Author: Alisa Hail

Welcome to the Wastelands. No, no. We aren’t talking about Las Vegas or West Virginia. Welcome to the post-nuclear fallout badlands of Russia.

Set in 2005, Atom RPG places you directly in the boots of a Soviet special forces cadet tasked with assisting in the restoration of the Soviet Union after the Cold War ends in mutual nuclear destruction in 1986.

Made by indie developer AtomTeam in the style of Wasteland and Fallout 1 and 2, Atom RPG promises the best of classic RPGs, but is this adventure worth the time?

Much of the game operates similar to your standard classic RPG, and this is not a knock. Though nothing groundbreaking, everything from combat to character creation and the subsequent effect on the gameplay is well-designed.

Combat is grid-based with movement and attacks dictated by how many action points you possess. You will have two forms of attack costing more or less AP depending on which you choose. This can either be bare hand and feet attacks, long or short range weapons, or some combo of either. Thankfully, you will generally have more attack points to begin with than your early opponents.

Unfortunately, as I will explain shortly, you will discover rather quickly just how ill-equipped you are for the realities of the wastes almost immediately.

The best-laid plans of mutants and men often go awry in the wastelands. The skills and stats you choose during character creation will heavily affect your game, especially in the early stages. You can choose from the usual range of stats such as strength, endurance, and intelligence.

Your skill sets include weapons specialties such as Martial Arts for bare-handed knuckle-busting, long and short range weapons, gambling, survival, and lock picking. You also have the option to choose a “Distinction” which will auto-allocate your skill and stats points to create a very specified type of character for you.

These can be both a blessing and a curse. In fact, the downsides that come along with the “perks” of these distinctions might be worth avoiding altogether unless you already have a set strategy for the game.

For instance, you can choose to be a “Savage Hunter” which will drastically increase your damage to animals. However, no one will like you (you lose Personality points) and you will have trouble carrying all those animal skins with a significantly reduced carry weight. Some Distinctions like “Diplomat” which heavily focus on Speechcraft might not be a bad choice, but you have to make certain you deal with the fact your weapons skills will suffer significantly.

I chose to bypass the “Distinctions” and ended up making three separate characters throughout my time with Atom RPG. My third character was lower in Speechcraft and personality than the two previous, and I noticed how helpful being able to smooth talk my way through the world was from the get-go.

People easily volunteered additional information, and in one instance I was allowed through without proper papers. My other two characters were given a much harder time of things. Lockpicking came into handy right off the bat as well. It is amazing just how many locked containers I came across early on. But, I suppose that makes sense in a savage post-apocalyptic landscape.

Intelligence and mechanical skills will also come in handy during the first hour or so.

Though I prefer a character more heavily skilled in the gift of gab, I gave my final character a heavy focus on Strength and Martial Arts. This is because of how high the difficulty can be during random encounters.

When you leave a specific area such as a town or a bunker, you will appear on the world map. Using map scrolling with WASD you will locate a destination and then click on it, sending your character on their way.

During your journey, you will encounter events that range from meeting a friendly caravan to running into bandits. Even as prepared as you are regarding attack power and resistance to enemy attacks, running into four bandits, two of which are armed, within the first 30 minutes of the game almost guarantees your death. At one point, I admittedly only made it to a nearby bunker on luck. Instead of running into armed bandits that could kill me in a few shots, I ran into some giant ants instead. Giant ants are much more easily dealt with, largely because they cannot carry guns.

The game seems to be designed to push the player to heavily allocate points to only a couple of skills and stats, slowing down later progress in others.

For example, though you get a few guns early on, unless you heavily allocate skill points to their use from the beginning, they won’t do you much good. On my first run, I gave my character high personality and Speechcraft skills, allocating an average or below average amount of points to most of the other skills and stats save for intelligence. Lockpicking, and technology. All was going fairly well until the one time I could not talk my way out of a bandit encounter and then I was dead.

In fact, even with my reasonably high Speechcraft, I didn’t succeed in talking my way out of very many bandit encounters early on, thus leading me to a frustrating familiarity with the death screen.

