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April 18th, 2017 Featured, PC, Reviews No Comments »

Golf With Your Friends Review

Golf With Your Friends Logo

Developer: Blacklight Interactive
Publisher: Blacklight Interactive
Platform: PC – Steam

Mini golf is pretty fun in real life, but not something I typically get to play very often. Golf With Your Friends brings this simple formula to the gaming world with the right amount of seriousness (that is to say, very little at all). The point is to have fun with a decent simulation of golf alongside a heavy dose of silliness.

The game includes five courses, ranging from the initial slightly realistic one to Egypt, a haunted house, and more. Each course goes from a decent difficulty to wildly challenging with outrageous jumps and obstacles. Golf With Your Friends isn’t exactly going for realism. There’s no option to change golf clubs – all you can do is charge swings (or make the ball jump to cheat some swings).

Golf With Your Friends Featured

Golf With Your Friends, as the name implies, is a multiplayer-exclusive experience. This aspect really shines once you start customizing match options. For example, consider setting the ball to random shapes. If you thought the levels were hard, try doing them with an acorn-shaped ball.

At the time of this writing, Golf With Your Friends is on the verge of leaving Early Access at version 1.99.0. My suggestion is to buy the game now before its price increases with the full launch. It’s already entirely playable and a great time with friends.

Score: 4

4 out of 5 alpacas

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April 11th, 2017 Editorial, Featured No Comments »

Checking Out Steam Releases in March 2017

PacaPlus

It’s time for the third of my monthly Steam summary articles. As usual, expect to find some information about the total number of games released in March as well as how many of them were Early Access and/or virtual reality releases.

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April 4th, 2017 Featured, PC, Reviews No Comments »

Kitty Cat: Jigsaw Puzzles Review

Kitty Cat Jigsaw Puzzles Logo

Developer: EnsenaSoft
Publisher: EnsenaSoft
Platform: PC – Steam

Casual games are great. For me in particular, they grant an escape from playing other games which require more attention, strategy, and skill. Because of this habit, I’m increasingly aware of which games have serious effort into their releases versus those that are simply re-skinned releases.

Kitty Cat: Jigsaw Puzzles falls into the latter category. This developer has a handful of puzzle games and they all appear to vary purely by theme. That might not be so bad if not for the fact that the underlying mechanics and interface are totally lacking. There’s also no music! I’ll admit, it’s not quite as awful as the Pixel Puzzle series.

Kitty Cat Jigsaw Puzzles Featured

At the very start, it seems like Kitty Cat: Jigsaw Puzzles is painfully easy. You actually get to see outlines of all the puzzle pieces on the game board! These disappear after a few levels, though, leaving players to deal with the digital puzzle much like a real one. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be confusing to tell if a puzzle piece sticks to the board (meaning it is in the right position) or not.

There is also no easy means of organizing your puzzle pieces prior to solving the puzzle. Instead you must click and drag them to areas outside the board to organize them as you see fit. The margin is not large enough to make this particularly enjoyable, though.  The cat photos per puzzle are cute – and they don’t appear to be stolen wholesale from various sources. But that’s basically the only good thing about Kitty Cat: Jigsaw Puzzles.

Score: 1

1 out of 5 alpacas

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March 28th, 2017 Featured, PC, Reviews No Comments »

Barnyard Mahjong 3 Review

Barnyard Mahjong 3 Logo

Developer: EnsenaSoft
Publisher: EnsenaSoft
Platform: PC – Steam

“Mahjong” is a term which is typically used incorrectly in English-language games. Many use it to refer to the familiar tile-matching concept, which is not the same as traditional mahjong. Real mahjong is a much more strategic, multiplayer experience. In any case, Barnyard Mahjong 3 is of the matching variety.

As the name implies, everything is doused in a barn theme. This includes the backgrounds and the tiles themselves, which feature depictions of fruits, farmers, and farm animals. There are in fact so many different visuals that it often proves tough to quickly survey the screen for potential matches.

Barnyard Mahjong 3 Featured

Each level in Barnyard Mahjong 3 features a timer. The amount of time left on the clock determines what you’re graded once finished with a puzzle. These stars are meaningless, though, as even ending with no time left still unlocks the next stage. I appreciate the game’s supremely casual attitude.

What doesn’t work is that the experience is barely enjoyable. The widescreen presentation makes it tiring to click back and forth between different ends of the screen. It’s also quite easy to fail puzzles (the remaining tiles just reset) even on easy. The music is so droll that you barely even notice it exists, and effects are incredibly anemic. Presentation is a huge part of making a mahjong game stand out and Barnyard Mahjong 3 simply doesn’t.

Score: 1

1 out of 5 alpacas

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March 21st, 2017 Featured, Lists No Comments »

My 10 Most Influential Games: Rule of Rose

 

Rule of Rose Image

I found myself fascinated with Rule of Rose before it even released on PS2. It was certainly no secret that games often launched in Japan prior to North America, but never before had I felt the need to play a title as soon as it hit Japan in early 2016. Yet, here I was, with a Japanese copy of Rule of Rose about a month after its Japanese launch. Fortunately for me, the game was not heavy on written text and cutscenes were actually in English to begin with.

What was it that initially drew me to pick up Rule of Rose? It most likely had to do with the Japanese trailers that made their way out prior to launch. It’s pretty similar to the footage shown in Atlus USA’s trailer, as shown below. The key things that hooked me were that it was a horror game with style, it featured an almost exclusively female cast, and seemed to be pushing the envelope.

