Category: Reviews

Note: While we don’t normally review comics, this is a particularly notable one that bridges The Evil Within games together – so it’s worth our time. Meet The Evil Within: The Interlude.

Human beings have always been an inquisitive species. We are never satisfied with the information presented to us and are constantly seeking the unknown and the hidden. As with all of humanity, when I watch a movie, play a game, or read a great book, I too need to know more. I want to learn the story of what happened in the events leading up to and then after the main narrative is finished; it’s the history behind it all that fascinates me the most. I must find out where these characters have been and what will become of them when a writer’s pen has become silent. For fans of The Evil Within, and those whose brains are just as inquisitive, you’re about to get a little more of the story surrounding Detective Sebastian Castellanos and his struggle to maintain his grip on reality.

The Evil Within: The Interlude is a two-part comic continuation of the game that bears its name, bridging the gap between the first and second instalments. Maintaining the same esthetic players are used to, Writer Ryan O’Sullivan and artists Szymon Kudranski and Damien Worm have constructed a continuation to the story at hand, all the while, leaving readers with a deep anticipation for the sequel.

For those who have never played The Evil Within, I won’t spoil anything, but I highly recommend you give it a shot. It’s only recently that I had an opportunity to try the first in the series; as survival horror goes, it’s fantastic. The game has a way of making the player exceptionally uncomfortable, with grotesque backdrops and Silent Hill inspired manifestations throughout.

Just as in the game, Interlude has a way of jarring the readers with sudden time cuts and brutal imagery, leaving one to ask themselves if what they’re seeing is real. Like our protagonist, Det. Castellanos, I too felt like I was beginning to fall down the rabbit hole of mystery and desperation. Was I, like the detective, going crazy? Is what we see with our own eyes the real thing, or are we trapped inside the Matrix, desperately trying to claw our way out?

Ryan O’Sullivan’s writing doesn’t reveal too much to the reader and allows you to second-guess everything. Mr. O’Sullivan has a way of luring you in and then warping your sense of reality without warning.  I felt as if the writer was keeping a dark secret, but refused to tell me out of some spiteful pleasure. For those familiar with O’Sullivan’s Turncoat graphic novel, you will notice a similar writing style that hooks the reader without divulging too much too quickly.

The artwork by Kudranski and Worm has a bleakness to it that can be a bit off-putting, in a good way. I felt truly uncomfortable reading this at times; it was as if what I saw was taunting me in a way. To maintain that level of paranoia and fear in comic form, just like in the game that inspired it, is a testament to the skills of those involved in its creation.

Although I had to read a few spoilers to get a sense of what this comic referenced from the first game, I am now incredibly excited for the sequel and the continuation of this mind-bending story. As the reader, you’re not supposed to know what’s real and what’s not, but Interlude acts as a perfect bridge in which to cross over into the unknown. If The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2 are centred around a twisted world, intricately woven together like a dark and sinister quilt, Interlude is the bloody thread that binds it all together.

If you’ve never played the original game, I highly recommend you do so first, before reading this short but engrossing comic. By the time I finished part 2, there seemed to be more questions than answers, but that’s just how something of this nature should be. Readers will get their appetites teased, but the main course of answers to this Pandora’s Box will come when you close the book and pick up that controller.

Please note, I’ve kept this review spoiler free (both game[s] and comic), and ask that those commenting below please do the same.

The 80s, a decade unparalleled in its excesses and style. There’s nothing quite as “big” as the 80s, and arcade racers from the 80s are no exception. Games like Outrun and Chase H.Q. did everything bigger, better, and faster than the racers before them. Outrun and Chase H.Q. featured sports car sprites driving at speeds in excess of 200 kmh on winding roads through cities, deserts, beaches, and canyons.

As the 80s ended and the 90s began, racers started trading sprites for 3D-rendered graphics. With the high-powered PCs and consoles of the early 00s, racers further distanced themselves from their 80s predecessors. Realism in racers became a trend and it is a trend which persists today. Some modern racers still opt for wild and loose arcade physics, handling, and speed, but the majority of modern racers favour simulation gameplay with realistic physics, handling, and speed. Regardless of gameplay, both the arcade and simulation racers of today often feature realistic 3D graphics. Rarely do gamers get a new racing game which looks, plays, and sounds like it came from the 80s. Fortunately, gamers have recently been blessed with that rare occurrence by means of 80s Overdrive.

80s Overdrive is a 3D arcade racer using sprite-based graphics. Everything in this game is beautiful. The cities, trees, and beaches on the horizon you’ll forever be driving towards and the traffic you pass along the way all look great. Each car the player can drive, of which there are a handful, look like their real-world counterparts albeit in sprite form.