The storyline might be your standard post-apocalyptic RPG fair, but being in another country is an exciting change. I found the writing to be enjoyable. Though you will have many standard interactions with NPCs in towns and cities and other areas, you will also run into some interesting characters.

I appreciated that the creators did attempt to create unique personalities for the people that populate the world, and you will see that come through, sometimes in fairly amusing ways.

Aside from the high difficulty, particularly in the beginning where it seems nigh on unfair, Atom RPG is very well designed. Though punishing, it feels satisfying to know your character design choices do make a significant impact on your progress and that playing the game again with different stats and skill selections will significantly change your gameplay experience, even if it does not have a huge impact on the overall story.

Atom RPG demonstrates well precisely why classic RPGs maintain a healthy audience even to this day.

Alisa Hail reviews Hello Neighbor: Hide And Seek on Nintendo Switch.

The premise of Dynamic Pixels’ original Hello Neighbor played on our curiosity. Who hasn’t, at least in passing, considered how tempting it would be to sneak into your creepy neighbor’s house and find out what sort of sinister deeds he’s been hiding behind his walls?

Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek serves as a prequel to the original story, explaining how our neighbor, Mr Theodore Peterson, came to be the way he is. It is also an improvement on its predecessor, even though it fails to escape a few shortcomings of its own.

The story opens on a pleasant, sunny morning with Mr Peterson’s son and daughter playing a friendly game of hide-and-seek. You take over the role of the little girl, trying to outwit her brother. Through the lens of her imagination, the familiar home transforms into an Alice in Wonderland-like domain. Furniture stretches to preposterous proportions. The ceiling and walls now absurdly high above and the ground now taking on the look of a wild grassland. Each level has a unique look, adding a childlike whimsy to the already surreal art style of the game.

Each stage comes with a set of objectives that need to be fulfilled before moving on to the next. For example, the first level requires you to retrieve several stuffed animals scattered about by your brother and delivering them to a certain location. Achieving these objectives requires solving environmental puzzles or using items you will find scattered around the stage. All the while, your brother is roaming about and if he catches you, he sends you back to the start of the level.

Hello Neighbor suffered from two major flaws: a glitchy gameplay experience and puzzles that were so out-of-the-box as to defy reason. Dynamic Pixels, clearly having learned from criticisms of their original title, did a worthy job of avoiding both of these shortcomings in Hide and Seek. The game played smoothly enough and I did not notice or come across any particular glitches during my play. There is also a handy feature that allows you to warp back to the starting point if you get stuck somewhere, like say perhaps within a giant bucket you hopped in without any clear plans as to how to get back out.

The game did carry over two issues that Dynamic Pixels has left untouched. Jumping frequently feels too airy and imprecise. Though the jump controls are certainly workable, I had hoped the developer would have tightened the controls as it does require platforming quite often. I also wish stackable objects clicked together when stacked to avoid the issue of objects falling over if you land on them incorrectly or accidentally get too close.

The puzzles in this prequel do a much better job of walking the line between creative reasoning and tying together clearly logically connected elements. Part of the original’s success was the community element needed to solve many of the puzzles without either dumb luck or spending more time than most people have or want to use in order to find the solution.

The puzzles in Hide and Seek are challenging and leave the player with a sense of satisfaction for having solved them without the frustration of trying to figure out something that was clearly not built to be discovered through reasoning alone.

You will need to collect multiple items during each stage and carry them with you in order to solve some of the puzzles. However, you can only hold four items at a time. If you find a new item while travelling around and your stash is full, you have no way to house the new item or switch it out with the one you are already carrying — without simply throwing another item down and hoping you can find it later. While doable, this certainly isn’t the most efficient way to handle item storage and becomes an unnecessary hindrance to progress.

Though the puzzle solving is fun, there is a downside to the central concept of Hide and Seek. While hiding from your neighbor in the original added an element to the game that gave it a sense of danger necessary for a stealth title, the heavy emphasis on puzzle solving and seek and find in the prequel can make having to stop what you are doing and run feel like more of a nuisance than anything else. It doesn’t help that your brother can see you from quite a distance.

