Harvest moon: It’s a Wonderful Life, Special Edition - Full Review (PS2 and PS3 game)

The Harvest Moon series is a series of games that revolve around farming and relationships in some way or another.Harvest Moon: Wonderful Life, Special Edition is available on both the PlayStation 2 and on PlayStation Network as a graphical remake for the PS3. I’ll be reviewing the PS2 original but bear in mind the PS3 has slightly better, smoother graphics though they are otherwise the same game. 

You play a male character who has inherited an unused farm from his deceased father. His father’s old friend has invited you to take over the land and to raise a family here too, which you agree to. We know nothing of our character other than this so whatever ties he had to a previous life are left unmentioned; whether he’s running from a dark, desolate past or a violent crime spree there is just simply no way to know. You start out with a very basic set of equipment to help you get started and one lifestock though with great opportunity to expand. This Harvest Moon game is slow paced but incredibly addictive and a satisfying experience that will give you a fresh love of games that incorporate the simpler things in life; farming, fishing, friends and family.

Story and gameplay

The game is set in Forget-me-not Valley and the Valley consists of your farm, a neighbouring farm that doubles as a shop you’ll use a lot, a dig site where you dig for treasures, several houses where people live, a large mansion, a river, spring, swamp, beach and a few ‘special’ houses like a mad scientist’s lab and an artist’s caravan. You build your farm up using a small variety of methods which fall into the category of either ranching or actual farming; that is, crops and trees. You look after a rather large selection of crops and trees by planting, watering, fertilizing and so on and generally it takes quite a bit of attention to get your crop to its best possible state. Produce and crops all have ranks that are improved through either care of the animals; ie, hugging and brushing your cow, feeding it good stuff and keeping it out of the rain produces better quality milk or fertilizing and watering your plants which will produce a better quality of crop. The animal selection is fairly generous; a variety of cows, chickens and roosters, ducks, a goat, sheep, ducks, dog and cat. You also get a free horse to speed up travel around the valley, a much appreciated addition.

Crops are grown according to their seasons and generally need to be watered twice a day, except when it rains, and if you want to increase their rank they require fertilizer twice a day too. The time it takes for a crop to grow varies and some are fast growing though some can take an entire season. They cannot get diseased and will only die if they’re trying to grow in the wrong season or they’re not watered. Later on in the game get the ability to create ‘hybrid’ fruit and vegetables by meeting certain criteria after the first game chapter where you can then combine fruit or vegetables seeds into new, weird ones. There’s something really entertaining about seeing what a turnip combined with a strawberry would create, then turning it into a delicious meal. There’s a huge number of crop and fruit tree variants which can also be enhanced using flowers found in different seasons that grow around the valley. These enhancements can be applied to seeds to give benefits like growing in any soil, growing in any season or by raising them up a rank level without need for fertilizer.
Crops are generally there to be sold, eaten, given as gifts or using a ‘seed machine’ turned into twice as many seeds to continue the cycle. There’s also a wide variety of meals that can be made which incorporate crops, fruits and also produce made on your farm like butter, milk and cream. There are dozens of different things you can create from soups to desserts which you can then sell either on your store or to a trader who visits bi-monthly. Alternatively, you can always put them in your fridge so later on your wife and child have something to eat. The immersion of creating three course meals for your family is a fun addition and, even if essentially pointless, gives you something else to strive for.

The large array of animals is restricted to just eight pens in your main barn and you’ll likely have cows since they’re the most profitable. Cows can be bred once they reach adulthood and, if you’re buying new cows, they need to have a calf before they can give milk. You can breed them by having your own bull or by buying a ‘miracle potion’ which is basically artificial insemination. Cows can be milked twice a day and start out giving ‘B grade’ milk which is the lowest and, by looking after them and increasing their love for you, they’ll give ‘S grade’ which is worth a lot more. Milk prices also depends on the breed of cow and there’s roughly 5 different breeds, all of which can be purchased. Sheep give wool once a month and by looking after them they can give ‘clean’ or ‘golden’ wool. Chickens give eggs, unsurprisingly, which can be hatched into chicks using an incubator. There’s also extra animals like a goat and ducks and pets like the horse, dog and cat.

The gameplay is slow though, extremely slow. If anything is going to put you off this game it’s likely to be how slow everything progresses. This is not a game where you dip in for a quick blast about and go home happy. Sometimes, it feels intentional as the sheer about of work and patience required to complete this game is reminiscent of actually having to sweat and toil on a real farm. The minutes tick by very gradually and it can be so dull that many players are tempted to just sleep away the days which, ultimately, will wreck your farm. Slow gameplay aside it is actually genuinely enjoyable if you don’t mind the slow and steady approach and enjoy building up something from nothing.

The game is divided into chapters with different elements to keep things a bit more interesting as time goes on. The first chapter will include you starting your farm and finding yourself a woman to marry. There are four women who you have to get to know, woo and then marry at the end of the year. To enhance the relationship there are cutscenes with the girls which can be triggered at different times in different places. To check how much a girl likes you you can check their diary since rather than communicate using words they just draw the number of hearts which best describe their feelings. You also share the valley with a lot of residents other than the 4 bachelorettes and all of them can be befriended by giving them certain gifts, depending on what they like. There’s no actual way to tell what they like other than to use an online guide or to just keep trying and failing, a lot of this game is like that actually. In the second chapter you’ll have a toddler who can barely talk but who you can start influencing. This kid’s personality, skills and interests will vary depending on who you marry and also how you influence him or her. Your child will start out as a toddler and, as the years go by, will grow into a child, teenager and finally an adult. By the end of the game they’ll choose one career out of six, one of which is taking over your farm. Influencing your child into a career makes up a chunk of the later gameplay. This is an especially fun component of the game if you’ve always wanted to be that pushy parent who gets angry when their future-scholar toddler shows you their non-scholar related drawings. Gameplay also includes past-times that are related to money making or befriending people such as helping out at an archaeological dig, opening your own store, fishing, cooking, flower picking or some pointless mini-games like ‘milk drinking’ or ‘territory capture’.

