Recent reviews by Hobbes

... The Technomancer. It's ... not bad. I'm going to shy away from saying genuinely great, because it's not. It's good, it's solid in a competent, reliable and comfortable kind of way. It's not yet got the spark of greatness within it, there's a lot of moving parts which fit together to make what -could- be a great RPG, but it's still a bit rough around the edges, there's still some strange design decisions (almost certainly budgetary) and there's just the general vibe that this sits squarely in what I'd term a "AA" game. It's missing one "A", which is a shame because it's very servicable, and whilst I rarely make noises about the price of games, had this been pitched at £25 GBP or the currency equivalent, this would have been a flat out recommendation right from the off.

But it's not, it's set at £35, your standard AAA price point. There was a great post a while back from someone in the games industry about how prices should be more elastic and how games should fit a wider spectrum of price points. Of course what he really meant is that the industry should push to charge more for games because £35 is clearly not enough to cover all the ladies of the night and cocaine that the industry execs in the AAA industry need. However, had people actually seen the wisdom of this and started pricing their games more appropriately and used the £25 price point for "AA" games, we'd have the Technomancer drop neatly into that gap.


It plays, and feels like a ramped up Mars War Logs, blended with a somewhat lo-fi version of Mass Effect. There's a really interesting skill tree system (which actually works by allowing you to put points into skills rather than just following a linear branch, by expanding skills you gain access to some significant boons, but that's at the cost of being able to go far into the tree right away). There's a solid, if somewhat not very inspired crafting system that does visually alter your armour (it's passive buffs to the obvious stats).

There's a reputation system that pretty much is hostage to the narrative. There's an overarching storyline where everything you do in the first act is massively invalidated (with some key exceptions) with everything you've done to get into two factions good books being tossed out of the window because the obvious badguy obviously gets the upper hand and forces you out on the run, which brings us to the first real issue I have, the story has no issue with clearly throwing all the cards up into the air and going "OH HEY, ALL OF YOUR WORK IN ACT 1, JAZZHANDS, USELESS, YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS INSTEAD!", of course in retrospect knowing what you know from the main storyline going into Act 2 you'd make some quite serious changes to your decisions because there's clearly no point doing certain -other- actions but it does feel like the main narrative has a very specific story to tell and BY GOD YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR IT.

Now this may open out in the late stages, but so far, it does feel that the decisions you make have the same level of effect as say, Telltale games, that is to say, it'll have cosmetic and minor flex on the core narrative, but don't expect things to go violently off the rails (like in Witcher 2), you're in for a Mass Effect style experience here.


I get it, I do, three styles, allowing the player to decide which stance to use and switch between them at will, and all the flexibility that grants. But! Here's the thing, most players are going to use one, maybe two styles at most and stick with them, because they're not going to spec for all three. The whole stance switching thing is enough to drive a Tiger mad at times, because it doesn't initiate the active pause like the other menu does, so you have to be quick and accurate with your commands.

In reality this could be solved by having your stance determined by what equipment you decided to tool up with. Use a staff as a primary weapon? You're in warrior stance. Use a knife and gun? Rogue stance. Shield and mace? Guardian stance. It would have been a lot simpler to comprehend AND it would have made it less work for the player rather than having to fiddle around with all the different possible weapon loadouts. Kingdoms of Amalur got THIS bit right ages ago, so it stuns me we're still having issues with diverse combat options in 2016, but there we go.


The Technomancer is good, it has a lot of interesting things going on, but it's not good -enough- to warrant that full AAA price tag, I don't care about the whole "OH BUT DEVELOPERS NEED TO EAT" argument, there's a counter argument that goes like this : "The game is worth what you feel comfortable paying for it.", would I feel comfortable paying the full £35, no. No I would not. I would not recommend people BUY it at that price either, because I don't feel it justifies THAT price tag either. I would feel comfortable paying £25, because it comes up short compared to its' peers, give it a month or two and the inevitable sale or price drop -will- bring it into line with what people could, and should expect to pay for it. Then it's an easy sell, at which point, absolutely, get yo' backside to mars, because then it's a worthy place to be.