Many times I thought I was in the clear and had lost myself in testing out a puzzle-solving hypothesis when I hear the telltale sound alerting me I am being pursued. I’d have to drop what I was doing and run to the nearest rock or something I can climb. This will often cause the brother’s AI to reset, forgetting where you are and you can watch him wander off into the distance before heading back to where you were. While the hide and seek component does sometimes add to the difficulty, it too often felt unnecessary given the more interesting puzzle element.

Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek is much tighter than the original in both gameplay and puzzle design. It is clear that Dynamic Pixels has learned from past experience and implemented that into their newest title. I found myself having much more fun with this newest iteration. The puzzle-solving is the most rewarding part of Hide and Seek and in a way, I wish the hide and seek element had been left out entirely. But, when it works well, it at least adds some tension.

It is not, perhaps, the best we will see from Dynamic Pixels, but it is fun and it gives me hope the quirky developer has more up their sleeves than we know.

Going back to some of our favourite games sometimes yields a nice, cool shot of nostalgia. Other times, it reminds us just how far we have come as an industry over even just the last 20 years.

When Rollcage released in 1999 its unique physics made it stand out from the crowd of other racing titles. Drive fast enough and you can defy the laws of gravity by speeding up walls and upside-down snake-like tunnels. GRIP: Combat Racing is a spiritual successor to Rollcage that attempts to revive that original thrill.

In some ways, GRIP does an excellent job of recreating everything that made Rollcage a standout. In other ways, at least on the PS4 version I played, it reminded me how far we have come in the racing genre and why we rarely look back.

GRIP offers a nice array of over 20 tracks covering a wide variety of landscapes ranging from futuristic cities to snow-covered mountains, and desolate wastelands. Tracks spiral and wind as players fly through at break-neck speeds. When executed well, it feels far more like being jettisoned down a warp tunnel as you spiral over and under the terrain and passageways, blasting your opponents with rockets and other weapons along the way.

However, as fun as GRIP can be, it suffers from some rather unintuitive track design. Especially in the beginning before you learn the tracks, you will likely find yourself slipping and sliding into an unexpected barrier or falling off the stage. While there are signs designating directions, some of the stages are just open enough to be confusing, especially when driving at high rates of speed. Multiple times I missed an indicator and found myself travelling down what I thought might be a path only for the game to reset me back on the track, thus costing me several seconds. Sure, this will dissipate with time and familiarization, but it makes getting into the game a bit of a frustration for first-time players. It also instantly kills the otherwise smooth action.

GRIP has only a small array of cars, but each handled fairly well. Controls were smooth and the cars maintained a solid hold on the track along turns for the most part. The only time I had my frustration with the controls is when airborne.

You will, whether from being blasted by an opponent, slipping off the side of the road, or making an unfortunate collision with a barrier, at some point find yourself helplessly tossed into the air where you will notice you lose any real control over your vehicle. Sure, this might be more realistic, but not being able to adjust your direction means you will either just have to watch while you barely miss the side of the track, or end up back on the track facing the wrong direction.

In a combat racing game where being flung about is a major part of the experience, having no control over your direction when airborne seems like a rather unfortunate oversight. Not to mention GRIP’s difficulty levels fluctuate quite a bit and so while falling off the track might not cost you too much in one race, landing the wrong direction just one time might move you from first to fifth almost instantly in another.

The tracks, though varied, lack the lustre and sheen one might have expected from a 2018 racing title. Textures can often look muddy and aside from the neon signs demarcating turns and barriers, the tracks and surrounding areas feel sparse and surprisingly dreary. That is not to say GRIP needs the cartoonishly bright colours of Mario Kart or the ultra-realism of Forza. But, the game’s visual design often looks too much like a throwback and less like a modern-day homage.

Speaking of Mario Kart, three out of four of GRIP’s race modes operate basically like Nintendo’s top racer with a twist or two, including choosing whether winning means reaching the finish line first, or whoever has the fastest trigger finger. You pick up weapons as you drive that you can use to blast your opponents out of your way, along with using green panels on the ground to increase your speed. There is also an arena battle mode that pits you against your friends or online opponents within a limited area.