Graphics and environments:

There’s no denying that the PS2 version has extremely muddy and unbearably bad graphics, there just isn’t. Everything is seamed, blurred and generally low quality. The villagers all have unique appearances however which makes them identifiable from just a glimpse across the valley. There are scenic areas in the game like Turtle Swamp where a turtle in a handkerchief wanders around or the Harvest Spring where an abominable snowman resides in winter, and weird fairy ‘sprites’ hide otherwise. Almost everything can be looked at and interacted with to some degree and in this version you get different outfits for every season. You’re restricted to one large area, the valley, and the border of it is kind of like a large hill with some half assed 2D trees floating around behind it. The ocean is also restricting you from exiting the other side of the valley but, considering, the valley is quite large with several different locations. It is though the sheer lack of interactive areas in the game that is rather unfortunate as most areas are fairly pointless and really just for show. Saying that, you will notice tiny little details that enhance the overall feel of the game like tiny little leaves falling from branches in the fall, an expanse of tightly knit together flowers that sway gently in the wind and the surprising details you'll find inside people's homes that reflect their business or personality.

The seasons are noticeably different and you’ll get snow in winter, scorching summers, wet autumns and mild springs and it makes a sincere difference to the way you run things; not only what you plant and harvest but also how you care for your animals. The surrounding scenery is particularly responsive to the seasons as trees turn from their summery forest green to shades of red, pink, orange and yellow in the autumn time before turning bare, cold and dead during the winter season. Someting else that this game does incredibly well is the rain; waking up in late autumn I could already hear it absolutely hammering it down outside my house and my first, panicked, thought was, the cow! The strength of the rain varies from light showers to complete downpours and when it's the latter you can barely see where you're going which, frankly, is incredibly accurate. The light levels also noticeably change depending on the time of day which is a nice addition and the sunsets and sunrises make good use of what graphical ability this game actually has. 

Music and audio:

The audio is surprisingly good with nice, hollow sounding rain when you’re inside and changeable music tracks. You can collect music discs by buying them and befriending villagers, there’s around 16 in total, and you can change the background music by putting a disc on your record player in your house. The music itself is different enough to be worth pursuing this goal of getting different records but until then you’ll probably grow sick of the same song and just turn the music player off. No characters speak in the game; it’s all done by text and the most sound you’ll get out of someone are squeaks, ‘hmm’s and laugh’s depending on what they’re saying. Every animal and action has a sound, whether that’s a plopping noise as a fish latches onto your bait or whether it’s a boinging noise as you jump over your cow pen’s fence. There’s nothing special going on in terms of audio, apart from the nice guitar playing that a couple of villagers engage in, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with the audio either. The fact that no characters actually speak is most likely intentional and, frankly, I don’t think I want to hear what some of the residents sound like so it’s probably for the best.

Playability:

Once you’re into the game you’ll likely find it very addictive and it will keep you occupied for, quite easily, longer than 40 hours playtime.  If building up something from nothing is your thing then you’ll be right at home with a harvest moon game and if you’re a perfectionist then I’m sure you’ll enjoy the challenge of making your efforts as efficient as possible. It’s admittedly a fairly cutesy game but no more than your average fantasy RPG, aside from all the chicken cuddling and cow nuzzling, and it’s not too cheesy and lovey dovey. In fact, half the characters in it are jerks until they’re friends with you. What’s unusual about this game is there’s a lot of ‘hidden mechanics’ in the way certain things work and it can be quite hard to break into as a newcomer. This is one of those games that will last with you for the years to come, through childhood to adulthood as you develop fond memories of this odd little game that keeps you entranced with its slow but thorough approach to entertainment. 

Overall – 8/10

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Runescape 3 - MMORPG Review (Online game)

Runescape is one of those games that has been around for quite a long time now and has been given a new face several times over. Our current release of Runescape is Runescape 3 with updated graphics, combat system and quests that are gradually all being given top quality voice acting and music. Generally I’ll be looking at this game from a F2P point of view but bare in mind that the members side of things gives a lot of additional content including mini-games, higher tiered equipment, additional resources and means of levelling up at higher levels and things like player owned houses and a huge map area. 
 
Graphics and environment

To begin with, the free player map is actually quite large and includes several different areas such as cities, desert regions, swamps, forests, mountains and the wilderness. There are mines and underground dungeons to also explore and train in. The graphics are good, considering it’s all in a browser based Java system and what’s better is that the Jagex team are constantly upgrading parts of the game to make it look even better. There is currently the intention to move the game to HTML5 so the game will run smoother and with additional capacity for graphical improvements. The primary means of travel in the game is running about but as your magic level increases you’ll be able to teleport using runes, alternatively, if you visit and unlock them you can get access to ‘lodestones’ that allow you free travel to major areas. Canoes have also become available for free players where you can travel up one large river to various points, though you have to make the canoe yourself. The free player map does not have too many high levelled creatures out to kill you so everything’s quite safe; you need to travel to specific places to find the assortment of high levelled monsters but, especially at lower levelled, several creatures will still attack you. 

Music and sound

Music in Runescape is unlocked as you enter new areas and can be controlled via an in-game music player. A lot of the music is now considered out-dated compared to the new style of music that is being released into the game. Despite this it’s still extremely popular in the community as it’s reminiscent of retro RPG classic games. More than 100 of the old music tracks have been recently re-recorded for the release of Runescape 3 with a live symphony orchestra, making Runescape music some of the best and most atmospheric music in online RPG games. Some quests now have voice acting and where voice acting is implemented it is truly of a fantastic quality. The dialogue is varied, humorous and emotive with no two voices the same. Where implemented, the voice actor’s style truly does match that of the NPC character.

