Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: The Sins of our Forebears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 5.5/10

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

Degrees of Separation: Worlds That Can Never Meet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 7.5/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 6/10

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

Trine 4: Our Beautiful Nightmare.

My history with the Trine series is long, stretching all the way back to 2011. However it could have never happened at all as I missed the game when it first came out, it not really registering as a blip on my radar back then. It was on the recommendation of a friend, one who had noticed the uptick in my gaming consumption, who recommended that I give it a shout. What’s bloomed from that is a love of the quirky series that I’ve seen go through ups and downs over the decade of its existence; from it’s awkward beginnings as a quirky physics based platformer all the way through to its latest incarnation which, I’m happy to say, is the best one in the series to date.

This time our intrepid trio of heroes isn’t summoned to adventure by the Trine, instead the request comes from the Astral Academy. Prince Sellius, one of their “students”, suffers from intense nightmares. This would be one thing but he’s also gifted with potent magic abilities and those nightmares are starting to invade the waking world. So the call goes out once again to the Wizard, the Thief and the Warrior to help save the kingdom from this threat and, hopefully, save the prince in the process.

Trine has always had amazing visuals and the latest instalment is no different. The trademark dreamlike quality is retained, coming to us through the liberal use of bloom and bright lighting effects. The 3D backgrounds and set pieces have become even more elaborate, becoming bigger and more detailed than they ever have before. The game still runs on the in-house proprietary engine and it appears that Frozenbyte has done a great job in improving its capabilities and optimising the implementation as the whole game runs very smoothly, even on old hardware. Suffice to say that Trine continues to be one of the most visually impressive platformers in the market and I’m glad the developers keep pushing themselves to improve upon what they’ve delivered before.

As anyone who played Trine 3 could predict the game has returned to its 2D platformer roots, removing the 3rd dimension and going back to what they know. For fans of the series this is a great thing as whilst the 3D version of Trine was indeed a step up the fact that they could only deliver a third of the game they wanted to with 3 times the budget of Trine 2 says a lot about the effort required to make it work. So in that respect Trine 4 is much more of an evolution of what Trine 2 was rather than a rework of 3 and the mechanics are all back to their roots. There have been some changes to make all characters more equally a part of the overall experience however, notably with the Wizard now having substantial combat capability and the Warrior being a key piece of numerous puzzle mechanics. Progression is now split into 2 tiers: one from combat and one from finding experience jars. The former is effectively the unlock for new puzzle mechanics whilst the latter unlocks augments to those abilities, effectively being quality of life improvements. Frozenbyte describes this as the “most complete Trine” experience they’ve ever created and, I’m glad to say, I wholeheartedly agree with them on that.

Combat is, as it always was, something of an also ran in the Trine experience. To be sure, there’s a more comprehensive combat experience to be had there than there ever has been, but pretty much all the engagements play out in the same way. The addition of more combat abilities to the Wizard, in the form of abilities that allow you to slam objects and levitate enemies, does make for a more varied experience but in all honesty most of them will get done with a lot of hack and slashing. The resurrection mechanic is also very, very forgiving ensuring that you’re unlikely to actually die and need to go back to a checkpoint at any time. To be fair this kind of combat fits into the whole overall zeitgeist of what Trine aims to be: a casual puzzle platformer that could be enjoyed by anyone. In that respect I don’t ever envision the combat aspects getting much more complicated than they already are.

The puzzles have gone back to their roots with physics based problems being the name of the game. The wizard still has the ability to conjure boxes and platforms, the thief grappling hook things and now the warrior’s shield forms a core part of the experience with its reflecting ability. There are numerous augmentations to all of these abilities which bring with them a wide variety of challenges for you to solve. For the most part though the majority of puzzles are going to be heavily focused on the last mechanic you unlocked with only a couple other abilities required to solve them, at least for the main puzzles. The secret ones do ramp up the challenge somewhat although they, like pretty much every puzzle that’s ever been created in Trine, is subject to the whims and whiles of the emergent gameplay that the series is well known for.

Initially you’re pretty limited in the shenanigans that you can get up to as your abilities are significantly limited. However once you’re able to summon 2 items things start to get pretty interesting and only start to rocket up from there. Indeed the combination of multiple boxes plus the fairy rope means you’re able to make platforms of arbitrary height that you can grapple onto, meaning that no matter what the height of something is you’ll be able to get to it. Combine that with the fact that the developers have still not solved the likely unsolvable issue of the Wizard levitating things he’s standing on in some capacity (this time you can grapple 2 boxes together and then levitate one of them, which can fling you basically anywhere) and you’ve got a recipe for some rather whacky solutions to the puzzles at hand. Additionally, and I don’t remember noticing this in Trine 2, but the co-op aspects have obviously played a bit into the level design as there are some puzzles that have multiple solutions, most only requiring one character. So for those it’s usually very easy to get past them with all 3 abilities at your disposal.

