Recent reviews by Hobbes

Grey cubes. It's an unassuming title isn't it? It tells you very little about the game. There are cubes in the game, yes. The cubes are indeed grey. There are also cuboids, flat surfaces, and panes, also varying shades of grey, bluish grey, and on occasion red or even other colours. But mostly grey. Let this game not be accused of false advertising. It is based on the perennial favourite Breakout. A game who's heritage is as old as the all time greats (and much like another game I've recently reviewed - Fine Sweeper), and has had various attempts to refresh it. Some have had a lot of success like Shatter, others, not so much. How does this one stack up?


The game flow, whilst obeying the two dimensional nature of Breakout in the usual manner, does play with the third dimension in clever ways, with blocks often stacked up using the depth plane in clever ways to mask the actual number of blocks you'll need to take out, as well as throwing the blocks in different directions (physics play a part, in more than a few ways). The playfield will on occasion be changed up as well, adjusting itself and forcing you to adapt and improvise as the level literally evolves as you clear the field, the game is full of clever touches that keep things fresh and interesting as you work through the levels.

In an interesting twist, you're also given a usable ability that will magnetise the blocks, sending the ball careening towards them once you've managed to clear more than half the board, a great way to help tidy up the last few stragglers, and to prevent frustration with that "one last block" that tends to pervade these Breakout types of games. It's a clever feature and bears merit on that point in specific.


Much like the clean, stylised presentation of recent games such as Invisible Inc. There's a clean, almost futuristic feel to Grey Cubes that has a specific design vision, helped by the minimalist music, that doesn't overawe the gameplay, but instead complements the action, with blocks being broken up to the accompaniment of various orchestral stings (louder ones based on some power ups as well). Giving the game an almost trancelike state when everything goes right.


Grey cubes, despite it's rather unassuming nature is a very tightly woven game, with enough surprises to make it stand out from most of the Breakout type games on the market (Shatter excepted, but then Shatter was really, REALLY good), it's most definitely recommended for anyone with a hankering for a block smashing.

Verdict : Recommended

Fine sweeper, a game that some would say has been a long time coming, and a game that really should have been done by now. A simple, clean modernisation of Minesweeper. It has mines, it has sweeps, it has some nice extra features, it has music, it has a couple of really fun animations (the mines go boom), the playfields change as you work your way through the levels.


It's Minesweeper. The core gameplay is as old as the hills so I won't belabour that. What's been added, well, aside from the classic game mode, the "Fine Sweeper" mode gives you lives, so if you accidentally blow a mine it may not be the end of the day, you may carry your lives between levels, giving you up to a maximum of seven do-overs before the game ends, and you may retry up to the last level you failed on. The custom mode allows you to set the size of the field and the number of mines, so that's pretty standard, and it has the basic options for sound and music (yes, we have music AT LAST, and it's pretty good).


Considering this could have been a simple retooling of Minesweeper with a marginal graphics polish, Fine Sweeper has actually been a very pleasant surprise, it feels like a genuine coat of polish has been applied and it feels a lot more up to date from the original that we've been used to seeing on almost every version of Windows since day dot. Considering the price is absolutely minimal, this makes it a very nice value proposition for anyone looking for a "premium" minesweeper experience. Seriously, it's a good deal, try it!

Verdict : Highly Recommended

Fermi's path is another in the ever expanding genre of "reaction test" games. I like to call them youtube fodder, they're great when you scale up the difficulty and are able to produce reality bending feats of skill for the video replays, but in general they play to a pretty limited audience. The question is - is this one going to be specifically any better than say Super Hexagon (one of the biggest names in this area) or the more brutal Velocibox?


The game -looks- pretty, with graphics running at a smooth clip, with a smooth palette of colours and vivid backgrounds, there's an almost ephemeral quality to proceedings as you glide along the "rail" towards your goal, avoiding various obstacles, both static and mobile, and you've the ability to rotate in ninety degree increments along the rail, as well as jump and shoot certain types of obstacle to remove them. Herein lies both the biggest twist in Fermi's path, and the major step towards originality in this area, and the problems which in turn, prevent it from escaping the shadow of games like Velocibox and Super Hexagon.


