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I have played Submerged: Hidden Depths for a good few hours and got a pretty good impression of the game. Now I never played the predecessor, Submerged, so I come at this game completely fresh and with no pre-conceived ideas.
Upon starting it becomes clear pretty quickly that this game is about relaxation and exploration. Relaxation for you the player, and exploration for the characters you control. There are no enemies as such to fight, so you really can just sit back and chill as you play.
The game is full 3D, you play as Miku and Taku, the game chooses different characters for you, swapping between each, as you explore a sunken city, surrounded by water. There are plenty of ruins, which you can travel to on boat, you will then find yourself climbing, swinging and jumping to different areas of each building, and collecting various items, both from these buildings but also from the surrounding sea. So that might be flowers, boat parts, diaries, and also detecting all creatures and cataloguing them.
You have a telescope too, so find yourself a nice high building, or a lookout spot, and have a look through your telescope, see if you can find other places to explore.
While climbing and exploring is fun, riding around on your boat is also a lot of fun, perhaps more fun than it should be, when really you should only be using your boat to get from one point to another.
The game never asks too much of the player, it is a fun experience, with great music, and excellent visuals, a proper palate cleanser compared to your usual games.
The Good
Very pretty visuals, a lovely soundtrack, and lots to explore and collect.
The Bad
When I first started the game, there is not a lot to tell you what to do, so you might find yourself lost for the first 10 minutes of play, but you will soon figure things out.
Overall
A fun game, simple as that, it delivers what it promises and in life and gaming what more do you want.
I score Submerged: Hidden Depths on PC (Steam) a solid 8/10
You have all by now heard of a game called Wordle, and people posting weird green and white squares on their facebook profiles.
Some of you will be wondering what this is, and might go and search for Wordle.
However, if you do that on Steam, the top answer is a game called Wordle which was released in April 2021, costs £1.79. Seems legit.
Well yes and no. This is Wordle, but it is NOT the Wordle all your friends are playing. That is a free mobile game. The issue here is that THIS Wordle was released first, so it is not fair to say this game ripped off the more famous Wordle. But it did do something a bit dodgy. You see this game is what is known as an Asset Flip. There is a site where you can buy the base of a game, you then add your own title, graphics, improve it and so on, and that is perfectly fine, however sometimes lazy people just buy the base game, change the name and that's it. Put it on Steam and hope enough gullible people will buy it and they make a profit.
So, with that known, you can understand why people might be a bit annoyed. Firstly, it is not the game they were looking for, and secondly it is a cheap rip off.
However, with all of that said, the game itself is perfectly fine, it is a simple Wordle game, find words, trace with your mouse cursor to spell the words. Lots of categories, harder and harder levels.
There are 10 categories: Animals, Beach, Outdoor, Recreation, Computers, Monsters, Art, Science, Meal, Family, Sport.
I am in a bit of a quandary here. The game is perfectly fine, its just not the game I was looking for, and it is an asset flip.
As such I wont give it a score. I will just leave it as is, and this as a warning so you know what you are getting.
The Waylanders is a party-based Role Playing Game, with lots of Celtic myths and historical legends thrown into the mix.
First let's take a look at the official synopsis
The first meeting between the Celts and their gods, the Tuatha de Danaan, should have been a time of celebration and enlightenment, but when negotiations go catastrophically wrong, a battle against a god leaves you near death and untethered from time!
Return to a land overtaken by magickal corruptions and a kingdom splintered into multiple factions warring for the throne. The Celtic society, a complex tapestry of different religions, human cultures, and mortal and immortal races such as the Mourians, Werewolves, Goblins, and monsters threaten to tear at every seam. Will you support the immature, yet rightful, heir, or the pragmatic general in their bid for the throne? What alliances will you forge, what friendships will you foster, what romances will you pursue, and... what will you do when you are suddenly thrust into Medieval Spain?
First thoughts upon playing was the unnecessary swearing, the game is not particular adult as far as I could see, and the graphics are more cutesy than realistic, so it seemed totally out of place to use modern swearwords and slang, calling someone "dipsh*t" for example. It just stuck out like a sore thumb. Personally, I get bored with a lot of cutscenes,. wherever possible I just skip past them, because I want to actually play the game, not watch a movie. I only mention this as I noticed a lot of people moaning on online forums about the cutscenes, saying that it seems that scenes are missing, or that storyline events do not make sense etc.
Another early issue I had with the game is as you walk around, you might see a staircase in front of you, but you can't walk up it, it is just there, ready to be walked up, but not. At least put a little rope in the way or something. Little things like this in a game can make all the difference. I need to know if an area is accessible by looking at it, not some kind of trial and error of walking up to everything.
As you get into the game properly, you will find yourself needing to talk to people, a little gripe with the dialog options is that I can read faster than the characters can speak, so as soon as I have got the jist, I want to skip the dialog to go to the next line, and yes you can skip the lines, but if you accidentally click on the original talking point, you then have to go through the whole same conversation again. If you allow this in a game, you are taking shortcuts. A well-made game with just include a line something like "you already asked that", instead of repeating verbatim what was already said.
