Let's Talk... A Story About my Uncle

1st-person platforming is an idea that's been tried a number of times but never really been done right. Naturally, a side-scrolling or behind-the-shoulder perspective makes spatial awareness and navigation much easier in a 3d environment. Thankfully, A Story About my Uncle makes it both exciting and easy to handle by making some smart concessions to the platforming formula and adding layers of grapple hook-esque mechanics. The tight controls and easy-to-use setup makes A Story About my Uncle's unique blend work excellently.

Unfortunately, however, the game seems to think that it needs to have some kind of story to contextualise the world and the grapple mechanics, and so, for some reason, opts to have a bad and uninteresting story rather than simply not having a story at all. It feels extremely weak, poorly fleshed out and, frankly, completely unnecessary, especially in a game where the core mechanics are easily novel and interesting enough to make up for a lack of narrative. The story essentially is as follows: you are retrospectively telling a story to your daughter about a time when you went searching for your uncle (it is quite a literally a story about your uncle). The writing is clunky, the voice acting is kinda terrible, and the story mode ends before anything remotely interesting happens. Although it doesn't completely ruin the story mode but it certainly slows the game's fast and fluid pace with its frequent, though never particularly lengthy, storytelling moments, which usually just consist of listening to some people talk for a few minutes.  

The game's grapple device, and an example of the game's excellent environment design

However dull the story may be for the most part, the game's novel and unique platforming mechanics: a grapple hook that allows you to fluidly swing through the world. Starting with only one available swing per jump, you eventually build up the capability to swing three times before having to land and recharge (recharging your swings happens instantly when you land on a solid surface). Although 1st-person platforming has always been a pretty awkward thing, A Story about my Uncle manages to make it feel both natural and smooth, with the game's large, open environments feeling very suited to the way the platforming feels. On top of being able to swing, you can charge up your jump to increase the height of your jump, a mechanic that is hugely integral to some of the game's platforming puzzles. Furthermore, as you progress you eventually come across a pair of rocket boots that allow you to boost forward a significant distance in whatever direction you're looking in. It's another neat gimmick that really sets the stage for some rather complex manoeuvres, especially in some of the game's later puzzles. When all the different platforming mechanics come together and are used skillfully it feels extremely tight and making complicated jumps feels highly satisfying.

Despite having some novel core mechanics, the value of the game really depends on how much you're willing to dive into the game's time trial modes that unlock as you finish each respective level. The story mode lasts a couple of hours and there are approximately half a dozen levels to replay in the time trial modes, which, naturally, has you replay each level in an attempt to beat the game's set times for bronze, silver and gold medals. The story mode is a pretty linear endeavour, but the excellent environmental design and art direction make many of the game's larger set pieces well worth seeing, although the time trial mode allows you to experience many of the game's levels without having to sit through the rather tedious story elements of the story mode.

Although certainly more than just a simple gimmick, the grappling mechanics of A Story About my Uncle feel more like an impressive proof-of-concept for a larger, thicker and much more complex set of mechanics and future title. The story mode feels like an unfortunate and unnecessary inclusion, but thankfully the forced story beats are short enough to be easily ignored. Ultimately, it's an interesting, unique and well-executed platformer that's well worth checking if the idea of 1st-person platforming done right sounds appealing to you, even if it is a little thin on fresh content.

Let's Talk... Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs is a game that has been plagued by a lengthy and strenuous development cycle, with a development lasting five long years. Naturally, when a game has this much history and hype and then is quite abruptly delayed numerous times, the expectation and anticipation of the what the game should and is going to be can often cause its eventual release to be shrouded in disappointment. For a lot people that'll be one of their biggest gripes with Watch Dogs: it simply isn't the innovative, "next-gen" experience people were hoping for. What it is, however, is a solid and highly enjoyable open world sandbox with a gripping story and some cool little gimmicks.

The story of Watch Dogs opens with hacking superstar Aiden Pearce losing his niece in a fatal car crash in which he was the intended victim. Hungry for revenge and blaming himself for the incident, Aiden seeks to find the men responsible and avenge Lena Pearce's death. Naturally, this puts him the crosshairs of some very bad people and very quickly makes him the notorious vigilante of Chicago (where the whole game takes place). The revenge tale set-up is a decent premise, although it certainly feels very familiar, but the game's narrative very quickly evolves into a spy-action thriller that is way more exciting and a lot more interesting. Although the ending leaves a lot to be desired and some parts of the story feel a little disconnected from one another, the story is generally sound and manages to be fun enough to remain appealing towards the end.

