Wonder Boy Returns is a remake of the original arcade game that launched in 1986 for Japan. While the visuals have been improved not a lot else has been changed. Now I never played any of the Wonder Boy games growing up mainly because I never owned any SEGA consoles. This year is the 30th anniversary for the series in North America so I have actually been tinkering around with the games for some time now in preparation for a retrospective. Surprisingly when I fired up Wonder Boy something felt familiar.
Turns out I technically did play this game via Adventure Island. Wonder Boy was developed by a company called Escape, but was published by SEGA. Escape wanted to make a port of the game for the NES, but obviously that wouldn’t be beneficial for SEGA. So Escape partnered with Hudson Soft, reworked some sprites, and voila Adventure Island was born. Past the first game neither series crossed again. With that little history lesson out of the way here’s my video review. Enjoy!
Special Notes: I received a PS4 review code for Wonder Boy Returns.
It’s been about a week since Mass Effect Andromeda launched so I thought it was about time to share my thoughts. Not going to lie, I’m very torn with this one. I didn’t want a new Mass Effect, but I still hoped for the best. While it’s not completely terrible there are a lot of bad things about it. Shay joins me to discuss our highs and lows with the game. Spoiler free as well. Enjoy!
To reinvigorate new interest in I Am Setsuna now that it’s out on the Nintendo Switch, I sat down with Shay and discussed the game from start to finish. It’s like a long review wherein we go through our likes, dislikes, and hopes for the future regarding Tokyo RPG Factory and I Am Setsuna in general. There are spoilers as if the title wasn’t obvious. Enjoy!
How does one explain Everything? Well you begin as an amoeba and quickly progress into a snow leopard and it’s here where things start to progressively become insane. First of all everything in the game can be played and they each have a calling. For a Snow Leopard or any other type of animal that’s fitting, but when it comes to houses and rocks well then we’re getting into crazy town.
Communicating doesn’t do much, but sometimes objects in the game will have white, or rainbow bubbles above them. The white clouds range from advice to nonsensical observations. The rainbow messages are audio logs taken from the philosopher Alan Watts in a series of talks he gave throughout his life in the 60s and 70s. Who are we? What is a thing? How does one define living? Notions like this are interesting to ponder, but when you’re a frog flying through space it seems misplaced. Still this isn’t a game about him so that’s just a minor bump.
Getting back to gameplay you can also group up with other animals, or objects. Again, going back to the snow leopard, you can run around in packs. Later on you can actually group with categories and not just of your same species. So bears could join the snow leopard along with llamas, goats, and so forth. It’s funnier to watch a horde of houses travel through the great wilds though and that’s pretty much what Everything is trying to communicate. It’s a game without much for goals and is more about creating your own experiences and enjoyment from your bizarre tinkering.
Perhaps the easiest way to categorize Everything is to liken it to Goat Simulator and No Man’s Sky. Goat Simulator really has no point to it either and as for No Man’s Sky, well I feel the procedural generated areas and exploring of species is better in this game. True there’s more of a sense of progression in No Man’s Sky, technically, but a lot of those mechanics get in the way of exploring. My mission was an endless loop of going into space, finding a new planet, delving onto the surface, looking for plants and animals and then repeating that process in the hopes of discovering something wackier than the last excavation. That was my desire in play at least.
While I did enjoy my time with Everything it was fleeting. You can pretty much see the game’s mechanics presented to you in the first couple hours. It’s fun to mess around with and perhaps accompanied by friends it can be a blast for an obscure party game, but admittedly it’s not for everybody. That said it’s hard to score. On one hand there’s not much to it, but at a maximum cost of $15 I don’t think the money is an issue. It’s like buying a ticket to a bizarre indie movie where anything is playable to the specs of an atom to the vastness of the sun. There is value in Everything, but you have to know what you’re getting yourself into and I hope I at least did a moderate job of conveying that. Sometimes it takes more than words so be thankful for video reviews.
Score: 3/5 Stars
Special Notes: I received a PS4 review code for Everything.
My Breath of the Wild coverage isn’t done yet. I wrote another listicle for TheGamer this time on fifteen amazing locations I found during my tour in Hyrule and I’ve found at least fifteen, if not more since. Again, I have some big issues with BotW, but I’m still having so much fun exploring. Ugh, Nintendo you frustrating and magnificent devil. Anyway you’ll see what I’m talking about in the accompanying video below. Enjoy!
This month marks Bionic Commando’s 30th anniversary. It was released in Japanese arcades under the title Top Secret in March 1987. Later in the year it would be debut under a new name in North America, Bionic Commando. Most gamers are probably more familiar with the NES game that launched in 1988. In Japan it was known as Hitler’s Revival: Top Secret and again just Bionic Commando in North America.
