Tag: lore

First Impression: Metal: Hellsinger (PC – Steam) ~ Rhythmic Doom

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Steam – Official website

While I love music, I’m not that fond of rhythm games. Because, I can’t keep a rhythm for some reason. Especially in games, since my playing style is quite reflex based, and I act on instinct instead of on the beat of music. Anyway, I was scrolling through the games I got via my Humble Bundle subscription and I saw Metal: Hellsinger. I was like: “Oh, a new indie shooter game, let’s give it a try.”. I only noticed that it was a rhythm game after I installed it and booted it up. So, I was afraid that this game wasn’t going to be something for me. Yet, this game surprised me… And in this article I want to talk about it, while I invite you to give your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Going to hell singing

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In the world of this game, hell is a place where memories are lost. Demons don’t know who they were and why they are down there. Also, because souls are tortured in hell, something is taken away from you. For the main character in this game, the Unknown, that’s her voice. She is out to get it back and travels through hell to defeat the demons standing in her way to get her voice back.

The story in this game mostly takes a backseat for the actual gameplay loop of this game. I’ll talk more about the gameplay later. First, let me talk about the voice acting. The voice acting in this game is pretty good. Since the main character is mute, one of our weapons is our guide and tells what’s going on. The skull named Paz is voiced by no one less than Troy Baker. His performance here is excellent, and it’s a joy to listen to. The other voiced character is the main antagonist of the game, the Red Judge. She is voiced by Jennifer Hale. I have to tell you, the voice acting in this game is well done.

In terms of the story, I’m not going to critique it too much. Because the game is rather short, and I don’t want to spoil anything. Not that this story is going to move you to the edge of your seat, but still. Howlongtobeat puts this game at a runtime of 4 1/2 hours, and I have to say that’s a very low estimate. If you are good at rhythm games, I can totally see this game taking you give or take 5 hours, but if you aren’t the best in rhythm games, I think that 7 to 8 hours is more reasonable.

Now, something I really like in this game is that the cutscenes are mainly lightly animated comic book panels. This makes the art in the cutscenes of this game highly detailed and give it an amazing atmosphere. A few cutscenes are in-game and they look fine. Let me just say that if I had to be real nitpicky that some textures in action moments were a bit rough and stood out from the amazing looking visuals in this game. Thankfully, it’s something that will be noticed if you review games for a hobby or a job, but I’m certain it will be less noticeable if you are just enjoying this game.

The story is mostly told at the start and at the end of each level. The pacing of this game is quite fast because of certain gameplay mechanics. But, more on that later. If it’s too fast for you, you have a codex where you can look up more lore or more information on the enemies and events in the game. These unlock automatically, and you don’t have to go looking for them… Looking at you, Doom…

Rhythmic Doom

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If I had to describe this game in a few sentences, I have to say this. Take the hectic shooting combat of Doom, combine it with the combo system of Devil May Cry, and mix it with the rhythm gameplay from Crypt of the Necromancer.

In this game, you go from arena to arena and fight a boss at the end. The arenas themselves are combat puzzles where you have to know how each enemy operates in order for you to prioritize the right enemies. Each arena is gets between 2 and 5 rounds of enemies spawned in. In total, you have 7 main enemy types for you to deal with. They get introduced one by one, and you get more than enough time to learn the behaviors of these enemies.

You also have special elite versions of some enemies, and let me tell you… They are the ones you will hate. They are not only stronger than their normal counterpart but also hit harder. I still hate the first elite enemy you encounter. The shield cambions can go and die in a fire. You need to get close to them and strafe around them to get through their shield, but they have a very nasty wide fireball attack that makes getting close to them quite difficult.

Just like in Doom, you can stagger an enemy. When you stagger an enemy, you can glory kill them. Instead of blinking blue, they blink orange in this game. If you press E at the right time, you will fly towards the enemy and glory kill it. If you don’t press E at the right time, the enemy will get up and continue attacking you. Glory killing is important since you can regain some health from it. This is especially handy when you used up all the healing crystals in the arena.

Now, you might have noticed at the top of the screenshots, you have a multiplier. This multiplier is exactly what you assume, it’s a damage multiplier. Like in Devil May Cry, if you keep fighting, that meter will go up. The higher it goes, the better. It’ll slowly go down, so you have to make a mad dash towards the next arena to fight again to keep it high. There are also sometimes power-ups in the arena’s that either double your current fury OR up it to the maximum right away, which is 16x.

Sadly, just killing enemies doesn’t increase the counter. If you look closely at the crosshair in the screenshots, you might start to understand how the rhythm mechanic in this game works. It’s sort of like DDR/Guitar Hero, where arrows come from one side, and you have to hit the right button when they are inside the arrows of the crosshair. The better your rhythm, the more damage you do and the more your fury meter increases.

But, that’s not the only advantage of keeping a rhythm. When you press “R” at the perfect time during the reload animation, you’ll be able to instantly reload your weapon. Now, unlike Doom, you don’t have limited ammo. So, no need to keep in mind which ammo you still have and which one not. You can only take two guns into a level, so choose wisely. Each weapon has their own special mechanics and usefulness and maybe if you die over and over again, you might want to try with another weapon.

Another important gameplay mechanic is the yellow bar you see in the screenshots. This yellow bar is a charge bar. The better you hold the rhythm, the more you charge that bar with that weapon. When it reaches max, you will be able to unleash the special ability of that weapon. For example, for your blade, it’s going ninja on your enemies with extremely fast sword swings. Another example are the dual pistols, where you spawn a temporary clone of yourself, they not only helps you fight but also increases your fury meter.

