Typoman | Wii U17/3/2016 Move over Suze in dictionary corner, the Typoman is here and he needs your beloved vowels and consonants to escape a land fraught with danger. A puzzle-platformer with an almost blatant love of Limbo, Braid and Scrabble, Typoman flirts with greatness in the early rounds, before slumping to the canvas in its later stages. The word puzzles are an original concept, but Brainseed haven’t quite got it right here, which is a real shame. Early puzzles require you to spell out simple words like ON to turn on (unsurprisingly) a lift, or feed a hungry monster the letter D to change its gorge into gorged. These are all really well done, but they never get any tougher (many words get repeated over and over), and that’s a real issue here. If you ever do get stuck (and you probably won’t), the immensely flawed hint system won’t just give you a clue, it’ll tell you the whole shebang whether you want it or not, like the office gossip after the Christmas party.
The first hour of the game is wonderful, and really had us inking down an eight or nine out of ten, but unfortunately the game repeats itself, and uses cheap tricks instead of a genuine learning curve to pad out the length of the adventure. We really hope Brainseed Factory take Typoman back to dictionary corner, add some more words, replace the over-long purposely irritating puzzles with genuine linguistic challenge, and they’ll have an underground classic. Until then, wait for a price drop to pick this one up. Pros
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6/10 In the world of comic books, you can definitely have too much of a good thing. The sheer amount of films on the cards over the next five years is almost enough to make you want to claw out your eyes with a batarang in disbelief, and, over the last few years in particular, the Lego games have been going a similar way. More modern TV series and DC properties which have made their mark pop into the game, but mostly in the story’s closing credits (and some inevitable DLC), without any explanation of context - not to mention that there’s not enough of them to fill each section, meaning you must sit through each exchange between the likes of The Arrow and original Batman Adam West several times over. Don’t be fooled into thinking this game isn’t fun though. Gameplay is as tight as it has been for any game in the series, and the narrative is just the right balance of humour and intrigue to keep you playing, while some of the new environments discovered when you visit the various Lanterns’ coloured homeworld in particular really raise the bar for the variety shown in the series. Unfortunately this isn’t enough to stop you feeling that the puzzles seem a little undercooked, even for newcomers to the series, and the extending of suits - previously restricted to Batman and Robin - to other characters quickly makes them seem pointless, and you’re left constantly flicking through trying to remember which one is which as they all look different on different characters. To Travellers Tales’ credit though, some of the little touches they have brought in really help to bring the characters personalities across by fancy threads alone (The Joker’s explosive jack-in-the-box and Cyborg’s washing machine being particular highlights). Multiple hub locations not only make it difficult to remember where things are, but also so that no area really feels like home. The hub menu for this game feels like something of a step back from Lego Batman 2 as it loses its open world in favour of a series of hubs connected by portals, including the Watchtower, the Hall of Justice and the Bat Cave. Sadly these multiple hub locations not only makes it difficult to remember where things are, but also no area really feels like home, making it less compelling to just amble about and discover side quests and secrets hidden here, there and everywhere. Completing the game doesn’t give as much satisfaction as it should, since completing the actual story is only a small percentage of the game overall, thanks to the ever-increasing slew of collectables. Batman might have a gadget ready for any occasion, but this game is the utility belt-equivalent of a Swiss army knife with 17 different types of spoon - useful, but there’s plenty of it you feel like you’ll never need. Pros
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6/10 Super Mario Maker | Wii U1/1/2016 Have you ever read Philip Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect? It concerns the scenarios and variables that lead to good people carrying out acts of unspeakable evil, something that appears to have afflicted a large portion of the Super Mario Maker community! Get ready to play some of the hardest, most sadistic platforming levels since the NES days. And probably just as likely, prepare to create some truly heinous levels designed to induce baldness in all that play them. Makers is a showcase for all the users creating levels, put into specialist categories such as highest ranked, (you have the option to comment on and “star” every user created level you play) upcoming creator and new user. It’s a really clean way of presenting you with new courses to try, and to be inspired by. Some of the classic Nintendo themed courses created by the community are fantastically nostalgic; from levels based around the Zelda universe (complete with music and Link sprite) to attempts to recreate the original Metroid. Alongside these are auto-pilot levels (don’t press a button, just sit back and watch the show), to head scratching puzzlers and levels overflowing with peril. Courses is much the same as the above, the difference being that the levels themselves are put into the categories of highest rated, newest etc. This is a great place to start when delving into the user created community, as you can blast through many different levels, with varying play-styles, in a short space of time (providing you can complete them, of course!). The 100 Mario challenge tasks you with completing as many levels as possible, with your 100 lives. This works in much the same way as the 10 Mario challenge, but with one major difference: the courses you play here are all user created. It’s really good fun for the most part, until you get stuck on a particularly sadistic level - something that has happened to me multiple times already! An especially nice touch here are the credits - the user’s names scroll down in place of the likes of Miyamoto-San! Now on to the main event: creation. For years, Mario enthusiasts around the globe have prayed to the gaming Gods for a comprehensive level designer - they’ve finally answered the call. Super Mario Maker’s level creation tool is packed with classic enemies, power-ups, blocks and scenery spanning the entire lifetime of the 2D games. These items unlock over a 9 day period, along with a choice of graphical styles - Mario Bros, Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros U - and the ability to add personal touches, like custom audio. The interface itself is also beautifully done, based around a grid system that finally utilises the Wii U’s gamepad screen and stylus. You simply drag and drop things into the level and manipulate them from there; want a goomba hidden inside a ‘?’ box? Just drag and drop it in. Unhappy with your level and want to delete it? Hold down the explosive rocket and watch it all disappear. It’s a brilliantly-designed toolkit offering hours upon hours of experimentation and ultimately, great fun. There are a couple of minor niggles though; you can’t easily search for a friend’s course, instead having to use a rather clumsy 16-digit level code. The code system isn’t great here, as it isn’t with adding friends on Nintendo platforms, but here’s hoping our pleas are heard and any future editions of Maker will feature something all-the-more streamlined. The only other issue was the original lack of checkpoints, though Nintendo have recently addressed this with a patch. I can’t help but be left with the feeling that if this had been ready in the first year of the Wii U’s lifespan, sales figures might read differently, and that’s a shame. To anyone with a Wii U or thinking of getting one: pick this game up - there are endless hours of fun here that shouldn’t be missed. Pros
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9/10 Are you a Mario Maker creator? Why not leave your course code in the comments section below, and be sure to check out our Pass The Controller themed level: D327-0000-00A5-DF6C
Dying Light | Xbox One1/1/2016 We were introduced to Dead Island, Techland’s previous first-person zombie basher, with a poignant trailer that seemed to imply focus would be placed upon the human side of the apocalypse. Yet somewhat bemusingly, the fact I’ve had nothing positive to say so far is by design. These problems begin to dissipate as you play and unlock abilities to combat the issues, before they eventually disappear entirely. It’s not a smooth ride, however, thanks to the levelling system, which tasks you with performing the actions you want to upgrade à la Elder Scrolls. You can’t complete missions and put the experience you gain into improving your parkour skills, you have to endure hours of bad parkour to make it bearable and messily kill hundreds of zombies to become slightly combat proficient. Eventually, I unlocked a grappling hook to zip wherever I wanted to go in an instant and I killed zombies with one satisfying, head-popping blow. I was a badass and I was loving it, but why on earth did I have to endure hour upon hour of tripe to make the game fun? This is the protagonist’s line of work, after all, so there isn’t even a contextual reason for him to begin unskilled. Conversely, one element of the game gets progressively weaker. When night falls, “volatiles” take to the streets. These faster, more deadly enemies change the entire dynamic of the game, transforming it into a tense, stealthy, survival horror experience. When you’re spotted, heart-pounding chase music kicks in and you flee to reach safety at the nearest hideout or work to shake pursuers. If they catch you, or you try to fight, you’re as good as dead – it’s a terrifying game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately, when you reach Old Town in the second half of the game the map’s verticality makes it incredibly easy to avoid foes, and the darkness no longer holds any horrors. Dying Light is just Dead Island done slightly better. In addition to volatiles, several other nasties add variety to the enemy arsenal. The Dead Island cast return with exploders and large brutes, accompanied by the equivalent of Left 4 Dead's Spitter, and straight out of Dead Space come mutated children that attract the horde. Human enemies also feature – although you barely realise, as they’re as brain dead as their undead brethren. You’ll often need to equip a gun to counteract their added firepower, which is a shame, as the gunplay is unsatisfying and unresponsive. The story is typically clichéd and both awfully voiced and written. There’s a possible cure, a fight against time under the threat of the city being levelled and a drug to delay turning when bitten, to name just a few genre tropes. You already know the story because you’ve heard it a million times before – and 900,000 of those are told better. The ending is particularly weak, offering no closure and a QTE final boss. Missions don’t hold much variety and some are shamelessly ripped straight from Dead Island. Side missions and random encounters often outshine the main quest with quirky characters and interesting self-contained stories, but unfortunately these are mostly tied to typical fetch quests. Quarantine zones and challenges are fun diversions, although challenges ridiculously don’t have a reset option; if you get off to a bad start you have to wait the timer out before being able to restart. There’s such a high volume of missions on offer that the lack of both fast travel and vehicles becomes a real issue. The setting is thoroughly drab, and traipsing back and forth through it holds no joy, so you’ll likely give up long before completing them all. Unless, like me, you’re an avid achievement hunter… Considering developer Techland parted ways with Deep Silver due to creative differences on where the Dead Island franchise should be taken, I’m not quite sure what couldn’t be agreed upon. Dying Light is just Dead Island done slightly better. It’s highly unoriginal, nicking copiously from numerous games, but if you can stick with it and switch your brain off, there’s some fun to be had here. Pros
Cons
6/10 |
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