Though uneven difficulty and unintuitive track design can cause difficulty for players just getting into the game, part of GRIP’s call-back to it’s older inspiration is a solid focus on the individual player’s ability to compete against themselves. The individual campaign mode is appropriately story-free, leaving you to quickly run through three multi-tiered tournaments. The “Carkour” mode allows players to practice their tricks, turns and other aerial acrobatics.

Of course, online leaderboards for race modes add that extra level of motivation. But, I found whether playing with a friend locally or strangers online, GRIP was just as fun and just as challenging.

Though GRIP isn’t as polished as it might have been, and new players will find themselves faced with a steep learning curve, it’s gravity-defying action is both a nice slice of nostalgia and something a little different than your standard racer. It is also always satisfying to watch the car in front of you explode in a bright and brilliant billow of fire, or hammering your opponent with a wave of tiny rockets.

GRIP: Combat Racing is now available on Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Humans, despite our lack of brute strength, when compared to other predators in the animal kingdom, have managed to stay on top of the food chain due to our innovation, particularly when it comes to the creation of weapons.

But, what if another species suddenly developed weapons as well and decided our time as king of the jungle had come to an end? And, no, I am not talking about Charlton Heston against a band of royally perturbed, highly intelligent apes.

I am talking about an enemy that seems far less likely to arise, but if they ever did, man would find they have a bone to pick with us: sentient fruit.

Juicy Realm Review

Juicy Realm is a roguelike in which you’re taking part in an ongoing war against cognizant crops of various berries, pomes, and melons.

Notes left behind by a brave, or foolish, observer provide some context for the world in which you now find yourself. However, it doesn’t take more than a few seconds of gameplay to figure out regardless of why or how these once docile and delicious eatables are out to kill.

Equipped with weapons ranging from dual-wielded swords to portable Gatling guns, the fruit prove to be formidable foes.

You have the choice to stand in the shoes of four different character types who come with varying stats and starting weapons: the Boxer, the Botanist, the Mercenary, and the Ninja.

All, except the Ninja, begin with a gun. The Ninja is the only one who begins with a melee weapon in the form of a giant sword. Between playthroughs, you can choose to switch out characters by going back to camp, but not during a play session.

Each character also comes with a unique item/secondary weapon classified as “gear” that cannot be dropped or replaced during combat. The Botanist comes with a grenade launcher type weapon. The Ninja has a tiny, mobile companion that can be dispatched to electrocute enemies. The Mercenary can set up a turret that sends single blasts toward approaching enemies. And, finally, the Boxer can use a life potion that refills portions of her HP as long as she stands within the glowing, green circle.

Once a character deploys their gear, a meter on the bottom of the screen empties and then slowly refills, indicating when the gear can be used again. the time between uses is long enough that you don’t depend too heavily on them as a sort of trump card during combat.

However, they do give some characters more advantage over others.

For example, the Boxer’s life potion and high beginning HP do make her easier to use than, say, the Ninja who’s beginning weapon, as badass as it may seem, make him far more vulnerable to attack since he must engage enemies at close range.

His companion, however, being mobile is far more useful than the Mercenary’s turret which requires you to lure enemies close to it before it becomes useful.

In this way, the developers of Juicy Realm have done a decent job of establishing a simple balance between characters and requiring you to use each character slightly differently during combat.

I do wish the game allowed you to compare the stats of each character’s starting weapons along with their other stats. Without this information, I had no way of knowing whether there was a specific advantage to any of the guns over the others, or even how the Ninja’s sword stacked up against other melee weapons I found throughout my journey.

The game does give you some simple stats for new weapons you find but unfortunately does not offer a way to compare them to weapons you are currently carrying.

A recent update improved the attack power of melee weapons, thus making their use feel a bit less like an unfair disadvantage during combat. This is especially important since weapons are dropped or discovered randomly.

So, if you end up running out of ammo and need to use the baguette you just found to defend yourself (yes, a baguette), you are not at the disadvantage you once would have been before this was corrected.

In fact, I often noticed certain melee weapons could take out enemies in two hits when the gun I was using took at least four or five shots. The advantage of the gun, obviously, is that I can keep moving and stay much farther away from enemies during a firefight.