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March 14th, 2017 Editorial, Featured No Comments »

Checking Out Steam Releases in February 2017

The Shadows of Pygmalion Featured

Last month, I decided to try my hand at keeping track of Steam releases in 2017. It just seemed like the right time, as 2016 was a landmark year of releases for the service. This year is also poised to be quite different once Valve shutters Steam Greenlight.

Defined as a failure practically out of the gate by Valve, Greenlight stuck around for years regardless. At the beginning, getting Greenlit meant something. At this point almost anything gets Greenlit given enough time. Once its gone, we should see an eventual decline in the number releases. I don’t know if we’ll notice that this year, though, as thousands of Greenlit games still haven’t launched on Steam. In any case, let’s get on with the data.

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March 7th, 2017 Featured, PC, Reviews No Comments »

VOI Review

VOI Logo

Developer: Yunus Ayyildiz
Publisher: Yunnus Ayyildiz
Platform: PC – Steam

Puzzlers have really taken over my life as of late. It’s just really enjoyable to chill out with games featuring one specific thing that makes their puzzles stand out. In the case of VOI, it’s the concept of 1 + 1 = 0. What does that mean, exactly? It makes sense in the concept of the game.

Each stage of VOI features a small stage, a few shapes (triangles, squares), and asks you to use them to create a certain shape as shown onscreen. These shapes require you to move the pieces logically on top of and around each other to create the shape. Where the 1 + 1 bit comes in is in overlapping objects. Once two are on top of each other, they “disappear.” This is a pivotal part of solving puzzles.

Voi Featured

Despite grasping the concept in theory, I still found it challenging to complete some levels. On others, I let my lizard brain do the work as it appeared to magically guide me to solutions with ease. VOI is definitely better suited to folks looking for a challenge based purely on logic rather than twitch reflex or hints.

It’s because of the surprisingly tough nature of the game that I came back to it less and less while in pursuit of a completion. One smart gameplay tweak would’ve been the ability to specify which piece to move when clicking on a space with multiple overlapped pieces. As is, things get a bit muddled and you often end up having to pull everything apart and restart from there. Frustrating bits like this lessen – but don’t extinguish – the challenging appeal of VOI.

Score: 3

3 out of 5 alpacas

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February 28th, 2017 Featured, PC, Reviews No Comments »

Phrase Shift Review

Phrase Shift Logo

Developer: Hyper Hippo Games
Publisher: Hyper Hippo Games
Platform: PC – Steam, Mobile – Android, iOS

With so many puzzle games out in the world it often seems like there’s no way to create something new. Well, Phrase Shift does exactly that. At first, it looks like someone cut out a small segment of a word search. Each puzzle offers one vertical column and multiple horizontal columns with words intersecting it. You’re also given a clue.

Unlike a word search which has you fill in everything, the horizontal words are already set per puzzle. So your goal is actually to shift the horizontal words left or right until the letters which intersect with your vertical bar form a word which fits with the given clue. It might sound confusing, but all you need is to play a level or two to grasp the concept.

Phrase Shift Featured

Once you do, get ready for a ton of enjoyment playing Phrase Shift. The game includes level batches of twenty in different categories: Food, Science, Animals, etc. For the most part, I knew all the vocabulary (even if it took a bit of guessing to bring them to mind). Some sections, such as Movies, might be tough for folks who have absolutely no interest or awareness of American pop culture.

Phrase Shift is a perfect game to come to after a long day at work. It allows you to both turn off your brain as well as give it the reward of solving (mostly) simple puzzles. I’ve enjoyed my time slowly working through the sections one by one. Unlike most games, I desire to play this one to 100% completion.

Score: 4

4 out of 5 alpacas

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February 21st, 2017 Editorial, Featured No Comments »

Emulation, Me, and the Raspberry Pi 3

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Featured

Emulation is one of those things that became an obsession from the minute I learned of it. This all began one day in high school when a friend asked to borrow a PS1 game of mine. When it came time to return it, he told me about playing it on his PC. My immediate reaction was something along the lines of “What do you mean?” Instead of explaining himself fully, he cryptically only gave the name of the emulator. Thus began an obsession.

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February 14th, 2017 Featured, NES, Nintendo Systems, Reviews No Comments »

Contra Review

Contra Box Art

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Platform: Arcade, Console – NES, PC – Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, DOS, MSX2, ZX Spectrum

Contra is one of those games folks can’t help but talk about. Comments circle around its high difficulty as well as the infamous Konami code which grants players thirty much-needed lives. The thing is, I never even touched the original Contra before. The closest I came to understanding its hectic 2D action was through playing the spiritual successor Hard Corps: Uprising. 

Thanks to a shiny new Raspberry Pi 3 in my possession (and watching the “This is the Run” video series on Giant Bomb), I decided it was finally time to take on Contra. Don’t worry, the NES cart is also in my possession. Unlike most players, this meant I was already armed with knowledge of how to defeat bosses and what challenges lie in wait. None of this made the experience a cake walk.

Contra Featured

When people say Contra is hard they mean it. The earlier stages aren’t quite so bad, but once you reach the middle there are bullets flying every which way as enemies constantly run onscreen. The challenge is compounded by one hit kills and a piddly default gun (which resets all power ups upon death). Securing a better weapon such as the spread gun is awesome – but often short-lived.

Contra is also super weird thematically. Despite being named with relation to the Iran-Contra affair, it bears little resemblance to real life events past the introductory level. Very quickly players move beyond the jungle setting with army-looking dudes to huge monsters, alien space ships, and more. None of this detracts from it being a white knuckle, badass experience. Anyone up for the challenge should definitely try their hand at Contra.

Score: 4

4 out of 5 alpacas

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