Review

The Pedestrian: I Was Strolling Through the Park one Day…

by David Klemke on March 9, 2020

Way back at the very first PAX Australia (which was, gosh, 7 years ago now) I remember roaming through the indie booth and stumbled across FRAMED. I’m ashamed to admit that I never actually got around to playing it even though I was thoroughly intrigued by it’s panel puzzle design that was unlike anything I’d seen before. Since then there’s been a few imitators but none of them really caught my attention. That was until I stumbled across The Pedestrian in the Steam recommender and it’s combination of the panel puzzle design and absolutely fantastic background art design. That was enough to get my attention and keep my curiosity for a little while after however unfortunately I didn’t find much to keep bringing me back after just an hour or so of play time.

The premise of the game is pretty easy to understand: you’re a little man trapped inside the various signs , drawings and other wall coverings that are part of our everyday life and you want to travel through them. It starts off easy enough, you just need to run from one side of the screen to the next, but you’ll quickly find yourself needing to rearrange panels in certain ways to make sure you can progress. Initially this is just a simple task of not dead-ending yourself but it’ll quickly turn into a problem of figuring out which order events can happen and when they need to happen. It’s kind of hard to explain via text but you’ll immediately understand the premise when it’s first presented to you.

The Pedestrian’s graphics are, put simply, wonderful. A lot of attention has been paid to the smallest of details like the metal grains you can see on the outside of galvanised metal pipes, the various textures of the different kinds of signs you find yourself in and even the vast detail in areas that the camera whips past in just a few seconds. That kind of dedication to detail is, to be honest, quite astonishing and reflects the high level of craftsmanship that’s gone into developing this game. It does make you wonder what kind of person loves the minor details of the mundane world so much that they want to make a game that’s ostensibly honouring it in this way. Possibly someone who’s able to see the joy in the little things… 😉

The puzzle mechanics build up over the course of the game, starting as a simple platformer (with an extra step or two) but quickly adding in more and more mechanics as the levels go by. There are some really clever ones in there, like the puzzles where you have a hole through the card that you go through, but for the most part they’re the standard 2D puzzle tropes that you’ve seen before. The rearranging frames part is the game’s main claim to fame and it uses it to good effect, often making you wonder just how the heck things are meant to go together and forcing you to just try things out.

However past a certain point I just lost interest in seeing more puzzles as, whilst the game does add more mechanics and challenge, I just didn’t feel motivated to go back. Part of this could be because of the lack of story, although there seems to be some narrative around somewhere if the achievements are to be believed, as once I’d lost interest in the puzzles themselves there wasn’t anything to fall back on. That’s saying something given the fact that I think the game is probably only 2 hours long total, and really I could probably slog through it, but I just don’t feel like going back to it. Perhaps if I’d played it through to the end in one sitting I’d be singing a different tune.

The Pedestrian is a well crafted game with it’s beautifully realised renditions of the everyday world around us. The mechanics are a solid blend of the traditional and the new, slowly building the challenge as you tick over each of the levels. However for me it just failed to capture my attention much beyond the first hour, the repetitive nature of the puzzles and lack of any other driving factor (such as a story) making it far easier for me to put it down than to pick it back up again. All this being said I still think The Pedestrian is worth playing for those who enjoy these kinds of games, and those with perhaps a little more patience than I.

Rating: 7.5/10

The Pedestrian is available on PC right now for $28.95. Total play time was 78 minutes with 40% of the achievements unlocked.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem: I Can’t Believe it’s Not Diablo/Warhammer/etc.

by David Klemke on March 1, 2020

Ah the launch days of a new online game. They’re almost always filled with bugs, server problems and teething issues the developers and their play testers never managed to come across. You’ll be forgiven for thinking that Early Access would be a solution to this, even if you spent oh I don’t know something like 4 years in it. Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem debuted to an audience that was hungry for a new arpg and the hype it had built up to its release ensured that its release date was not so dissimilar from the AAA games it sought to emulate, plagued with numerous issues that made the game chuggy and problematic for many and downright unplayable for an unlucky minority. However like many of its other brethren after the initial furor died down what was left was an extremely competent arpg, just one that I lost interest in after the real grind set in.

In Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, you, Valeria, and Edric, are the three only survivors of the slaughter of Castagath. Rescued by Grand Inquisitor Heimlock, you were drafted into the Republic’s Army of the Purifiers at a very young age to be trained in the military academy and become perfect soldiers. You also had the chance to benefit from Heimlock’s occasional advice and training. This special treatment led you and your childhood friends to be named the “Children of Heimlock”. However one day it’s revealed that you’re able to channel some devastating forms of magic, something that’s very much frowned upon in this world. This begins your quest to survive and determine what your true fate really is.

I honestly couldn’t believe that the dev team chose Cryengine as the basis for their game, given its propensity for seriously high end graphics and not-so-great multiplayer support out of the box. However what the team has created is really quite something, making full use of the engine’s capabilities. The environments are massive and filled to the brim with detail although in the later, predominantly procedurally generated levels, things do start to get a bit samey. The game does shy away from the Blizzard/Diablo style of using more bright and varied colour palettes to keep visual interest up but there’s still a good helping of lighting and particle effects to keep everything from blurring into a dark background. All of this runs amazingly well, even when you get a good number of enemies on screen. That’s not to say I didn’t have any performance issues at all but I do have to admit I was trying to see how far I could tilt the thing before it fell over.

Wolcen follows the standard isometric dungeon crawler formula pretty closely with its own spin on the various tropes that I’m sure we’ll see emulations of in future games in this genre. There’s no formal classes to speak of however what weapon you decide to wield dictates which skills you’ll be able to use and, by consequence, which talents and attributes you’ll be prioritising. Skills themselves aren’t a given either, you’ll have to find them in drops from enemies or purchase them with a particular kind of currency from the right vendor. The talent tree is also quite novel, consisting of 3 rings that branch out in a constellation like fashion allowing you to choose your own path to the talents you want. There’s also a rudimentary crafting and gem system although if I’m honest I don’t think they’re actually worth using at all. Finally there’s a kind of rift like system which makes up the bulk of the end-game content, servicing as an endless grind to help rebuild a city which will confer back to you some benefits. Honestly using the term “Diablo clone” here would be a disservice to Wolcen as whilst it certainly draws inspiration from it there’s enough new things in here that I think Blizzard will be taking notice.

Combat is, for my build at least, a fast paced balls to the wall killfest that literally doesn’t stop for anything. Now I’m quite sure that the build I was running has likely been nerfed into oblivion since I stopped playing but suffice to say, when I can 2 or 3 shot pretty much any boss or mob I come across in the game it’s not likely to be long for this world. Still it was certainly fun, especially considering that it was such a glass cannon build that I had to ensure I was actively using particular skills constantly lest I cop a few hits in a row which would see me downed in short order. Of course being basically unstoppable did also mean that there wasn’t a lot of challenge left for me in the game once I reached that point, especially without an end-game grind that was building to something interesting.