The only issue, however, with the game giving you melee weapons is as effective as they may be, you are literally bringing a knife (or, rather, a wrench) to a gunfight. Some of the enemies can shoot three shots in quick succession. Others can fire multiple rounds one after another.

When there is a cluster of enemies, this makes using melee weapons quite difficult and made me wonder a few times why melee was available at all, or at least as common as it is, within what is clearly a dual-stick shooter type game, along with its roguelike elements.

In order to help players maintain use of their guns longer, the same update that increased melee attack power also added random enemy ammo drops. This means that while you can indeed run out of ammo, I rarely did. I was quite thankful I did not have to battle a boss with the baguette.

Plus, blasting away your equally equipped fruity foes was far more fast paced and enjoyable than the comparably slow melee attacks.

Aside from locating weapons and ammo at random, you can also break open boxes to reveal food which will restore your health.

Coins that you can either find or collect from fallen enemies can be used to purchase randomly generated items from vending machines you will find also at random throughout your run.

Keep your eyes open because “hidden” areas will appear that, though not hard to figure out how to get to, can offer extra coin or food or ammo. The game’s controls are smooth and straightforward. On the keyboard, you use the mouse to aim and WASD to move about. You click left to fire and clicking right on the mouse allows you to dash a short distance in the direction your mouse is pointed.

This works especially well when in close combat with an enemy that can fire several shots in succession, but I found I rarely needed it when using a firearm because all I needed to do was keep moving about.

Just like with the gear, there is a meter that depletes each time you use your dash ability which will need to refill after a certain number of uses before you can use the dash again.

The game also has controller support, though I found aiming with the mouse much simpler than the dual-stick controls on the controller. There is no way to customize the controls using either, but with such simple design, I didn’t feel the need to do so.

Boss battles have a traditional Zelda-like feel, requiring you to learn a series of attack patterns in order to achieve victory.

For instance, the first boss I fought, a giant melon, had four basic attacks: a dash, a ground pound, shooting several rows of wooden spikes, and setting loose a gaggle of tiny watermelon slices that are surprisingly aggressive despite their tiny appearance.

I quickly learned I could not do any damage unless the boss was momentarily incapacitated. So, I had to learn how to make that happen.

Of course, this means you will likely die at least once or twice before reaching your goal.

Punishment for death means going back to camp and starting over again. This might seem likely a heavy price, but due to the constantly changing level layouts, I never felt like I was making the same run twice.

On the downside, though, without any real way to upgrade or customize your weapons or characters, the multiple run-throughs begin to lose a sense of reward aside from hopefully making it all the way through.

The game is rather short, at least, so I never got to the point where I lost interest entirely. But, if I could customize my weapons or my character so that each run-through at least rewarded me with something that would make tearing through the same levels much faster and with more satisfying violence, it might raise the replay value quite a bit.

As it is, you can play against your own time once you finish the game, but there isn’t much else to keep you coming back. Unless that is, you want to play through with a friend using the local two-player mode.

Despite its tendency to perhaps be a bit overly simplistic, Juicy Realm boasts gorgeous visuals and a handful of different level designs. From dense jungle to desert sands, the vibrant, stimulating colour palette paired with the jovial soundtrack adds a level of excitement and wonder.

I remember playing Oregon Trail in the library of my middle school back in the day. Even with the best planning, hunting, and river rafting skills, you died often enough on your journey that the ability to leave witty messages on your tombstone for a future passerby to read became a regular ritual.

Bandits stealing all your supplies and dying of dysentery became part of the expedition. Luck played in almost as much as skill, but we kept playing, again and again, determined to get a bit further this time and, eventually, make it all the way to Oregon.

Death Road To Canada Review

Death Road to Canada, a rogue-like title set during the zombie apocalypse, takes a lot of the simple concepts from earlier adventure titles such as Oregon Trail and sets you on a fun, addictive, and often hilarious journey. Like that childhood trip to Oregon long ago, death comes often in this game, but you will almost instantly find yourself ready to get back on the road.