80s Overdrive’s high-quality visual presentation pairs well with its high-quality retro-wave soundtrack. Featuring artists like Vectorwolf and Vocoderion, 80s Overdrive’s soundtrack fits the “80s by way of 2017” aesthetic perfectly. Unfortunately, as good as the soundtrack is, it falls short when racing in the “Time Attack Mode”. Like Outrun, at the beginning of the race you can choose what song you want to listen to, but the time attack mode race goes on for much longer than whatever song you choose. Eventually, the song ends and is followed up by a few moments of awkward silence before looping. It’s a small nitpick, but the repeating song and loop grow tiresome. A random song feature would be a nice touch here, keeping things fresh.

Besides the audio, time attack mode is a lot of fun. Time attack mode is 80s Overdrive’s “Outrun mode”. Players race the clock as they dart from the beach to whatever is on the horizon. Closely passing traffic while carefully avoiding collision nets players more time on the clock. All the extra time is a big help because 80s Overdrive’s time attack mode features a huge map with an almost infinite number of different routes. Time attack mode is a lot of fun and just as addictive as Outrun, imbuing players with a sense of accomplishment as they get a little closer to the goal with each subsequent race. Developers Insane Code claims there to be a reward for players who 100% time attack mode, but I honestly haven’t been able to do it yet. Time attack mode is difficult as is, but a couple of bugs make racing even more difficult. More on the bugs later.

Time attack mode is just one of 80s Overdrive’s gameplay modes. 80s Overdrive also features a career mode where players race NPCs for cash to buy more cars and car upgrades. Career mode is fun because it mixes things up with each race. Some races have more difficult routes with lots of twists and turns, other races have a lot or very little traffic, and some races will see players trying to outrun police while trying to maintain pole position.

Career mode occasionally presents players with the option to take on “missions” to pick up a number of collectables on the track, place above or below certain NPC racers, or deliberately wreck into other NPC racers. I noticed a lot of the missions present little risk but maximum reward. The missions are just another way to line your virtual pockets and access vehicle upgrades including faster speeds, better handling, nitrous oxide boosts, and a police scanner.

At first, the career mode is easy, almost too easy, but it picks up as players progress through the different races. The police chases make things difficult because the police will pull out in front of a player and hit their brakes. If players fail to avoid rear-ending the police, they will likely be set back several places in standing and maybe even get arrested if too slow to recover from wrecking.

The third game mode is a track editor. While you never do more than adjust sliders affecting different parameters to develop a track, a code is given uniquely to the developed track. Theoretically, players can take this unique code and share it with other players either in person or online, giving others the opportunity to race on player-designed tracks. I can’t decide whether this method of sharing a created track is appropriate because it holds true to the way people would share cheat codes with each other in the 80s and 90s, or whether it’s just inconvenient. It would be nice to be able to share created tracks on a server or even race other people online, but that’s an expensive proposition for developers. Maybe if 80s Overdrive does well, 80s Overdrive 2 will include multiplayer or PvP features. Cross your fingers.

Now for the bugs I mentioned earlier. Making the races difficult regardless of which game mode are the vehicle upgrades. Yeah! It’s weird. Typically vehicle upgrades make racing games easier but in 80s Overdrive it only kind of works that way.

Sure, maxing out your vehicle’s top speed will give you a leg up on other racers, but safely driving through each race without accidents becomes difficult. As I began to surpass speeds of 250 kmh, I found my surroundings chopping up and stuttering at a speed just as insane. It’s a framerate issue. Despite 80s Overdrive’s graphics being lovely to look at, the graphics just don’t do a good job of handling speed. Framerates dip as speed increases and the screen fills up with different assets. The graphical issues aren’t game-breaking, but they are frustrating and work as an artificial difficulty.

The only other problem I noticed was a sound issue in the “Elite City” track. It didn’t happen often but occasionally I would be speeding towards the horizon and a very sudden and very loud sound would just scream at me from my headphones. The sound resembled the sound the player car makes as it’s careening around a corner, tires squealing, only louder. The problem was I wasn’t careening around any corners when the squealing would sound, and the sound was so much louder than other sounds in the game. Even without my headphones I experienced the same sound quirk. The good news is I didn’t experience the bug on any other tracks.

80s Overdrive is currently available in the NOE 3DS eShop and will be available in the NOA eShop on December 14th. No plans have been announced for release in Japan or ports to other platforms.

Another year, another Call of Duty. This time we are transported back to World War 2, fighting with the First Infantry Division from Normandy until they crossed the Rhine. So, should you step off on the beaches or sit this war out?