Verdict : Wishlist, wait for it to drop slightly in price, grab it at that point. GMG usually offers 20% off deals which might just be enough to do it. It's definitely a good game, just not quite £35 good.

The Ball was a really good game, don't get me wrong, but it was at it's core, about "The Ball", and as such effectively was centered around a singular note, navigating and solving puzzles with the titular ball. It was an excellent exercise in good puzzle gameplay, with a smattering of platforming and a side dish of adventure story nonsense if you did a bit of skimming into it, but it was a first try for the studio, so really it was mostly for them to get their eye in and to make sure they weren't doing anything mechanically wrong. In that sense, "The Ball" was a roaring success.

"The Solus Project", that's a far different proposition, this is a game that actually goes several steps further, creating a real story around your actions, a limited survival system that whilst not lethally challenging in "normal" difficulty (in hardcore however, you'd best believe it can punish you fast) does serve as a constant reminder to keep fed, watered and rested, and a zelda-like crafting and inventory system that gradually expands your reach and your ability to explore an alien island that you've just crashlanded into, nose first.


And oh what an island it is, it's genuinely beautiful at ultra settings, whilst managing to remain fairly decent looking even if you tamp down on the pretty, whilst there's very little to actively contend with in the sense of wildlife and movable nastiness, there's a fallen civilisation that's left behind a lot of high tech nastiness, and a lot of that can, and will kill you if you're not paying attention. You learn pretty fast to keep an eye on the floors, ceilings and immediate surroundings if you're indoors, and your atmospheric readings if you're outdoors, as the outdoor temp can swing wildly between "So cold it freezes your genitalia off" to "So hot not even ice cream will help", this doesn't count the weather cycles, which seem to take their cues from America circa 2016, complete with tornadoes, blizzards, torrential rain, heatwaves, and that's all in twenty four hours.

Your primary mission is to re-establish contact with Solus command, and effectively to warn them that the planet has a giant energy cannon that is being operated by the remaining natives that can and will blow anything out of orbit (as seen in the intro), so it's likely a really, really bad idea to come knocking at this planet unless they fancy a dose of highly concentrated plasma being slung at the colony ship (almost certainly a bad plan).

Over the course of the game you'll get a bunch of downrange transmissions sent to your dinky little PDA from Solus command who are getting progressively more panicky at the state of the Solus probe teams, it seems most of them have not ended up in places that would qualify as "safe", but more than that would be deemed spoilery, so I'll keep that bit quiet.


The game leaves you alone to deal with the hazards posed by Gisele, the planet you are stranded on for the bulk of it, and essentially puts you in the shoes of "The Martian" but instead of trying to survive, you're trying to explore and figure out just what in the name of dieties is going on with the planet, you'll be spelunking through caves, picking through the remnants of a previous civilisation, and dealing with some genuinely creepy stuff as you work your way into the bowels of the planet. As you progress you'll gain an inventory of useful items for helping you deal with the various environmental hazards, starting with simple tools and working up to the really helpful stuff like hammers, teleporters and ropes to pick your way through.

Some areas are very much "linear", you'll go through them and unlikely revisit them unless you're going secret hunting, others are much more exploratory, since you'll have to scour them for the parts of the comms tower, but in either case, you'll be roaming Gisele back and forth for a significant sum of time, probably 12-16 hours for the average player. If, like me you got this during the sale, this is a fantastic buy and well worth the money. At full whack, potentially a tricker choice to make depending on your love for exploration games, if you -really- like them, then it's a safe recommendation, if not, you may want to wait for the sale to hit.


The Solus Project marks a coming to form from the creators of "The Ball", it's a much more confident and complete game, and it definitely marks their graduation from promising developers to fully fledged and talented rising stars. If the Solus Project is indicative of what we can expect of their things to come, they've a genuinely bright future among the distant echoes of space.

Verdict : Recommended, if you like survival exploration games, upgrade to highly recommended.

We're now several patches in, I've decided my old review no longer applies because frankly the game that's taking shape from the patches is something new and interesting. It's still Anno to an extent, but there's a massive raft of changes. So let's deal with the TLDR first and foremost.

