongst the stars waiting to be discovered, looted, and/or conquered, should you choose to do so. For the first time since the game was released, I feel compelled to play No Man’s Sky again, and see what else the universe has to offer.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

No Man’s Sky Revisited — Release vs Today was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s that time of year again, the religious holiday full of over-promises and tentative release dates, also known as E3 2018. A time where we all come together to argue about the upcoming releases in the video game industry, and shit on games from developers we don’t like based on cinematic trailers. A time of reflection, upon games from last year’s E3 that still haven’t been released, and those shown at previous E3s that never will. But most importantly, it’s time for the upcoming Battle Royale game announcements that we’ve all been dreading.

It’s easy to get swept up in all of the excitement and hype of E3, but we must never forget the real reason we tune in every year; the fact that E3 has always proven to be a goldmine for memes and awkward moments. Over the years we’ve been blessed with schadenfreudean delight as marketing staff and executives alike either embarrassed themselves or made their mark on history with unforgettably compromising moments that will live on in infamy.

Whether it’s Shigeru Miyamoto with a fellow Nintendo executive and treehouse members demonstrating Wii Music at E3 2008

The wholesome moment where Martin Sahlin aka “Yarny guy” won over all of our hearts at E3 2015 while announcing Unravel on behalf of Swedish indie devs Coldwood Studio

The slightly under prepared Jesse Wellens at the Need for Speed Payback showcase this time last year

or even the surreal experience that was the Devolver Digital press conference, which was unanimously agreed upon to be the winner of E3 2017

E3 is the gift that keeps on giving long after the bitterness of broken promises fades.

So what will E3 2018 have in store? Only time will tell. Besides the usual smoke and mirrors we’ve come to expect, all we know for sure is that we’re all waiting for those moments where we get to snap some scenes for our cringe compilations.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Video Game Community Looking Forward to E3 2018 Cringe Compilation was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Switch has proved itself to be a nice little console for indie games to make their home, both new and established. However, where there’s a large number of indie games, there’s also shovelware, and half a step back from shovelware is Alteric.

Alteric is a side scrolling 2D platformer where players control a square. Just an unremarkable square, who must make it from here to there, there being the other side of an obstacle filled level. Players must navigate these trials of traps and dangers to make it to the end of the level and… do it again.

My first impression of the game was that it looks and plays like the kind of game you’d find on Newgrounds or Addicting Games 10 years ago. It seems like a flash game that was made with the intention to kill time rather than create something enjoyable to play.

So what sets this apart from literally any other generic 2D platformer? Well there’s a mechanic where you can “switch worlds” at the press of a button, revealing an alternate level with different platforms or different positioning of certain elements and obstacles. The idea is that you must switch between the two worlds on the fly to make it past obstacles and get to the end of each level, which I guess you could say adds another level of challenge to the game in the same way that swatting at a fly that keeps landing on your screen adds a new level of challenge to any other game.

Over the game new mechanics are introduced, such as gravity switching and the ability to make a clone block that acts as a platform, the latter of which was the only interesting mechanic when it came to gameplay, if only it didn’t suffer from the same fiddly controls as the rest of the platforming.

The precision platforming, which is something the game focuses on pretty heavily, I found to be more of an annoyance than a challenge. This is mostly due to the inconsistent physics of the game, where landing at just the wrong angle in a tight spot is enough to end up dead thanks to inertia.

What really shits me about the game though, is the trial and error. There are sections that require precision reflexes or momentum that can only be mastered through trying and retrying and retrying. This only gets worse when you’re being “chased” through a level, where there’s little margin for hesitation, yet timing is important to make it past obstacles. Trial and error isn’t necessarily a bad thing in games — two games that come to mind in the same vein are Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami, but those games have fluid controls that feel nice to play and flow well, and story elements to add context and motivation, all things that Alteric is lacking.

The only part of the game that I enjoyed remotely were the bosses, even if they were as basic as the rest of the game. It’s essentially the same mechanic for all of them, hit all of their weak points in both dimensions and they die, but it was the only part of the game with an objective that felt rewarding to complete.

All things considered, we’re talking about a five dollar game here, but everything about the mechanics are just frustrating to play more than anything. It’s something best left for speedrunners and streamers, and that five dollars can be spent on a happy meal with a toy that will be more entertaining than Alteric.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

A Game for Squares — Alteric Review was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s a good time to enjoy the nicest looking Nazi slaying simulator around, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. With the release of the game’s third and final DLC in the Freedom Chronicles trilogy, we’ve had a good amount of time to get acquainted with the parallel universe WWII baddies that conquered the United States. I was excited to find out whether The Deeds of Captain Wilkins would send the game off with a bang, or if we’ve only come this far to end with a whimper.

Captain Gerald Wilkins as you may be able to guess, is an American Army Veteran turned resistance fighter. After Stealing a Nazi submarine, this crazy red blooded American hero returns to Alaska to destroy a Nazi super weapon known only as Operation Black Sun. Equipped with only a Kampfwanderer (robo extendo legs), a hankering for cheese burgers, and more guns than one person could realistically carry, Captain Wilkins is ready to go down in a blaze of glory… or so he thought.

A lot of this DLC felt like leftovers from the cutting room floor, from Wilkins’ glory seeker trope to weapons and gadgets recycled straight out of the base game, this title didn’t introduce a lot for the series. In fact, there wasn’t even anything resembling a boss fight in this campaign, which is what I found most disappointing of all. At least in the last DLC, The Diaries of Agent Silent Death, there were assassination targets to work towards and add some kind of overall significance to your actions, even if they could be taken out in one well aimed shot.

Instead, The Deeds of Captain Wilkins is all about taking on a swarm of Nazis at once, while throwing in a few of the big heavy armoured guys with big fuck off weapons that can one shot you from across the room when they see you, to keep you busy. I’m not particularly against this level of crazy wanton destruction and emptying a shotgun into every Nazi I see while sprinting aimlessly to somewhere that might have healing items, but it’s nice to have some kind of epic set piece to tie it all off.

The only other redeeming factor apart from the gunplay being smooth as hell, which is an engine standard not unique to this DLC, was that Captain Wilkins was at least a more interesting character than B.J. Blazkowicz. It’s not a high bar, since anyone that’s not a whimpering fridge box is more interesting than Terror Billy, but Wilkins’ Soldier 76 meets TF2’s Soldier kind of vibe was definitely a fun part of this DLC.

It’s an unfortunate last piece of content for a game I overall enjoyed, and with no announcement yet of further DLC it’s a relatively wimpy end to Wolfenstein until Bethesda decides to cash another check from Machine Games. After coming all this way and killing so many giant Nazi Death Robots, the game would rather end on an anticlimactic button push, which made playing The Deeds of Captain Wilkins feel a bit like sitting down to shit and only managing a squeaky fart.

Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.

Wolfenstein II: The Deeds of Captain Wilkins DLC Review was originally published in The Insatiable Gamer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.