Despite all of that though the game is very well polished, not really suffering from any major game breaking issues or glitches. I mean sure, there were times where something happened that I wasn’t exactly expecting but I was deliberately trying to find ways to break the game’s physics engine in order to solve a puzzle in an easier way than intended. Perhaps my most enjoyable moments was when I was trying to grappling hook 2 boxes together, one of which was directly on top of the other. Doing that is fine however the second you start to levitate them things go wildly out of control as they start to clip and bounce off each other. I’m sure there’s easy fixes for edge cases like that but honestly, I think the game is better off with them in.

The story is perhaps the most well fleshed out of the Trine series but it’s not like that was a high bar to get over. The focus of Trine has always been on the visual and puzzle experience, notsomuch the characters or the world that they reside in. To be sure this does expand the world of Trine a little but it’s a pretty standard affair with a rather predictable outcome. Thankfully the story doesn’t get in the way of the game at all, mostly playing as background to what’s happening on screen.

Trine 4 is a return to form for the series, taking the essence of what made it great originally and building that up significantly. The more varied and deeper puzzle mechanics make for some truly interesting game play, especially with the trademark exploitable physics engine that allows you to do all sorts of things that the developers never intended you to do. The visuals are once again of AAA quality, retaining the same stylings that have become a trademark of the game. The usual not-so-great features are still present in this instalment with the middling combat experience and a run-of-the-mill story that you’re likely to forget shortly after playing. Still what makes a Trine game great is here in spades and for fans of the series this is a definite must-play.

Rating: 8.5/10

Trine 4 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch right now for $42.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 9 hours playtime and 53% of the achievements unlocked.

Sayonara Wild Hearts: Something’s Changed.

One of my favourite games to play on my PlayStation Portable back in the day was Lumines. Something about the combination of pop hits with an easy to understand but hard to master block dropping mechanic made it the perfect little time waster game. I haven’t gone back to the series in a long time however and until I opened up Sayonara Wild Hearts I didn’t know how much I missed these kinds of games. You see, whilst there is very much a challenging game to master under the hood, the overall experience itself is enough to carry the game along. Indeed much like Lumines, which took me forever to get through all of its songs, I doubt I’ll ever master what Sayonara Wild Hearts has to offer but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a great time playing through it.

As the heart of a young woman breaks, the balance of the universe is disturbed. A diamond butterfly appears in her dreams and leads her through a highway in the sky, where she finds her other self: the masked biker called The Fool. To restore balance you’ll have to do battle with the elements of the universe that seek to disrupt order and bring chaos. You’ll do this through riding motorcycles, skateboarding, dance battling, shooting lasers, wielding swords, and breaking hearts at 200 mph.

Sayonara Wild Hearts’ visuals are a striking combination of low-fi textureless models and a colour palette* that shifts and morphs as you play through each of the levels. It almost feels inspired by the early days of 3D graphics in games with some of the models feeling like they were ripped out of Star Fox 64. These low poly visuals ensure that the game will run lightening fast on pretty much any platform which is likely going to be a necessity if you’re playing it on an iOS device. You’re not going to have much time to gawk at the visuals though as they’re going to fly by you at a rapid clip.

At its core Sayonara Wild Hearts is a rhythm game, its pace directly tied to the game’s pumping soundtrack. Now it’s been some time since I’ve played a game in this genre as I’m not usually a fan of them but it feels like Wild Hearts has taken a grab bag of basically every single mechanic in the genre and smashed them together. I don’t think this is a bad thing as it keeps you engaged and challenged throughout the game’s short play time. Of course just completing all the levels once is probably doing the game a disservice as it’s very much designed to be mastered over the course of multiple playthroughs.

The developers went to great lengths to ensure that the game’s pace didn’t slow down, even if you failed a certain challenge. I was really impressed with how rapidly it put you right back in the action and how little progress you lost when you failed. There’s even a built-in skip mechanic that’ll trigger after a certain number of failed attempts, ensuring that pretty much anyone will be able to make it through to the end. Couple that with the concise level segments it makes it very easy to pick the game up for 10 minutes or so and come back to it later, something I’m coming to appreciate a lot more of late.

Sayonara Wild Hearts reminded me of the joy I had playing games that based themselves around a solid pop sound track. It’s a short, well crafted experience that anyone should be able to get through in an hour or two. Indeed if I had an iOS device I’d likely have it installed there as my go-to time waster game for a while to come. Really there’s not much more that needs to be sad about it as if you’re not sold already you’ll know either way 5 minutes into your first playthrough.

Rating: 8.25/10

Sayonara Wild Hearts is available on PC, Nintendo Switch and iOS right now for $18.50. Total play time was 68 minutes with 4% of the achievements unlocked.

* Reading into the game’s development it appears that the colouring comes from the Bisexual Lighting palette, something I was not aware of before writing this review!

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: Life After Order 66.