Typical of Ubisoft's style, Watch Dogs features a number of really great characters, including a twisted mob boss, the aspiring and extremely dangerous leader of a dominant gang, and a paranoid, untrusting, anti-government type hiding from the authorities. The problem with these characters, however, is simply that they just don't do enough with them. Each of these great characters has one or two really amazing moments of their own, but that's almost all you'll see of them. Much like how Far Cry 3 set up Vaas as this fantastic, spine-chillingly evil villain who had a couple of truly incredible moments but still had a lot of potential that felt wasted by the end wasted, the most interesting characters in Watch Dogs feel woefully under-utilised, relegated to their spotlight moment before being put to one side for the larger story to take place.
Furthermore, although the game features a number of excellent characters, the main character, Aiden Pearce, is an extremely dull and rote character whose motives feel somewhat questionable and whose supposedly altruistic actions feel ultimately selfish, making his quest for revenge a little hard to empathise with.

The game's profiler system in action

As far as gameplay is concerned, Watch Dogs is a very standard city-based sandbox, the likes of which you're likely very familiar with by now. You drive cars, you shoot guns, you take on side missions with a disappointing lack of variety, and you'll probably unintentionally run over dozens of innocent civilians along the way. The one thing that Watch Dogs uses to try to set itself apart from the competition, however, is its constant use of hacking mechanics. Hacking is all done through Aiden's seemingly magical super-phone, which allows him to tap into almost anything in the city and gain some sort of benefit from it. Hacking is very much the supporting tool of your arsenal, aiding your endeavours rather than actually leading them. Evading the police or taking down a gang hideout, for example, can be made significantly easier through clever use of your environment (such as hacking road blockers in order to stop pursuing vehicles, or hacking something to create makeshift cover in a firefight) but very rarely can you do something exclusively through use of hacking and nothing else. Conversely, however, in a lot of cases, it's more than possible to get things done without any use of hacking (though you'll definitely have a harder time doing so), since almost all types of missions involve either shooting guys and/or driving. Consequently, although certainly not the forgettable gimmick it could well have been, the hacking just doesn't feel like the main event here and it certainly isn't enough to make Watch Dogs feel entirely fresh and original and the familiar tricks Watch Dogs relies cannot truly separate it from the likes of GTA or Sleeping Dogs.

Despite being very similar to such games, however, almost every part of Watch Dogs manages to still feel distinctly Ubisoft in its execution. The fairly dynamic free-running feel of the movement is not too dissimilar to the that of Assassin's Creed, hacking into ctOS towers displays activities in the surrounding area much like the radio towers of Far Cry 3 and the gang hideout side missions feel extremely similar to the stronghold takeovers that populated Far Cry 3, and even the game's stealth feels very similar to that of Ubisoft's latest Splinter Cell game, with its stealth-action hybrid, dynamic cover system and focus on cool, futuristic gadgets. They make no effort in trying hiding the fact that this is a Ubisoft game, which feels like the only thing that gives Watch Dogs an identity of its own (which, even then, it doesn't really have). Perhaps the crazy homogenisation of all Ubisoft games is a problem larger than just Watch Dogs, but Watch Dogs does very little to create its own distinct identity other than just being a very standard open world game with a little of the Ubisoft touch, which is something that may be a huge problem for those hoping for something new and innovative but may be completely fine for people looking for a solid open world game. 

The action may not be the most original, but it still manages to be satisfying and engaging

The game presents a number of minor mechanics that can potentially aid your endeavours in some way. Such mechanics, such as the ability to craft usable items on the go or the ability to slow down time at will to help you get off that life-saving headshot, range from essential and highly intuitive to needless and unnecessary. Focus mode, for example, the time-slowing bullet-time gimmick, is highly useful and quickly became an ability I was using in every fight, and it was certainly an ability that saved my life a number of times. Although the shooting in Watch Dogs is never particularly difficult (since enemies go down very quickly), focus mode was a neat little gimmick I very much appreciated. The crafting, on the other hand, felt completely shoe-horned in and was a system that I very rarely engaged with. The items you can craft (such as grenades, temporary city-wide blackouts and consumables that replenish your focus meter) are certainly very useful, and I definitely found myself using the system when I was in dire need of some C4 or other items, but it felt extremely unnecessary and I would've much preferred such items to be dropped as loot. 

Watch Dogs may not be the technical tour de force some were hoping, but it still manages to look quite nice

Most of the enjoyment I got from the hacking systems actually came from a lot of the smaller

activities and capabilities granted to you. Namely the profiler system, which allows you aptly profile anybody you can see and uncover information about their name, their income and even a dirty secret or two. The system isn't particularly deep and essentially serves as a HUD overlay that can be toggled on and off. Profiling a person is done by simply looking at them, but the range at which you can actually profile someone can get a little finicky and it can take a little too long to appear on screen (especially when you're searching a gang hideout for the required target and you have to awkwardly hang around until it triggers). Another example of blatant privacy invasion is, ironically, a side activity quite appropriately named "privacy invasion", in which you can hack into people's homes to observe their weird, dirty or otherwise comedic rituals. You can also "hack" into people whilst roaming the streets, ravaging their bank accounts or stealing their music as a way to unlock the game's full soundtrack. These systems are a lot of fun to mess with, and there's an impressive variety in the number of different conversations or activities you can come across.  