The problem with Fermi's Path, and note, it's something that is subjective, but it's the kind of problem that will be a problem, for anyone who intends to play at speed, is that due to the nature of the game (rotating around a central rail) and the graphical nature of the game, with lots of different colours and effects going on, considering this is intended as a reaction game, there's too much visual information, and at times the rail will obscure the obstacles and route coming up by virtue of the fact the route will be on the *opposite side of the rail* or off by ninety degrees. At low speeds this is quite easy to cope with, but as the game ramps up into twitch territory, this quickly dips into unforgivable sin territory.

Playing a twitch game where you do not have perfect information about what's coming up in the not too dim and distant is the cardinal sin of the twitch game world. In "The path mode" you have the ability to memorise the route by rote, but in randomly generated levels, no such luck.


As a diversion from the more hardcore twitch games, it certainly fills a hole. It has great graphics, and as a way to unwind from the tougher games or even as a way to "warm up" before a session of Velocibox, I could definitely see it serving a role. However, as a twitch game in it's own right, there's several issues that simply mean that compared to the likes of Super Hexagon and Velocibox, well, there's simply better options on the table. This is good, but there is better.

Verdict : Wishlist it, worth considering if you're a big fan of twitch games and need a more sedate option to unwind with

The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt is the conclusion in the trilogy of the Witcher IP series, and arguably represents CDPR's most ambitious project thus far, taking the lessons learned from the first two games and applying them to the Wild Hunt, creating a large, mostly open world role-playing experience where your choices both large and small will matter. Where morality and consequence will have a telling effect on your experience, and where no single choice is always seen as the "best" choice. Full playthroughs of the game clock in at 50-100 hours, and whilst time constraints mean if I wanted to do such a playthrough -and- review the game right the way through I'd not be able to write anything for a few weeks, what I've elected to do is a OCD clearout of the opening zone, which gives a good feeling of "what is to come", and also gives a good idea of what you can expect from the gameplay and graphics and the like.


Everyone has seen the VGX footage by now, the absolutely captivating scenery, the high detail, fantastically furnished terrain, the incidental artistry that made it look like we'd be getting an experience that in terms of art and design would blow the predecessor "Assassins of Kings" right out of the water. Then we get close to release, in game footage comes out and what we actually begin to see is that the textures have been substantially downgraded, the details and geometry have been altered, LOD has taken a massive hit in areas (including the use of the old graphic trick of distant fogging to reduce the render budget), and overall, the whole experience feels like it's lost a lot of the fidelity.

With the 1.0 release, the criticisms came out thick and fast, and CDPR initially denied that there was a "downgrade", opting instead to keep quiet and work on patches to deal with stability, recently they've finally come out and accepted it by way of mea culpa. Presumably because of the fact that there's a Digital Foundry article due soon that would pretty definitively mean they'd have no way to excuse themselves by that point. So now it's damage limitation. The question then is - How big a downgrade is it? First, let's deal with my system specs and my settings :

I run a core i5-4670 (haswell), 16 Gig of Corsair Vengeance ram at DDR3-1600, and an EVGA GTX 770, nothing overclocked, but this system is a good testbed for new games. As of 1.03 I can run the game at 1080p at 60fps, though not a lock at that framerate, at ultra for most settings EXCEPT for HairFX, which as expected wrecks framerates across the board.

The texturing as of 1.03 with sharpening set to max is a mixed bag, in places it's genuinely high quality, in others it reminds me of those crayola drawings you might have seen with "My first brick texture", with no bump or normal mapping. There's an inconsistency present that implies that either there's a serious chunk of work to do with fixing various elements, or that CDPR decided to skimp on texturing where they thought players would not pay serious attention to and just focussed on areas where players would likely be present. Grass and foliage is a mess, it's made of flat textures that can clip the geometry and other decals as well as other items, compared to the VGX footage it's a long, long way back from the highly detailed, low clip texturing that was present. Again, this is stuff that can likely be improved with future patches but right now it's a step down from what was expected.

"From a distance" the game does look genuinely impressive, but get up close and the details fall apart. This is an open world that's been created using watercolour brushes, and that's a problem for people used to the details of say GTA V, where you can go down onto ground level and there's a lot of incidental detail going on.