Going into games with little to no expectations makes for some…surprising moments. Most of the time I know what kind of experience I’m in for but there are times when I haven’t looked into the game beyond a cinematic trailer or two before I consider myself sold on playing it. Such is the case with Jedi: Fallen Order as I’m something of a Star Wars and Respawn Entertainment fan so I figured it was a done deal that I’d enjoy whatever happened when the two were combined. Imagine my surprise when I find myself in the middle of a Star Wars soulslike experience, far from the traditional RPG or third person shooter style games that this IP has been known for. Coming into this game somewhat late in the piece means I missed most of the extreme jank that plagued early reviews but still, as an overall experience, I think Fallen Order could do with some more work in a few key areas.

Five years after the execution of Order 66 and the beginning of the Great Jedi Purge, former Jedi Padawan Cal Kestis is in hiding from the newly risen Galactic Empire. On the planet Bracca, where he works as a scrapper salvaging ships from the Clone Wars. After he uses the force to save one of his friends from certain doom he becomes a target for the Inquisitors, an elite squadron of force users trained by Darth Vader himself. Luckily Cal is able to escape with the help of a former Jedi Knight named Cere Junda and her partner pilot Greez Dritus. Cere then tells you of her plan to rebuild the Jedi order using a holocron that contains the names of numerous force sensitive children scattered throughout the universe.

Fallen Order’s visuals excel in the wide open spaces that it puts you in, the wide vistas in the background providing some great screenshot bait. Up close however it’s clear that the visuals have been tuned a little bit more towards the performance end, wanting to ensure that the framerate remains more consistent during heavy action sequences. Part of that could also be due to my older rig not being capable of rendering more detail as I know that the PlayStation 4 version has a “performance” graphics setting which is recommended for non-pro users which looks quite similar to the results I’m seeing here. Even with all of that taken into consideration Fallen Order is still a fine looking game.

Fallen Order doesn’t make too many changes to the souslike core game loop, staying pretty true to the original formula. You have bonfires (meditation points), estus flask (stims), maps that twist and turn on themselves to reveal shortcuts that will make repeated trips through them quicker and a progression system that punishes death in the usual way. Fallen Order is a little more generous with its various mechanics however, making it one of the more tame soulslike experiences I’ve played to date. The only real changes to the formula are the much more contained levels with each world being its own distinct area to explore and the combat tending towards Bloodborne a little more than a traditional souls game. If you’ve been shying away from this genre for a while now I’d say that Fallen Order would be a good place to start, especially if you’re a fan of the IP it comes from.

Following the Bloodborne style for combat means that the game’s pace is a lot faster than your traditional souls game, being a little more hack ‘n’ slash rather than a strategic stamina management battle. Parrying is very much the name of the game here as you’ll have a much easier time if you’re able to hit the required timings rather than trying to dodge your way through everything. That’s partly due to the parry timing being somewhat generous and the dodging feeling a little buggy as it rarely works as you’d expect it to. Indeed the whole integration of the physics engine with the combat mechanics doesn’t feel 100%, even after the patches that took out the most egregious errors that plagued the game’s release.

That, coupled with the game’s rather basic approach to increasing the challenge for you (mostly by just throwing more enemies at you and/or the time between save points) makes for a combat experience that’s a little below par. To be sure there’s some great fights in there and I quite enjoyed a lot of the boss battles as they really did capture that same feeling I got when facing down bosses in other souls games. However much of the later challenge was really just frustration, forcing me to replay through sections over and over again just because I encountered something that I couldn’t have planned for. There was a lot of scope for Respawn to make every world have its own unique set of challenges with different enemies and mechanics but, in the end, they opted for most of them to be basically the same with only slight variations in the trash mobs. That could have been done a lot better.

Progression comes pretty steadily as you gain XP by defeating enemies, finding collectibles and unlocking secrets. Early on you’re likely going to unlock all of the skills available before you get the next tier unlocked and, even towards the end of the game, you’re likely going to be wondering what you really want to spend your points on. For the most part though the skills and upgrades are minor improvements and there’s no one build that’s going to be a lot better than others. To be sure there’s a few skills which will likely make some encounters a little easier than others but you won’t be able to say, build around a particular boss in order to cheese them.

Exploration feels somewhat rewarding however looking for all the crates isn’t something you’re going to need to do. Pretty much all the items contained in them are just cosmetics with no impact to your character’s stats at all. There are upgrades to your health and force scattered around the place but they barely feel worth seeking out as the talent tree does a good enough job of bolstering those up for you.

Whilst I never had any issues with the game freezing or crashing there was still a good helping of physics and hitbox related issues during my playthrough. I couldn’t tell you how many times I jumped at a rope, tried to wall run or jump onto a small rail only to have Cal fall to his death. That only got more frustrating during the more challenging platforming sections as I’d often fail at the last point, requiring me to replay the whole section again. This physics and hitbox jankiness pervades throughout all of the game’s various elements making for a rather annoying and inconsistent experience at times. It’s certainly no where near as bad now as some of the early videos show but there’s still a lot of room for improvement here.