War Never Changes

From the onset of CoD: WW2 the story feels like a “been there, done that” moment that lasts about 10 hours (on normal).  This is due in part to the flood of WW2-centric shooters that started a decade ago, though they have waned to be more “advanced or future” in recent years. It is also due to WW2 being one of the most fleshed out historical moments in recent human history (movies, books, games, you name it).

The story revolves around you and you platoon fighting across all the major encounters of the Western Theater: Normandy, taking Paris, Battle of the Bulge, Crossing the Rhine, all the while dealing with drama caused by current and past events. This would work if you felt any connection to the characters, but sadly they all fall into a stereotyped role with mediocre writing to back them up.

But the campaign in CoD has normally been about the big moments and this version has plenty of big moments, from storming the beaches to sitting in an MG nest mowing down swarms of enemies.  These are fun standalone events, few moments in gaming can be as thrilling as a well-done D-Day (and also as grim and gory) or as one-offs. The problem here is that every stage seems to place you behind an MG against a swarm of enemies, it stops being fun at that point.

Despite the games short fallings on the development side, the optimization seems to be solid. I played it on my dated PC, a GTX 780 and an old SATA HDD, and load times were fine, it had minimal frame problems even during high-intensity moments. CoD isn’t pushing any graphical boundaries but it looks good. The only gripe I have here is that the gun sounds are not the best.

A Band of Brothers

The core experience, and longevity, of CoD, lies with the multiplayer experience and if you have liked CoD in the past you will enjoy what this game has to offer again.

When you start playing you’ll be asked to pick one of five divisions: Infantry, Airborne, Armored, Mountain and Expeditionary.  Each one has a different starting loadout and has different weapons they are suggested to use, but you can unlock any you want along the way.  Each also has a different modifier for their weapon – I started as Airborne and could place silencers on my submachine guns – it’s a small and interesting feature that gives each class something a little different.

There didn’t appear to be any major network problems in the games I played (my connection is 150 down/25 up) with empty spaces being filed quickly, no disconnects on my part and generally, the games ran smooth. I will, however, add that I am playing the game after nearly a month of being released and I had heard and read about network problems on launch.

There are two problems, however, that still stick out. First, the map design just doesn’t feel great. Many times I felt like 90% of the map was going unused in favour of just running at the opponent’s spawn location then, when the spawns flipped, doing that again. This does vary depending on the game mode but I always seemed to find a few people trolling around in spawns until they flipped.

The second is simply it doesn’t do anything new, or at least new enough to be earthshattering. You level, unlock things, prestige and repeat. A tried, true and frankly boring progression system. It works as intended and has for years but that doesn’t mean changes can’t be made to freshen the experience for veteran players. How is this new? Yes, there are daily, weekly and speed quests to complete but that isn’t why people want to play CoD online, they just want to enjoy some good old fragging.

With technology improving at an exponential rate, it seems like a no-brainer that developers would mine their old IP for titles that are deserving of a second chance at gaming life. With the re-release of Crimsonland by 10tons on Steam in 2014, fans of the original and those just discovering it got a chance to play a fun top-down shooter classic with better graphics, higher resolution, and enhanced designs. Now released on the Nintendo Switch, gamers can enjoy this fantastic port on the go.

Crimsonland first hit the PC scene way back in 2003, and like most top-down shooters, the premise is simple; shoot everything that moves before it kills you. With a 360-degree shooting ability, players have to gun down hundreds of little baddies ranging from zombies, aliens, spiders, demons, lizard men, and more. Enemies come at you in all directions, moving rather quickly to box you in and cut off an escape route. Making things even more difficult are nests and other monster dens which pop up randomly, spewing forth countless monsters hell-bent on your demise.

Aiding you in your quest to annihilate everything on screen is a collection of thirty weapons and fifty-five “perks”, which are unlockable throughout the game. Players can kill their foes with pistols, shotguns, flamethrowers, ion cannons, rocket launchers, mini-guns, rifles, and more. I highly enjoyed the selection and found myself strategizing on which ones would be better for each mission. Weapons randomly pop up after shooting enemies, allowing players to simply walk over them to equip. I recommend you hurry and pick them up though, as they’ll disappear after a few seconds.

Think of perks as special abilities that appear at random times throughout each mission. Players are given four choices, with each option sporting an amusing icon and a brief description. Once a selection is made, it automatically goes into effect, combining with other perks already in use. These abilities can range from shooting poison bullets, reloading faster, running at double the pace, emitting harmful radiation to nearby enemies, and more. There are so many in fact, it can be difficult to choose which ones you want over another at any given moment. Perks add a fantastic dimension to the game, giving players a huge advantage in defeating the hordes of baddies coming for them.