The gameplay also, is something of a mixed bag, both in terms of combat and in terms of inventory manipulation. First and foremost you're now initially limited to three of a given potion, much like estus flasks in Dark Souls, and you can only refill them by meditating, more to the point, you tend to use these "on the fly" as opposed to preparing and using them up during meditation. Gone are a lot of the longer term things like using a mix of potions before a major fight and balancing your toxicity before engaging, now toxicity raises and lowers in a dynamic that is based more on consumable timing (in a bit like estus usage). This might be me donning my PC Master Race flag at this point but the game definitely feels like it's been blunted for the console crowd. A lot of the refined approaches in "Assassins of Kings" have been simplified to make it more accessible, and not in the good way.

The overall feel is a game that seems more 'hurried' in all aspects, there's more speed in the combat, there's more "rush rush rush" when you're fighting, and a lot of the thoughtful elements in the moment to moment play have been pared back because the console crowd might find it a bit too hard figuring out why you'd want Cat for a specific area and Tawny Owl for another and preparing accordingly.


The big redeeming feature of the Wild Hunt is the roleplay, I can forgive a lot when the writing and the voice acting and the story is as good as the Witcher has become. Assassins of Kings was one of my top picks at the time for it's brilliant story depth and flexibility, and the Wild Hunt definitely shows off the heritage proudly, allowing you to continue in that vein, with choices that already seem to hint at consequences down the line, even in what is supposed to be the "tutorial" area.


Fifty Quid. Nope. So much nope. If you didn't pre-order it and manage to save on it. Or you've got a friend who can source it cheaper through the global markets, so much nope. It's good, but it's not Fifty Quid good. I know there's a push by AAA developers and publishers to raise the price of big budget games up to the level of PS4 and Xbox console prices but get real, this is the internet, and we're not going to pay that for a game that's still not bug free, that -did- suffer the downgrade, and ultimately is a mixed bag overall compared to Assassins of Kings.

Verdict : Recommended, but not at £50, wait for it to come down to a more reasonable price

Some days you get a review, and you know it's fate. Where the game picks you, as much as you pick the game. Kitty Powers is one such game. It's a strange beast, being made up of one part casual coating, one part extremely devious memory games and puzzle minigame, and one part hideous pink topping. Had this been the same mechanics in any other presentation (say, a popcap game), this game would be literally flying off of digital shelves all over the place. The problem stems from well, the insane use of pink, but more of that shortly. Let's get into what the game is about.


You are a fresh hire in the ever expanding world of the Kitty Powers Matchmaking empire. You have been given a franchise branch in a city, and it's your job to service the city by matching people up and sending them off to find love and happiness (or at least make you enough money to keep you in profit). To this end Kitty Powers furnishes you with two hundred "Kitty Coins", a Kitty Powers office which would make Kerry Katona weep tears of joy, and introduces you with a step by step tutorial that teaches you the ins and outs of the basics of the game, as well as introducing you to some of the most basic of the minigames you'll encounter.

Once you've completed your first tutorial date, the training wheels come off, and you can use your Kitty coins to purchase anything that's within your level. As you successfully complete dates and match couples, you'll gain reputation and experience, this unlocks more things to spend your coins on, and as it turns out, there's a lot to buy. There's a big selection of restaurants to pick up, there's a wide bevy of make-up customisation to groom your dates before the night out, as well as additional pages in Kitty's book for room for more dates to give you extra leeway in selecting possible date options. In short, this game has depth, which is surprising, it will take you time, quite a bit of it, if you want to see everything.

Each restaurant comes with its' own unique events, along with a generic pool that means each restaurant encounter will be different, along with the conversation system (where you "pull the love handle", deities help me, that's a thing now) which not only requires you to remember the personality types of each date, but enforces harsh penalties if you repeat topics, not just on the same date, but on previous dates as well. For a supposedly casual game, this one doesn't pull its' punches when it comes to the memory mini-games and layering on the difficulty over multiple dates. You get reminders about topics covered and restaurants visited with a given couple, but the game will make damn sure that you're kept on your toes. It might -look- casual, but under that cute exterior, this game has a rather steely spine.