Fallen Order’s story goes through peaks and troughs; sometimes reeling you in with some heartfelt moments whilst at others falling utterly flat. Usually this comes down to bad pacing however Fallen Order does manage to get that right, delivering story items at a consistent rate to keep you engaged enough. I think it partly comes down to a lot of false crescendos as the story appears to be leading to a pivotal point only to shoot off in a completely arbitrary direction, making you feel like you really haven’t gotten as far as you think. The one thing I will credit them for is not relying heavily on main Star Wars characters to drive everything, a sin many Star Wars games commit all too frequently.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a competent soulslike experience that suffers from some fundamental technical issues that make it a good, but not great experience. There are glimmers of excellence all over the place, from the expansive visual set pieces to the steady pace of progression and some key story moments that really hit home. But those are buried under the janky physics and hitbox issues that pervade the rest of the experience making things like combat, exploration and solving puzzles a frustrating experience. This is something that will, hopefully, get better over time but as it stands today, even after a couple patches, Jedi: Fallen Order is a game that’s probably best picked up when it’s on sale a few months from now.

Rating: 7.5/10

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One right now for $89.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 17 hours play time and 46% of the achievements unlocked.

Death Stranding: Once, There was an Explosion.

Death Stranding’s genesis is perhaps one of the most well known controversies in recent memory. Hideo Kojima, ousted from his position at Konami, reformed his company Kojima Productions with the assistance of Sony. Their first order of business was to begin working on a new franchise and, some 3 years ago now, he unveiled the first trailer of Death Stranding. For someone who’d never really gotten into the Metal Gear series of games I knew little of Kojima’s work directly, but I knew of the large following his games had developed thanks to their heavy story focus and inventive mechanics. However the trailer alone was enough to sell me on the idea of the game, giving us precious little details about what the title would actually be but teasing a few concepts that had me intrigued. Suffice to say I don’t think anyone back then expected the game we have today but, after spending the last 3 weeks playing my way through it, I can say that it’s likely 2019’s best game in almost all respects. Truly this is a product of an industry veteran who knows how develop unique, inventive concepts but also have the drive to see them through to reality.

The game’s namesake is an event that occurred some time ago, ravaging the world and blurring the line that separates the world of the dead from the living. Now Beached Things (invisible creatures originating from the “Beach”, a land said to be the link to the world of the dead) roam the earth seeking to drag anyone they come across to the underworld. You are Sam Porter, a member of the Bridges corporation, who’s ultimate goal is to reunite the now shattered United States into a new order called the United Cities of America. It’s your job to deliver goods from one place to another, navigating the ravaged world and avoiding all the horrors that now lie within it. However it’s clear that there’s some history between you and the new leader of the free world and you soon find yourself reluctantly agreeing to work with Bridges to unite all of the fractured cities together.

Death Stranding comes to us via the Decima Engine which has brought us other such gorgeous titles like Horizon Zero Dawn. As you’d expect from a late-in-the-generation game Death Stranding makes full use of the PlayStation 4 hardware, delivering amazing visuals in all respects. The environments are not immutable either, with dynamic weather systems, interactions from other players in the shared world and even your own actions. All of this is wrapped up in amazing game direction with many aspects of the game expertly crafted to have maximum impact on you as a player. Finally the game’s soundtrack and foley work is second to none, rounding out the experience completely. This high level of craftsmanship makes for an extremely immersive experience, beyond that of any title in recent memory. I guess I should’ve expected no less from someone who’s been a leader in this industry for over 2 decades.

Mechanically Death Stranding is a mix of various different standard game tropes with a core game loop that’s really unlike anything else out there. At a basic level you’re a delivery guy, tasked with taking cargo from point A to point B whereupon you’ll be rated by various metrics like how damaged the cargo is, how long it took you to get there and whether or not you helped out others along the way. In all honesty I wouldn’t blame you if your eyes were rolling back into your head at this point but past a certain point, once a few of the more interesting mechanics have been unlocked, the game loop really starts coming together. That’s when the challenge starts to ramp up as well and some other core mechanics, like the third person shooter part, come into play. You’re also part of a shared world with other players, enabling you to utilise structures and items that have either been placed or even lost by other players. I could go on for some time about the various different mechanics that the game throws at you as it never really feels like you’ve unlocked everything, even when you’re right at the game’s conclusion. Suffice to say Death Stranding is an experience that evolves significantly over its play time, giving you a good reason to keep plugging onwards.