It probably also didn’t help that I settled on a skill build and playstyle early on and all other variants seemed to be far, far less effective. To be sure there seems to be a lot of build variance available but speaking with my mate who tried numerous other builds none of them were as effective or useful as the good old slow 2 hander with bleeding edge. Some of the skill modifiers did make for more interesting rotations but most of the time they just allowed me to do the one thing I needed to do more efficiently or with a greater margin for error. I’m sure for those seeking to craft the one true ultimate build there’s a lot to explore and experiment with here but without a goal to work towards I can’t imagine there’s going to be much enjoyment in doing so.

Like most arpgs the progression comes thick and fast at the start but begins to slow down measurably once you hit the end game. When once you’d be able to find an upgrade or two during a dungeon run now you’re likely to go multiple runs without finding anything. Worse still you’ll likely have to spend quite a bit of time sifting through all the gear you’ve picked up to find that one upgrade, a rather tedious chore that’s unfortunately not made much easier by the inclusion of gear archetypes that are supposed to make the culling easier. I found a pair of rogue gloves early on in my endgame grind that were just flat out better than anything else the other types could provide, even though I should’ve rightly been using bruiser or heavy gear. Towards the end I was just looking for gear that appeared to be as good or better than what I was currently using and then saw if equipping it upped my character sheet DPS. A blunt tool, to be sure, but comparisons beyond that just aren’t really feasible.

It doesn’t help that the crafting system is pretty much useless, allowing you to reroll or add random attributes to your gear. Gems are also somewhat moot as you can’t combine lower tier gems to higher tier ones and the effects they provide are minimal at best. Not having a comprehensive crafting system isn’t really a major issue but it does mean that there’s really only one path for progression in the end game and that’s to grind, grind away at those dungeons. For some this is probably exactly what they want but for me? I’d kind of like the option of doing something else with my overflowing pack of loot other than vendoring it all. That or some semi-meaningful goal to grind towards.

All this taken together you’d think that I was somewhat dour on the whole Wolcen experience but apart from the last couple hours I actually really enjoyed it. Tooling around in the campaign was always fun, especially when I teamed up with my mate and we had stupid banter over the dialogue whilst we waited for the next quest step to appear. With loot being so plentiful too it was a no-brainer to share everything as well and the game’s catch up mechanics made questing with my much higher level mate very much worth it for both of us. It’s just that it feels like there’s an expiry date on the experience as once you hit a certain point with the game there’s likely not going to be much going back to it. This was much the same as Diablo III for me as whilst I spent a good lot of hours in it initially after hitting Inferno 1 and seeing the grind ahead I just decided to call it quits. I think I’ve only been back a couple times since.

There’s no denying that Wolcen was a buggy mess during its 1.0 week. For the first few days my group of mates and I would routinely get put on servers all the way around the globe which led to a less than stellar experience, even at 180ms ping. There were also the raft of issues around joining games in progress, how quest progress was handled and just a general set of problems that could only be ascribed to launch week teething issues. To be sure a lot of these got better but for one of my mates the game remained unplayable for a week and when it was useable he’d frequently crash if he used certain skills. Right now though the game seems to be in a good spot so if the initial negative press put you off it might be time to revisit it.

The world and story of Wolcen is certainly interesting although it is somewhat predictable given its use of the standard tropes for many of the game’s protagonists and their motivations. The whole thing is predicated on the big bag thing coming to town and you doing everything you can to stop it. There’s definitely more of this world to explore and I can definitely see myself coming back if they drop any story content in the near future. However for this particular instalment it’s decidedly middle of the road but hey, at least you’re not going to be playing this for the narrative right?

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is an extremely well thought out arpg, taking inspiration from all the right places and then applying their own brand of creativity to provide a game experience that’s quite different to what you’d expect from a run of the mill Diablo clone. The game’s initial teething issues appear to be sorted out for now and hopefully, if you’d decided to give it a miss because of that, this review can convince you that it’s still worth a look in. You might not sink as many hours as you did in Diablo or Path of Exile but it’s still something to tide you over until Diablo 4 releases sometime this year.

Rating: 8.75/10

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is available on PC right now for $56.95. Total playtime was 18 hours with 36% of the achievements unlocked.

Speaking Simulator: GREETINGS, FELLOW HUMAN.

by David Klemke on February 23, 2020

You really have to marvel at the thought process of developers who make games in the frustration genre. I’m sure a healthy portion of it is done “for the memes” as kids say these days but at the same time you need to figure out how you’re going to make something that’s a) funny, b) somewhat approachable so people just don’t give up on it straight away and c) actually masterable in some way so the streamers have a goal to shoot for. I’ve seen many, many games that meet 2 out of 3 of those criteria crop up in the Steam store and you’ll likely never hear of them because they’re missing one of those 3 key pieces. Speaking Simulator manages to tick all those boxes, managing to keep the comedy up the entire time whilst also giving you the impression that, should you try hard enough, you could very well 100% every one of the levels.

Not that I’d want to though, of course.

You are our representation in the human world however we’re not ready yet to conquer them so you must blend in. We’ve discovered that humans communicate by wagging their tongue and flapping their lips so you too will do this in order to convince them that you are DEFINITELY NOT A ROBOT. Unfortunately, there were some corners cut on your safety features. If you make errors your systems will overload and your AI will be forced to relieve pressure by triggering one of the various array of facial explosions and mechanical glitches. Since you are a perfect AI however this should not happen and we shall conquer the humans in no time at all.

Speaking Simulator has that distinct default Unity game feel to it with a healthy dose of b-game styled art thrown in for good measure. All of the visual effort has gone into your face, with good reason as it’ll be the thing you’ll be starting at for most of this game. Everything else in the game is very bare bones with minimal animations or work on the background environments. Of course you’re never really playing these kinds of games for the visuals and what Affable Games has done here fits in with the overall theme of this particular genre.

There is a core of frustration game in Speaking Simulator (mostly related to the tongue mechanics) however it’s more akin to something like Bop It! or Whack-a-Mole as you’re constantly tweaking a bunch of different things in order to say the next word. It starts off with you just needing to click buttons with your tongue (which is very hit and miss) and moving your mouth around. However from there you’ll unlock your eyes, eyebrows and whether your expression is happy/sad/neutral. You’ve got about 8 seconds to say each word and should you not manage to say something in time or, should you miss a cue, whatever part of your face you were meant to manipulate will start malfunctioning. This only serves to make it even more challenging as you might not be able to be sure if you’ve moved everything into the right position, triggering even more chaotic facial expressions.