As for the dialog itself, the voice acting is ok, there seems to be a lot of it, and a fair amount of voice actors brought in, however if you just listen to them, it is clear they are just sat reading from a script, and as such it does not come across at all natural.
Onto the fighting, this also seems a bit strange. You select an enemy to fight, you walk up to them, click attack, and then you just have to wait for your character to keep attacking him, you just sit there, kind of watching.
The urge to just run and attack enemies, run around etc is massive, but the fighting system won't allow you. You do get used to it, but in my opinion, this was the wrong system to use in this game. Let people attack, that is the fun of the game. If you want to use a select attack system, then it needs to be full on turn based like in a Final Fantasy game. This game is somewhere in the middle and it does not quite work for me.
As you play the first mission and get used to the attack system, you will find AI characters to join your party, and once you have a few, and they are all doing their own things in a battle, it does seem to feel better.
At the end of the first mission, the boss is a giant dog creature. You quickly realise that you need to attack its hand (paw?) and once you hit its paw enough times, it drops its head, which you can then attack to take larger amounts of damage off his health bar.
After this battle, you find yourself in the in The Otherworld! Where you learn more about the story, and you get to explore there, upgrade weapons, armour and skills, but potions for health and magic, and so on, pretty standard stuff. I seemed to lose my health fast in battles, so get yourself a lot of potions, however if you choose the easiest setting, I don't think you can actually die, well I didn't anyway.
There are 3 different camera points you can play from, close up, a bit further away and then very far away.
With over 50 regions to explore, with quests, and secrets to uncover, as well as playing in Celtic and Medieval eras. There is plenty to do once you get into the game.
There are the usual character customisations, party upgrades, and all what you would expect from a RPG.
The Good
Although slightly cartoony, the graphics are decent, and the soundtrack is very good.
The Bad
I have already mentioned a fair bit of what is wrong with the game, much can be fixed or tweaked with updates, but I think that some of the basics of the game are set and you just have to get used to them.
Overall
I have seen a lot of hate for this game online, but I think that that hate mainly comes from your hardcore RPG gamers. I am not one, so I won't jump on the bandwagon.
As a casual gamer, there is enough in this game to keep me busy, it is far from perfect, but it is a perfectly adequate RPG game. With a few updates, (which are coming) this might be a decent game to add to your collection as it will only improve as the developers fix the bugs. But perhaps wait for the sale as a penny under £30 is way too much.
For now, I score The Waylanders a rather generous 6/10
Despite the rather silly name, there is a proper little game here in Bang-On Balls: Chronicles. You control a ball, that is your character. You start the game in a warehouse of sorts, no real instruction of what to do, or where to go, outside of a few arrows, but as you search around the level you will find collectables, the most important being film reels, for these are what open up the levels. If you see a TV screen, you can dash into it, the first TV screen you see is right at the start. This is basically a control tutorial level, a simple obstacle course to get you familiar with how the game works.
Once you finish that you are back in the warehouse, have a good look around and you will find 3 arcade games, dash into the screens and you have 3 different mini games to play. The smashing up of cars was my favourite, even if it seemed strangely hard to finish off the destruction of a car.
Further explore the warehouse, get into the vents, climb up on top of scaffolding, if you see a treasure chest, dash into it to open it, and collect the goodies. After a while however you may be wondering "is that it", just like I did. For I couldn't seem to find any more TVs to dash into, but I know there was more to the game, as I had seen the official screenshots. Eventually I collected a second film reel and opened a door, and low and behold I am now in a new room in the warehouse, and there is a TV in the corner. Dash into that and my journey has now properly begun. The first proper level of the game is a Viking based level, destroy some Viking boats, rescue some imprisoned villages, and collect those all-important film reels to unlock the next level.
And that is pretty much how the game works.
Think of Bang-On Balls: Chronicles as a nonlinear platformer, where you really have to explore, collect items, smash things as well as complete the required tasks. You can even customise your character as you progress, for some reason I have a piece of cheese on my head.
There are different "countries" for levels, and although this game is still "Early Access", it has progressed enough that there is a decent amount of content here to keep you busy,.
I played the single player mode, but you can play multiplayer with up to 4 people playing at once.
The Good
Graphically this game really surprised me, it is really high quality, and although this may cause some performance issues, even if you turn down the graphics level, everything still looks great. The game plays well, and your ball moves easy enough, and the various options for movement, like dash, jump, double jump, shield, vacuum, and so on, all become a second thought, as you get used to the game.
The Bad
I wonder if a better menu system, and an easier way to access the levels would be a good idea. I spent way too much time not really understanding what I was supposed to do, or where to go. However, once you do figure it out, even if by luck, that will make you feel a whole lot more comfortable with the game.
Overall
Ignoring a few graphical bugs, and performance issues, this is a good little game, a few tweaks here and there to make it more accessible, and this could do some really good business for the developers.