One piece advice I read about early on was to get to Chapter 3 as quickly as you possibly can and that advice is sound. The early game is a slow, plodding experience as you don’t have access to some of the core tools which make the game a lot less frustrating to play. Additionally areas after the initial one have far more structures thanks to many players in the community contributing resources to things like roads or strategically placing all manner of buildings to make your life easier. Indeed if you’re playing this game after reading this review there’s a good chance your world will likely have highways that stretch to most of the game’s most important points, charging stations at various points to ensure you never run out of juice for your vehicles and signposts everywhere that do many things from warning you of upcoming danger to even giving your vehicles a boost. Honestly I felt a little spoiled in the mid-game because of this but I see that this is actually a part of the overall experience and it encourages you to pay it forward.

It was for that reason I spent quite a bit of time farming materials to complete 2 sections of road and built numerous structures along routes I took when I noticed that say, the charge on my vehicle was running low or there was 2 zip lines that, for some reason, didn’t have an interconnecting middle section, rendering both of them useless. Of course part of this is motivated by likes, which are basically just an in-game metric of how much you’ve contributed to other’s experience of the game, as there’s nothing quite like see a roll of names go by indicating that you’ve actually done something that’s impacted another player’s game. I’ve had inclinations to go back now that I’ve finished the game and help out with getting the roads fully completed but, after some 35 hours in game, I figured it was time to let the experience breathe for a little bit.

Stealth is a not-so-small part of Death Stranding’s experience although it comes in two flavours: avoiding BTs and sneaking up on the human enemies (MULEs and Terrorists). Initially the BT avoiding sections are a bit of a pain in the ass as it’s not made entirely clear how they actually track you. For the most part it doesn’t seem to matter how much noise you make (although I didn’t test firing a gun next to them…hmmmm) and it seems to be mostly related to how close you are and whether or not you’re holding your breath. I found the most successful way to navigate your way through a BT field was to get close enough so that the Odradek is spinning and still blue and then walk in such a way that you’re gradually putting distance between you and them. Then, if you accidentally get a bit too close, hold your breath and leg it past them and then take a breath once you’re back in spinny blue territory. That likely makes zero sense if you haven’t actually played Death Stranding but if you’re going to play it keep that in the back of your mind.

Stealthing around human enemies works in mostly the same way although, if I’m honest, you really don’t need to bother. Sure it’s kinda fun to hog tie up an entire encampment but it takes so long to do it’s just not worth it. Instead you’re probably best served by sneaking up on the first few and then whipping out your weapon of choice and going to town. Indeed I can’t even think of a part of the game that required you to go full stealth as even some of the final encounters, which were ostensibly built around that, can be cheesed somewhat by leveraging other mechanics. If I’m honest though I quite like that as it means you’re always able to use the playstyle that suits you the best.

The third person shooter parts are probably the weakest part of the Death Stranding experience as the aiming feels a little wonky. Granted this may be because it’s been some time since I’ve played a shooter on the console and there’s usually long breaks between shooter encounters, limiting the amount of practice you can get in. Still, there’s a variety of weapons at your disposal and if you put enough effort in the right places you can get some upgraded versions that are much, much better than their lower tier counterparts. I have no doubts that a few sections were made a lot easier for me since I had the Level 3 Non-Lethal Assault rifle almost immediately after getting the Level 2 version, meaning I could carry a single one and still have enough stopping power to get me through nearly all of the game’s encounters. I still kept a bola gun most of the time as that, if used correctly, is effectively a one shot kill for human enemies and with a 14 round magazine I could sometimes take out an entire MULE camp with it.

The core game mechanic of delivering cargo starts off being extremely tedious as you have to walk everywhere and you don’t have any kit to help you move faster or carry more cargo. As you unlock more things like vehicles, powered skeletons and higher tier boots though things start to get a lot easier, at least for the run of the mill deliveries. Of course with more tools the game is able to present you with greater challenges and you’ll quickly start coming across delivery missions that require some planning in order to get them done. For most of the mid game you’ll likely be well served by the standard reverse trike as that can go pretty much anywhere Sam can, even through dense fields of BTs if you manage to play your cards right. Once you’re in the mountains though vehicle use starts to become quite tricky, only really getting you about 20% of the way before it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. If I’m honest the mountain section of the game was probably my least favourite time as it was both challenging and bereft of solid story progress, making it a bit of a chore. Hopefully there’s more zip lines available when you’re playing through this section!

Progression comes at a pretty steady pace although, if I’m honest, it does give the game a kind of perpetual tutorial feel as you can never be quite sure you’re seeing everything the game has to offer. The various ratings shown after each delivery will increase the various stats you have although, if I’m honest, I saw much bigger differences from the various upgrades than I ever saw from the various rank ups I got. Thankfully the game doesn’t punish you for not doing lots of side missions either and, if you’re a player like me, you can basically go through the whole game without doing a single side mission if you want. You’ll likely end up doing a few though just because there’s no reason not to and contributing to the shared world does feel rewarding.