At the start it’s actually pretty fun and not particularly challenging. It’s even pretty fun to mess up a couple times just to see what will happen, although sometimes the consequences can be rather annoying (nothing like continuous lip smacking to set the mood, amiright?!). However it quickly becomes quite the challenge, so much so that I ended up only playing a mission or two most times because it was just such a mentally exhausting experience to manage all the different mechanics. It is pretty rewarding though when you manage to pull off a couple words in a row quickly but that quickly wears off as you have to adjust a dozen things just to get the next one out.

This is definitely a game that could heavily benefit from multiplayer. Whilst you could kinda do it now (one person on the tongue and the other on…well all other bits of the face) I think there’s a great party game hiding in here for up to 5 people, each one controlling a different aspect of your robots face. I’m not sure if that’s something that’s on the dev’s TO-DO list but I know a couple of my friends would love to give this thing a crack if that option was ever made available.

With these kinds of games it’s always hard to tell what’s something that’s in need of patching/fixing/polish and what’s been deliberately left like that as part of the game experience. There’s definitely a little more work to be done on some of the UI elements as they tend to blend into the background a bit, making it hard to know what you need to do next. There’s also a log ticking over in the top right hand corner but you’ll barely ever notice it, which can lead to you not being completely sure if you’ve actually completed a move or not. Having the text from there pop in saying “perfect!” or “good!” or something DDR like would go a long way. I could complain about the lack of precision in some things but honestly that cuts both ways as quite often there were times where I got something right when I really had no reason to. Overall it’s pretty much in-line with what you’d expect for a game of this genre.

Speaking Simulator is a great example of what this genre can be: fun and challenging but not in such a way as to deliberately punish the player. The dev team has focused all their efforts on what matters: making a robot face contort and bend in all sorts of whacky ways for our enjoyment. That means that the rest of the game is very basic but that just means you’re clearly focused on the core game play. If you’re just after a lark or are a fan of the frustration game genre then there’s really no going past Speaking Simulator.

Rating: 8.25/10

Speaking Simulator is available on PC right now for $17.50. Total play time was 2.5 hours with 63% of the achievements unlocked.

Greedfall: Good Day. I’m De Sardet, Legate of the Congregation.

by David Klemke on February 16, 2020

Oh my word would you look at that, it’s another RPG from our good friends over at Spiders. If you are unfamiliar with them (although how could you having read every single one of my reviews!) they are a small developer who has aspirations of being the next Bioware but not where near the prestige nor funding to achieve it. Their previous run of games, which are all startlingly similar in their construction, have all been firmly in the B-grade category; having many of the trappings of its AAA brethren but nowhere near the same level of polish, finesse or integration of mechanics that would make it seem somewhat similar. Over the years then I’ve grown to love seeing Spiders releasing things because it means that they’re somehow still making money despite peddling some of the most mediocre titles for years on end. However, and I feel strange for saying this, their latest game Greedfall actually manages to be a half decent game, even if the spectres of its past are still very much visible. So this may be the first time ever that I say I’m actually looking forward to seeing what Spiders comes up with next.

You are De Sardet, legate of the Congregation of Merchants and you’ve been tapped on the shoulder to accompany your cousin to a newly discovered island called Teer Fradee. He’s to be the governor there and it’s your job to assist him in ensuring that the will of the Congregation is executed over there. At the same time you’ve been tasked with trying to find a cure for the terrible sickness that has been plaguing everyone on the content, a disease that has been named the Malichor. Your journey is not simply one of bashing heads and saving those in distress; no instead you’re there to ensure political stability on the island, including finding a way for those of the continent to get along with the natives of the island. That’s going to be something of a challenge considering the number of different factions, all of whom have their own ideas of what this new island should be used for.

The graphics of Greedfall are brought to us by Spiders’ own game engine called Silk which itself was based off the free Sony engine called PhyreEngine. The graphics it delivers though are more akin to the best we’d seen out of the previous generation, although when compared to previous Spiders titles it’s definitely a major step up. Whilst there’s a healthy dose of asset reuse the environments are still more detailed than they ever have been before. They will start to blend into each other after a while as all the forests look pretty much the same as do the towns save for the few custom designed areas that each of them has. Heck even the various governor houses are basically identical save for the texture jobs. There’s also some noticeable differences in the game’s framerate and the physics engine’s rate which is probably most notable in your cape which stutters along rather than flowing like you’d expect. Credit where it’s due though this is a pretty big step up for Spiders and I’m not one to chide someone for making progress.

It seems that after making ostensibly the same game 4 times over Spiders has finally managed to streamline it to the point where they’ve actually managed to make most of the systems work properly. You’re still going to have to choose to main one of three character classes, each of which largely fits into the regular RPG tropes. The multiple different attribute and talent systems make a return although at least this time around there’s a respec facility that gives you the ability to tweak things if you happen to make a wrong decision early on. You’ll still be saddled with AI companions that you have zero control over however and their AI hasn’t really improved much in the years since the Technomancer. Crafting once again makes a return although it suffers from the same problems at it always has. Overall whilst the theme of “put everything in that the AAA guys do” is still very much prevalent in Greedfall at least this time it’s a lot better done making for a game that’s actually kind of fun to play.

Combat is still a very simplistic affair, being mostly focus on you whacking at enemies and dodging their more obvious telegraphed attacks whilst waiting for your abilities to come off cooldown. The game asks you what archetype you want to be at the start and, for a change, I decided to see what being a spellcaster would be like. To their credit this was actually quite a viable build although, unfortunately, it still meant that I’d spend about half of most combat encounters meleeing things as I waited for my mana to regen. However there were also times that I could completely wipe out an entire group with 2 spells, something which I sorely needed to do later in the game when I was over everything and just wanted to complete the story. I still have the feeling that going for the warrior tree might’ve been the smarter move overall as it seems all the good weapons and armor require you to invest in points that that tree makes use of. Having to split my points a bit between things to support my spellcasting whilst also wearing armour that wasn’t total shit was a bit of a pain, although it wasn’t too much of a drag for the last 5 or so hours of my playthrough.

Like most things in Greedfall though the combat gets extremely repetitve after not too long. The enemy variety is very low and doesn’t really change much throughout the game. This unfortunately means that the increased challenge usually comes from the game throwing more of those enemies at you or simply giving them a truckload more health and armour. This turns most fights into drawn out slugfests and with an unfortunate late of variety in spells and skills there’s not much to really keep you interested. To be sure I could’ve easily respecced between any of the 3 trees anytime I wanted to (you’ll pick up more than enough items to cover them all off) but I shouldn’t have to completely up-end my build just to keep things interesting. The games that Greedfall aspires to be (Dragonfall: Origins should I take a wild guess) managed to keep me interested without the need for me to change things up so I definitely feel like it’s a lack of time and/or resources on Spiders’ part here.