The world of Watch Dogs certainly looks very nice (although the frame rate sometimes fails to keep up, especially on PC, where frequent and extremely obvious hitching often ruins the frame rate), with motion-captured cutscenes boasting some excellent and extremely evocative facial animations that allow characters to be impressively expressive. The sound design is also solid and the game makes excellent use of its soundtrack to really emphasise some of the story's most evocative moments.

Ultimately, Watch Dogs is by no means the innovating blockbuster some were expecting, but its excellent execution of familiar concepts and mechanics taken from other crime-focused open world games and some of Ubisoft's best work still allows it be an exciting and gripping open world game. Furthermore, although there are a couple of grievances I had with Aiden as a character and a number of really interesting characters that they just don't do enough with, the game's narrative is still pretty well-executed as a whole. Even though Watch Dogs might not be the most mechanically original game, it certainly manages to build the foundation for a potentially incredible (and pretty inevitable) sequel.

Let's Talk... Outlast: Whistleblower

Outlast was an extremely interesting game when it released, a game that played upon the (semi) newly found no-combat-revolution that the horror genre seems to be undertaking (very much inspired by 2010's Amnesia: The Dark Descent). Both an exciting and sometimes terrifying experience, Outlast set up an excellent foundation on which it to build its further iterations that proved extremely successful. Whistleblower takes the very same foundation and implements it into some new environments and half a dozen memorable and disturbing set pieces to make for a somewhat iterative but well-made DLC.

Whistleblower offers a variety of new, yet somewhat familiar environments 

The set-up and overall premise for the story of Whistleblower are both more interesting and more engaging than that of the original Outlast. Rather than assuming the role of Miles Upshur, a journalist investigating the allegedly horrific misdeeds taking place at the Mount Massive mental asylum, you instead take the role of Weylon Park, an employee at the asylum. After witnessing the disturbing results of one too many twisted experiments, Park informs Miles Upshur of the troubling corruption taking place, before being caught by his boss and consequently being "committed". The rest of the DLC essentially has you desperately roaming the asylum in search of escape, whilst being chased by a bearded cannibal, a psycho who seeks to make you his bride and one too many downright mentalists.   

Whistleblower expands little on the core of Outlast, both mechanically and in its choice of setting. The DLC takes place in new areas of the same abandoned asylum and the minimalistic mechanics remain completely unchanged. You're still gingerly making your way through a hellish abandoned asylum/experimenting site for evil things, and are still armed with nothing but a single night vision-equipped video camera with some serious battery life issues. The focus of Whistleblower remains entirely on the complete and utter avoidance of combat and getting the hell away from the crazy people who want to cut you and sometimes eat you. Although nothing is changed about the mechanics of the game, the DLC sets up enough crazy and memorable set pieces and situations for it to still feel appealing. 

One of the game's many truly disturbing set pieces

A lot of what made the original game great was its chilling setting and truly nightmarish scenarios, which, although Whistleblower does maintain that quite well, the DLC manages to create a stronger feeling of actual horror rather than just being thrill ride of jump scares and strong tension. The original game definitely had a lot of horrifying moments, but Whistleblower provides a lot more premise for genuinely scary moments and scenarios. Batteries (used to power your video camera, your only light source and only ally) were plentiful in the main game, for example, and it was extremely difficult to run out of batteries, meaning that it was easy to take your camera (a resource that should be scarce and utilise a solid risk-reward scenario for each individual use) for granted. Naturally, this sucked a lot of tension out of a possibly excellent idea. The battery count in this DLC feels a lot tighter, however, creating a more desperate situation and forcing more conservative camera-usage. The scarcity of batteries in the world created a number of situations where I opted to wade through the darkness rather than risk wasting anymore of my precious light source.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from a couple of examples of frustratingly obtuse level design that usually spawns from the game sometimes being a little unclear about where you need to go. Although mostly not a huge deal, and in most cases simply a result of the game's extreme tension rattling my nerves to point of disorientation, it can be actually be a real tension-killer. Being forced to run around a certain area in search of an exit can get a little tedious, and at some point you stop worrying about the guy chasing you and just focus on finding the way out. These frustrating moments are absolutely fatal for the game's suspension of disbelief, since when you're focused on simply escaping rather than engaging in the tense and exciting scenario the game has set up for you it's easy to be reminded that you're dealing with programmed AI with pre-set, easily exploitable patterns and behaviours rather than crazy,
unpredictable psychopaths, an illusion that the game is generally very effective at maintaining.

Although not particularly long, Whistleblower manages to make up for its short length by consistently and effectively using a well-paced mixture of slow and tense traversal, thrilling chases, and well-timed jump scares. The condensed longevity of the DLC allows it to feel significantly more focused than the original game, keeping its fairly thin base from losing its appeal.