There are a few small issues in Death Standing, some of which can go either way depending on your situation and others that would just be quality of life improvements. The physics engine is a little…generous with its interpretation of how things should work and this can mean you can get yourself into places that really shouldn’t be accessible. At the same time should you do something that the physics engine doesn’t quite understand your likely to find yourself (and your cargo) thrown unceremoniously in a random direction. Now I didn’t get this too often, but there were times when I’d say, try to exit a car only for the game to instantly think I was falling down a steep slope which then ended up with me smashing into the side of the car. Some of the other issues I was going to mention (like not being able to see the Odradek sometimes) are going to be fixed in an upcoming patch, so it’s very likely that your experience will be much smoother from that perspective. Other than that the game runs perfectly well.

What really got me hooked though was the story and the consistent pace at which it was delivered. Completing every main mission was usually accompanied by a cutscene that delivered additional detail which helped immensely with keeping me engaged through the game’s long play time. All of the characters are well thought out, given ample time for their backstories to develop and, perhaps most importantly, are expertly delivered by their respective actors. It speaks volumes when not one, but two of the actors were nominated for Best Performance at The Game Awards for their roles in Death Stranding and one of them (Mads Mikkelsen) took home the award. There’s a few issues with the story that I won’t go into detail about, lest I ruin what it for some, but suffice to say the fact that I’m still thinking about it and processing it some time after finishing it means it’s had quite the impact on me.

Death Stranding is a masterpiece, showing what can happen when high concept thinking meets the dedication to deliver. All aspects of the game are expertly crafted: from the visuals which come from a highly revved up Decima engine, to the game’s audio experience and, perhaps most importantly, the actors that bring the game’s characters to life. To be sure it’s not a game for everyone as the core game loop and the first 8 hours or so are likely to turn quite a few people off it. However sticking through that initial part opens up a world that’s ever changing, growing in response to the collective effort that all players invest in it. I’m glad to have played my part in helping build out that world and for the experience that Death Stranding has given me. It is truly a game for those who seek a deeply immersive experience, one that resonate with you for years to come.

Rating: 9.5/10

Death Stranding is available on PlayStation 4 right now (coming to PC in late 2020) for $89.95. Total play time was 35 hours with 57% of the achievements unlocked.

Undefeated: Simple, Spammy Fun.

I’ve found myself stumbling across a lot more work from game developer students of late and I have to say I’m continually impressed at the work they’re putting out. To be sure part of it is because of my own history in trying to make games with mixed results although I do contend that they were crafted over a decade ago, long before Unity and its community were in existence. Still the fact that students make games is only part of it as it’s more about the quality of what they’re putting out which bears mention. Undefeated is a fantastic example of this as it manages to do what a lot of other, bigger budget titles fail to do: make being a superhero just plain fun.

Undefeated’s premise is simple: there’s a city in trouble and it’s up to you to save it. Initially this takes the form of beating down the hordes of rank and file bad guys who are getting in your way, stopping to help citizens in trouble as you do so for good measure. From there it turns into a kind of superhero anime where you’ll have to level yourself up through the ranks so you can take on the ever increasing threats to the city (mostly in the form of boss fights). In all honesty I went into this thinking I’d have yet another trash heap to review but, to its credit, Undefeated managed to get me hooked no less than 5 minutes into the game.

Visually Undefeated is quite simple, retaining that default “Unreal engine” feel that many games built on the platform have when they use assets from the store. The UI does appear to have been given some love though, mostly to give it that very distinct Japanese UI design that lovers of JRPGs and other such titles seem to favour heavily. This simplicity means that the game runs buttery smooth and will quite likely do so on pretty much any platform you care to throw it at. However it’s not the visuals that makes this game, it’s the rapid pace and careful selection of mechanics that makes it so gosh darn fun.

You’re immediately greeted with a game that looks a lot like the Earth Defense Force series of games but plays a lot more like Prototype. The basic premise is you’re a superhero that can fly, has super strength and is lightning fast. This means that you’ll be zipping from point to point, beating the living heck out of something before moving on. It sounds simple but the execution is spot on, giving you this feeling of being completely unrivalled as you tear your way through streams of enemies. The two mission types follow the same trope, either having you blow up a bunch of stuff or flying through rings. There’s also minor events which will spawn every so often, usually just another bunch of bad guys which you can take out in a couple hits.

Then there’s the boss fights which are where the game’s challenge really starts to kick in. Instead of you having a health bar it’s actually the city and the challenge comes from stopping the boss from doing damage to the city whilst you try to pummel them down. Each one of the bosses is another big step up in difficulty from the last one, with every one bar the first requiring at least some kind of strategy to take them out. It’s at that point where the game starts to struggle a bit as the shine wears off and the game’s more egregious errors start to come through.

Of course they’re the kind of things you’d expect from a small group of students working on their very first title. The controls can feel a bit janky at times, your character not responding exactly how you’d expect him to. Hit detection could also use a bit of work as it doesn’t seem to be 100%, especially with the boss fights (like trying to put out fires). The camera also routinely loses your character when he’s zipping around certain things which can make some challenges far more difficult than they were intended to be. The control scheme is also somewhat unintuitive, although I’ll admit to not having played a great deal of Eastern titles so it could feel a lot more natural to those who do. Overall these are all fixable things and they’re easy enough to ignore to enjoy a good chunk of the game.