If you want a multiplayer anno experience, right now this is not the game for you. Go back to Anno 1404 Venice. I wouldn't even recommend Anno 2070 because in my extensive experience of the Anno series, 1404 is the stronger entry, Anno 2070 is too crufty, and too overloaded with some really strange ideas that just don't quite work. Venice is a far more consistent, challenging and interesting experience, and you'll find it a far more -fun- game to play. As a multiplayer game, and indeed, as a versus AI, 1404 wins against 2070 for that purpose.

However. If you want a Singleplayer experience where you're attempting to build the biggest, cross map empire, where you're "indirectly" fighting your opponents via economic growth and where you're working against disasters and a very -different- Anno, one where the biggest challenge is going to be what difficulty you set for yourself, and the challenges you impose upon yourself. If your idea of a good anno experience is a "Sandbox" game, then this is potentially the Anno you want, As a Sandbox game setup, it's easily the strongest of the lot, with a campaign that works with the sandbox to create comfortably the largest singleplayer empire that you'll handle.


Anno 2205 does some much needed ripping away of the bandaids, this much is entirely true, it gets away from requiring you to math out the building resource chains, by providing "sector balances" that help you understand at a glance whether you have enough of each resource to stay in the positives as you're building, the addition of modules, despite the fact you have to deal with a fairly substandard combat mini mission to really harvest the stuff, is inspired, being able to upgrade your production facilities is great. Anno 2070 had similar to some extent but nothing on the scale of this, which is kindof important, because with the latest patch, using modules is critical to keeping an efficient colony running.

The game cleans up the upgrade paths for several of the citizen types, however, it also oversimplifies them a bit too much, there's now only two levels of upgrade for two of the citizen types, which is deeply unfortunate, a third level for both the Arctic and Lunar citizens would have gone a long way to making things a lot more interesting overall, along with increasing interdependency for various goods, you start seeing some of the multi-step goodness that was part and parcel of Anno's late game with Investors but tragically there's really not much payoff in exploring it beyond better tax returns.

The Tundra is also a missed opportunity, which is annoying because there was a real chance there to make up for some of the lost complexity, but once again it seems that Ubi are hell bent on keeping the various citizen types as self contained as is possible and minimising the interdependencies until -really- late game, when it stops mattering quite as much.


However, the Veterans update and the Stock Market update -do- bring significant improvements to the table, the former allows you to ratchet the difficulty up to genuinely tough levels, finally presenting a real challenge for those who are comfortable with Anno 1404 and the like, and the Stock Market update adds a new layer to the game, placing you in indirect competition with your NPC opponents, who have now been elevated from mere talking heads, to potential threats who if you're not careful, could buy you out and bring your game to an abrupt end, Offworld Trading Company style.

The game explicitly warns you that by activating the Stock Market this will have irreversible consequences on your company and a backup will be taken, there's a good reason for that, the AI isn't shy about putting the screws on at the higher difficulties, and you can expect auctions to come in at a steady rate if you've not got a -good- positive credit balance.


Orbit, the final known piece of content on the roadmap is entering beta now, it's free to everyone on the Season pass, there's a hope it's better than Tundra, it needs to be, however, the free content has been broadly positive, and the Stock Market addition actually creates a situation where if you're playing at high difficulty, it's eminently possible to lose to the AI through economic manipulations and calamities wrecking your company.

In effect, this is a Sandbox Anno with teeth, and it's a very big, very sprawly sandbox, with a narrative that sits behind it that guides you through the various stages of the game right up to the point you have a Corporate HQ, and then you're on your own, go free little bird and build as much as you like.

Now that's going to sit well with some people, and sit badly with others, because it's all going to hinge on the idea of if a Sandbox Anno appeals to you, if it does, then this is definitely an interesting concept, and 2205 executes it with style, however as an -actual- Anno game? That's a harder question to answer, it's going to get filed under "Maybe", and whether that becomes a "yes" or a "not really" hinges on Blue Byte's remaining support cycle before they turn their attention to the next in the series.

With the latest additions, I give it a cautious thumbs up, because I do enjoy a good sandbox, but I -really- recommend people do their research on this one, it's not "just" another Anno game.