Your goal in Death Road to Canada is clear and likely self-explanatory. You must guide a ragtag group of survivors to Canada, the only allegedly safe place after the world has been ravaged by the ravenous undead. Everything you have you must scavenge from locations you visit along the way. Food, medical supplies, gasoline, weapons, and any other items you need must be obtained at the risk of life and limb. And, as if fending off hordes of the undead wasn’t difficult enough, you also have to keep up morale.

The Caretaker

Along with ensuring everyone is fed and rested, you must also keep characters happy and loyal and, obviously, keep them from getting murdered. The events in the game are randomized, so you don’t always know how your choices will turn out. Sometimes, your choices appear fairly straightforward.

We chose not to accept an overnight invitation from a creepy-looking caretaker (and, yes, the game explicitly told us the caretaker was incredibly creepy). Of course, perhaps we shouldn’t judge by appearances, but as we have learned from TV shows like The Walking Dead, trust doesn’t come easy and is rarely rewarded during the zombie apocalypse.

Other times, choices seem more capricious. Once, I had a character shoot a deer that was standing in front of our car, blocking our path. One of my other members became angry I hadn’t chosen him instead, thus dropping his morale. After losing our car later due to an unfortunate encounter with a man wearing heavy body armour standing in the road, this member’s morale dropped so low he became despondent and wandered off into the woods to an unknown fate.

Oh, and I also learned not to tell bandits to “Cool it.” They don’t appreciate it and can become surprisingly violent as one of my former teammates tragically discovered. On second thought, perhaps that really isn’t so surprising.

Zombie Forecast

What you do have more control over during the game is how you handle your inventory. Weapons range from rifles and shotguns to blunt weapons such as wrenches, hammers, and even femurs. There are also less common weapons such as grenades, and you might even get the chance to buy a turret.

You can easily swap weapons between team members during missions by pulling up the menu, as long as you are within range of that teammate. Some characters can hold more weapons than others, but most can hold three. You are able to drop weapons if you find one during the scavenging event you would like to keep, rather than one you came with. You can also easily switch between the weapons you are carrying during a battle with the press of a single button.

There is no crafting in Death Road to Canada, so weapon management is simply a matter of distributing weapons thoughtfully, and only keeping the ones you think you will need. You have a total of 14 slots that can be used for storing weapons not currently being carried by characters. Before each mission, you can select which weapons you would like to take. Things like medical supplies are used automatically by team members after certain events and do not need to be managed.

In fact, one of the best aspects of the game is how it keeps it simple while offering just the right amount of customization. For example, each character comes with a certain set of skills and attributes which includes things like Medical, Shooting, Strength, and Mechanical ability. It might also include personality traits like a low morale, or low loyalty.

Boosting Characters

In the regular game mode where you will encounter random characters, you can increase some of their skills and attributes through certain activities or choices. For instance, you may get the opportunity to take shooting lessons, thus increasing everyone’s shooting skill. Or, you might have a certain character tinker overnight while at a rest stop, increasing their mechanical skill.

You also have the option of building your own custom characters. Each character comes with a certain set of traits. Traits can both positively and negatively affect skill sets and attributes. For instance, the “Inventive” trait will add two points to your mechanical skill, which might help you fix your car eventually if it breaks down.

I say eventually because on the negative side it might take a little practice. Sometimes the negative effects are comical. The “Nurturing” trait says it adds two points to your medical skill and gives you a great attitude. On the negative side, your positivity “may be an act.” For the risk taker, you can choose more extreme traits like “BESERK!” This boosts the character’s strength, fitness, and shooting ability by four points, but they can also be killed in one bite.

Being Surrounded On All Sides

You earn Zombo Points throughout the game that can be traded for perks. For instance, “Phoenix” resurrects a character upon death to full health, though it can also be used once per game. There are also more bizarre perks such as “Anime Fan”, which gives the player an overpowered Katana that cannot be dropped upon death. Just what every anime fan needs.

Combat is super simple, but fun. Cracking zombie skulls never seems to get old, and the splat they make when defeated is always satisfying. Using guns is also super simple and doesn’t require careful aiming, only that you are facing in the right direction.