Undefeated is a fantastic example of the results you can get when you focus on the fundamentals of what makes your game fun. Sure the graphics aren’t the greatest and there’s a bunch of rough edges that need polishing but the core game play is just, well fun. The fact that a handful of students from Japan were able to recreate the fundamental game loop of some bigger AAA titles is honestly quite astounding and I hope the team that put this one together has a serious look at building out a fully fledged title.

Rating: 8.25/10

Undefeated is available on Steam now for free. Total play time was 33 minutes.

Discolored: Lifeless.

Games that play with colour, whether it be from the basic idea of restoring it to your world (ala Gris) or the more advanced mechanical based ones like Antichamber, have held some significant fascination for me. I’m not quite sure what it is though as it’s not like I’m obsessed with colour in other aspects of my life. So you can likely see why Discolored caught my attention when I was trolling the Steam discovery engine looking for a game to review this week. Whilst the concept was enough to draw me in the execution however is sub-par, it’s simplistic mechanics, lack of any story and general lack of polish made for a rather unsatisfying 75 minutes of game time.

The game’s plot is extremely simplistic; telling you that there’s a diner somewhere that’s lost all its colour and you’ve been sent to investigate. The game doesn’t have any further dialogue or items in the game that’d point as to why that might have been the case, nor does completing any of the puzzles reveal any further insight about that. Now I’ve played my fair share of games that tell stories through unconventional means but Discolored seemingly wants you to believe it has one without actually putting any effort in to develop it. This only makes the game’s ultimate conclusion even more confusing as it offers up no explanation nor real conclusion to your time spent there.

The game’s graphics are…ok, something which usually is neither here nor there but looking at the developer’s webpage it’s clear that he’s capable of producing far better art and assets than what has been included in the game. I can likely hazard a guess as to why: simplicity on the graphics end belies the complexity he likely encountered when trying to code for enabling/disabling the different colours. That’d explain why most of the surfaces are completely flat and untextured and why most of the assets themselves are very basic. Still given the fact that the colour mechanic itself is basic and not particularly interesting I’d honestly say he would’ve been better served toning down the mechanic and focusing on the visuals and story a little more.

Discolored’s mechanics focus somewhat around the idea of restoring colour to the world but for the most part it’s your run of the mill puzzler. None of them are particularly difficult but you’ll likely hit a few walls where you and the developer’s chain of logic part ways. This isn’t helped by the fact that the hit detection is a bit wonky and 90% of the time when I was stuck on something it was when I had clicked on a particular object and it did nothing, necessitating me finding the right angle to actually get it to work. You’d also think that switching or combining different colours would be a major mechanic that the game focuses on but it isn’t, only coming into play a couple of times before the game runs its course.

There’s just nothing really about Discolored that stands out as a reason for you to play it. The mechanics aren’t inventive or novel, the graphics are below average, there’s not a skerrick of a story to be had and the soundtrack is so forgettable that I can’t even really remember if there is one. I was kind of hoping for a new take on the “restore colour to the world” trope but found a very basic puzzler that does little to make you want to keep playing.

I went into Discolored without any expectations really, just looking for a game to tide over the blog between the larger reviews. What I found was a below par game that, given the credentials of the developer, could have been a lot better. The only standout feature is that it’s short so you’re unlikely to waste a great deal of time stumbling through the ham fisted puzzles, gawking at boring graphics or trying to remember if there was a soundtrack or not. To the developer I have this to say: build a game around your strengths. It’s obvious you’ve got skills in 3D artwork, start from that basis and work up.

Rating: 5.5/10

Discolored is available on PC right now for $11.50. Total play time was 75 minutes with 84% of the achievements unlocked.

Superliminal: Hello, I’m Dr Glenn Pierce.

Superliminal and I have some interesting history.

5 years ago there was a video of a perspective based game doing the rounds, one that many people regarded as being the next evolution in games after Portal. There were even rumours that the game which gave rise to the demo was actually playable however looking at the developer’s website no one could find a link to it anymore. So, like the good Internet citizen that I am, I started digging around and eventually uncovered the still active link that the developer had hidden. Not wanting to blow up their server (which is what I assumed the reason was for hiding it) I downloaded and rehosted it on this very blog, telling a few people on reddit about it so they could have a crack at it. Little did I know that, from that point on, I’d become the single source of the demo the world over.

Fast forward a couple years and, for reasons I can’t remember, I was looking for that link again and started Googling my own site to find it. Curiously though I started to find references to it everywhere, some even on YouTube videos that had racked up millions of views. Now I never really noticed anything on my end, my hosting is all done elsewhere and the bandwidth consumed was never that large. I did feel a little miffed though, figuring they could’ve at least given me a shoutout. I have however since learned that the devs said that they’d prefer people don’t play that one anymore, given how far their actual game, Superliminal, has come in the interim.