As it is an easy access game, my score is with that in mind. So, as it is right now, I score Bang-On Balls: Chronicles on PC (Steam) a very fair 7/10
Achilles: Legends Untold is currently in Beta testing, as an early access game, I was invited to take part in the testing, and what follows are my honest and unbiased thoughts. Please keep in mind that the game is not finished, and my opinions on the game are based on the unfinished product.
To start off, this is an isometric RPG game, that isn't really isometric, nor is it a RPG game, in the classical sense. It is isometric only in parts, and the camera angle does move to set positions.
You as the player are unable to move the camera yourself, which is beyond frustrating, especially when you first start the game. Your initial instinct is to use the right stick if using a game controller, to adjust the camera so you can see your surroundings better. And this is the first huge problem with the game. By going against the natural instinct of the player, and forcing a camera perspective, you are taking away a huge part of what makes a game enjoyable. But we will come back to that later.
The game is basically a linear route, hack and slash game, you control your Greek warrior, you run about, and when you come across an enemy, you try to hit him and kill him before he kills you. You will also face mythological creatures, boss fights and everything in between.
As you play you will collect "souls", and other colelctables, used to upgrade your character. Health potions, bombs and so on.
It just so happens that I have been playing Assassins Creed Odyssey for the past few months, so instantly upon playing Achilles: Legends Untold, I already have in my mind what a good game based on Ancient Greece should look like. Unfortunately Achilles: Legends Untold is not in the same league as Odyssey, but then they are very different games with different budgets, so you have to accept that although first impressions of loading screens and so on, indicate one kind of game, what you get is something quite different. The closest you could compare would be one of the top down view Lara Croft games.
Onto the gameplay itself. As I mentioned earlier the camera view is a bit of mess, straight away you feel too close to the character, in that it is hard to tell where you are supposed to go, as the field of view is very limited. There are no on screen maps, no directional arrows, and although the levels are linear, there are a few little side routes you can take. That instinct to adjust the camera is huge though. As you play, the camera angle does change depending on which part of the level you are on. Moving to an almost side on 2D type perspective. This then causes other problems including your character being hidden completely by obstacles in the foreground. Check the photo below, can you see where my character is?
This is seemingly done, to show off some of the pretty backgrounds. It does seem like the game makers created the graphics, backgrounds etc first, and then thought about gameplay, which is a slightly backwards way of creating a game in my opinion.
In your regular hack and slash game, you have a large health bar, and you just go on a killing spree. However in this game, your health bar is tiny, meaning a few good shots from an enemy and you die. You will then respawn either at the start of the level, or at certain points placed around the level, which also act as a place to replenish your health, upgrade your character and so on. With the health bar being so small at the start, you will find yourself drinking health potions in an attempt to stay alive, but this takes a few seconds, leaving you wide open to being attacked by the very enemy you are trying to beat. The menu system is a bit of a mess, to upgrade yoru character and so on, it is pretty unclear, and you will just find yourself clicking on everything, trying to figure it out.
In fights you have a regular attack and a hard attack, the hard attack takes a few seconds to hit with, and the regular one is slightly faster, both seem so slow to use, and instead of what you would normally do in a hack and slash game, you find yourself trying to time the attacks, as they seemingly take forever to actually hit, meaning the game forces you to strategise basically every hit. Not so easy when you are fighting more than one opponent. And if you are facing a boss fight, or a mythological creature, you will struggle, even on the easy setting. Think "Hit, run away, hit, run away" You also can only hit a few times before your stamina runs out, so you then have to wait for that to refill.
I am truly dumbfounded why they would make a game that plays in this way, especially so when you choose the easy difficulty setting. You have a shield you can use in fights, but this just slows down your movement and ends up increasing the chance of you getting hit, and making it harder to time a return hit, as you cant move away fast enough.
Some of the cut scenes look great, some look a bit 2005.
The one saving grace of all of this, is that the game is early access, it is unfinished, and most of these problems can be fixed. I assume that the camera angle is a lost cause, as to fix that, would mean reworking the entire game. But the basic fighting can easily be fixed. Will the game makers listen to the players? Time will tell, as a second quarter relase date is promised.
As it is right now, the game has potential, there is a good game hidden in there, the question is if the developers can bring it out of the mess they have created for themselves. Even if they just make a easy dificulty setting with faster strokes, and a massive health bar, and just allow players to have fun.
My tip to any game developer out there, concentrate on the gameplay first, make an enjoyable game that works, and worry about the graphics and cut scenes later, they really aren't that important.
I wont score the game as it is right now, as it is no where near the finished article. I just hope that the game developers can take constructive criticism, and understand that my criticisms are based off of frustrations for a game that I was sure I would love. I am Greek, so any game that uses my history, my culture needs to be of the highest quality, As of right now, I am just disappointed.
When the game is finished, if the game makers want me to take a look at it, I will happily do so, but they need to fix the problems I mentioned first.
For now, if you want a great game that celebrates ancient Greece and delivers on the gameplay at the highest level, check out Assassins Creed Odyssey.