Now I didn’t know a lot about this series until I researched it for this brief retrospective. Despite my unfamiliarity I played every game and gathered a list of facts for your enjoyment. As always, enjoy!
I’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since it came out a couple weeks ago and it’s incredibly hard to put down. Even though I’m also loving NieR: Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn I’m not hooked like I am with Zelda. I just need to finish it in order to avoid spoilers and just because I want to. Plus my backlog is piling up. 2017 is too good! Anyway I wrote another listicle for TheGamer about my thoughts on the best and worst qualities regarding BotW sort of like a review in progress. You can read that here and I also made an accompanying video to go along with it below. Enjoy!
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing originally launched on PC and Xbox 360 in 2013 with an enhanced Xbox One port releasing in 2015. Now it’s PlayStation’s time to shine as it makes its debut on PS4. Is this 4-year-old game more than a simple Diablo clone and is it worth your time?
Now as the name would imply this game is based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and more importantly the character of Abraham Van Helsing. Players star as his son assisted by his ghost companion Katarina. You’re tasked with exploring Borgovia, which is plagued by not only monsters of the night, but autonomous robots and experiments gone wrong. Like the film version of Dracula this game definitely draws from the cheesy and over the top side of things without beating players over the head with long drawn out narratives. The main plot line is simple accompanied by witty banter between the two companions while they come across problematic NPCs. The mixture of both gothic and steampunk aesthetics gives it a unique flavor although it’s not very striking for the eyes. It certainly looks like a game developed four years ago even with the graphical boost from the PS4. That said the overall design makes up for any artistic shortcomings.
All right so gameplay. Yes this is like Diablo in that it’s a top down action RPG with a heavy emphasis on loot, but it does have it’s own distinct feel thanks again to the unique lore it draws from. From the start players can choose one of three classes before they track down hordes of monsters. I went with the Hunter that is armed with swords, guns, and light magical abilities that can be allocated and strengthened when leveling up. Weapons and spells can be mapped to any number of buttons plus a quick click will open up another setup. One configuration could be targeted as the damage dealer while the other could be more focused on defense, or healing giving battles a sense of strategy. Plus Katarina has a number of spells you can instruct her to perform as well.
The other two classes of fine, but they definitely are one-sided experiences, both with ranged emphasis. The Thaumaturge is sort of like a mage while the Arcane Mechanic is more or less a defense heavy support type with wily gadgets. With all that said strategy, or not it comes down to hacking, or shooting away at unbelievable numbers of monsters swarming you. It’s not hard though thanks to the respawn system wherein players can use gold to warp back to one of three death spots. I never found a lot of use for gold save from that as monsters were generous with loot and shops had a lackluster appeal.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Enhanced Edition is a good port and fit for the PS4. Everything ran well and while repetitive there’s nothing wrong with mindless monster killing every now and again. The one big issue I had was the lack of couch co-op. In order to play with up to three other people one must venture online, but I rarely got a good connection in the few days I tested it out. Technical hiccups aside I think it’s well worth visiting to those hungry for a Diablo like with some comedic value. It’s a budget title appropriately priced that values gameplay and a fun story above all else.
Score: 3/5 Stars
Special Notes: I received a PS4 review code for The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Enhanced Edition.
Welcome to Listicle! Like the name would imply it’s based off of listicles particular ones I wrote for the new website, TheGamer. This new feature will be an accompaniment to those articles. This first one is on Mario Kart clones. So if you want to read the article go here and for the video, well, it’s linked below. Enjoy!
February turned out to be a disappointing month for games. Some high profile titles like For Honor were fun for a flash, but didn’t hold my attention. I just got Horizon Zero Dawn, but that feels more like a March game as it just released at the end so look forward to those thoughts in March at some point. Anyway despite my unfavorable game experiences I do have some exciting work related stuff to go over.
First of all I left GameSpew. It was nice having somewhere professional to call home while I transitioned content over from Examiner to here in my spare time and I appreciated the experience, but I found something more lucrative and now I can finally talk about it. Since the end of January I was hired to help create content for a new website called TheGamer. It just launched today and you can see everything I’ve written so far along with my other content below, as usual.
The past month proved to be taxing, but seeing the website up is a huge relief. More on TheGamer and my plans for ReActionExaminer regarding it soon, but for now enjoy my stuff from February as well as the accompanying video wherein I go over my thoughts on the month’s crop of games. Enjoy
Game Jurk 