Verdict : Cautious Recommendation, do your research, if you're an Anno veteran and want a multiplayer game, avoid, if you want a Sandbox Anno, upgrade that to Recommended

Review updated! The Developers listened, if not to me, but to people generally, I want to thank them, marry them, do many romantic things to them. THANK YOU


First and foremost, this isn't the mech game that Mechwarrior purists are looking for. It has elements of the things that a Mechwarrior type gamer would be looking for, and it may appeal to those kinds of players, but it's not an actual Mechwarrior game. This is still very much a twinstick shooter of sorts, but with a more deliberate, thoughtful take, where the choice of mech, pilot, and loadout does factor into the difficulty of the run through the city. You'll be managing your ammo and making sure your shots count, you'll be prioritising your targets, and the mechs, tanks and antigravs all look and -feel- very different from one another, but this is not an actual Mechwarrior game.

For that, you'll want the game that Harebrained Schemes are brewing. That, is going to be the game that the Mechwarrior mech-heads are all looking for, I've backed it to the Valhalla tier and it's looking mighty fine. But enough of that, Brigador is a different and very unique beast. It's definitely interesting, but is it good?

The answer? -mostly-


Firstly you'll have to make some fundamental adjustments, you do not have "cardinal" controls, you can't just use WSAD to direct the mech in the eight directions as you wish, instead the game uses "tank" controls, with A and D rotating your vehicle, and W and S making it travel forward and backward along the plane it now faces, there's a spotlight which helps keep you orientated but make no mistake, this does take time to get used to. For people used to traditional twinsticks where your controls are a 1:1 analog of what's going on, this is a shift you'll have to adapt to.

Until the most recent patch, this was your sole option, and it was a bit of a mixed bag but now? CARDINAL DIRECTIONS ARE IN BABY, and what's more you can have "True upward" for WSAD or "Isometric upward left/right" for if you're more used to that line of thinking, which is perfect. More options for various players is JUST what the doctor ordered. Suddenly this game has gone from niche to being accessible to everyone. If you like and feel tank controls are atmospheric, go nuts, they're still there, but for people like me who just can't handle them that well, I have an option that removes that issue, and being able to know that W means "up" on the screen makes life so, so much easier. Gone is the hitching on the interface, now I can really cut loose!

Alongside this there's an angle to compensate for when aiming weapons, as denoted by the red and blue "aiming" angle markers, which help you adjust for aiming at things which are shorter than your vehicle or antigravs which might be at a horizontal level and thus need you to adjust accordingly. It's a learning curve, for controller inputs, I'd almost certainly want a "Vertical auto-helper" of some kind (and it does seem that there is now with the controller patch, but it's not a HUGE one, you'll have to do a lot of the work). It'd work on a steam controller, but not on an Xbox 360 controller. On the mouse? It's easy and intuitive, and you get used to it fast.

Once you've set your controls up you'll be piloting the mech in good order, and working through a neon saturated Blade Runner take on a city that frankly would rather you were not in the area. Your initial options are designed to ease you into the whole "murder everything that's not you" process, with good loadouts, plenty of armour and shield, and a healthy dollop of firepower available. As you generate funds and unlock more options, you'll be able to load your vehicles with laser weapons, gauss rifles, mortars, chainguns, and all kinds of good stuff, and you'll be able to go for lighter, more maneuverable frames, at the cost of armour.

In effect, you get to dictate how tough your run is, by choosing the mix of pilot, vehicle and weapons. This part is inspired, and I commend the developers for giving the players a really diverse and flexible toolset for deciding just how much stress they want to be under in a given run. Want to relax? Pick a heavy mech and a low difficulty pilot, get some big guns and blow the whole city up. Want to test your mad skillz? Pick a powered suit and see just how far you get.


The graphics are, for what is basically iso-pixel art, stunning. This is genuinely high presentation all the way through, and is reminiscent of titles like Crusader : No Remorse, and Syndicate, when 2D graphics enjoyed a rennaisance and people were creative with the resources they had available to them. The music is also a synth drenched call back to films like Blade Runner and genuinely adds to the atmosphere to the game, meaning the whole package is cohesive and the entire game from end to end has a real depth to it that really works.