Let's Talk... Dark Souls 2

For those for aren't familiar with the strange systems and mechanics of the Dark Souls games, the basics are essentially as follows: killing enemies and bosses grants you with souls, which act as the game’s currency. These souls can be spent on a variety of things: levelling up a handful of useful stats that offer a variety of different benefits, upgrading weapons and armour to increase their effectiveness or enchant them with certain magical bonuses, or buying items that will aid in your endeavour. Every time you die you drop all of the souls you currently have right where you died, and must return to collect them in your next life or they will disappear forever. And I mean forever. That’s basically the core of all you really need to know about a game that, despite its reputation for being inaccessible and extremely difficult, is actually a surprisingly approachable game. All it requires is a little patience and the acceptance of the fact that you will lose souls, and a lot of them.

Majula, the game's hub, where you'll be returning to very frequently to level up, repair items and see just how many times players have died worldwide

The core gameplay mechanics that Demon’s Souls and the original Dark Souls set up remain relatively unchanged intact. The small learning curve is still very much there for new players, but veterans of the previous games should have no problem jumping back in. Souls still work in the same way, stats are generally the same, and the obtuse dedication to animations being punishingly difficult to cancel and almost always the main reason for your death. Although Dark Souls has a reputation for being an extremely difficult game, it really isn't. The games have never been downright hard, but simply extremely punishing, and although that may makes the game hard in its own rights, the game really isn't all that hard once you accept that you have zero margins for almost any error. Thanks to its improved presentation and UI elements, better streamlining of tutorials and explanations, and general decline in overall difficulty from the previous games, Dark Souls 2 is probably the most accessible the game has been for a while. However, that’s a large part of what made it feel like a diminished experience when compared to the extremely unique and entirely memorable experience that was the original Dark Souls.

A hugely convenient fast travel system is available as soon as you've lit your first bonfire, which, although a huge time saver, inadvertently makes the world feel a lot less like the continuous and sprawling world that the original Dark Souls created. The ability to quickly zip from one place to another from any bonfire makes returning to locations in search of items, bosses or simply to farm out some much-needed souls significantly easier. However, this time-saving mechanic has the confusing effect of making the game feel a lot less focused from a narrative perspective (since you're going from one very different area to another fighting boss after boss with no apparent narrative connection between them) whilst simultaneously making it feel more focused from a gameplay perspective (since there's more boss fights and less finding boss fights). Dark Souls 2 basically feels a lot more like an elongated endless boss run, which somehow manages to both diminishes a lot of what Dark Souls 1 felt like whilst also cutting out a lot of the middle-man and just getting to the meat of what Dark Souls is really about: banging your head against boss after boss until eventually it breaks through. 

Multiplayer summons and being "invaded" by other players remains a very big part of Dark Souls 2 

This creates the inadvertent effect of a lot of the areas feeling very disconnected from one another narratively (in that each environment is so radically different from the last, and it seems infeasible that you would go from between such areas in such quick succession), this comes with the added side effect of allowing the environments to have a really nice degree of variety to them. Instead of a lot of the very samey castles and fairly stale environments (for the most part) of Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 offers some impressive variety from its dense forested area to an apocalyptic ruin with ruined structures that stand above a large stretch of water. Excellent variety which is typically followed up with some gorgeous art to match, meaning that even when the game’s technical prowess can’t quite get there, the fantastic art is usually there to keep it looking interesting enough.

Although this may sound like Dark Souls 2 has done a great job of streamlining the core of the Dark Soul’s experience, in reality it’s actually done the opposite. Despite the many interesting and immensely challenging boss battles being the core of what people loved about the original Dark Souls, it was the little things that really made it special. The sudden realisation that the entire world is connected by these little passages and doorways, the weird, mini-boss-like elite enemies that were almost as difficult as some of the bosses, the exasperated sigh of relief when you finally stumbled across that bonfire you’d so desperately been hoping for. That was so key to what made Dark Souls such a unique and memorable experience, and, for the most part, Dark Souls 2 feels like it lost a lot of that mystery and unpredictability in a somewhat disappointing attempt to recreate such an amazingly unique game. The inherent and consistent focus on quantity over quality is one of Dark Souls 2’s biggest downfalls. More areas, more bosses, more weapons, more loot. Dark Souls 2 has around 32 boss fights in total, around a dozen more than Dark Souls 1. However, all that having more boss fights does, in reality, is make the majority of the bosses bland and fairly generic (the majority of the game’s boss fights are just tougher-than-usual dudes with a large weapon, a handful of plain attack patterns and a lot of health). Furthermore, the extreme over-saturation of boss fights also ruins the excitement and unpredictability of finally reaching a boss fight, mainly because there are just so many of them, but also because most of them are incredibly trivial (which was extremely disappointing considering the crux of the Dark Souls experience is that it’s meant to be extremely difficult). I should probably clear up one thing, however: for all my complaining about the extreme ease of the game, Dark Souls 2 is not an easy game, especially not by typical RPG standards, my problem is simply that compared to the gruelling fights that filled Dark Souls 1, this game feels substantially easier.