It's all presented in this smooth, glossy casual style that immediately evokes memories of Popcap games, and has that easy, big button approach that makes it very straightforward, and friendly to those even with poor fine motor skills (even if the humour sails terribly close to the wind on many an occasion). The art style is very, very consistent, albeit in many cases you're going to wish that the designers had a volume dial and they used it to tone the damn thing down, the game uses neon pink liberally. Great for calibrating your monitor, not great for your eyes, have ice buckets on standby if you intend to play more than half an hour at a time.

Herein lies the great contradiction at the heart of the game, the mechanics are good, and in any other game there's the foundation and the scaffolds of something really good. This game hasn't got the positive reviews it has just for being he-he-hilarious. It's got them because when you manage to get past the horrific pink, there's a really solid game under the surface. But the visual design is going to deter people, I mean it uses comic sans fer chrissakes. That's not how you win the hearts and minds of some people. But then I have concluded the audience for this game is likely not the traditional audience who plays things like say, Counter Strike or the likes. Still, softening the pink would have helped a lot.


The game does a really good job of translating both the concept of a dating game, something that to now has always been done pretty terribly, and the longer term effects (by sending letters) using good procedural generation techniques. It's managed this by taking itself "not very seriously". This game isn't afraid to poke fun at itself, the loading screens are full of self deprecating humour, the game likes to jibe about various game genres, it asks you to "Pull the love handle" with a straight face, it throws chintz about in the same way Max Payne threw bullets.

In turning the whole process of dating, love and romance into this utterly comic and slightly off the wall casual game that's both approachable and yet at the same time potentially really tricky, it strikes a fine balance. As you get into the higher difficulty dates, you'll find the memory games get genuinely hard, like, brain training hard. You'll be asked to remember details that you may not have been paying much attention to ordinarily, you'll be asked to remember and pick out the desert from a list as they roll past, you'll be asked to correctly identify and order food based on vague descriptions. As I said, inside this cute chintzy game, there's a really tough nut in the center.

It's just too damned pink.


So. Hm. How do I put this. It's good. As much as I grit my teeth and press the button to recommend this, it's actually a good game once you get past the first initial dates and the difficulty ramps up. But you'll need a serious tolerance for the visual design (or a good pair of sunglasses) and probably Clicker Heroes so you can hide what you're doing, lest people stare at your Steam Profile and go "What in the name of gods..."

Verdict : Highly Recommended as a guilty pleasure. So do your research first, and/or run Clicker Heroes so people don't start laughing loudly in your chat window.

Distant Star : Revenant Fleet (from here on out I'll call it DSRF, because I like my fingers and typing that over and over will murder my keyboard) is one of the "Second Generation" of Early Access games, having now seen and made it through the initial wave of Early Access highs and lows, we're now seeing a more matured approach to the Early Access platform, with more specialised projects and more consistent and constrained planning resulting in products that actually deliver on their promises. DSRF was sold as a Rogue "lite" in space, where you'd assemble a small fleet of ships, guide them across the solar system, and then engage in a showdown in a final battle much like the genre definer FTL.


Much like FTL, you work your way across multiple sectors, each sector contains multiple jumps, however, unlike FTL, there's only four sectors that you'll be working your way across as you head towards the final battle, meaning your average playthrough is much closer to two to four hours, as opposed to the four to eight in FTL. However, unlike FTL, instead of managing -one- ship with a few upgrades, here you'll be managing a full fleet, each with their own weapon systems (in some cases, multiple weapons systems), sub systems, and passive systems.

The blend of upgrades means that fleets can in theory be quite unique (in practice, there's usually one generally optimal approach for fixing the deficiencies for each ship, straying too far is a bad idea). The ships too will upgrade with experience, granting bonuses in various ways, again, helping you compensate for their weaknesses or exaggerating their strengths. These upgrades are not exactly anything amazingly unique, but there's a good enough variety per ship to keep things interesting.

Of special mention are the weapon systems, of which there is a serious number, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, allowing for a significant degree of tactical flexibility and nuance within your fleet, this is extremely useful, and can allow for a player to adapt on the fly, particularly if things go sideways and they lose a valuable ship during the course of the voyage.