Cardinal controls MAKE the game accessible to everyone regardless of skill level, suddenly this game has gone from being a game I could like but couldn't love due to the fact I was fighting on two fronts, because the controls would fail me due to my brain telling my hands to do something and not getting the right result, and fighting the enemies in the game itself. Now? Now there's nothing in my way except the enemies and it is *glorious*. I am immersed in this world and it feels -alive-, I don't think about what I have to press to get my mech into a certain place, I just do it. With the controls update, this game just went up in my esteem from a game I might play once a week to a game I'll play nightly. Now it's much easier to get your teeth into, I REALLY suggest you do as well.

Verdict : Essential

Okay, if you own Hard Reset, or you own Shadow Warrior, and thus get the crazy 85% discount, ignore everything in the review, go to the "Buy now" button, and pick up the game. At the silly cheap price it's being offered at, they're offering you a gift of a very, very good game, which has been refurnished in their newer engine, with some much needed gameplay tweaks, and some optimisations and additions, for less than the price of a coffee. You would be a complete lunatic not to pick it up for the price offered, or flat broke, but it's -easily- worth the pittance they're asking for the update, and makes the Metro Redux package offer look a bit absurd in comparison.


Hard Reset was a -great- game when it came out, it was unashamedly old school, it didn't even have a crouch button. But it's laserlike focus on good gunplay (it had a shotgun that made me happy in ways that should be illegal) and excellent visual design easily marked it as one of my picks back at the time. It's aged well too, mostly because the engine it rested on was a very well optimised one for the PC platform, you could pretty much run it on a toaster and get good looking results.

Which may beg the question - Why the "redux" update? A few reasons. One - Cybersword. You get a melee option in case you were lacking enough tools as it is. Two, they've integrated the DLC in much more cleanly, so it now presents a much tidier experience. Three, they've updated the engine to give even -more- scalability and at the top end, an even shinier presentation. They've also made some adjustments like deciding the whole stamina system could die in a fire, and therefore allowing you to dodge and run around at will, this is entirely for the good by the way, the game needed that adjustment.

As before, this is as pure a shooter as it's possible to get, you go charging from place to place shooting everything that isn't you, the graphics are great, the sound is rich, and the enemies are unforgiving. Granted, this isn't DOOM, but it's a very good "AA" tier take on the topic, and it very definitely holds its' own as a game which for half the price, will easily give you a lot of entertainment for your buck.

In effect, for new buyers this is the "Definitive" presentation of Hard Reset, made ready for the console crowd (and to them I really do recommend they grab it, it's a great experience), and for people on Steam, this is definitely the way to go, because they'll get the version of the game "as the creators intended", a sort of Director's cut if you will. With all the rough edges sanded off and all the best parts made even better.


A good way to look at this is as the "Director's cut" of Hard Reset, it's been given the treatment that the developers felt it deserved, and for current owners, they're getting the finalised version at the cost of a cup of coffee, so there's no reason to feel slighted. For new buyers, this is the version to get, and as a result, I've very little hesitation giving it a solid pair of thumbs up. This is a very, very good "AA" first person shooter, and deserves your time, and your trigger finger.

Verdict : Highly recommended

Well, Banks is the big one in terms of bringing Stellaris to a point where I can safely say the game is now end to end complete, you get the full Stellaris experience. There's still a handful of rough edges (Sector AI is still spotty, but it's a hell of a lot better than 1.0), picking up the Utopia DLC is highly recommended - and as with all Paradox games, the free content patching has made the base game rather excellent, but there's enough in the paid that people who actively play Stellaris a lot, will find a lot of value in it.

Stellaris was, at 1.0 an unfinished masterpiece, whilst there were bugs aplenty, what was presented was something that was essentially unique in the Sci-fi space. A grand strat which provided your own unique narratives, and allowed you to paint your own story on a blank canvas galaxy full of strange and wonderful races. A lot of things were -wrong- with it, Sector AI was a mess, diplomacy was truncated, and there was a feeling that stuff was missing, but it was such a change from the tired retreading of space 4x that it was a legitimate breath of fresh air.