The HUD and on-screen information remains pretty much unchanged

Another side effect of having so many boss fights is that you accrue a hefty amount of souls a lot quicker than you did in the first game. This time round bosses give you a lot more souls per kill, which quickly add up as you zip from one area to the next killing boss after boss (there are some diminishing returns that make souls eventually lose a lot of their worth, however, once level-ups begin to cost upwards of 15k souls). This is also added to by one of the game’s new, and very interesting, mechanics that come from items called Bonfire Ascetics. These items allow you to “intensify” the flame of any bonfire, thus increasing the difficulty of enemies, respawning bosses and items, and essentially making the area re-doable after you’ve cleared out many of the enemies and bosses. Naturally, these more difficult enemies and bosses drop significantly better items, loot and “boss souls” which can be turned into better-than-average weapons and armour. It’s a really interesting mechanic that sets up a lot of risk-reward scenarios that revolve around using these reasonably rare items (early on, at least) for a shot at some better items and more souls, but with the knowledge that the effect cannot be reversed.

The obnoxiously cryptic nature of how information is delivered to the player is very much a part of Dark Soul's unique charm; the sheer lack of useful information (i.e. item descriptions that actually explain how much stat X is increased by, instead of simply saying “increases stat X”) can get a little frustrating. Discovering what weapons, items, spells etc. can or cannot do can be quite a lot of fun in itself, but some things are just unnecessarily mysterious (severely lacking explanations for pretty rudimentary spells, for example, just feels a little over the top). The non "hand-holdy" nature of Dark Souls 2's approach may serve as a refreshing reprieve for those who have grown tired of the crude and somewhat condescending way in which many (typically Western) role-playing games treat new players, and a lot of people love Dark Souls for that very reason. However, when a lot of the game’s core mechanics are hardly explained, that's just bad game design and not something that should be so heavily praised. By all means keep the description of some really rare, obscure item a secret and allow me to find out for myself, but when the player has to go to walkthrough to understand how to summon in NPCs and other players (a fairly core mechanic, and the crux of the multiplayer), there's a problem.

An example of one of the game's earlier bosses, the Flexile Sentry

One of the biggest and most obvious improvements Dark Souls 2 brings is its huge improvements in both visual fidelity and overall frame rate performance. No longer will a certain enemies' ability cause the frame rate to drop into single digits, and, thankfully, the game looks considerably better than the, frankly, broken PC port of the original Dark Souls. Vastly improved lighting and particle effects make for a much better-looking game, whilst the nice lighting adds a little much-needed atmosphere to the series, with bonfires creating ominously looming shadows whilst simultaneously looking oddly eerie themselves. Furthermore, Dark Souls 2 brings some small improvements to its UI and menus, but they still need some work to even reach the standards for menu interfaces in most modern RPGs (which really aren't even that high themselves, in fairness). Although certainly an improvement to the clunky and awkward menus and UI of Dark Souls, navigating through your inventory and sorting items could be a lot more streamlined in its execution, especially with the sheer volume of items you quite quickly accrue whilst playing. As for PC-specific controls, playing with a mouse + keyboard is no longer the death wish it was in Dark Souls and is certainly possible, but is by no means a preferable alternative to simply using a gamepad. This time round the PC is easily the best version to pick up, if you can of course.

Ultimately, Dark Souls 2 is, for all my grievances, still a great game. It’s just that when compared to the incredibly unique game that the first Dark Souls was, this feels like a cheapened and diminished experience. If you played and enjoyed the first Dark Souls, then you’ll most likely still have a good time here, and, in a lot of ways, it’s a better game than Dark Souls (from a technical and mechanical perspective). The game looks, plays and runs a lot better than its predecessors, and there’s still a lot of satisfaction to be gained from slaying boss after boss (however easy a lot of them may be). If you were hoping for a harder and even more punishing Dark Souls, then unfortunately this isn’t it, but you should be more than happy if you’re looking to get in on some more accessible Dark Souls action. 

Let's Talk... Betrayer

The historical territory of colonial America is an area that remains largely unexplored setting in games. An interesting and fairly unique setting, it is full of untapped mystery and intrigue and the potentially fascinating mysticism surrounding Native Indian culture (which was loosely explored in Prey). The 16^th Century colonial America setting is hardly the only unique that sets Betrayer apart from other games, however. The monochromatic art style, idiosyncratic mechanics and interesting approach to side quests all add up to make this game a bundle of really interested mechanics. Much of the game’s problems unfortunately come from the fact that such potentially fascinating mechanics go largely underdeveloped and disappointingly unexplored.

The game starts with you crash landed on an unknown and unnamed island that is heavily implied to be around the period of colonial America but never explicitly named as such. You, a silent and unnamed character, set out to explore this mysterious island, which appears to have been ravaged by “the Spaniards” as well as some frequently mentioned malevolent spirits referred to as the “Naturals”. Much of the backstory of the island and its people, and the awful things they so clearly went through, is mostly told through notes and diary entries that fill in a lot of the implicit narrative. Furthermore, side quests often play out as mysteries that slowly unravel piece by piece as you find each relevant clue, in whatever order you find. These mysteries and personal stories often regale the lives, and usually the final moments, of the island's previous inhabitants, and are all interesting, well-told tales of sadness and regret.