Pro-tip: there’s basically no reason to invest any points in crafting as there’s NPCs who can craft everything for you. Not only that but all crafting recipes are available to you right from the get-go so there’s really nothing else for you to do but to go and find the required mats. This is made incredibly easy by the fact that every time you travel you have to camp, which also brings with it a vendor who always has every crafting item in stock. It’s probably still worth picking up various mats along the way as you’ll sometimes need to craft something or use them to complete a quest but other than that you’re going to end up with a bunch of materials that you’re not going to have any use for. Thankfully they don’t weigh particularly much so you can still indulge in your packrat ways if you so wish. Once I’d found a good set of unique armour and an associated weapon I maxed out crafting to upgrade everything to the fullest and then respecced into something more useful right away. I think I ended up using that setup for over half the game.

Progression is a muddled affair as you’ll get skill points every level (and can even find “skill shrines” that give you additional points) but will only get attribute and talent points every so often. This means that if you find a sweet piece of armour that needs endurance 2 it’s not going to be 2 levels to use it, no more like 5+. Whilst this does mean that the early game is a bit of a balancing act to get the most out of the loot you have it ends up being a pretty big source of frustration later in the game. This is most apparent when all the good loot requires the higher tiers of attributes unlocked or not having a particular skill (like say vigor) levelled up enough means taking the very long way around something. Of course I totally get the idea that this is meant to make you specialise in something but given the loot isn’t particularly diverse it kind of means that non-warrior builds are less viable than their melee focused counter-parts. This is honestly par for the course with Spiders games though so I really shouldn’t be surprised.

There have been some major quality of life improvements over previous Spiders games like, finally, a fast travel system. Unfortunately this is tied up with a completely unnecessary (but mandatory) “camp” intermediate level which basically means you’ll always see 2 load screens unless you’re travelling within a current map. It would be so, so much better if you had the choice of camping or not as later in the game there’s really not a lot of reason to spend any time at camp. Other improvements include item comparison, so you can see if what you’re looking at is an upgrade, a useable map and a UI that isn’t complete garbage. It’s still probably about 5+ years behind what I’d call AAA but at the very least we’re streets ahead of what I’ve come to expect from this developer.

Of course the game is still riddled with issues, some of which may be due to their continued use of the Silk engine or perhaps just straight up lack of polish. Pathing is a major issue and you’ll routinely get cornered or stuck by NPCs or your companions alike although they’ll usually figure out you’re trying to get past them after a 30 seconds or so. There are missions in the game that are obviously related to each other but haven’t had alternative voice lines recorded from them so you’ll often have your character experiencing weird bouts of amnesia about things that they really should know about. Whilst the level of the jank in the combat is certainly decreased the same issues in Spiders’ previous games still exist, like spells or melee hits just straight up not connecting for no reason at all and enemies straight up ignoring terrain to get at you. A lot of these things can be patched out though and hopefully Spiders does invest some time between this game and the next on improving the overall experience.

The story is passable as it’s rather predictable but at least many of the characters are given time to develop and there appears to be a much richer world behind everything than previous Spiders’ games had. Even with that said though there were a good number of characters I was just straight up not interested in talking to, including 2 of the companions that are introduced much later in the game and as such feel like strangers in your tightly knit crew. I will admit that I played for much, much longer than I would have otherwise just because I wanted to see how everything panned out but even that became quite the chore towards the end. Overall it’s a vast improvement but there’s still a lot of room to grow here.

After 7 years of not really improving at all it’s heartening to see signs of life from the Spiders team. Whilst Greedfall is certainly still in B-grade territory it’s very, achingly close to tipping over to into A. There’s still tons of room for improvement here and a “less is more” approach could still help immensely in focusing more on what matters to the core game rather than trying to emulate what others deliver in the same kind of experience. Still I hope that the success that Spiders has found with Greedfall either gives them bigger budgets or allows them to attract more top tier talent as it’s clear there’s something going on there, they just need the right guidance and resources to make something truly AAA worthy.

Rating: 7.0/10

Greedfall is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and XboxOne right now for $69.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 22 hours play time and 51% of the achievements unlocked.

Control: Welcome, Director.

by David Klemke on February 9, 2020

Ever since I started keeping a list of games I’d like to review (some 6 years now) it’s become clear to me just how many I don’t get around to playing. Still I try to make time for the ones that everyone seems to enjoy or have seen wide critical acclaim. Which is why I went back to play Control as it has managed to snag many Game of the Year awards and nominations from many of the top game reviews websites. My opinion differs significantly to those as whilst I think Control is a very competent and novel game it’s far from game of the year material. Perhaps the most grievous sin it commits is to follow in the footsteps of the many Assassin’s Creed and Ubisoft open world titles that came before it, introducing the concept of grind into a single player game. Combine that with a game that’s still needing some polish 5+ months after its release and I really have to wonder why so many think Control is a better game than the numerous other contenders for the 2019 release year.

You are Jesse Faden and have arrived at the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, a place called the Oldest House. However upon your arrival you find it practically deserted the only person around being an old man called Ahti who appears to be to be bureau’s janitor. He then points you towards the director’s office for your interview, commenting that he could really use a new assistant to help him out. Upon arriving in the directors office you find his body, apparently dead from suicide. As you grab his weapon from the table you’re transported to another realm where it becomes clear that there’s much more to the bureau, and the world at large, than you first thought.

Control uses Remedy’s proprietary engine called Northlight which was first used with Quantum Break back in 2016. Back then I commented on how good the game looked but it seems like Control hasn’t really improved much on the visuals that the engine is able to offer. I think a large part of this is the fact that the vast majority of Control takes place in smaller spaces, making the lack of detail in some areas a lot more apparent than they otherwise would be in a more open setting. There also isn’t a great amount of variance in the environments either which makes the blandness stand out even more. This isn’t to say Control is a terrible looking game, more that it’s a half step or so behind what I’d consider to be the norm for a AAA title. No doubt part of it is also my now 5 year old rig which seemed to struggle in some places, even at 1080p, but given I had similar troubles 3 years ago with Quantum Break I have my suspicions that the engine could use a few more optimisations.