But, be careful. Don’t be too overzealous with your zombie slaying. Your weapons break, and bullets, though not particularly scarce, are valuable, particularly when you find yourself in a siege event. What is a siege event, you ask? Only your worst nightmare, if your worst nightmare involves being surrounded on all sides by zombies.

There are five different game options available aside from the regular mode. Familiar Characters mode increases your chances of running into your custom characters. Rare Characters Mode increases your chances of coming across special characters, some with incredibly useful abilities, and some that look a lot like well-known characters such as Link from the Legend of Zelda series.

Deadlier Road Mode makes the game, well, more deadly than usual. The two remaining options either significantly shorten or elongate your road trip.

Best of all, the game never takes itself too seriously. The music, a 16-bit style techno and rock mix, is exhilarating and sometimes even quite catchy.

Quirky And Weird

The characters themselves are quirky and weird. My first character was using his time at the end of humanity to write a comic book about his life. I also ran across a man in a horse mask who, for all intents and purposes, considered himself an actual horse. I found him running along the highway, perhaps trying to locate his four-legged compadres, before my team forcibly pulled him into the car and made him join us.

Then, we all went to Y’all-Mart (you read that correctly). While at Y’all-Mart, I located a treadmill I had the horseman use despite the game’s warning against using a treadmill while surrounded by zombies. It all turned out for the best, however, as using the treadmill increased the horse man’s strength. Which was all well and good until I died some ten minutes later in a blaze of glory, mobbed by ravenous corpses. And, thus, the cycle began anew. The circle of life.

Science and the spiritual realm are often considered opposites within our modern cultural milieu. So, what happens when the two clash together as very real yet polar counterparts? More specifically, what happens when the realms of madness come into contact with the methodical clockwork of the scientific method? Tesla vs. Lovecraft poses one answer to this: absolute and glorious chaos.

Tesla VS Lovecraft Review

We recently did a full review of Tesla vs. Lovecraft for the PC, but as a bit of a refresher, the game centres on an ominous interaction between famous horror author H. P. Lovecraft and well-known electric guru Nikola Tesla. After ignoring Lovecraft’s pleas not to continue with his work on electricity, Tesla finds his laboratory raided by minions of the sinister Cthulhu. Tesla must now take back his inventions and castigate the forces of darkness using his scientific knowledge, and enough firepower to take out any collection of onerous elder gods.

The battle has finally made its way onto the Nintendo Switch and thankfully none of the monster exploding mayhem has been lost in the transition. The neon blue of Tesla’s teleportation ability, the brilliant green of underworld portals, and the bright purple tones of a devastating blast translates just as well whether on full screen or in tablet mode. The monstrous hordes are just as crisp and clear on my TV as they are on the small tablet screen aside from the obvious reduction in size. At no point did I feel at a disadvantage using the tablet over the TV mode.

In fact, I actually preferred using the tablet over playing in TV mode despite the smaller screen and decreased speaker output. I used a pro-controller to play on my TV and felt the larger screen combined with the more fluid, slightly raised analogue sticks made the movement feel less precise. The slighter, tighter movement of the Joy-Con controls matched with the smaller screen felt far more precise and made the action flow more fluidly for me. Of course, this will be a matter of preference and hand size, but I do think the game feels more natural on the tablet.

Plus, the visuals will still feel crisp and clear and the audio on the tablet, though not a match for TV speakers, handles the techno jive and bass output of the soundtrack quite well.

The Switch version brings with it all of the quick gun action and screen-filling hordes that keep the pace pumping along at breakneck speeds. You will find numerous weapons of varying effectiveness lying about and will quickly learn which is best for dispatching enemies in the swiftest and most visceral fashion. Tesla can also collect certain perks that can be added at the start of each level. You will also acquire a mech that will increase Tesla’s firepower and shield for a few seconds before exploding. You can then begin collecting the parts from around the level in order to regain the power of the mech for a few seconds before the cycle begins again.

Tesla can momentarily escape being consumed by the throngs by using a teleportation ability. This becomes extremely useful and often keeps you from feeling overwhelmed. But, be careful. It does take some seconds to recharge after a few uses. Once you get the hang of the dual-stick combat, you will find yourself dancing around and through the monstrous masses like some badass ballerina equipped with weapons that would make the Terminator jealous.

