Warp Zoned Presents
Author: Sam Sheldon
Enter the Gungeon Review: A Few Steps Forward, More Steps Back
Strange though it may seem, in 2016, video games are an old medium. The various genres and mechanics of the medium have, over time, formed a kind of complex language that makes sense to those who are video game literate but is impenetrable to those who aren’t. Good guys are blue, bad guys are red. This is simple if you’ve played a few shooters, but is not immediately obvious. This creates a problem for the critic when describing a game’s mechanics: to some people, Red Dead Redemption is a simulation of the Old West in which you meet with people who need tasks doing; to others, it’s GTA with horses.
Enter the Gungeon is a top-down, twin-stick shooter in which you explore procedurally generated dungeon floors armed with weapons, bombs, keys, and a special item. You fight your way through each floor looking for shops and item rooms to arm yourself for the boss fight that allows you to move down to the next floor of the dungeon. It’s usually best to avoid comparisons, but if this description reminds you of The Binding of Isaac, then you’re on the right track. (more…)
Posted in PC, PS4, Reviews, Top Story
Tagged Enter the Gungeon
Salt and Sanctuary Review: Derivative, But Who’s Complaining?
It is often said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. If this is true, the folks at From Software must be fanning themselves like a Victorian lady in search of a fainting couch, because Salt and Sanctuary is an unashamed imitation of Dark Souls. In fact, licensing aside, it essentially is a Souls game. Of course, Salt and Sanctuary is not the first game to copy the formula established by From Software, but where others have become mired in being too much like Dark Souls, Salt and Sanctuary strikes out in new, interesting directions and successfully transposes the Souls style onto a 2D action-platformer. (more…)
Posted in PS4, Reviews, Top Story
Tagged Salt and Sanctuary
Dreii Review: Puzzling, But Not In a Good Way
I first got word of Dreii a couple of months ago and I’ve been quite frankly jazzed about it ever since. A physics-based puzzle game! With Journey-style invisible matchmaking and limited communication! And that art style! Dreii almost seemed like it was designed just for me. It pains me to report then that, in spite of all of these things, Dreii is mired in an indecisiveness about what it wants its puzzles to be that makes it at best, boring, and at worst, infuriating. (more…)
Hitman: Intro Pack Review: For Better or Worse, the Same Old Hitman
As long as I have been playing the Hitman games, I have always been struck by the strange dissonance between the way the series is marketed and the way it actually plays. In adverts, cutscenes, and promotional art, Hitman games are always presented as offering a power fantasy in which you play as a globetrotting, sharply-dressed, dual pistol-wielding assassin. This is strange because, as anyone who has played a Hitman game will tell you, the games are actually much more about dressing as an engineer and rigging an oven to explode, or disguising yourself as a waiter and spiking your target’s drink with a laxative so that you can murder them in the privacy of the bathroom. This pattern holds for IO Interactive’s new entry in the Hitman series, and, for fans at least, this is good news. Even if this game is something of a known quantity, it does still manage to deliver that same incredibly cool feeling that comes with watching a chandelier “accidentally” fall on your target and walking out without anyone suspecting foul play. (more…)
Broforce Review: A Geri-Action-Packed Shooter
At first glance, Broforce seems to be an incredibly simple game. In each level, you run from left to right until you reach the end, killing any enemies who get in your way, with the occasional necessary exception of killing a boss before you can leave the level. While this might sound like a rather stagnant formula, Broforce, with its large roster of characters, emergent chaos, and four-player co-op, is designed to constantly descend into the kind of explosive mayhem that was so much fun in the action movies that the game borrows so liberally from. (more…)
Tharsis Review: Survival is a Dicey Affair
Five weeks ago, my ship was struck by a micrometeoroid storm that killed two of the six crew and irreparably damaged the ship. Since then, two more crew members have died and been cannibalised (we ran out of food), and many of the ship’s systems have gone offline. The two remaining crew members are hungry, tired, very badly injured, and still five weeks from Mars. Relatively speaking, things are going pretty well.
Tharsis is a board game with teeth. Every decision you make will feel the best of a bad bunch, and even then you might roll snake eyes and be locked out of making that decision. Tharsis is really, really hard, and the fact that your ability to act is based on dice rolls means that even if you are a strategic genius, you can still end up with a dead crew seven weeks away from Mars. (more…)
Tom Clancy’s The Division Beta Impressions: Fear and Loathing in New York City
After watching Ubisoft’s E3 2015 playthrough last year, I started up the weekend-long beta for Tom Clancy’s The Division with some vague memories of a very traditional looking third-person shooter with an online mode designed to encourage uneasy alliances. Now that I have played The Division, I can confirm that it does indeed play like most other third-person shooters, and yes, it looks about as uninspiring as most of them, too. Fortunately, The Division’s hook, “The Dark Zone,” does occasionally deliver great, tense moments in which you’ll be wondering which member of your hastily-assembled team is going to try to kill everyone and make off with the loot. And who knows? Sometimes, it might even be you. (more…)
The Witness Review: Puzzles as Far as the Eye Can See
In The Witness, you traverse an island divided into traditional video game zones (desert, forest, castle) solving line puzzles. Each puzzle exists on a square grid with a starting point and an end point. Your goal is to successfully navigate these puzzles. The puzzles are very simple at the beginning of your quest, but quickly become more complicated after the introduction of new rules.
Contrary to what the above description might make you think, The Witness is a fascinating game, and if my description makes it sound dry or boring, it is only because I am eager to dispel any theories of what The Witness may or may not be. (more…)
Posted in PC, PS4, Reviews, Top Story
Tagged The Witness