The fact that Paradox flung their arms open and embraced the modding community like the Blorg didn't hurt them either. We've seen mods that have shored up a lot of the games weaker elements, we've seen mods that have enhanced the base game with flavour and extra depth, we've even seen full on rewrites to core areas of the game, completely transforming and in some cases teaching Paradox a thing or two about how to go forward with further development of the Stellaris platform.

These are all good things by the way.


Paradox never start with a perfect release, but they provide something that is a journey to something special. Every game of theirs improves like fine wine, and their post release support is second to none. This is case in point.

With each patch they've slowly but steadily addressed many of the concerns the community has had with Stellaris. It's taken them a long while to get to the point where by 1.5 I am able to safely say we have a fully complete product on our hands, but we have got there. With Utopia we've not only got a complete product, but we've got something that actively advances the sci-fi strat genre in multiple significant ways.

The faction system now has actual teeth, each one develops it's own, multifaceted agenda which should you fail to keep up with, could lead to rebellion and your empire splintering and tearing itself apart, yet the rewards for embracing them are significant. No longer is it some minor element of the game, now it actually feels important and vital.

Equally, the slave pops now matter, as does your handling of robotics. Everything has been rejigged to some degree to make empire management fundamentally more interesting as a set of choices and tradeoffs. It's a lot more like a sci fi EU4-Victoria II (No bad thing) where you're now dealing with an actual empire as opposed to a blob of map territory.


Sector AI is still hit and miss, it's a lot better, but it's not ideal, trusting the computer to run chunks of your empire is still one of those things I feel could do with providing instructions to your various sector governors as opposed to abstracting away too much. Diplomacy needs a little more transparency, and the AI entities of other empires can be a little too ready to shift their mood at times, but again, it's getting better with each patch. The mid game still feels a little wobbly, with the best of the game at the beginning and the end, that however may be down to the AI being still a work in progress.

That said... you can now safely forget every other 4x in space on the table. Stellaris just found another gear. Even with the things I list above, Paradox just made an object demonstration of why when they put their mind to it they can absolutely -wreck- the field.


When 1.0 came out I stated that Stellaris was a platform to be built upon. With 1.5 it's now a fully fleshed out game that I can safely recommend anyone can buy right now with no hesitation. With Utopia it's now at a point where the competition are mere specks in the rear view mirror. Even Amplitude's newest iteration of Endless Space suddenly feels lacking in areas where even they added -new things-, which ought to tell you just how far Stellaris is ahead of everyone else. Let's not even get into Master of Orion...

Dear space 4x devs, take heed, I said at the beginning this was the bar to aim for. It's a moving target, and one Paradox is keen to ensure stays as high as possible. If you are not attempting to advance the genre. Go home.

Verdict : Buy the hell out of it now. It's cooked and ready to serve.

This is an EARLY ACCESS review, so expect this to evolve over time as bugs are fixed and features change, Copy was bought with my own funds.


Niffelheim is one of those rare creatures which seems to have turned up at just the right time, ever since the advent of Kingdom there's been a calling for a game which does Kingdom, but in a more meaningful and interesting way. One where you have a much more personal connection with the world you're involved with, and one where the lore is much more tightly woven with your character and their goals. Enter Niffelheim, one part Kingdom, one part Tormentum, one part Banner Saga. A world which judging by the areas you wander through, have had the kind of detail lavished upon them that you rarely see outside of games -like- Tormentum, which is high praise, this is genuinely good stuff here.

You play a recently deceased Viking on their way to Asgard, as you sail in your funeral boat, burning brightly in the pyre, your soul is captured and you are taken to Niffelheim, where you must fight your way to Asgard by showing that yes, you are indeed worthy of your rest in the halls of the hereafter. However, to begin with you start in a place which can be best summed up as bleak, yet beautiful. Wind and snow swept vistas combine with gorgeous hand painted scenery and a steady trudging viking complete with historically -accurate- (no horns!) armour, who must turn the little pittance of land he has found himself on into a defensible position, and then fight his way outwards, earning glory and fame before taking the fight to those that brought him to this forsaken land.


