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Summertime Madness is a single-player first-person puzzle game. The game starts off with a nice intro.
"The city of Prague was under siege, ravaged by war.
Buildings were falling, churches were burning, and everything was to be washed away forever.
A painter lived there, isolated from the outside world. The worse the terrors of war became, the more the artist obsessively painted beautiful landscapes as a contrast to the evil he had witnessed. One night, a mysterious figure appeared in the house seemingly out of nowhere. The stranger walked slowly around the room, inspecting the paintings. He then sat down in front of the artist; to offer him a deal.
The chance to enter one of his own creations, far away and free of war. But he would have to find his way back out before midnight, or else his soul would become trapped in the canvas forever. Feeling alone, on the edge of madness, terrorized by the scent of death creeping in from the streets, the artist shook the mysterious man's hand, accepting the deal.
A few moments later, the house was empty."
Once the intro has finished, you get a choice of how to play the game.
Classic Mode = 6 hours to finish the game.
Advanced = 3 hours to finish the game.
Explorer = No time limit.
Once you have chosen which you prefer, your characters eyes open and you find yourself in a beautifully drawn 3D world.
You play as the painter, now inside one of the paintings, who has seemingly made a deal with the mysterious figure, basically representing the devil.
As you walk about you will need to solve puzzles and explore your surroundings.
For a puzzle game, there is a lot of walking around, which seems strange, but I understand that the game makers want to give you a peaceful experience, but then why add time limits?
The puzzles themselves involve a lot of running back and forth, and unfortunately the puzzles in general are really poorly thought out. And instead of a challenging feel, they will just make you frustrated. The first puzzle for example, run back and forth turning the wheel on a ship, open doors, close doors, pull a lever, ring a bell, it all gets a bit tedious. The exact puzzle mechanics tend to be very easy, but wrapped in ridiculous back and forth running about, that is just annoying and not much fun.
The game doesn't hold you hand either in any way, some puzzles are just confusing and make no logical sense, and since you have no real idea what you are supposed to do, the feeling to just give up and turn the game off, grows and grows as you play.
The Good
The game is beautiful, the visuals and sounds are all of the highest quality.
The Bad
The puzzles are poorly thought out, and frustrate more than challenge.
Overall
The base of a good game is there, it is just ruined by puzzles that are just terrible in their delivery.
Neodori Forever is a retro inspired, endless arcade 3D racing game inspired by the beloved old classics. A colorful cast of rivals is waiting to race against you on a variety of vibrant environments.
Collect power ups and coins on the way to expand your car collection and outrun the competition.
The Good
Fun, old school racing game, addictive, and challenging.
The Bad
Controls can be tough, and drifting needs improving.
Blast Brigade vs. Evil Legion of Dr. Cread comes from Allods Team Arcade and published by MY.GAMES.
The game is a classic style 2D side scrolling platform game in the style of Metal Slug, for any of you old school gamers.
Inspired by 1980's action films, you find yourself trying to save the world, using an array of weapons and bombs to help you along the way.
The game has its tongue set very firmly in its cheek, and this sets the stage for what is a very fun and action packed game.
You start off watching a cinematic of a plane being blown up, the Pilot and a Scientist grab a parachute and jump, while Jeff is asleep in the back of the plane, Jeff wakes up, grabs his gun and plummets to the island below.
As you explore the island, you will collect coins that will help you upgrade your weapons and abilities, as well as collect grenades, and eventually assemble a team that will help you as you fight the weird and wonderful enemies that the island is full of.
Areas on the island include jungle villages, cliffside prisons, volcanoes, and ancient temples.
I am playing this on a Nintendo Switch Lite, and as is often the problem with the Switch Lite, sometimes the controls can be a bit tricky. The right analog stick is used to aim your weapon, and the right trigger is used to fire, now I have decent sized hands, so can reach both, but even then, hand ache will come in soon. This game definitely works better with a regular controller.
As you play you will eventually have available to you a decent amount of weapons and tools, not just big guns and grenades, when you are first exploring, you will notice areas you can't reach, well later on when you get a grappling hook with one of the characters you add to your team, you can go back and explore those areas and in turn unlock the secrets they hold.
Another part of the game is the ability to upgrade buildings at your base area, this allows you to get better weapons, tools and upgrades, and this really does add an extra element to the game including customizing specific abilities for your character, including faster reload times, magnet to help collect coins, a longer period of invulnerability after you are hit by an enemy, more ammo etc.