Content

There’s always plenty to do in Runescape and the free play side of it is a great way to introduce you to the game and, whilst many go on to be members, there are plenty who prefer the non-pressurized approach of FTP and the challenge of getting a skill up to 99 without the added additions of member items/areas. Alongside training skills, trading, questing and money making there are several other activities available to free players. A mini-game called ‘fist of guthix’ is a great way to train your magic and the duel arena in the desert means you can fight players in a safe environment. 

It's pretty easy to make money in the game and there's no way to buy in-game coins with real life money. All players have access to player trading and a stock market where you can buy and sell your items with ease. A lot of people use this as a way of making money so if you’re into number crunching then go right ahead and try ‘flipping’ for cash. You earn money in Runescape in quite an organic fashion, through training your skills and selling the materials. If you don’t know what to do with your time in Runescape there are things called ‘daily challenges’ where free players get up to 2 at a time. These challenges will tell you to do something like craft x amount of x or kill x amount of x and then reward you once the task is completed with experience in the relevant skill and trading items if it involved collecting and handing over materials. Daily challenges are a great way to trying out new areas of the game that you may have not yet experienced as it encourages trying out new activities. There is also a task system available in one of the cities where, by completing a set of tasks you’ll get an item with special abilities at the end of it along with a bit of money for each task completed. 

Storyline and quests

The history, lore and religion of Runescape is very in depth and told mostly through quest lines but all of it can be found on the website. A lot of players tend to choose a deity and can show their support through clothing, items, ‘titles’ which show up after your name or, these days, by supporting them in the current war. There are a lot of quests available in the game, almost 200 for members but a comparatively paltry 24 for free players, but generally they’re all pretty good quality. Runescape comes with a great deal of sardonic British humour that makes reading the dialogue very worthwhile. The free player quests are all graphically updated and are of a generally higher quality than the members quests as a lot of the members’ ones are getting on years now. Quest series tends to stretch across a variety of different storylines; from a penguin ‘cold-war’ type takeover, to vampire quest series to elven quest series but these are generally felt by the members more than the free players. Free player quests are generally an introduction to different skills and serve as the opening quest to several long and complicated quest lines that are realized later on in your Runescape career.

Training/grinding

As an RPG game a large portion of the game is naturally dedicated to training your skills and with that comes grinding. Grinding used to be a large part of Runescape and, to a certain degree, still is today so plenty of people pride themselves on their skills due to the amount of hard work and time put into it. Nowadays, a lot of the grinding aspect of levelling up in Runescape has been removed with the addition of bonus experience opportunities, mini-games, alternate and more varied training methods and social training. For free players the grind is still very apparent as many of the updated methods are aimed at paying members. Despite this, little additions like the ability to “make all” rather than individually clicking items is universal and common for all activities so free players are able to reduce the amount of repetitive strain injury endured. 

Player killing is available in this game however it needs to be conducted in a special area; the wilderness. The wilderness is a very area at the top of the map that is home to dragons, a lava maze and several monsters like ghosts, bandits and skeletons. The wilderness was the site of a great war but, these days, is just a burnt out span of landscape. Player killing can also be combated duel arena that has recently made available to free players. Here, players can combat one another in safe circumstances without the risk of losing any items unless you stake gold or items on your own victory using a safe, scam-free system.

Whereas members have 26 skills available to them with training methods all the way up to level 99 (or 120 for dungeoneering) the free playing community have access to only 16 of them, though with the ability to train members skills up to level 5. All free player skills can be levelled up to 99 though this is much harder in free to play worlds due to the lack of high level training methods, it is not however, impossible.

The skills included are: Dungeoneering, Woodcutting, Firemaking, Smithing, Mining, Fishing, Cooking, Crafting, Runecrafting, Magic, Ranged, Prayer, Defence, Strength, Attack and Constitution. The additional member skills include: Agility, Thieving, Hunter, Slayer, Summoning, Herblore, Farming, Divination, Fletching and Construction.

Community

Free players and members are divided off into different worlds so whichever one you pick you’ll find a supportive, lively community of good natured players. This game is generally orientated at teenagers and young adults and the community tends to consist of mature, polite and helpful people who genuinely care about the game and its players. If you’re the type of gamer who isn’t really into group activities and much prefers to play solo then this game supports that 100%. There is practically nothing which requires lots of other people and, in the rare case that it does, the forums are constantly thriving with people who are probably in a similar situation to you. Whereas some online multiplayer games can be critical of new players you’re more likely to find players who are willing to help out somebody who is new as there’s no detriment to them or their skills. Competition for resources is limited to certain skills like combat training and mining and many activities are social and non-competitive like firemaking, where you get bonus experience for sharing a bonfire, or fishing; where resources are not dependent on the number of people fishing. Dungeoneering is a skill that involves descending down levels of a mysterious fortress in the wilderness and is more advantageous to players if done in groups of 2 or more, though it can be done solo, so teamwork is encouraged but generally at your own pace.

In terms of updates, Runescape gets weekly updates and every month you’ll get a ‘behind the scenes’ post showing what’s coming to the game in the upcoming month. The constant updates and tweaks to the game really show how much farther it has yet to come and how alive and supported everything is. Of course, plenty of players will voice their criticism of updates and due to this Jagex have now released player polls so that players get to choose which content is released into the game.

Conclusion

Runescape is a game that is friendly, content filled and constantly evolving into something better. There are very few micro transactions in the game and it’s not one of those ‘pay to win’ games that you often see. As a free to play game it of course has less content than the members version but there is still a lot to do and with no time limit or trial period it means you can play it for as long as you like with no downsides. The tutorial is interactive, simple to follow and thorough in how much it teaches you about the game and it’s a pretty easy game to get into without feeling too daunted. The ability to customize your character with a range of equipment means that no two players often look the same and overall the entire world feels alive and kicking, just what you want out of a multiplayer game. Overall, I rate this game highly as it is addictive, challenging and time consuming but in all the best ways possible. 