The current state of Niffelheim is best described as rough. There's very little guidance for the player, and you're more or less left to your own devices to figure out exactly what is going on. There's a few quests to kindof guide you, but at least at this point, you're entirely on your own. Understanding how to navigate the world can prove a bit of a challenge in itself, combat is most definitely not a finished article and feels clunky and unrefined, the control mappings are unreliable and feel like they could do with some visual UI and UX elements to help ensure the player knows what's going on on-screen when they press various buttons.

Even understanding how the character gains experience is going to be a real challenge to begin with, not to mention what items go in which slots, this is all stuff that will get fixed as time goes on, but make no mistake, on the Early Access scale, right now? This one is *Early*. Really Early. Having said that? I like it. I genuinely like it. There's a charm here that just grows on you, from the almost Tormentum like puzzle in the Workshop to open the safe to the various graphical indications to show how wounded the wildlife is, there's a lot of incidental detail that helps make the world feel *alive*. There's clearly a lot of will to make this game -great-, and if the execution can be brought up to the level of ambition, Niffelheim has the potential to be a genuine classic.


Niffelheim is a very specific recommendation. If you're not afraid of dealing with bugs, control mappings suddenly not working, more bugs, strange obscurities like "WHAT ON EARTH DOES WARRIOR LVL 2 MEAN?", yet more bugs. Under that very unfinished surface is the raw metal of an excellent game. Once it's been put through the fires and the forge, once it's been finished and polished, this could be an essential game. I truly hope the devs make it the game it deserves to be, because this is one I've got my eye on, and dearly hope it will come through on what it promises.

Verdict : If you're looking for an Early Access that offers something different and special, this might just be it.

Disclaimer, this review is for an EARLY ACCESS product, this means the review should be deemed provisional, and will change as the game evolves over time. Key supplied by developer.


Seraph, from the developers of Ironcast, a rather interesting game in its' own right, is in essence a side on shooter where you play an acrobatic angelic/human host, bound up in a prison explicitly designed to hold said angel, for reasons unknown, and at the start of the game, your prison is opened. The guards are well, they're not doing so good, you collect a pair of pistols from the ground, and set off to find answers.

As an angel in a human host, you have access to miracles, most key of which is the ability to despatch demonic invaders with a flash of your wings and a touch of your hand. This requires you to be in -close- proximity. Considering that everything in the local area wants you dead, and you've a limited time to make this happen, this can be rather dangerous. You also have your rather human tools to hand - guns, lots and lots of lovely guns. They come currently in two flavours, the default twin pistols, which can be aimed at two seperate targets, and primary weapons, which range from the straightforward (Autopistols, shotgun, submachine gun, AR) through to the nutty (Railgun... RAILGUN?).


These primary weapons are categorically more powerful than your plink plink pistols, but they have limited ammo, and as a consequence you have to budget your use of these powerful primary weapons carefully, saving them for the much more powerful demons that can regenerate, and the multi stage demonic champions that require multiple smites in order to bring down.

This arsenal is all fine and well, but it doesn't touch on the signature element of Seraph's core gameplay, a "smart targetting" system that takes the hassle of finding enemies for you. Seraph will auto-lock the closest threat and direct her fury at them with whatever firearm you've selected whilst you focus on moving, using miracles, and generally not dying. The not dying is important, see, these enemies will throw a LOT of nasty attacks your way, and as the difficulty ramps up, the attacks not only increase in damage output, they'll also increase in variety.

Enemies gain -new- tricks as your difficulty dynamically cranks up, matching your skill as you go. Finding things too easy? As you mill the enemies, you'll see the difficulty counter in the bottom counter begin to race upwards, and before you know it, your opponents will have new toys to play with, will hit harder, and need more ammo to bring down. The reward however is more components, and more experience.


Currently the game only offers a subset of the possible blessings, oaths and miracles that will be in the full version, we've a lot more to look forward to, but the moment to moment gameplay is absolutely excellent, providing a good cross between spectacle shooter and bullet hell where your management of the blink resource and your positioning proves more vital than targetting and dealing damage. This is a game that rewards good placement and evading your foes, before surging forward to deliver lethal strikes in a real hurry. You need to be fast, elegant and acrobatic.