The unique monochromatic art style is an immediate eye-catcher

The game takes place in two very different worlds: day and night. During the day, enemies armed with bows and primitive 16th Century weaponry (muskets, flintlock pistols etc.), but at night, ghouls and skeletons roam the land as well as the restless spirits of the recently deceased (who basically act as the game's quest givers). Once you've sussed out the differences between the two worlds, you start to get into a rhythm in which you are going into the dark world (night) to get quests and then switching back to the light world (day) to actually do them. Both worlds provide very ominous atmospheres for very different reason, when in the "light" world you have hold onto the unnerving feeling, and frequent confirmation, that something went horribly wrong on this all-too-quiet island. Whereas, the "dark" world has a real undead, otherworldly vibe that, although feels uneasy at first, feels underused. The night time is essentially just a carbon copy of the daytime world with less lighting and enemies that behave the same (but are skeletons, instead of soldiers, at night). For all its potential, the night “world” is just one of the many great ideas Betrayer has but fails to properly expand upon.

The gameplay is a fairly basic blend of exploration, stealth-focused combat with use of bows, muskets and flintlock pistols, and some light RPG elements. The exploration is completely free-wheeling, and although the game does give plenty direction towards key areas and objectives, there is rarely a strictly-set path the player must take. Exploring the vast and expansive world of colonial world can give way to a number of different items, scenarios and quest-related intrigues. Such exploration is key to unravelling the mysteries of the island (generally in the form of background-filling notes and side-quest objectives), as well as finding extra fast travel points, finding loot chests and finding some of the game’s slightly weirder set pieces.

The enemies of this world, mostly phantom-like soldier-looking guys and fast-moving goblin lookalikes (the enemy variety is a little lacking, but the combat is hardly the highlight of the game, so it isn’t a huge deal), are relentless and will spring on you at any time if you aren’t being particularly quiet in your movement. This is what makes stealthy behaviour and movement both encouraged and highly beneficial. Stealth, though never forced, plays a huge role in your survival, attacking without being detected provides damage bonuses and can give you the much-needed upper hand (especially on tougher, larger enemies). Also, since many of the enemies (though not all) are equipped with muskets or pistols, attracting their attention may lead to attracting the unwanted attention of other trigger-happy predators. Stealth gameplay is tense and exciting, but the game could definitely benefit from better indicating when exactly you can be seen and heard.

Changing the colour palette back to normal still makes the game look great, but it loses a lot of its originality

The wind and the subsequent swaying of trees serve as both a tool of the ominous atmosphere and a mechanic of the stealth system. On random intervals of around every 15-20 seconds the wind will blow, in an extremely hyperbolised manner, for roughly 5 seconds or so. In that time, you are harder to hear and therefore can sprint or fire off shots without needing to worry about being spotted, however the game is real vague about what that actually means, and an almost way to track how much noise you're making at any one time would be real useful (it can be a little hard to decipher, especially when you get ambiguous items that make you "4% harder to see and hear", without explaining what on earth that means). Although some of the game’s more complex mechanics are lacking in the department of solid explanations, the game is usually very good at communicating information about what you can interact with (with use bright colours) and where loot and quest related items are with very specific  and easily recognisable audio cues.

Although the game’s core mechanics and eerie atmosphere are fundamentally excellent, neither are explored fully enough to reach their full potential, and many mechanics of the game feel disappointingly thin and lacking in enough variation to keep them interesting. The atmosphere starts off promising, with the eerie swaying of the trees and empty silence of the island creating a chilling and tense atmosphere. However, the ominous tree swaying really loses its effectiveness once you realise that it’s merely a mechanic of the stealth system, and the potentially creepy night time “world” feels woefully underutilized. As for the core mechanics, the combat is extremely simplistic and thus can get a little tedious to repeat (especially during some of the later unpredictable and frustrating difficulty spikes), and with only three weapon types (and a Tomahawk throwing weapon) the variety is somewhat lacking.

Furthermore, although the game’s questing and investigative systems are conceptually sound, with the basic concept being that you hop into the dark world (by ringing an ominous bell) to gather lost spirits and bring back to the hub area of that specific area (typically a small village or settlement). Talking to them will begin the investigation of some kind of mystery or confusion that remained unresolved when they died. Such mysteries can range from finding out how somebody died, or why somebody was sentenced to death. Unravelling these mysteries requires you to hop back into the light world (essentially the “real” world) and discovering enough clues and pieces of evidence to then suss out what really happened. In the game’s case, this means going back into the dark world to talk with the restless spirit, inform them of what you found and let them explain what it is or what it means.

The game can be a little vague at times, even frustratingly so at times

Although the investigation aspect of the game is conceptually sound, it is disappointingly lacklustre from a mechanical standpoint and its execution squanders its potential. Exploring the island and finding the clues is fun and the clues themselves are generally interesting and well-varied, but the act of returning back to the dark world and regaling what you’ve found back to the spirits is way simpler and way more repetitive than it should be, and feels way too fetch-questy. The most frustrating thing about the dull execution of this system is that the actual mysteries are all so interesting, unique and well-written. Another great idea that falls short in its execution, but one that may still be worth going through if you’re interested in the excellent stories behind them.