Control is a third person shooter/RPG hybrid with a healthy dash of open world elements thrown in for whatever reason. Whilst there’s a main campaign mission to follow there’s dozens of side quests, tasks and other errands for you to run that’ll reward you with varying amounts of resources, crafting materials and, if you’re really lucky a skill point or two. You don’t technically find new weapons instead you craft new forms of the “Service Weapon”, most of which fall into the typical archetypes we’re familiar with (pistol, machine gun, shotgun, etc.). Progression comes in 3 different ways: skill points, weapon mods and personal mods. The former is granted on completion of some, not all missions, and feels like it’s mostly tied to the main missions and a few of the longer side missions. Mods can drop from basically anywhere and are randomly generated, meaning it’s quite possible to pick up a mod with a god like roll that won’t get replaced for some time. This is where the game starts to tend towards endless grind territory as you attempt to seek out the best mods to tweak your preferred build. There’s even endgame level activities if you’re so interested although honestly I can’t really see why you’d bother.

Combat is typically medium paced as pretty much every encounter will have a couple waves of enemies and whilst your ammo and powers are unlimited they’ll need recharging pretty often, slowing down how many bad guys you can dispatch in any one go. After the first couple hours you will have seen basically every enemy archetype there is though and so after then it just becomes a matter of numbers and how many waves get thrown at you for any particular combat encounter. For the most part if you take your time there’s not much in the game that can kill you, especially considering that most encounters you can simply just walk away from and leash the enemies, giving you time for round 2. This makes for an overall combat experience that’s OK but somewhat boring after a while as you’re literally just doing the same fights over and over again.

It probably doesn’t help that the progression in the game is kinda meh for the most part. All of the upgrades you get, apart from the 3 or so new abilities and new weapon forms granted to you over the course of the game, are percentage based stat increases and so don’t feel particularly impactful to how you play the game. To be sure there’s a couple skill upgrades which make can change things a little, but even then not by much. Really the only one I got any kind of use out of was the levitating enemies when their health was low perk and even that was only useful because the enemy bodies were usually bigger than the other bits of crap I could hurl around.

If I was able to stack a ludicrous amount of mods then I could see myself having a lot of fun with some really stupid builds but unfortunately you’re limited to 3 weapon mods (per weapon type) and 3 personal mods. Whilst that makes for a large amount of build variety I don’t feel many of them are particularly viable as you’re going to want a health upgrade and, by consequence, the upgrade that makes the little health thingies that the enemies drop more effective. Either that or waste your valuable skill points on the same things which would limit you to the vanilla base skills. Really I feel like Control could’ve been a lot more fun if they just let you go hog wild with these things and become a complete wrecking ball like many other RPGs do.

Control also suffers from a few issues which at this late juncture I would’ve expected to have been ironed out by now. Switching from the menu to the game triggers a good 3 seconds of single digit frame rates which is a real pain in the ass when you have switch in and out of it all the time to read the various files strewn about the place just so you understand at least the basics of the plot. Since a good chunk of the game is physics based you’ve got the usual emergent behaviour issues that goes along with it, something that becomes readily apparent when you say, walk through a room with stuff strewn everywhere and Jesse seemingly forgets how to walk around or over things. In the grand scheme of things these are minor issues but given this is a AAA title, from a big name house and it’s been out for a while now I figured it should be basically issue free.

The story is interesting enough, being a kind of X-files meets the Twilight Zone kind of deal. The game does go out of its way to be especially obtuse with the various plot elements it introduces you to directly, forcing you to sniff around all the various files to find context and detail that you’ll so desperately need to have any clue about what’s going on. The main character’s inner dialogue also started to grate on me after a while as I didn’t feel like it added much and almost felt like a remnant of a choice system that was implemented and then scrapped halfway through the game’s development. If anything it’s reflective of the game as a whole: well built but just lacking that hook to really get me to buy in to the whole thing.

Control is a well constructed game that’ll tick a lot of boxes for many people but seems to lack that certain something to bind everything together to make the concept really sing. Indeed all of the individual elements are good to begin with but fail to evolve or improve over time. So the experience you get at the start feels largely the same as the one you have at the end which, for 10 hours invested, does make you question why you’d bother in the first place. I’m sure there’s some out there with dozens more hours invested in the game’s various end game and open world activities but, for me, I just couldn’t get invested enough to want to keep playing. Just goes to show that what makes something game of the year material will be different for everyone and, for me, it seems that I simply can’t find what others see in Control.

Rating: 7.75/10

Control is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One right now for $59.99. Game was played on the PC with a total of 10 hours play time.

The White Door: At a Loss.

by David Klemke on February 1, 2020

The journey through mental illness is a deeply personal one, intertwined with the life events that lead to the eventual manifestation of symptoms that we label depression, anxiety and so on. I think that’s why exploring these themes in games is often done in a highly allegorical way that, on the surface, appears to be completely disconnected from what the stereotypical experience of these health conditions are. In that sense whilst games like The White Door would in one view be seen as a surrealistic exploration of the grieving and trauma process it could very well be exactly what it was like for someone to go through it. In terms of an actual game it’s definitely not bad and likely best enjoyed on your mobile platform of choice over many, small sessions.

Your character, Robert Hill, wakes up in a Mental Health facility and suffers from severe memory loss. The facility enforces a strict routine to help patients remember their past and what led up to them being there. Scattered throughout the room are remnants of your past, little details that’ll help jog your memory and, hopefully, bring about some resolution to the troubles of your past.

The White Door splits your screen down the middle, the one on the left being a kind of interactive map whilst the one on the right being what your character is currently focused on. That, combined with the simplistic graphics consisting of mostly bold outlines and limited coloured panels, gives The White Door a comic book like aesthetic. The use of colour (and the lack thereof) is one of the game’s primary storytelling mechanics, highlighting the difference between the past and the present, the times of emotions and feeling and the times of emptiness and thoughtlessness.

Mechanically the game is pretty simple, requiring you to go through the day’s routine step by step so you can progress to the next day. Whilst there’s no tutorial to speak of the game does guide you in the right direction should it see that you’re taking quite some time to finish a particular puzzle. That being said there were a few times I had to consult a walkthrough guide as I just couldn’t figure out exactly what the game was driving at. Still the game’s logic is consistent enough that once you’ve figured it out for the first time the deviations from there on out are relatively easy to understand.

The story, at its core, is a simple one although the heavy use of surrealism does lead you to question just exactly what is real and what isn’t. There are some parts of the narrative that are obviously completely disconnected from reality but making the connection back to real world events isn’t really possible since you don’t have much of a reference point. To be sure, as I alluded to in my opening remarks, some of these things are certainly allegorical elements reflecting a personal experience and are most likely representations of feelings more than they were actual events. Suffice to say it’s interesting even if it does leave you a little dazed and confused throughout.