Graphically, for a two dimensional game it is highly reminiscent of ACE's Abyss Odyssey, but with a very futuristic touch, and a matching soundtrack to boot. The soundtrack having a very electro-industrial feel puts you in mind of things like Equilibrium and the Matrix, which is very fitting given the gunplay involved.

There's also suggestions and bug fixes being worked through by the developers, and more good things will hopefully be on the way.

At this point my final judgment is -

Verdict : Highly recommended

Enter Reynardo, wannabe hero, witty fox, and cunning duellist, with fashionable taste and colourful swords, he dashes and zips about the battlefield with grace and agility, he cleaves the foes with might and skill and then...

... he dies. Usually in many hilarious and unintended ways. Welcome to the book of Destinies. Where most of the time regardless of the route you take, things are going to end badly for you and your dear foxy hero. However, with each failure, you will learn, and the book of Destinies will rewind the timeline, allowing Reynardo to keep the knowledge he gains, precious as it is, to carry forth into the next attempt. Knowledge and hindsight are powerful things, and this book teaches that if you have the gift of hindsight, *use it*.


The game can be broken down into two beats. Narrative choices, where you'll uncover choices, all of which are mutually exclusive, so by travelling down one path, you'll close off another, and eventually lead you towards a specific destiny. The other part of the game is exploration of the map and combat, which is in part isometric exploration and part Arkham system combat, with a few twists. You have use of various elements like a dash that makes you all but ethereal in nature, allowing you to blink from place to place, and a grappling hook which you can use to pull shields away from particularly difficult ravens.

On top of this you have gems that you can socket which can heavily influence your playstyle, the socket system is fairly simple, but the choices are meaningful, in the same sense as the sword system which has a simple two level upgrade system for each sword, but each sword is meaningful too, serving both as a vital part of the combat arsenal AND as a key to unlock new areas to explore and uncover more loot.


The story is masterful in its' delivery, rewriting itself as you complete each playthrough. As you learn more with each decision you make, the narrator, who is a masterful voice actor, will change the lines he reads, providing new insight and new information based on what Reynardo finds out. This in turn will shape future playthroughs, always ensuring that you're looking to see where the next ending might take you, and keeps the game feeling fresh and interesting. It's a very curious change from a lot of games where you tend to fall down pre-determined routes. Here you're exploring lots of different routes, and eventually through gradual discovery, you'll find the correct one.

Special credit goes to the voice of the Narrator and the music, both of which deliver brilliant performances and I would -highly- recommend you take the time to listen to the music in game. It's well worth stopping for a moment to take in the atmosphere.


Spearhead Games have delivered an absolutely excellent piece of narrative, and one that for all the complexities, lends itself well to the repeated, short, looping playthroughs that it offers, with each playthrough you learn more, and gain new information, with each loop, new elements come clear. Eventually, the path of Destinies will show Reynardo the way to victory...

... or at least you'll have a lot of fun dying!

Verdict : Essential

Julai has potential. It does. There's a nice concept in here, fly around, blow things up, collect parts for a constantly evolving ship, rebuild your ship, make it more powerful, blow more powerful things up, do this over a wide open world that has a MASSIVE scale to it. Lots of scope for tactics and ship types depending on what you pick up. There's a lot of possibility here.

BUT...

That's all there is. An idea. This is a tech demo, dressed up as a full game. Everything that's needed to make the game an actual -game- is missing. Rebindable controls, settings, objectives, the construction area being anything more than a perfunctory, horrible mess, understanding how the modules interact with each other, the fact that roll and speed controls are bound to some REALLY strange places.


If this had been released to early access at say ... £4, and had been on the basis that there was about a year of work to do to make this a fully realised game, this could have been something brilliant.

As it is?

No. Absolutely not. It's on 90% off, which made me curious, now I can see why.

Stay far away. Faaaaaar away.

Verdict : Don't get this. Not even in Julai.