Enemies include hybrid monstrosities, giant robots, cyborg ninjas, and other evil minions. Further along into the game, as you assemble your squad, you can switch between them as you play, each character has different abilities and specialities, which is important if you want to explore certain areas.
You start off with "All-American Jeff, and later can channel the deadly rage of Shura, decommission enemies as the cyborg Scotsman Galahad, and help the chakram-wielding Vortex reclaim her island."
The boss fights are quite tough, and will need pattern analysis if you want to beat them, nothing impossible, just needs effort to keep trying until you beat them.
Luckily there is a in game save option whenever you see a hammock, get a quick rest, your grenades are refilled as is your energy. And you can also quickly move between areas once you find the motorbike.
The game should give you at least 20 hours of play, more if you really want to explore every single corner of the island. There are multiple paths, and nearly always a way to go you haven't found yet.
The game is fully voice acted, and full of humour, and is definitely worth your time.
The Good
Stunning cartoon/comic themed graphics, which look incredible. Gameplay is easy to learn, but tough to master, and the boss fights offer a decent challenge.
The Bad
Works better with a proper controller. And some of the humour won't be for everyone.
Overall
A thoroughly good 2D metroidvania adventure.
I score Blast Brigade vs. Evil Legion of Dr. Cread on Nintendo Switch a solid 8.5/10
I was invited to try the new Disney Speedstorm Closed Beta Test on PC. I kind of wish I wasn't now.
Speedstorm is made by Gameloft, and runs pretty similar in style to other Gameloft games like Asphalt 8 and so on. The basic model of the game is free, but there are lots of micro transactions. But as with the other Gameloft games, you can still play it without paying, but you might be limited to how many times before your energy runs out etc.
At first look you may think this is a Mario Kart style game, but for PC, well get that out of your head. Even though you might drive "Karts", this is very much a Mobile style game.
You play the game on circuits inspired by Disney and Pixar worlds, and you can play with a collection of characters from those franchises. The biggest name of which is Mickey Mouse. And yes, you have to put up with his god-awful voice too.
Some of the levels include the docks from Pirates of the Caribbean's Pirates Island and the wilds of The Jungle Book's Jungle Ruins map.
The game will run in "Seasons" with new content and challenges dropping with each new season release.
As with similar arcade racers, you accelerate with the right trigger on a gamepad, and break/drift with the left trigger. You have a boost button for when your meter fills up, giving you a short boost of speed, you have a jump/trick button, which allows you to jump your vehicle, or if flying off a ramp can let you do a barrel roll. You can also collect offensive and defensive weapons, drop a mine, fire a weapon, short teleport forwards and a shield are the ones that come to mind so far.
The levels each have set challenges to complete, come first, use a full boost 3 times, do a trick, the usual stuff. The levels start easy and as they get harder, you will need to upgrade your vehicle to stay competitive, you do this through collecting "Shards" during normal races.
Now let's get down to business. The Closed Beta Testing has been something of a disaster, the vast majority of people are unable to even start the game, I also struggled, but then tried a few compatibility tricks, (run in Windows 8 Mode, with Admin privileges on, restart PC) and that seemed to help to get the game to run. Very long load times, a buggy interface that crashes often, so don't try exploring the menus too much. The races themselves are ok, when it is running, it all looks great, but often things freeze for a half a second before starting again.
It truly seems insane to me that they would push out this game for Closed Beta Testing when it should still be in internal alpha testing. Surely the developers aren't learning anything they wouldn't know if they just played the game themselves for 5 minutes.
Disney also has been having a terrible time recently PR wise. With multiple employees being arrested and charged with sex crimes against children, their opposition to an anti-grooming bill, which comes as no surprise considering who they employ, and the fact they are about to lose a lot of powers in Florida with the park there. So the fact that their name, logo and characters are associated to this game is damaging to not only Gameloft, but this poor start is damaging to Disney too.
The only saving grace is that the game when it is ready will be free, it will be available on all formats, and it will run smooth by the time it gets a console release, since they are much stricter on releases than Steam.
The Good
It is a free arcade racer, with recognisable characters from your favourite Disney films.
The Bad
At its base it is an Asphalt 8 clone, that is no where near as good as said game, oh and it has Mickey Mouse in it, who I hate.
Overall
Terrible start. Should never have left internal Alpha testing, and has pissed off a lot of people excited to play a PC based Kart racing game.
I score Disney Speedstorm an unplayable 2/10. (The 2 is purely if you can get the game running, the tracks do look nice)