For what it’s worth guys, apologies if I’ve caused you anything untowards for rehosting it. Because honestly they’re right, Superliminal is far and away the better game.

As you fall asleep with the TV on at 3AM, you remember catching a glimpse of the commercial from Dr.Pierce’s Somnasculpt dream therapy program. By the time you open your eyes, you’re already dreaming – beginning the first stages of this experimental program. This is a world where perception is reality, where how you view things is just as important as how you interact with them. The puzzles put before you are meant to reframe how you perceive the world around you, forcing you to think of different perspectives that you might not otherwise consider until you were forced to confront them.

Visually Superliminal has a very standard Unity feel to it with many of the assets looking like they came from store packs. There’s nothing wrong with this, just that everything has this kind of bland feel to them with their unoffensive, basic construction. No doubt part of this is to try and combat some of the rather severe performance issues the game suffers from, most likely due to the intense calculations required for some of the game’s more unique mechanics. The level design is good however with the run of the mill assets turned into visual marvels through the incredibly inventive use of perspective, quite often getting a good chuckle out of me for how they’d managed to twist my own view of their world against me. I guess you could call it more of a cerebral experience than a visual one.

When the team from Pillow Castle Games first demonstrated the idea it was definitely an unique one; the idea that your perspective of objects influenced their size in the real world. Funnily enough this isn’t the first game I’ve played that has this mechanic, the other being the absolute horrorshow of a game that was Elementium. However the perspective mechanic isn’t just limited to objects that you interact with, it extends to numerous parts of the world, often parts that you wouldn’t expect. The devs have gone to great lengths to create visuals that on the surface look one way but are completely different when viewed up close or from a different perspective. For someone who’s played enough of these kinds of games it’s rare for me to be surprised by perspective tricks like this but Superliminal managed to do it often, even right up until its final moments.

The puzzles built around this mechanic are mostly simple endeavours, mostly focused on being in a single room with a few tools at your disposal to find your way out again. They’re made somewhat easier by the fact that objects you interact with, which therefore have some kind of special property associated with them, are very limited in any one space. There’s no puzzles that require you to bring in objects from previous areas or any other kind of non-linear puzzle mechanic that will spin you out. There are a couple where the mechanic isn’t well introduced and can lead to some horrendous confusion if you can’t figure out the logic path but nothing that’s more than a video or two away from realigning your internal logic compass back to the developer’s.

The game does have quite a few rough edges though, most of which I think are due to the novel nature of the mechanics which introduce all sorts of wacky edge cases that are going to be hard to come across in internal playtesting. The performance issues are something I didn’t expect, even on my now older rig, and I’m sure it’s to do with some objects getting their perspective calculated when the player isn’t interacting with them. Indeed the performance issue disappeared completely in sections where there were little or no objects to interact with. The game’s implementation of portals and other teleport mechanics is a little janky, freaking out in the weirdest circumstances and sometimes sending you right through the world. Strangely Superliminal also suffers from the same issue Elementium did, whereby some objects continue to scale themselves when they’re outside your vision. I don’t doubt that this is due in part to the object being flagged as “interactive” when you pick it up and that flag isn’t turned off until it stops moving. You can also completely ruin certain puzzles if you’re not careful, either making objects too small to interact with or just straight up putting them somewhere you will never be able to reach. Most of these problems are just a checkpoint restart away from being fixed but just be warned that there’s still a lot of rough edges to be found here.


The story spends an awful lot of time in the standard “subject trapped in a mad scientist’s experiment” trope that was made popular by Portal all those years ago. Indeed that’s one of the game’s most distracting features as you feel like you’re playing with a B-grade GLaDOS and the plot reveals itself in a rather predictable way. That changes right in the game’s final stages though when the main narrator begins to talk to you directly about why the experience was crafted that way. In a way it’s a subtle play on the game itself, setting you up with a perception that’s influenced by your biases and then flipping it on it’s head in order to give you a new perspective. Up until that point I was pretty much settled on Superliminal being a “good but not great” kind of game but it really won me over in those final moments.


Superliminal brings with it a new breed of game play that’s sure to have its share of imitators from here on out. The perspective mechanics are numerous, each of them playing on how we perceive things in order demonstrate how that can be twisted in fun and interesting ways. Even with it’s rather long development cycle though there’s still a lot of rough edges to be found, although I’m sure that over the coming months many of these issues will be stamped out. The story, in its summation, is a beautiful meta-commentary on itself and it’s final moments round out the game perfectly. I honestly can’t wait to see where Pillow Castle Games goes to from here.

Rating: 8.75/10

Superliminal is available on the PC right now for $19.99. Total play time was approximately 2.5 hours.