The White Door is an interesting experiment in surrealistic storytelling, combining various narrative elements together to tell a much larger story than what it’s few words put forward. Its simple mechanics get out of the way for the most part leaving ample room for the story to develop. Apart from that there’s not much more to say about The White Door and, should this short review piqued your interest in it, then it’s likely worth investing the couple hours to explore it yourself.

Rating: 7/10

The White Door is available on PC, iOS and Android right now for $5.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 102 minutes play time and 6% of the achievements unlocked.

Game of the Year 2019.

by David Klemke on January 28, 2020

Bet you weren’t expecting me to actually write this any earlier than last year, huh? 😉

Last year was a time of change for me in many ways. Whilst the most significant of which has nothing to do with my game of the year (read: having a little ankle biter around the house now) I found myself not enjoying the same genres and types of games that I used to. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything to enjoy, far from it, just that it seems that with the passage of time either the genres are changing in ways I don’t like or it is I whose tastes have changed and no longer align to what those genres seek to deliver.

Or perhaps it was just an artefact of playing more titles in a year than I have in a long, long time, managing to play through a record (well, I think it is) 50 titles over the 2019 year. Granted quite a few of those were shorter titles that were plugging in gaps that I would’ve left bare in previous years but at least this time around I was finding the spare hour or two every week to sit down and play through something. I have to admit to also going back to some old classics to pass the time, like Battlefront 2, just because I didn’t feel like investing the time I had in anything that was out of the time. There was also the spectre of the Epic store, something which I avoided for a long, long time before I relented due to a couple of my must-play games appearing on there as exclusives. I’ve well and truly broken my rule against buying on there now so there’s nothing stopping me from playing through games on there that I would’ve otherwise left fallow.

As always here’s last year’s list in chronological order, this time around coming with the added benefit of having their scores as well:

Most years I take a rather awful delight in handing out the wooden spoon for the year but this time around I feel bad about naming AMID EVIL as this year’s last place, scoring a (admittedly far from the worse score I’ve given) low 5.0/10. I say that because, looking back over them, Discolored and Epitasis are probably worse games but they managed to get another 0.5 and so just barely missed out on being tied for worst game of the year. I think at the time I was particularly annoyed at the attempt to revive the “classic” FPS experience which, time and time again, has proven to be a place we left behind for a reason.

The honourable mentions list this year is long with no less than 5 games making the cut. The Division 2 was a pretty great experience whilst it lasted although once I ran out of story related missions the want to grind for end-game gear (and the associated annoyance of not having a matchmaking system for said end game) I ended up leaving it behind. Resident Evil 2 showed that you can do a remake without it being a shameless cash grab, bringing with it equal parts nostalgia and upgraded game play. Katana Zero was just straight up good in all respects, all it’s differing elements blending together just so to make something that’s truly one of 2019’s more memorable experiences. A Plague Tale: Innocence was a surprise hit for me, starting off as some weird medieval fantasy romp but quickly turned into a great experience once the story found its feet. Finally A Short Hike is just a nice, light game to play, never asking too much of you but giving so much in return.

So with all that out of the way my game of the year for 2019 is:

Now I’m no Kojima fan but I certainly know of the man by reputation. The initial cinematic teaser videos he posted really hooked me in, even though I had zero idea what the resulting game would be about. Over the years the few details I allowed myself to consume about it just fed into that initial interest and before I knew it I was fully bought in. The experience, whilst admittedly slow for the first 8 hours, sucked me right in and soon I found myself revelling in the shared world and wanting to make it a better place for all players. The story, which I admit in no small part hit me right in the feels because I’m a new father, even with all its faults is still something that I found incredibly enjoyable. So Death Stranding takes out 2019’s game of the year and the highest score at 9.5.

The runners up are Apex Legends and Untitled Goose Game. At its peak I was playing a good lot of Apex Legends with a rotating roster of my mates, something which we hadn’t done in a good long time. Of course it was Apex Legend’s mass appeal which is what led us to do that as none of the preceding battle royal games had managed to get more than a couple of us interested at one time. Finally Untitled Goose Game is just plain fun and honestly, in this age where games too often get wrapped their axles in trying to be novel or be something greater than just a game, something that’s just irreverent and a good chuckle is really refreshing.

2019 saw a lot of the titles I was looking forward to pushed back to this year so there’s dozens of games that I’m very eagerly awaiting the release of. If this year is going to be anything like the last then I have high hopes I’ll get to them all and, if I do, what a year it’ll be.

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: The Sins of our Forebears.

by David Klemke on January 26, 2020

The Mechwarrior series and I go a long, long way back. I don’t know exactly how I came into possession of a copy of Mechwarrior 2, me being only 10 at the time of its release, but I can remember being captivated by the robot on robot combat. My favourite thing was to equip stupidly large mechs with dozens of jump jets and tons of leg armour, flying myself around the map and crushing opponents who didn’t get out of the way. I even remember playing the Ghost Bear expansion with the idea of a melee focused mech (I think it was the Kodiak) seeming like the coolest thing in the world. Eventually I graduated to a long range sniper build based around PPCs and gauss rifles, something which seemed to work for all but the smallest and fastest mechs. I can even remember picking Mechwarrior 4 as a prize at one of the ACTGN LANs I attended, much the confusion of many others around. For me the mechwarrior series was one of those series that defined me as a gamer for a long time.

However the last decade hasn’t really proven fruitful for the series. Sure there was Mechwarrior Online, but that fell victim to a meta game that made all but a few playstyles non-starters (read: snipers and missile boats). So when I heard that a new Mechwarrior game was come out I was tentatively excited as it’s been a long time since I’ve really had a chance to sit down and indulge in my mecha fantasies. Unfortunately though Mechwarrior 5 is just so unashamedly mediocre that even childhood nostalgia couldn’t push me past a couple hours with it.

You’re a young commander working with you father running a mech mercenary corp, taking contracts in all sectors across the galaxy. The company has just finished refurbishing an old Centurion model mech and puts you to task in shaking down its systems. However, right as you’re just about to complete the final diagnostics on the system, you’re attacked by another mercenary company who corners your father and starts interrogating him for information. He’s able to buy you enough time to get airborne but, unfortunately, the other mercenary group wasn’t interested in taking prisoners. Now on the run you set about setting yourself up as a mercenary outfit once again with an eye on vengeance when the time comes.

There’s really no nice way to say this: Mechwarrior 5 looks like absolute garbage. I don’t doubt that a lot of this is to do with the fact that a lot of the terrain and buildings in the game are destructible but even in the scenes where there isn’t any of that the game still looks like it was made over 5 years ago. All the animations are stiff and ungangly, which would be forgivable for the mechs, but all of the human NPCs move like action figures that were accidentally left out in the rain. Even the wide open terrains don’t really look that good with many of the maps feeling very samey after not too long. This doesn’t feel like something that a better PC could improve either. Whilst graphics aren’t everything it was still the first of many red flags that came up during my time with the game.