Once you jump into a sector, the game moves to a top down view of your ships, moving around a two dimensional "pane" of space, with the sun behind it, filtering light through to give a sort of 3D effect. It's rather effective, and pretty. Combat therefore works by ordering your fleet (up to five units) around the 2D map and having them reposition, attack, use specials, cover each other, heal each other, etc. Line of Sight can be used and abused to cover each other (units are solid objects, so weapons will hit the first thing they make contact with), and specials are often "skillshots", which means that moving can disrupt or even cause them to miss.

This should sound very much like a singleplayer version of most MOBA type games, and that's because in a sense, it is. It carries a lot of the fundamentals of that type of game in the genesis when you're playing the tactical map mode, but you have the benefit of a pause mode that allows you to issue orders and activate specials whilst the pause is set, then allow time to proceed on its' merry way once more, pausing when you need to issue fresh orders. Disabled units will suffer critical damage at first, represented by debuffs that carry over from sector to sector, however, with each critical suffered, the chance for them to be entirely destroyed begins to tick up, if they take too many criticals, well, you may lose a ship altogether, and in this game, that can be a punishing blow, especially late game. Units in this game are extremely valuable, and losing one can be crippling, enough to trash a game and force a restart.


The A'kari are not a pleasant or amiable lot. Their culture is very warrior caste, and it's very clear as you travel through space that you are just "a side" in the war, if anything it's quite possible that you're the bad guys. This moral ambiguity is both interesting and potentially a downside, the problem with such a situation is that for some players, it's important to have the belief that they're on the "good" side when playing these kinds of games. The A'kari often resort to less than wholesome tactics to make their way through the game (as the necessity of their mission requires), but that will come with a moral weight to it, and if you become invested or put some time into thinking about the lore or backstory of the game, well, it may leave you wondering if you're actually playing for the right side.


The graphics aren't -quite- Homeworld Remastered, but nonetheless, they're definitely good enough to pass muster, presenting clearly defined racial ships for both the A'kari and the Orthani, along with a third set of ships for the neutral Pirates. The backdrop itself is colourful and clear, with a good set of nebulae and lighting presentation being well handled and running smoothly throughout. This is a well designed and imagined game. Of specific mention is the soundtrack, which is really, really good. We're talking standout quality, easily worthy of being a standalone OST if ever they decide to release it as such.


When combat takes place, the playfield is colourful and bright, the music sweeps up to an orchestral swell, the explosions are many, debris litters the place as ships disintegrate in style. This game makes space combat look -good-, and does a good job of hiding the MOBA style combat under it's interface and behind the active-pause button, but with the limited number of sectors, and the fact that the game doesn't support the same level of replayability as FTL, this is a game to play in shorter bursts, as a side dish to things like FTL.


DSRF does a lot right, and in some areas it does break some interesting new ground, however, it doesn't -quite- do enough to break free of FTL's shadow, and it doesn't quite do enough to stand far enough away to net it my unguarded praise. Which is a shame, because there's a lot to like about this game, for people who are big on Sci-Fi and Roguelites, this may prove to be too tempting to miss, for people who are looking to get "into" such games, FTL is still the daddy.

Verdict : Wishlist it, if you're a fan of Sci-Fi, and particularly FTL, give this one some serious consideration.

Dustbowl appeared silently on Steam a few days ago. No fanfare, no publicity, one moment silence and the next. *poof* It's here. A little slice of retro-apocalypse goodness. The brainchild of two developers, Dustbowl is set after the visitations of an alien race who covered the land in a biochemical dust that quite literally rendered the surface of the planet unlivable. A toxic, barren wasteland (drawing inspiration from the UFO afterlight storyline) where what remains of humanity gathers together in small underground shelters, away from danger, away from the light.

Technology has fallen apart, and humanity lives precariously on the cusp of extinction, this is very much the death throes of society, with people still struggling to come to terms with what has happened. Worse, your shelter seems to be suffering a major case of the shakes, prompting the leader of the shelter to call two of the most experienced surface scavengers to a meeting, and to plea to them for assistance. One, your father, reluctantly volunteers to see what is causing the tremors, leaving you alone in the shelter to find your way, and find answers.