The game’s unique monochrome art style is a real eye-catcher and really adds to the atmosphere, but the contrast can get a little obnoxious, so the option to turn off the monochrome filter is available if you so wish. The use of bright colours to contrast the monochromatic colour palette is a great way to highlight important items in the environment, and the blood red colouring of such highlights is great for extending the sense that something very wrong happened on this island. The game generally looks pretty good and the sound design makes some clever uses of audio cues and unobtrusive hints.

Ultimately, Betrayer is a bundle of really great ideas that almost all fall flat thanks to their simplistic execution and undeveloped variety. The backstory of the island and the individual stories of the people (or spirits, more accurately) you come across are all really interesting and really well-done, and if you come into Betrayer looking for that then you’ll probably be able to look past some of the disappointingly basic mechanics. The uniqueness of the mechanics, art style and setting make Betrayer well worth checking out, but it leaves a lot to be desired.  

Let's Talk... Ninja Gaiden Z: Yaiba

Yaiba takes the Ninja Gaiden series in a radically different direction, replacing the very traditional Ninja tropes and extreme difficulty with a cel shaded art style, frequent use of crude humour, and zombies…? The radical tonal and thematic shifts Yaiba makes to the long-running and esteemed Ninja Gaiden series will likely confuse long-time fans, and it’ll probably take a while to get used to the series’ apparent new direction. The crude sex jokes, the zombies, the shallow and extremely easy combat, the bland and rote environment design. Especially when you consider some of the high points the Ninja Gaiden series has had over the years, it’s hard not to be disappointed by what feels like such an uninspired and formulaic experience.

The game's cel shaded art style is probably one of the game's biggest strengths, and it does look pretty cool to be fair

The game’s story starts actually starts out pretty well, and makes a great impression… for about five minutes. The game opens with a short but sweet cutscene that shows off the game’s shining new cel-shaded art style (which looks pretty spectacular), as Yaiba (the protagonist) and Hayabusa (the game’s main antagonist, and protagonist of the previous games) fight to the death in an epic display of swordplay and extreme gore. It’s actually pretty exciting, and provides hopes that this zombie-filled nightmare might actually be a good game. Unfortunately, however, then the rest of the game kicks in, and it all goes downhill from there.

After Yaiba is brutally murdered by Hayabusa in the opening cutscene, he is reanimated by a large corporation and stereotypically evil CEO, who allegedly wish for him to hunt down and kill Hayabusa. Fortunately, the (excessively) foul-mouthed Yaiba’s goals align with said large corporation, and he pursues the trial of his attacker. Along the way to assassinate Hayabusa, Yaiba must also push his way through the apparent zombie outbreak that has invaded the generic urban environment in which the games takes place. The reason for this zombie virus is never explained, nobody even blinks at the infection and its origins are never even so much as hinted at. As for the characters, there are few and the few the ones that do populate the world are largely insignificant and extremely shallow. The protagonist is a loud-mouthed, excessively cursey badass who is sleazy to women, because that’s cool, right? Next, we have the painfully sexualised pair of breasts for to check the box for obligatory sex appeal. Finally, the evil CEO man… he’s an evil CEO with bad intentions etc etc. The characterisation is as shallow and cheap as the game’s almost irrelevant storyline and choice to include the inconceivably overdone cliché that is the zombie horde.

The game plays around with some elemental stuff, but it's pretty rudimental

The gameplay, or more accurately the combat, is almost as shallow and simplistic as the game’s story and setting. The combat uses a pretty standard 3-button combo system with knock-backs, knock-ups and the like. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, and a sweeping area-of-effect attack. Although you do gain a significant amount of basic and extended combos as you gain levels, they rarely get more complex than XXXXY or YYY. If you manage to pull off an “execution” on elite enemies you are rewarded with their own unique special weapon for a limited number of strikes. Such weapons include an explosive rocket launcher and a pair of speedy clown arms. They don’t last particularly long, but generally do a ton of damage. The combat is pretty shallow and highly repetitive, but it’s generally fairly satisfying, even if fighting hordes of zombies (who are the primary enemy in the game) quickly becomes a pretty dull ordeal.

As little depth as the combat has, the environment design truly wins the award for sheer lack of inspiration. The majority of the game takes place in the most painfully rote environment imaginable in a video game. Plain urban setting? Check. Sewers? Check. Desolate rooftops? Check. The environment design in the previous Ninja Gaiden games wasn't exactly the most original, but at least the traditional Japanese setting and appearance made it feel a bit fresher than most games. The environmental design in this game just feels so stale and unremarkable, and considering the game’s cool-looking art style it’s a shame it’s so plain.