Even the best of us have something hidden within ourselves or our past we prefer to keep buried. The monsters of self-pity, jealousy, bitterness, and anger are always battling with our better self. For some, these inner demons can be just as dark as any denizens of Hell. Later On focuses on what it might be like if the murky recesses of the mind found their way out into a reality of their own.

Later On Review [PC]

You play as David, an individual who clearly has a less than lacklustre view of the world and the people in it. David often refers to people as “trash” as he makes his way around the neighbourhood. It is clear from the get-go that something is a little off about the town of Later On, and David seems a little too calm about it. For example, your daily routine involves disappearing into the back of a . . . research facility? Lab? Whatever it is, it has something to do with David’s “job”, and whatever that might involve doesn’t sound good based on the noises coming from the back area. Of course, David shows no sign that any of this is bizarre or out of place.

After “work” David runs into a friend, Nico, an ally complaining he needs David’s help because he just developed a tail. David isn’t quite certain how to assist, so he decides to do nothing and walk away. This decision to abandon his friend in a time of need sets off the game’s events as David attempts to make things right with Nico. But, this is only the beginning of David’s deep dive into his own motives. What kind of person is he? And if the world around is any clue, David has some skeletons in his closet that are going to be something much worse than that time you got drunk at Christmas no one prefers to talk about.

Later On does well in sustaining a sense of unsettling anticipation. In part, this is accomplished by well-placed and well-orchestrated sound effects and music. Another way is through an unpredictable narrative. Whether you are tasked with finding a mermaid or encouraging a sentient towel to allow you to pull it off the wrack, you never know what might come around the corner. When the game takes its darker turns, this unpredictability feels even more disquieting because it appears to be a normal aspect of David’s life. Environments take on a bloody hue at times and monsters present themselves as if they are a natural part of the everyday. Dreamlike conversations with fellow residents who seem totally at home in nightmarish situations only add to the unease.

Puzzles are usually simple and equally as surreal, requiring you to think about objects around you in a way that is contrary to their natural use. For example, you might have to utilize a painting as if it were a certain appliance, or figure out how to awaken a sleeping manhole cover so you can move it. In these instances, some trial and error along with just a little ingenuity are enough to find the solution. But, there are also instances where the game sends you on a hunt for an object without any clue where to locate it. In one case, I needed to find something to cut down some bushes that were blocking my progress. I wandered around town until I found it in a location that felt random rather than a natural place to seek them out. These situations made the puzzles feel a bit inconsistent.

There are only a couple of what might be called “boss battles” in Later On, and though these were clearly meant to serve as emotional epiphanies for David, I found them the least enjoyable interactions in the game. You are confronted by a monster that represents an aspect of David’s past or character that he wishes not to face. You are challenged with accusations to which David must respond accordingly by choosing from a set of replies.

For example, you will run into a monster of self-pity who can only be defeated if David responds in ways contrary to that emotion. However, there were times when the exact meaning of a sentence is not quite clear, so I had to guess which one would cause a blow to my enemy. If you guess wrong, you still have to complete the interaction only to fail and go through the whole thing once more. It also felt lacklustre as a tool for making me empathize with David. From the world around him and some of the later story elements, I began to understand just how disturbed David was, but I never felt close to David. This made having to try to answer questions as him a rote effort, particularly at the very beginning.

The characters around David feel charming and full of life. In fact, it is everything around David that gives the world both its vibrancy and horror. David himself is simply a vessel often removed and unaffected, which is fine and fitting, except when we are asked to get into his head and pretend to be him. It is for this reason that Later On doesn’t quite hit its mark as an emotional narrative that wants the player to connect with David in a rather visceral fashion. The horror is conveyed just the same, and perhaps natural empathy can help bridge the disconnect between David’s story and the player, but I left without ever feeling a strong sense of attachment when it seems clear the game intended that I should.

David’s story isn’t quite original. A number of indie horror titles have dealt with taking on the role of a protagonist whose mind has seriously affected their perceptions of the world around them. Home does this quite well and far more subtly.

Later On is available now on Steam.