Complimenting the aforementioned guns and abilities, are special power attacks which players can pick up at random. These short burst items allow your protagonist to freeze everything on the screen, blow up nearby monsters instantly, turn your weapon into a temporary super killing machine, health increases, and more. I can’t tell you how many times I was saved at the last second by one of these conveniently timed Hail Marys.

Unlocked items can be reviewed via the Extras menu located on the main landing page. Players beware, however, as all weapons and perks are not created equal; I found that I actively avoided certain ones because I felt they became a detriment to winning. Case in point, the blow torch. Unlike the flamethrower, players must get insanely close to enemies for this weapon to do any damage, but by doing so, you risk dying at a much faster rate. Certain perks are also a gamble; choosing “Grim Deal” bestows upon players sixty-six percent more experience points, but it kills you instantly. If players choose the “Highlander” perk, you don’t lose any health when attacked, but there is a five percent chance of instant death. Don’t worry, there are way more helpful perks then ones requiring you to make a deal with the devil.

It’s a good thing Crimsonland offers such a wide variety of weapons and perks because there isn’t much variety when it comes to the actual gameplay and missions. The backgrounds are predominantly the same throughout, with only slight variations in colour schemes and the missions are all just running and gunning until everything moving but you is dead. Although the game is insanely fun, I did find myself getting a little bored of doing the same thing over and over for sixty quests. I would have liked a little more variation in level design (ok, any variation at all!), and perhaps some different gameplay thrown into the mix. Don’t get me wrong, Crimsonland is still intense, and it isn’t easy, but something different to look at would have been a nice touch.

Aside from the sixty-level quest mode, no top-down shooter would be complete without a rock solid survival mode. Players slowly unlock each one, with all five becoming available once the quest missions are completed. Aside from your basic “kill as many as you can before you die” option, each of the other offerings come with their own unique challenges and obstacles. If you’re looking for a challenging survival mode, Crimsonland is your game; I got my butt handed to me on several occasions, shamefully not lasting long at all!

If you’re tired of going at it solo, players have the option of local co-op that can support up to four players. I wasn’t able to try this, but I definitely could have used the help on several occasions. There are so many baddies coming at you, it can get pretty overwhelming at times. The game also has dedicated leaderboards, which give players an option to check global rankings and scores amongst friends. It’s a nice little addition that ups the competitive nature of the game.

This is all to say, the game isn’t perfect. I mentioned my displeasure on the monotony of the backgrounds and the missions in general, but there are a couple of other gripes I have with this title. For starters, I didn’t like how slow your character moves. The game allows you to speed everything up with an option in the gameplay menu, but it didn’t seem fast enough. I found myself “willing” the speed perk to pop up so I could run around faster. There were times I died because I couldn’t get away from a massive horde fast enough.

It’s nice to play a game that makes you think and keeps you on your toes. Too many games these days can be picked up and played with little thought or attention. Be it a shared concept or control scheme, games can be too familiar sometimes. The best way to beat this? Splice two different genres together.

In steps Spellspire does exactly that; a side-scrolling adventure game that brings the best bits from Countdown with it. Thankfully the maths is nowhere to be seen… Phew.

You play as a young wizard who has to travel to the top of a spire and, you can probably see where this is going, you need to create words in order to power your attacks. The bigger the word, the more powerful the attack (No rudies though, not that I tried or anything).

It sounds simple and that’s because it is, and its charm is in this simplicity. As you progress, more enemies stand in your way who get more health and more powerful the further you progress. Thankfully, upon their defeat, they drop coins and leave behind a stash of loot which can be used to power-up your little wizard. Be it a new wand, a robe upgrade or increased health, your gathered loot will enable you to continue scaling the tower.

In what seems to be a recurring theme in games from 10tons, your best hope for progression is to revisit previously beaten floors. A higher difficulty setting brings a greater reward upon your second attempt at clearing each floor. The controls are equally as simplistic as the gameplay; you move to the desired letter with the arrow keys and then press the ‘A’ button to select it. Once you’ve built your word you submit it, and that’s about it.

Albeit simple, this can be a bit clunky and the touchscreen option is the best one for the majority of the time. Even playing with the Joy-Cons detached and holding just the screen on its own like a tablet suits the game perfectly.

So, with that in mind, Spellspire is probably best suited to the mobile market as opposed to the console market. Yes, the Switch is portable, but here it feels like the Switch’s capabilities are somewhat lost, maybe wasted.

Having said that though, Spellspire is the epitome of a pick up and play game, meaning you can dip in anytime and carry on where you left off.