The world of dustbowl is consistent, and very quickly shows itself to be deep, full of characters suffering and broken by the very events that have driven them underground, the survivors in the HUB feel just like that, survivors by necessity. Some showing clear signs of depression, others panicking and more concerned about their own skin, others yet just getting slam drunk because "who cares, the world is going to hell"

And this is just the first area, once you get out into the game overworld, it's not going to get any more cute and cuddly either, I can assure you of that much. The game overworld is meaty, sporting multiple locations that will require you to either talk, shoot or puzzle your way through them. The game falls somewhere between a Role Playing Game and a point and click adventure, and even borrows some elements from survival sandbox games with thirst, hunger and tiredness being perennial beasts that stalk you every step of the way. In case you're feeling particularly masochistic, the developers even put in a hardcore mode, which yes, will delete your save file when you die. You will die. This game does not pull punches.


If there is one criticism I could, and should level at this game, it's that the game engine (Adventure Game Maker) is almost certainly running at the absolute roof of it's capability here. The developer has crafted a masterpiece in Dustbowl, but make no mistake, AGM is bursting at the seams to contain this world, every trick and optimisation to cram the content in has been done, and you can almost hear the engine screaming in agony in the background as it works tirelessly to make this thing happen.

In a sense this would be akin to the times when games like Driller came out on the spectrum. Yes, you could push polygons and 3D rendering out on a computer with 128K of memory, but the poor thing creaked, and you could -hear- it creaking. People have asked if more content will be added, it might happen, but the engine is really being pushed here, so it'll be a case of hammering it in with a wedge in small chunks at a time I think.

This game almost certainly deserves to be a success beyond the developers most optimistic expectations, such that a sequel can happen, but it needs to happen in the same style, just in an engine that won't beg for mercy when they create this wonderful, vast canvas.


The combat deserves specific mention. I always felt games like Fallout 3 strayed too far towards "real time" combat, Dustbowl strikes a brilliant balance by being turn based with a reaction-ish based timing sequence for determining if you hit, crit, or miss. Weapons have their own distinct damage ranges, and your power in the game is strictly gear dependent (which means that progressing through the story will directly improve your ability to fight and also to defend yourself against the horrible nasty mutant things). The range of weapons is diverse, even at the early stages you'll find a goodly selection of pistols and assorted BB based weaponry, I can only assume it will escalate from there.


The art style is -very- retro. Going right back to VGA style RPG's of yore, but it works, evoking memories of Wasteland (the original, not even the remade original) and of similar games in that era. It's a very consistent art style, and the eye to design has been thoughtful and considered. The Subway (your first 'dungeon' area) is dingy and foreboding, and even though it's never explicitly threatening, there's always that nasty feeling you may be going a little too far from safety.


Dustbowl came literally out of nowhere, and it's possibly been the most pleasant surprise this year to date. It's had no press, and no hype, and that's one of the greatest injustices I could possibly think of, because this is a terrible disservice to what is possibly one of the best RPG's outside of the AAA releases.

Verdict : Essential.

Disclaimer : Base game was provided via a review code by the developer. I've spent some considerable time providing feedback and suggestions to said developer, which has resulted in the implementation of the deluxe packs as seen in the DLC section of the store page, his willingness to adapt and provide new ways for players to get involved and experience this game should be seen as a pure positive, and I purchased the deluxe cars pack as a measure of support. Developers who act inclusively should always be supported in such a manner.


With that out of the way, let's get some misconceptions out of the way, what VRC-Pro is and is not. First off, it's not a casual racing game. This isn't a knockabout toybox racer like say "Toybox Turbos" or "Blazerush". Whilst VRC-PRO deals with miniature racing cars, it should be treated with the same respect as say Assetto Corsa or DiRT Rally, you will need to either -have- an interest in the subject matter (namely RC car racing) or be willing to learn and take an interest in the hobby to get the most out of this. This is a "simulator" as opposed to a normal racing game, except here we're discussing simulating radio controlled cars, and that's a different mindset. It takes a different approach to get used to, but once you get over the learning curve, it's most definitely an entertaining and satisfying experience.