MMORPG Score: 9/10

For more information, check out these links:

• Runescape homepage
• Runescape Wikipedia
• Beginner's guide

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Fable 3 - Quick Review (Xbox 360 game)

Though Fable 3, successor to two hugely successful games, is dramatically glitchy and victim to some slightly clunky gameplay the storyline is genuinely quite fun. With its ‘seize the kingdom’ campaign you will be sat at the very helm of Albion as its monarch, and who can say no to that? The game itself has a short storyline but lots of side quests and places to explore. There are several irritating little gameplay features though that cannot go unmentioned, for instance, the interaction with NPCs in the game has deteriorated to that of childish one on one dancing and playing 'patty-cake' with individual people, among other things. The map system is fairly awful; a large, interactive 3D map is manageable but there is no way of telling where you are at any given time which leads to much frustrated running about, looking for noticeable landmarks. Finally, the ending of the game basically requires you to have a great deal of wealth if you want to have a 'good guy' ending but making this wealth is time consuming and extremely difficult, no matter how many properties you own. This often leaves gamers having to plug in a controller and leave the game on idle so enough gold can accumulate before the 'point of no return', not exactly an ideal gameplay feature.

 

The graphics are extremely similar to the last title making the transition almost seamless and the new combat is definitely improved; bringing new features to magic and elevating the status of melee and ranged due to the new legendary weapons.  This Fable is, as usual, peppered with great British irony and humour which elevates it to the status of one of the most successful comedy adventure games on the market. The dialogue, quests and storylines are both amusing and interesting with genuinely memorable characters like Chesty ; a demonic, static chest, and Brian; a neurotic garden gnome collector who’s blighted by obscenely insultive runaway gnomes. The importance of decision and morality that is previous in all Fable titles is now more important than ever as you’ll soon be responsible for the lives and happiness of hundreds of thousands of citizens. Whilst Fable 3 is not as good as the previous titles it still sits as a decent sequel for those looking for a quirky but entertaining game that leaves just one, final question; how will you rule? 

Score - 7/10 

Preferably with the crown on.

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Dead Island Riptide - Full Review (Xbox 360, PS3 and PC game)

This is a disappointing sequel to a game I sincerely enjoyed. Riptide starts where Dead Island started off; rescued on a military ship, conked out from sedatives after a medical examination. Things seem to be going well; you're on the way back to a civilization not dominated by inconveniently aggressive zombies until, boom. Monsoon. Zombie invasion. Two things which don't usually compliment one another are now two things you need to adjust to. Waking up from sedatives you find that the boat is infested with zombies and with some initially impressive waves, storm features and getting jerked about on an unsteady deck you end up getting thrown off the boat and onto another zombie inhabited island. Fantastic. Luckily, nobody's hurt and your new orange clad friend decides to come along for the ride. 

Good thing Xin's capable because the others couldn't give a stuff about what she's doing.

This new but vapid character is awkward and weak compared to the original four due to his focus being ‘hand to hand’ combat. Unless I can start kickboxing, judo throwing and tackling enemies like a champion martial arts instructor on steroids then I really don’t care that this new guy can punch harder than everybody else. It’s boring and his perks are all useless. Besides, I already have plenty of hammers, knives and kicking/punching ability in every other character, so thanks, but no thanks.

"Greetings! Turns out, I'm one of those incredibly rare, biologically immune, medical

anomalies that you've been hearing so much about. Who'd've guessed it." 

The graphics have not been improved since the first game and, whilst not terrible, there was definitely room for improvement. The game does water and tropical landscapes really well and the first game did truly look like paradise but the zombies and people in particular have a very strange, gluey appearance. Saying that, Riptide does a great, partially drowned jungle landscape that's fun to splash about it and explore. The game remains fairly open world but there's not a lot of point in exploring as the main and side quests take you everywhere you need to go, but at least it's not linear and the choice is there to explore as you will. The problem with this game is the lack of diverse environments. Whilst Dead Island had very clear cut areas; Beach Resort, City, Jungle and Laboratory and finally a prison the Panoi islands are extremely repetitive and just all a mash of beaches and tropical, flowery looking jungles. There's a couple of nice shanty town type villages that are all held up on stilts to keep out the water and, at one point, a quaint little town with a nice cinema that mixes it up a bit but apart from that there's not really much going on in Panoi that changes the way you play. Dead Island's progression from a fairly relaxed beach resort to an extremely challenging City area was notable but Panoi doesn't have tht 'let's crank it up a notch' environmental shift which I found disappointing.

A familiar feature that appears in Riptide is it's irritating and consistent glitchyness but this time, it's less endearing. By this point it's not so much; 'kick a beachball and you'll glitch into it and die! Ha ha ha!' And more, 'guys... come on, you didn't even try to listen to feedback did you?' The weather in particular is rather bugged and given that the whole, 'we warned you a monsoon was coming, now we're in it!' was an important and heavily advertised feature means that this buggy weather engine is pretty unacceptable. Good weather in a game can be a really enjoyable component especially if it changes the way we play but, unfortunatly, Riptide's weather is simply bipolar. One minute it’s all sunshine and good tidings and then, two steps forward later, it’s overcast and pissing it down with rain. This is most noticeable around one of your main basecamps where walking forward a little in one direction is guaranteed to dramatically change the blue skies to storm and rain with no natural transitions indicating it'll start raining soon. It’s a laughably annoying feature given the hype that revolved around the promise that we’d be trekking through chest high water, battling the unpredictable and dynamic weather of the tropical isles and relying only on teamwork to get us through this whole new threat. It all sounds great, if only whomever was responsible for marketing that idea hadn't got confused between the terms ‘dynamic weather’ and ‘buggy and poorly glued together weather transitions.’ Another irritating glitch includes zombies spawning directly behind you and, somehow, managing to one-hit kill you before you've had a chance to even turn around. This zombie spawning bug is extremely frustrating when it happens with the larger zombies like Floaters and Butchers who often re-spawn directly after you've killed them if you move away from the area a tiny bit. 