Mechwarrior 5 does follow the series’ standard tropes for combat, customisation and finding and undertaking missions. Initially you’ll start off with only one mech and limited options which kind of works as an extended tutorial. As you progress you’ll be able to spend your c-bills on new mechs, upgraded weapons and NPC pilots who will join you on missions. The mission system seems to be significantly revamped from what little I can remember of the original mercenaries with a lot of different options to maximise your returns for a given investment. The first couple hours will lock you into campaign missions only but after that you’re free to start roaming the galaxy in search of work which you’ll need to do if you want to hire and maintain a decent crew.

At a basic level Mechwarrior 5’s combat retains much of what I remember being good about the original series however it’s the structure of the encounters and the continuous reuse of the same enemy types that make it an absolute chore. In the dozen or so missions I played (including a handful of non-campaign ones) it seems that you’re always facing the same couple different types of tanks and helicopters for a good long while before the enemy you’re fighting decides to send in a mech or two. The AI on the mechs is incredibly simplistic too, seemingly broken down into different strategies that are predicated on their distance from you. Far away? They’ll attempt to pepper you with missiles and other long range implements while trying to hide behind terrain. Get a little bit close? They’ll run in and start circle strafing you, even if they can’t actually run a circle around you (which can be kind funny). What this leads to is repetitive encounters which really aren’t terribly interesting and take far too long to complete.

Part of what fed into my boredom with Mechwarrior 5 was the lack of customisation that’s available early on in the game. To be sure it’s there but it seems like a lot more of the deeper stuff that I remember enjoying many years ago is locked away until later in the game. I did get to the point of being able to travel where I wanted to but by then I’d already been bored stiff by the repetitive missions and the small amount of freedom I’d gained wasn’t enough to keep me playing. Even playing missions with a full squad wasn’t particularly interesting as they don’t really contribute more to your experience than a handful of canned lines which they repeat endlessly throughout the mission’s duration.

The story is also completely forgettable, made ever so much worse by the voice acting which is delivered flat and with little emotion behind it. To be sure the story certainly sets up all the right ingredients at the start but it’s done in such a bland and uninteresting way that you’ll quickly dismiss it in the hopes that you’ll find something more interesting to catch your attention. It’s just a shame that there really isn’t anything else there to hold the rest of the game up.

It’s a real shame honestly as, at a base level, all the parts of what made mechwarrior great (to me at least) are there. However the mediocre combat experience, coupled with dated graphics and an uninteresting story mean that there’s really nothing to keep you coming back once a mission is done. I was hoping for at least a halfway decent mech game that could keep me entertained just with the customisation alone but even that failed to materialise. In the end I don’t think I could really recommend this game for anyone as it’s likely to disappoint fans and newcomers alike. Perhaps the next instalment will be better, but this is 2 misses in a row for Piranha games, in my opinion.

Rating: 5.5/10

Mechwarrior 5 is available on PC right now for $49.99. Total play time was 2 hours.

Degrees of Separation: Worlds That Can Never Meet.

by David Klemke on January 19, 2020

Thinking about my journey as a gamer it’s interesting to note how I’ve ebbed and flowed between being focused on single player experience and those enjoyed with others. To be sure part of this was due to the way I came to games in the first place, sharing the family PC with my brother and later moving onto the first generation NES console which we’d waste endless hours on. Later on, when I was blessed with my own personal PC, that I started to find an interest in gaming by myself. That was upended when I got into the LAN scene and continued in strength as the world of online gaming was unlocked when I was graced with the wonderful gift of broadband. The last decade has been a good mix of the two although I’ll admit that most of my gaming time is more on the single player side than otherwise.

Suffice to say I don’t often go looking for co-operative experiences these days, especially if they don’t come with a single player option. However Degrees of Separation caught my eye early last year and it had long been in my review queue to play with my wife when we got the time. Well, once again thanks to the bushfires that continue to rage on, we managed to sit down and make our way through it. Whilst it’s core mechanic is somewhat novel it is a rather run of the mill puzzle platformer. That being said it can be a good bit of fun when you’re playing with another, especially if they aren’t exactly experienced with this kind of game.

Ember and Rime are from two different sides of the same world: hers a warm one of endless sunshine blessed with boundless heat and his, a world of frozen beauty. They are separated by an enigmatic force, unable to reach each other nor visit each other’s world. It’s clear however that their world has suffered some great tragedy at the hands of despotic ruler and they set out together to uncover the mystery of their shared world. Working together is the only way that they’ll be able to uncover the mystery of what happened and why they both are separated from one another.

Degrees of Separation is crafted in the style of Flash games of yesteryear with its flat 2D environments, simplistic animations and limited use of modern effects. There’s an unfortunate amount of asset reuse which makes a lot of the areas feel very samey, even though they’re supposed to be completely different environments. That being said it’s not like it’s an ugly game, more that it’s just very simplistic in its implementation. I can hazard a guess that’s likely due to the developers needing to create 2 of everything: one for Ember’s world and one for Rime’s. Combine that with the various interactions that needed to be coded in and I can see why they wanted to keep things simple from a visuals perspective.

The game’s claim to fame is the two worlds of the main characters: one world is hot and the other is cold. Initially that’s all there is to it and solving most puzzles is just figuring out the order in which things need to be done with the various worlds so you can progress forward. The later worlds start to play on the divide a lot more, bringing in mechanics that make use of it in some way. However all of these new mechanics are contained within the level that they’re granted in, so this isn’t some kind of metroidvania style game where you’ll be unlocking different parts of past levels with new skills. The only metroidvania style thing in here is the main overworld which is non-linear, but realistically you’re going to have to complete a number of levels in order due to the number of unlocks required to open them.

The puzzles are almost all self-contained and we only came across one that required us to bring something in from another puzzle in order to solve it. I personally prefer it this way for a co-op setting as otherwise you end up second guessing each other’s ideas endlessly, spending countless hours trying to drag things from other puzzles around in order to try and solve them. It also means that you’ll need to be aware of the developer’s logic as you progress through the levels as if you lose sight of that then there’s going to be puzzles that you won’t be able to solve. Thankfully those seem to be few and far between as I can only remember skipping maybe 3 or so in our full playthrough.

The puzzles are also predominantly physics based with a good chunk of them requiring precise platforming and/or timing in order to complete them. Given the game’s less than stellar control implementation this can make some puzzles a little more frustrating than they need to be as objects might not react the way you expect them to or you’ll find yourself having to repeat sections over and over again because you mistimed a jump. Even I, the seasoned puzzle platform gamer that I am, struggled at times much to the delight of my wife. This could also partly be due to us playing it on console as, I’ll admit, I don’t usually do most of my platforming with a controller.