The core package provides you with a good slew of tracks, both indoor and out, time trial and practice modes, as well as practice against the AI to get you used to the core concepts, it also provides you with an arsenal of components ranging from spec grade controllers, batteries and motors, all the way through to a selection of bodies that come with their own decals and colour schemes. Critically, all of these components can be fine tuned in much the same way that one can tune a full size car in AC, except now you're dealing in the fractions of millimeters and fractions of degrees, but the principles are very much the same.

You'll be adjusting to balance downforce against top speed, working out the best gearing ratio for a given track to optimise for speed versus acceleration, the user interface provides a solid level of information as to what each change will affect, so you're not left in the dark as to what your adjustments will cause. A useful addition is the marker that shows where the original setting -was- before you started tweaking, so you can assess how big a change you're making before you commit. Pitting in track allows you to make some adjustments, but for the full suite you'll need to go outside of the track and take the car apart, that also allows you to change components, and with the deluxe car pack, there's -tons- of options available.


The graphics are solid, the track are well appointed, and the cars are suitably detailed, the game runs at a rock steady 60fps and I doubt it's going to tax anything that's been built in the last five years. The only hiccup is the flat textures that represent the people around the edge of the track, but you won't really be paying attention to them when you're trying to set good times.

An important note is that the physics engine most -definitely- feels convincing. These machines may be light, but they have grip and traction once they're up to speed, and using something with an analog control (such as an xbox pad) is deemed *critical* if you want any chance of setting decent times. The game supports the full gamut of controllers, and in a full nod to authenticity, even supports RC radio controllers if you order a USB dongle from the VRC PRO site. This allows people who are testing their RC setups to port their configurations into the game, and then test them from the PC environment using their RC controllers with full and immediate feedback, this is an important plus.

Sound? It has some. It won't win awards, but it does the job. The music is .. music. I'll be kind and say you can set it to "off" if it doesn't flick your switch. Multiplayer is stable and the netcode is reliable, in the tests I ran it didn't hiccup once, and there's a good and solid community that's been running alongside this game for an extended period of time, which is a nice to have. The skill levels range from hobbyist right the way through to high end (as evidenced by the time trial leaderboards), so there's always likely to be a race that suits your tastes.


The one thing it lacks right now is a true Single Player "Career" mode of sorts (a la Project CARS), which means that beyond Time Trials and Practice VS the AI, you're going to be reliant on the community and your own enthusiasm for the world of RC simulation as for how much you get out of it. In that sense it's going to be a lot like Assetto Corsa, if you have a love for the subject matter, this is an easy sell. It's a very niche product, but what it does, it does exceptionally well.

Verdict : Highly recommended for serious RC fans, and worth wishlisting even if you're not. This is definitely "one to watch"

This will be a review of "Ultimate" mode tic-tac-toe. The normal mode tic-tac-toe is as you would expect, and whilst the provision of full "ChalkFX" graphics and 7.1 surround sound with high quality samples of chalk on blackboard do fully immerse you in the experience, that is not what I will be delving into in the space of this review.

No.

You see, "Ultimate" tic-tac-toe is a game within a game. It is tic-tac-toe within tic-tac-toes, and it requires you to think several moves ahead of your opponent. The rules are simple. You start with nine "Cells", win a cell and your "X" or "O" takes over that cell, construct a winning line and you win the game, as with normal tic-tac-toe, but to do this you have to win the smaller games, nine smaller games of tic-tac-toe being played *at the same time* against your opponent.

It's brilliantly simple, and the sting in the tail is the rule, the move you make determines which "cell" the opponent must place their move, and consequently, their move determines which cell you must place YOUR move. Thus the game elevates from simple matters of trying to get three in a row in one given cell to attempting to maneuver your opponent into a position where they are forced to place a symbol in an empty space in such a way that gives you access to a cell that allows you a favorable position, or you might play defensively and play what seems like a nonsensical move, or even throw away a winning line, but in doing so prevent your opponent from gaining a decisive victory.

This isn't tic-tac-toe anymore. This is chess. It's chess at breakneck speed, it's a strategic knife fight that takes no prisoners, and ramps up in tension, two -good- players can quickly become entangled in multiple complicated dances with several cells on the cusp of victory or defeat and then a game of hopscotch ensues as each player tries to maneuver each other into a position where the opponent is forced into giving ground.