Gorgeous landscape, and I suppose the people look alright from a distance too.

Weather and glitches aside; Riptide lacks a lot of what made the first game fun. Zombie bashing is not something I usually seek out in a game due to my hatred of using guns in games but Dead Island always had a fun focus on melee weapons and the ability to target specific areas with knives and stuff, happy days. An entire game of that later though and it becomes boring so unless something changes, there’s not a lot to stick around for. Storyline, good characters, new perk abilities, more challenging combat and environments… all of these, even just one of these, would have been great. Unfortunately, 'Dead Island: Riptide' fails to deliver anything that’s an incentive to stick around for; the storyline is weak and uninspired, the characters are over levelled and whilst there are a couple of new perks they’re not interesting and just serve to overpower the character even more so. Unless there’s a degree of struggle with survival or a storyline that makes you want to find out what happens next then it’s not a game, it’s a chore. Upgrading your abilities is now pointless and there’s no element of choice any longer since you can basically have every available perk. That careful selecting of what to pick next from the three perk trees is gone, leaving you to just bang it on everything because you’ve already got what you need to bomb through hoards of zombies who are now more an irritation than a threat. 

A much needed positive comment about the game is the new zombies that are now present and all of them have some form of unique quality. You can now fight 'grenadiers' which spit a sort of toxic waste, acid type substance at you and screamers who deafen you with their high pitched wailing. The game also features a vast array of drowners who lay face down in the water, playing dead and finally the elusive wrestler who are monsterously huge, deformed zombies that knock you off the ground by smashing their meaty fists into it. 

Dead Island often pulls off visually appealing envionments for you to get frustrated in.

There’s a new system for upgrading the rest of your, unplayable, team which is nice as previously they didn’t even exist in game except for in the cutscenes. The ‘system’ is basically finding them special objects, giving them to them in return for a boatload of experience and then having them get a little stronger. It feels like progression but truly they’re only ever used for ‘hold the fort’ type missions which get quickly repetitive; an endless battle of putting fences in glowing locations and bashing any zombies that get through. 

The last new feature worth mentioning is the addition of boats. You now have access to these nippy little speed boats that are difficult to get used to but, once you do, are handy for zipping along the water like a champion martial arts instructor on steroids, piloting a boat. These sound great in principle since many areas are waterlogged and it's just unreasonable to wade everywhere since it's such a slow way of getting around. Unfortunantly, once you're in the boat you cannot see where the water ends and the surrounding islands begin as the HUD map just gives us total darkness with our little 'you are here' icon displayed. In single player this is irritating and in co-op it means I have to get my girlfriend to keep the main menu map up on the other tv so I can glance over and see which way doesn't have a river dead-end. I guess it encourages co-op play but, frankly, it’s just a pain in the ass as the both of us as, for the fifth time, she gets dragged into the water by a wet and pissed off zombie because her map blocks out what's going on in the background. Overall, I guess it’s better than nothing but it’s a shame it wasn’t… better. 

Score – 6/10

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Outlast - Full Review (PC, Xbox One and PS4 game)

I don’t often play horror games, especially not ones of such excruciatingly high visual quality, so perhaps I was ill prepared for the nightmare that followed upon deciding that I’d give Outlast a try. 

Developer: Red Barrels
Genre: Survival Horror 
Release date: May 6th, 2014 (PC and PS4), June 18th 2014 (Xbox one) 
Platforms: PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4.
ESRB: M - Mature

I’d found the game listed on Steam with plenty of people saying it was scarier than Amnesia; Amnesia, or what I’d managed of it, had disturbed me beyond measure so I quit playing halfway through. If you’ve heard of Amnesia I’m sure you’re aware of the gruesome reputation that closely follows behind it, Outlast is worse than that. Outlast is another survival horror game that seems to be becoming a more popular choice of game in recent years and this one doesn’t let the genre down. Outlast is set in a psychiatric hospital that is, for the most part, abandoned. You play a freelance journalist called Miles Upshur who is investigating ‘Mount Massive Asylum’ after receiving an anonymous tip-off about some troubling goings on in the asylum. Armed with nothing but a notepad, pen and video camera your job is to escort Miles into the building to expose some kind of conspiracy. Since this is a survival horror game we all know it’s going to be nothing pleasant, and my god, it is not pleasant.

Here's the trailer for your enjoyment.

Gameplay

The gameplay is predominately investigation and survival and you’re restricted to a permanently first person point of view. You’re completely unable to fight or defend yourself apart from in scripted cutscenes and you’re not going to be able to pick up a great deal of items aside from batteries and documents. The fear factor starts here; you’re completely helpless and there are plenty of things to be afraid of in Mount Massive Asylum. You’ll often find yourself running through corridors, vaulting over desks and scrambling under beds or into lockers to hide from the creatures that are hunting you. It’s only until they’ve meandered off are you able to exit and resume traversing through the hospital. The game leads you on with objectives but no map or means of finding out where you’re supposed to be going but the areas are fairly linear, not completely so, and it’s always quite apparent where you’re supposed to be going. There are a few puzzles, dotted here and there, but for the most part the game is dedicated to the horrifying storyline and desperate struggle that comes with it. The puzzles that do exist tend to be very similar to nature to one another so it’s probably a good thing that they’re few and far between.

 This is nothing; just wait until he turns around.  