All this being said the puzzles are, for the most part, pretty straightforward and most of them should be doable for even novice gamers. Thankfully not every puzzle must be solved as you’ll only need a certain amount of scarves (the game’s collectible) to progress to another level. The only improvements I’d seek to make would be the inclusion of a map and a reworked checkpoint system as it’s something of a pain to get back to where you were after you’ve put the game down for the night.

The story is told via a voiceover that’s triggered on every new puzzle screen, which is nice, but the story itself is pretty forgettable. I think this is partly because it’s told in the third person and the characters themselves rarely interact on the screen so it’s hard to really empathise with them at all. To be sure I prefer having the story told to me as I’m playing it rather than being presented with walls of text every so often, but having the entire thing told in the third person just seemed to take a lot of the emotional investment out of it.

Degrees of Separation is a solid co-op platformer with a novel take on the genre’s mechanics. Whilst its visual style and story err on the side of simplistic the puzzle/platform mechanics are on point, requiring some real lateral thinking and cooperation to solve. Its casual nature will make it attractive to those who are looking for something to play together but can only do so in short bursts. Other than that there’s not a terrible amount to say amount Degrees of Separation and hopefully, if you’ve read this far, you know if it’s for you.

Rating: 7.5/10

Degrees of Separation is available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch right now for $28.95. Game was played on the PlayStation 4 with a total of approximately 4 hours playtime and 38% of the achievements unlocked.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan: The Horrors Adrift at Sea.

by David Klemke on January 15, 2020

My wife was absolutely enamored with Until Dawn. After I completed my initial playthrough I did another with her as she’s a massive fan of the horror genre, especially the cheesier, B-grade ones that Until Dawn emulated. After that playthrough she was hooked and spent a good long time replaying the game multiple times over, trying to see every variation that she could. So when I saw that Supermassive games was releasing a series of shorter titles called The Dark Pictures Anthology I was intrigued and, given that we were housebound due to the bushfires blanketing Canberra with smoke, I thought it’d be a good time for us to play through the first instalment: Man of Medan. Unfortunately this particular title doesn’t feel up to the same level as Until Dawn, feeling decidedly middle of the road.

There were rumours of a downed WWII airplane that hadn’t yet been catalogued out in the South Pacific Ocean. Keen to explore a wreck that hadn’t yet been seen by other humans a group of 4 young explorers, along with the captain of the rented vessel, set out to find it based on some information from one of their friends. However whilst they’re out at sea they catch the ire of some local ne’er do wells and quickly find themselves at their mercy. Soon after that happens they get hit by a storm and find themselves butting up against a ghost ship which, for some inexplicable reason, the pirates decide to take shelter in. So begins their journey into this lost vessel and the horrors that lie within.

Man of Medan retains much of the cinematic level quality that Until Dawn had although now, compared to 3 years ago, the graphics aren’t as cutting edge as they once were. This game’s aesthetic is much, much darker than its predecessor as well so a good lot of the detail is hidden from view most of the time. Thankfully though the performance issues have been addressed so even chumps like me using an original PS4 won’t be left suffering with low frame rates. Given that this game is on Unreal unlike the previous one (which was on Decima) there’s definitely room for improvement here and who knows, maybe the whole thing looks amazing on PC.

This is still very much an interactive fiction game with it’s mostly linear levels, countless items strewn around for you to interact with and the action scenes peppered with quick time events. At the basic level not much has changed with Man of Medan as most of the mechanics have been renamed rather than reworked. The biggest change comes in the form of the Curator, a fourth-wall breaking character who speaks to you about the story that’s unfolding and the choices that you’re making within it. He will also offer you clues from time to time, although whether or not they help or hinder you is something that’s up for debate. He’ll be a recurring character in the series as he’s apparently some sort of collector of these kinds of stories, wanting to observe those who experience them. Given the shorter intended length of these stories most of the mechanics I’ve described above have been streamlined somewhat so there’s a lot less depth to them than what I remember being in Until Dawn.

As with all interactive fiction exploration is the name of the game here although, if I’m honest, Man of Medan doesn’t provide a particularly rewarding experience in this respect. Sure, there’s a lot of stuff for you to find, but most of the time it’s just flavour text for the story of the ship. That’d be great if it wasn’t for the fact that you have most of the story for it already, thanks to the opening tutorial taking place in the past. So the rest of the stuff you read is really just fluff for the most part. Worse still it doesn’t seem like exploration, especially in places that are meant to be hard to find, rewards you in any way at all. In these kinds of games that kind of exploration, I feel, should be rewarded with things that help you in some way when it comes to the game’s critical moments. None of the items I found exploring the ship with my wife helped in any way and indeed, I think most of them actually made things worse. Sure, I can see that could have been intentional, but getting punished for doing the hard thing in a game feels like a swift kick in the pants.

Probably the worst part of Man of Medan though is the lack of connection between your actions and their outcomes. Now our playthrough probably wasn’t the greatest, we managed to kill 3 out of the 5 characters, but one of them didn’t feel connected to previous events at all and the last two were single QTE fails, neither of which gave any indication that that was our last chance to get the character out alive. The premonitions were also total trash as well, the options that they showed you seemingly having zero influence on the situation at hand. Worse still, with losing a character around halfway through the game, it was obvious that there were holes in the story that that character was meant to fill and from then on many interactions felt half baked as the scenes didn’t seem to be rewritten enough to cope for said loss. Honestly I never felt this way in Until Dawn, even when I watched my wife’s playthrough where she killed nearly every character.

Of course I’d probably be able to ignore most of these issues if the story wasn’t so uninspired and predictable. It was pretty clear from the onset what was going to happen and the unfolding of events really didn’t add much to the overall narrative. Combine that with the use of tired jump scares and run of the mill horror tropes and you had a recipe for a story that was forgettable, boring and lacking the drive to push the game forward. Even my wife, who loves this kind of horror, wasn’t really enjoying the story for the most part.

Putting this all together you’ve got a decidedly disappointing experience in Man of Medan, one that really isn’t up the standard that Supermassive set with Until Dawn. I do like the concept though, a mysterious man who takes you through stories of the past and catalogues your decisions, but the first instalment in this anthology doesn’t give me high hopes for future ones. Perhaps with a more engaging story I can look past some of the more egregious missteps as it was that, combined with the distinct lack of agency my wife and I felt whilst playing, that really tore the experience down for us. Maybe the next story, Little Hope, will prove to be a little better.

Rating: 6/10

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan is available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 right now for $49.95. Game was played on the PlayStation 4 with approximately 4 hours total play time and 11% of the achievements unlocked.