This game is excessively bloody, and the blood does look pretty cool

Ultimately, Ninja Gaiden Z: Yaiba is a disappointingly average 3^rd person that takes a radical departure from what we’ve come to expect and love from the Ninja Gaiden series, trading it for crude humour and incredibly rote enemy, environment and story design. Yaiba isn’t an inherently bad game so to speak, it just feels completely forgettable. Also, if you want to get cynical, the choice to include zombies, urban environments and relentlessly crude sex jokes and excessive sexualisation feels like a game just trying to check boxes and appeal to a much wider audience.

Let's Talk... South Park: The Stick of Truth

It’s no secret that licensed properties and games have a dark history, especially South Park. Whilst most licensed games feel like soulless cash-ins riding off the success of a popular TV series or film, it’s a pleasant surprise to say that The Stick of Truth couldn’t stay any more true to what has makes South Park such a simultaneously infamous yet beloved series. All the over-the-top set pieces, the political jabs, the constant flow of jokes that makes you feel awful for laughing at. It all feels so distinctly South Park, and your feelings on what that actually means are detrimental to whether this game is for you or not.

The Stick of Truth opens with the game’s completely silent protagonist, aptly named “New Kid” (or just “Douchebag” to some), moving into his new house in the sleepy mountain town of South Park. All details of your previous life are withheld, except that your lack of voice has some mysterious dark history to it. New Kid joins forces with Grand Wizard Eric Cartman and his human faction the KKK (Kingdom of Kupa Keep) as they seek to return the apparently hugely important “Stick of Truth”- which has the alleged power to control the universe, according to the ever-changing rules of their little game- from Kyle and Stan and their Elven faction. As you’d probably imagine, the story is a load of totally insane, yet hilarious, crap that gives you ample excuse to roam the fairly small but densely populated world, which takes him from the depths of Mr Hankey’s sewers to the mystical lands of 16-bit Canada.

Hopefully that'll make up for all the awful deeds this game makes you do...

The show’s tradition of constantly 1-upping itself with somehow even more offensive, controversial and just plain outrageous jokes and biting satire. The Stick of Truth feels like the writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone to use their apparent love and appreciation for the classic video games of yesteryear and the tropes of high fantasy to craft an adventure that simultaneously pokes fun whilst also serving as a thoughtful homage. Weapons and items are all everyday objects that somehow hold magical properties, cardboard forts that can withstand intense pummelling, and a school that quickly turns into a complete warzone. The game does an excellent job of consistently turning the ordinary into fantastical and hilarious set pieces, and all shown through the twisted imagination of a couple of kids.

Although the continuing nonsense of foul-mouthed kids acting out insane fantasies is a regular theme in the story, it’s only a mere fraction of the sincere weirdness the game has to offer. Alien abductions, government conspiracies and a Nazi Zombie virus are just some of the unbelievable madness that the game spits out at a lightning fast pace. The lasting quality of the humour can be accredited to the game’s ability to know when to keep going with a joke and when to move on, as well as the fact that it never holds the player back to say “look how crazy that was” and simply rolls with every inch of its insane madness from start to finish. There are a couple of instances where a joke or scene lingers a little too long, but the game usually knows when to move on.

The combat features a nice variety of delightfully dumb of spells, abilities and summons

The RPG side of the game is nothing to write home about, with exploration usually leading to more quests, loot or just more jokes, and the turn-based combat just being fairly simple with its focus on hitting the right timing to achieve maximum effect. The combat is fun and there’s a certain satisfaction from mastering the rhythmic button prompts, but don’t come into the game expecting anything more than a frankly rudimentary (and very easy) combat system. Besides, most of the combat is just in service of making another joke anyway, whether that is through the ridiculous Final Fantasy summons or the ludicrous animations or button sequences required to pull off some moves. The RPG side of the game is fun and well-made, but you may be disappointed if you’re looking for a deep and lengthy RPG since South Park only lasts around 12 hours.

One of the game’s key mechanic is frankly is a bit of a clunker. Since it’s a South Park game, this mechanic is naturally a farting mechanic, which, if that’s what your into, may funny the first few times but quickly gets old. Farts are a form of magic in this world that can be used on parts of the environment and in combat as an offensive spell. Such farts come in the form of a handful of spells, the most powerful being crudely named “Nagasaki” of all things. To “perform” a fart, you have to hold down the right stick and used the left stick to find the right “frequency”. It’s a little awkward to pull off and can be somewhat unresponsive to properly execute, but fortunately there are only a dozen or so instances where you are required to use it and I almost never used it in combat.

The combat is simple but satisfying, and like the rest of the game its full of dumb jokes

Ultimately though, your feelings on South Park and its own brand of insane and offensive humour are essentially the only thing that should impact your interest in this game. As much as saying “fans of the genre/property will enjoy this more” gets a little tiresome, it cannot be overstated with The Stick of Truth since South Park’s humour can be hilarious to some and downright offensive to others. South Park is a fantastic example of a licensed game done just right and is possibly one of the best licensed games of all time, not that there’s much competition…