The game utilizes an interesting mechanism which incorporates the journalism background that Miles’ character comes with; you need to keep your camera turned on. Simply having the camera out doesn’t use up any battery but does allow Miles to record events and for him to write in his journal. Without the camera on you miss out on Miles personal take on what’s happening around him which would be a shame as it really adds to the immersion of the game. The video camera is also your primary means of not tripping over furniture as, for the most part, the asylum is incredibly dark. It’s that type of pressing darkness that keeps you on edge; unable to take another step forward because you just don’t know what’s going to happen. At the beginning of the game I went so far as to lock myself in a pitch black bathroom, the battery low on my camera, where I physically couldn’t bring myself to move for a good two minutes out of pure dread. You quickly realize that by using the night-vision option on your camera you’ll be powering through Poundland’s own brand batteries at a tremendous rate that leaves you, quite literally, powerless. If you’re not constantly searching for batteries you’re going to find yourself unable to continue; locked in some dingy bathroom and hoping that the game enforces some kind of engine that allows your eyes to adjust to the pitch blackness. They don’t. On the plus side, if there is a plus side, this encourages exploration which yields a host of different types of document. These documents all contain the kind of information Miles is looking for for his article, provided he gets out alive that is, and they also usefully fill in all the gaps on what happened in the asylum so you’re not left confused. When you’re all stocked up on battery power you’ll find that the video camera’s night vision casts everything in a pallid, green tinge which makes everything, and everyone, startlingly apparent in the otherwise dim hospital. Those who have seen the gory horror [REC] or Blair Witch Project are no doubt familiar with the subtle but eerie terror that comes with viewing the world through night vision; seeing just enough to navigate but not enough to know the full horrors that lie within a darkened room.

Graphics and environment

The graphics are extremely good, plain and simple. I first noticed it when walking up to the front door of the asylum where I was struck with the sudden clearness and detail that the game boasted. The lighting was fantastic, the breeze through the trees was unnerving and the darkness was pressing in all around me. Further into the game it became obvious that the blood smears, flayed corpses and tortured inmates were all horrifyingly vivid which further added to the grotesque ambiance.

Usually, nobody in their right mind would break into this place.

The colour palette itself is all fairly neutral and mostly shaded in greys, browns and blacks. Rather than bringing the game down this actually elevates it as we are, afterall, in a fairly typical environment. Offices, wards, padded cells and corridors aren’t the most exciting of arenas but they’re all done very well with plenty of little embellishments and details so the areas don’t feel too bare. The normality of the environment is chilling; there are no spooky haunted castles or out of this world space stations to contend with here and I maintain that the best horror games are the ones that could be set within your own town.

At least somebody in this place is sane, I'm with this guy.

A minor complaint of mine is that several areas in the game are completely barred off and it becomes a familiar occurrence to be constantly running into locked doors. I passed this off as very tight hospital security when the place was up and running but in terms of gameplay experience it could have been better. The paths are very linear as I said mostly due to this feature; if it’s an unlocked door then that’s where you’re supposed to go, or failing that, that’s where a battery will be. A little more openness to the facility with maybe a few more random features such as random enemy encounters would have been well placed to add to the fear factor. Some areas are fairly open, one place was particularly maze like, and the increasing desperation to find your way is an emotion the developers could have utilized more.

Characters

The rather unhinged ensemble of characters in Outlast is a large factor in what makes the game so creepy. Jump scares, dark environments and helplessness are all well and good but when you’re faced with those who are truly disturbed you do start to become aware of just how much danger you’re in. With a psychiatric ward as their playground the developers have gone full throttle with dark and disturbing personality quirks and more often than not it’s the non-aggressive ward residents who are most likely to unnerve you. Like you, a lot of these residents are confused, afraid, and just trying to stay alive though several are just trying to make the best of things. Whether it’s a man doing unmentionable things to a headless corpse or a curious, deformed pianist, the characters of Outlast burn themselves into your memory with a lasting residue of unease and nervous laughter. All in all the characters are unique and interesting and I like how it’s not just restricted to the same few who are the main antagonists of the game. Rather, there are characters who will help you; though some in less standard ways than others.

What a gregarious young man.

As an added bonus those documents and hospital files that are littered throughout the game also give you additional detail on who these people were when they were ‘official’ patients of the asylum. One of my only criticisms of the game is the predictable AI that inhibits the enemies. You’ll spend a good portion of the game having to get to certain places or away from certain situations with somebody pursuing you. Provided you’re not seen entering a hiding place like a locker or beneath a bed you’ll never be caught, and that can be pretty frustrating. Even as the enemy bursts into the room they’ll always search one locker that’s not the one you’re hiding in and then give up and go back to patrolling. This rinse and repeat scenario of running, hiding, waiting and going back to whatever it was you were doing can be unfortunately boring. Without a way to distract or lure enemies away from certain areas your other alternative is to just run through and barge your way past the hulking menaces, experiencing the game primarily at a sprinting pace.

That said, it would make the game impossible if you were found every time as once they get their hands on you you’re pretty much screwed. Rather, there should have been some degree of random searching involved where sometimes they check everything, and sometimes they don’t, it would have most certainly made the game tenser due to the unpredictable nature of your pursuers. The combination of clunky AI and sluggish enemies makes the chase scenes a little lacklustre, though not exactly boring. I’ll make a special exception that a certain medical man is a bit more unpredictable due to the looping nature of the area, meaning he could be around any and every corner.

Music and audio

There’s not a great deal of music in the game as the atmosphere is mostly derived from the sensation of being completely alone and helpless. That said, there are sometimes a few high pitched chords shot out at you at roughly the same time a corpse or something worse does. The sudden, loud music does mean that you’ll have to take some additional time to unstick yourself from the ceiling and waste more time lingering in dangerous areas. As if that’s not bad enough you’ll notice that whenever you’re in the proximity of an enemy, whether you see him or not, Miles begins to freak out. His broken, frightened breathing as he tries to remain calm is enough to put even the most hardened gamer on edge, especially if you yourself haven’t yet identified the cause of his fear. The game is generally littered with lovely bits of audio like creaking gates, leaves rustling in the wind and hollowed footfalls on wooden flooring. Quite often I found myself stopping still to listen, trying to figure out if the noises I could hear were being made by Miles or something else, and it’s certainly a suspense builder. Each time you shut a door behind you you’ll be cursing Miles for his blasé attitude to your plight as, for some unknown reason, it is impossible to gently close a door. Instead, Miles feels it necessary to SLAM a door as though he was making a dramatic exit to an argument, how the creatures don’t pick up on this but notice a few little splashes is beyond me.