And it's free. Emphasis - FREE

Find a friend, someone who likes mind-games, invite them for a game of "ultimate" tic tac toe, get a hot tasty beverage, and prepare to lose an evening as you engage in what will be the most tense evening of strategy that ranks up alongside the very best games of Chaos Reborn and X-COM.

... and it's Tic-Tac-Toe. What has this world come to.

Recommended, may Gaben have mercy upon my soul. I have recommended tic tac toe.

Nineteen eighty five called, it would like to have a word with you about cheesy Karate games. Specifically, I would like you to cast your mind back to the spectrum era. Long loading times, terribad graphics, but a blank canvas where game creativity was about pushing boundaries and exploring what games could be. One of those many explorations was a title called IK+ (International Karate +), a glorious bit of code involving some pixellated men in pyjamas whacking each other in the goal of changing their belt colours. The controls were tight, the fighting was good, and the feeling was very much that of a cheesy b-movie. Hell, the Amiga version had Stephen Segal (or a very good likeness)[www.atarimania.com] on the cover along with what looks to be Chuck Norris delivering a trademark kick to some poor sod. Fighting games have wavered in and out of vogue, travelling between the more realistic and the more fantastical over the generations, but the pure, basic Karate game sortof vanished into the ether...

... UNTIL NOW...

... KAHATAE MASTAH. NOCKA DOON BALOO. OSU!

It's gloriously throwback, the graphics are retro Amiga era, the script has more chinglish than a motherboard manual, you get to Karate Fight a bull and a bear (yes, you get the opportunity to punch a bear), and you get to do a jump kick over a car to promote your dojo. It's that kind of finely matured cheese. Jackie Chan would be -proud- to feature in such a script. It has so much terribleness (like the fact you can exit without saving very easily and the game does a TERRIBLE job of warning you) that it has no right to be as good as it is. Yet, it is. It's good, it's good in the way finely matured cheese is good.

The game features a mix of tournaments, one shot fights against various opponents (who if you beat, will then appear in the said same tournaments), special encounters such as the aforementioned "DO A FLYING KICK OVER A CAR!", and occasional expositions of horribly written story, with english so badly written even google translate looks at me and throws it's arms up in despair. You can read it, and you'll laugh, it's that wonderfully bad.

In between the fighting and the b-reel script you get to train your fighter in a fantastically diverse set of mini-games (some are genius, others... not so much), and there's a limited RPG style progression system where you'll tinker with the stats of your fighter, and can even suffer injuries and get to participate in a mini game where you have to recover from those (and the first time that happens, you get some cringeworthy story for that too).

The fighting however is -good-, really good, it uses the tekken style approach of mapping left and right legs and arms to seperate buttons, and then you can apply "low" or "high" using down or up on the controller to give you a wide variety of punches and kicks. There's a good set of combos and a fairly fluid system tucked away in here, as well as a solid blocking and countering system, and button mashing is punished frequently with the AI giving you a damn good spanking in the later stages, so it pays to learn the intricacies. In effect, this is IK+ put on steroids, and then given a serious training regimen, the Karate is pretty full featured (at least that an outside layperson can figure) and has a much more realistic, crunchy feel to it, as opposed to the more fantasy based fighters that you tend to run into.

Training focusses on the various stats, or training you in new moves, the stat training can range from simple button mashing (for body conditioning, which will give you hand cramp, well, they did say it was toughness training - BEAR THE PAIN), to attempting to hit a tennis ball suspended by a piece of string, which feels a bit like the human version of a cat playing with a feather. Generally speaking some minigames work really well (the concrete bag, the strength tests, some of the toughness tests) and there's only a few real duds (the water droplet test can die in a fire). There's even a minigame where you work to build up funds to enter the starter tournaments, which... can go horribly wrong if you decide to fiddle about with your forklift (there's safety videos for that you know!).

With all this said, would one recommend it? At the price point it's pitched at? Absolutely. It's a -steal-. There's a lot to do in this game, and it'll keep you busy easily for a good few evenings or a solid weekend, and you may well return to it every so often for a theraputic bit of Karate fighting in the later tournaments, even after you master the game. It's excellent value, and as a b-movie, modernised IK+, it's an easy sell. If you're into fighting games and fancy a change of pace, grab this and give it a whirl.