Overall

As games go Outlast is certainly a memorable experience and by the time you’ve completed it you’ll either feel richly rewarded or deeply distressed. Despite a few of my teething concerns I’d score this game very highly as not only is it a very entertaining game but it’s also produced by a small, lesser known company who are trying to tackle a difficult genre of games. Arguably, it’s too scary for a lot of people to play but since fear is such a subjective thing it’s not really something you can hold against it, besides, it’s a horror game. If you can stomach it then I recommend a play through or, failing that, watch somebody else play it on YouTube as either way you’re not going to want to miss out on the fairly unique experience that Outlast burns into your soul. 

Don't expect any central heating. Seriously.

The Good:

• The documents and notes you find are actually an interesting read
• Love the inclusion of the camera and filming your own footage
• Vibrant and memorable characters
• Very disturbing moments, which is great
• Nice length, lots of hours play and some great locations
• Fantastic ambiance, almost constant feeling of danger
• It's terrifying, if you're not a hardened skeptic.

The Bad:

• Enemies AI could be improved when searching for you
• Protagonist is a bit of a dick.
• The puzzles that are in the same are basically identical
• Miles always SLAMS the doors shut when you're trying to be quiet.

The Score: 9/10 

Last thoughts: That was the best, and worst, time of my life. I want more, so much more, and I want everybody I know to play this so I can watch them freak out. 

The DLC for this game, Whistleblower, is now out and you can read my review of it here.

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Zoo tycoon Xbox edition - Full Review (Xbox 360 and Xbox one game)

'Zoo tycoon, Xbox Edition' is a park management game where you create a zoo to attract guests, make money and keep your animals generally happy. The game is the first console edition of the Zoo Tycoon series and has been a long running and successful PC game series, until now. I’ll start by saying that this game looks brilliant on the surface, handles well, sounds lovely and would be a perfect game for younger children as there is great interactivity with the animals and it’s easy to pick up. The game has four modes: Tutorial, Campaign, Challenge and Freeform. The Tutorial mode will show you everything you need to know about the game. the Campaign mode has 20 different missions on different zoos where you need to complete objects or meet criteria and the Challenge mode is similar but it is timed. Freeform mode is a big empty area where you have infinite money so you can create your own park. So far, everything looks good.

Xbox one edition vs Xbox 360 edition

So, to get this out of the way the new Xbox Zoo tycoon game has been released for both the 360 console and the new Xbox One console. All in all, they are very similar games with the graphical changes you’d expect from a cross-generation console game. The Xbox One has slightly smoother, more defined and generally prettier graphics but the Xbox 360 version still looks very nice and bang up to date. If you’re wondering which version to get, and you have a choice, then you’ll want to buy the Xbox One version as the Xbox 360 version of the game has several features removed. The Xbox 360 for instance only features 65 out of the 101 animals from the Xbox One version, only features single player mode meaning that the 4 player co-op has been removed and there are limits on sharing. You cannot share or upload any pictures of your zoo or share your zoo with other players. Considering you’ll be paying roughly the same price for both games then you should most certainly opt for the later gen version if you want to have access to any of these features. The decision to almost half the number of animals you have access to is both irritating and disappointing. Realistically, there should be no technical limits that would demand there to be less animal options within the game, if it were a matter of how large you can make the zoo then I’d understand, but more on that later. So, with the differences between the editions out of the way let’s focus on how the game actually plays.

It's so pretty! But that's it.

Gameplay

I have played all the zoo tycoon games, thus far, and was perhaps prematurely excited when I heard it was being released on a console. I am also a big fan of console games and though I wondered about how that would work without a mouse, I was otherwise intrigued. My first impressions of the game was really good, it has lovely smooth gameplay, you can drive a super cool buggy around the zoo and make it skid for minutes of amusement and the animals look and act in a very realistic manner. The ability to interact directly with the animals was featured in Zoo Tycoon 2 on the pc but not quite like this game whereby you can have giraffes looming down over you to eat your proffered fruit. It feels very much like they intended this game to be compatible with the Kinect, sort of Kinectanimals style, but whilst it’s amusing and adorable the first few times the novelty of it soon wears off leaving you looking around for other things to do.  

So you start building your park, after all it’s a tycoon game. If you’re familiar with tycoon games you’ll be used to that money management, guest management type gameplay whereby you need to keep everybody happy by providing enough of this and that. This game doesn’t really provide much of a challenge in this sense and the ability to design the park itself is severely limited. For instance, there is a mechanism literally called ‘zoo limit’ to demonstrate how limited your building ability is going to be, so limited, they warn you about prior to help dissipate the frustration. Zoo limit is a bar at the top of the screen which will gradually fill as you put more items down, the bar will fill faster if you’re putting a lot of large items down. Once this bar is full then you can’t build anything else, not until you remove some things. Now, this is verging on game-breaking for me. Part of the point of being able to build something is to have fairly unlimited creative options, that’s what you look for in a building and designing game, the ability to exercise a little bit of creative perfectionism. Zoo limit automatically slaps you back and denies you the chance to ever build your brand new, beautifully graphiced dream zoo. What’s worse is they made the map fairly large, suggesting you can build in all of the space given to you when it’s utter rubbish. You’ll be able to fill around about a third of the map, tops, and you’ll probably hit the zoo limit after an hour or so of playing. Now, this may be due to a limit on the space or engine or something of that nature but, frankly, make the map smaller and don’t stick under freeform mode the description “allowing you to create a zoo without limits” as though to mock our entrepreneurial dreams. 

Limit aside, the gameplay is simplistic and unchallenging. It’s great for children and a quick blast when you’re truly in need of some animal company because your cat is ignoring you, but not much else. The campaigns can be completed very quickly and the majority of them are extremely easy with only around 5 that offer any real challenge. If you’re the kind of gamer who likes to grab achievements then you’ll get a bit more fun out of attempting to collect them all, if you’re not, then I’m afraid you’ll have a lot less to do. You can name your animals, if you’re into that, and also release them into the wild which is a kind of nice addition but just another means of selling them really. 

Graphics

So with all that negativity out of the way let’s look at something positive. The graphics, yes, they are lovely. The whole game is bright, colourful and cheerful with smooth, slick and modern designs everywhere. You can see the individual hairs on a tiger cub’s fur coat, the wrinkles and lines on an elephant’s trunk and the feathery tips of a peacock’s plumage. It all looks fantastic, water reflections are done perfectly, trees have individual leaves and the people have lovely fashion sense. The guests and staff generally all look quite like Sims 3 people as they are slightly over exaggerated in the eyes but maintain a realistic appearance in that slightly cartoony manner. There’s a good variation in the appearance of the guests; they don’t all look like the same three people basically. So, yes, the graphics score top points and the Xbox One’s graphics are unsurprisingly superior when doing a side by side comparison of the two editions. 

Customisation ability

The ability to personally customize your zoo is, well, limited to non-existent. You don’t have the ability to put down paths and so you’re stuck with the ones that were there from the beginning. When you put down an exhibit it will automatically add new path to connect it up to what exists. Very boring. You’ll basically end up creating several different versions of the same park with different animals and stalls. This problem of not trusting players to put their own paving down crosses into the exhibit customisation as it turns out, the shape of all the exhibits are pre-made. Ignoring how much they are stunting creativity already, by combining pre-made exhibit shapes with not being able to put your own paths down you end up with a very odd looking zoo with lots of gaps. So, that’s annoying. Inside the exhibit you have the ability to put down a different kind of enrichment thing; scratching post or whatever, and you get to choose where it goes. Out of a few specified areas so it ends up going something like this; would you like your trough in areas A, B or C? A, great, so the scratching post? C, alright, and the food? B, fantastic sir, did you enjoy customizing your exhibit? No, I did not, it gets very old, very fast, like the rest of this game. Even if a baby tiger looks adorable when climbing up a scratching post I’d still rather have put that post somewhere I wanted it to go.

The apple is the game, and you're the lemur, do you want the apple? You do? I didn't know where this was going anyway.

Choice of animals

Given this is a game that focuses on bloody animals i'd say it's a fairly important matter to discuss as this is why you're playing the game, surely. The animals that are already in the game are quite nice and cover your basic expectations; tigers, lions, elephants, crocodiles and so on with some that are a little different; peafowl, anacondas, meerkats and parrots. However, though they boast the impression of having over 100 (101) animals available for you to put in your park you’ll quickly notice that they all tend to be the same sort of animal. For instance, we have 3 kinds of snake, 6 kinds of macaw, 10 kinds of antelope, 13 kinds of bear, 7 kinds of lion, 6 kinds of tiger, 8 kinds of rhino… ok you get the idea right? If you wanted a lion sanctuary park then this would be quite good, but it does feel a little misleading that they’re giving the impression of all these wonderous, unique types of animal you can have then saying, oh, 9 different kinds of giraffe is so varied. You add up what I’ve put there, as a sniff of the game, and you’ll see that that’s 62 ‘different’ types of animal. 62, from 8 different ‘animal type’ really guys, 101? I didn’t even mention that you can have 4 different types of lemur! Four kinds of lemur! Everything I wanted from my zoo has been fulfilled. Something I also noticed was a lack of penguins, this sounds unusual I know, but penguins are the cornerstone of every good zoo. There are also no seals, or moose, or kangaroos, or cheetahs. I mean, there are 7 kinds of lion but not one cheetah? Why is this? Well, I imagine, as I’m sure you do that cheetahs and penguins will be saved for future DLC; Downloadable Content. It’s an extraordinarily irritating reality that the developers are fleshing out their animal numbers with repeats of tiger or whatever whilst saving all the unique creatures for a bit of extra cash, especially when charging £50 for the privilege of 13 bears and 4 lemurs.

The likeability factor is all this game has going for it, that, and this really unimpressed monkey.

Overall 

As you may have gathered, I was disappointed in this game. The PC versions of Zoo Tycoon had a degree of challenge and immense customization options that kept it fresh and interesting after several replays. This console edition is a long way off from its predecessors and, though it looks great and the animal interactions are realistic, fun and adorable it’s just not a good enough game to rate highly. Perfect for younger children or if you just want something simple and easy to play. The zoo limit is a ridiculous addition and the inability to change the shape of paths, exhibits and such forth ruin the sense of owning a park. If anything, the game plays more like a day out at the zoo than owning and running the damn thing. It is rather likely that different animals will be added in future DLC but with such a tight limit already on what you can place, why bother? This is the kind of game I’d enjoy for a couple of hours, having only paid about £10 to £15 for it, before it gets pushed to the back of the shelf and forgotten about. 

The Good:

• Beautiful game
• Some great quirky bits
• Good for casual play
• Easy to use controls and camera
• Convenient way of checking on the status of animals
• Animal interactions kind of cute

The Bad:

• Build limit is a huge handicap
• Very few actual animals, too many variations of same type of animal
• No micro-management means it doesn't feel like a tycoon game
• Very little customizability, can choose very little
• You cannot put paths down
• Tedious due to having so many limits

The Score: 4/10 

Last thoughts: "That was such a disappointment... I love park management games so much... I feel genuinely cheated out of what could have been an amazing game."

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