Now, interesting to know is that you can revive yourself 3 times on the easiest difficulty when trading in some score. This is an amazing feature in my opinion. This allows players with a bad sense of rhythm to play this game without getting too frustrated, but it’s also a punishment. Now, these points are nothing more than bragging rights for the global leaderboard, but it works quite effectively. I don’t know how different it is on the other difficulty modes, since I’m playing on the easy difficulty. There are four of them, with the 4th one being locked at first.

Metal rhythmic

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I think that it’ll surprise nobody that for this game, we get a metal soundtrack. On the Wikipedia page for this game, you get an amazing list of all the tracks in this game.

Now, while I do enjoy metal music, I’m not that big a fan when the vocals are just screaming the lyrics into the mic. I just enjoy my music when I understand the lyrics right away without listing closely, and English not being my first language also plays a huge role in that. Thankfully, in this game, it isn’t that bad. There are a few tracks where it happens and most of them are understandable, like in Amaranthe tracks, for example.

The amount of different artists that helped to make this soundtrack by Two Feathers come true is just incredible. Some of these are real earworms, like the main theme and “Stygia ft. Alissa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy”. I think I’ll have to look up some of these bands later, since I really liked their work for this game. Each level has its own theme and the soundtrack fits this game as a glove. There are also two DLC’s for this game. One adds 9 additional songs and the other one adds two songs and some cosmetics.

Let me be honest, I feel that the second DLC with “essential songs” isn’t the best. There are some none metal songs in there and clash hard with the vibe. The other DLC that adds two additional songs and cosmetics is a lot better and a steal for the price. I’m really curious to see what they are going to do next, since when you look at the DLC list in the main menu, there is a third option saying “coming soon”.

The music and gameplay work together quite nicely to bring you a highly addictive arena shooter with a lot of rhythm game elements. Apart from that, the sound design of this game is also quite amazing. The guns and weapons feel amazing to use, and you really hear the impact they have. Now, sometimes the feedback of getting hit isn’t clear enough, but playing a bit with the options fixed that for me.

Speaking about the options, the amount of flexibility this game has is just insane. You can adjust quite a lot to your liking, and you can even totally disable the whole rhythm mechanic from the game. Now, I advise against doing that since the game is quite well-balanced on the easiest difficulty setting, and you can just recalibrate so the audio and video latency is to your playstyle.

Visually, this game looks amazing. While the colors used in the levels can be quite monotone, everything still stands out and everything is quite easy to read during hectic fights. Also, details like the marionete enemies having strings aren’t lost during the hectic gameplay. You can quickly see when you are low on ammo on a gun or when an enemy is hiding or walking behind a wall. You also quickly see exit when you finished the arena.

Each level also has it’s own unique visual presentation. From a snowy arena to an big church… Each level looks different and looks amazing. A lot of memorable set pieces. I loved the mine level where you always came back to a similar room and had a lot of different fights. Also, the visuals change whenever you are in a higher fury counter. A lot more fireworks are displayed with some more animations.

In terms of animations, these just add to the atmosphere. Attacks are quite well telegraphed and with the quite responsive controls, I rarely felt that taken damage wasn’t my fault. Also, the green glow healing crystals give off, makes them easy to read as well. Something I also love is that you can see the top of the Unknown’s wings when you double jump. There are a lot of details present in this game without the UI and the screen becoming cluttered with information. Oh, and in terms of the animations as well, the animation of the main character in the main menu, oh boy. The way she throws you the peace sign and flies off when you click on the exit button or when she looks at the skull when you look at the codex, just wow. The charm while staying true to the setting is amazing.

Something you need to be careful of is that there are no mid-level saves in this game. One time I had the bad luck that just before a bossfight, Windows Update decided to reboot my PC. When my computer rebooted and I restarted the game, I had to restart the level. Thankfully, the levels are rather short so it isn’t that bad. The game saves automatically when you beat a level so we don’t have to worry about that one.

Something else to keep in mind is that healing crystals can be destroyed with one simple shot. And yes, they despawn quite rapidly. So, stay aware while fighting since these healing crystals are really needed in this game.

I have been mostly praising this game, but are there any negatives I can say about this game? What is this game doing wrong? It’s not the extremely stable frame rate, since I haven’t seen any slowdowns while playing this game. Most of my complaints about this game are rather small in the grand scheme of things.

The first minor complaint I have is that actually preforming a glory kill is quite unforgiving. If you are even a little bit off, you get denied. Thankfully, you get that information quickly with a visual and sound cue. But, still the amount of times I was off by just a few milliseconds and got denied, is frustrating.

The second minor complaint I have is about the default controls. Your blade is the first weapon you have and let me tell you, with the font useed, you barely see the difference between É and E. So, it took me some time to realize I had to press 1 on my number row instead of E… Just show the number keys too on that small icon.

Apart from going for a higher score or finding the hidden coat of armor for more additional bonus goodies, there isn’t a high replay value. Also, the UI before you enter the level gives you the impression that you need the sigils … while you don’t need them at all.

Sigils are bonus challenges that can unlock additional perks but unlike Nightmare Reaper these are anything but essential to finish the game. I only finished my first Sigil after I had beaten one of the final three levels. Yet, they are a fun challenge to challenge your skills with the game with an unique twist. They are also timed as well.

The third minor complain I have is how semi-aggressive the DLC is promoted. “Unlock by buying the DLC”. But on the other hand, I totally understand that the company needs to make money and promote that the DLC exists.

My final minor complaint is that as soon as you have found your two weapons, you are set. Apart from when they are introduced, there is no reason to use them anymore. It’s a shame since all them have unique and nice gameplay styles. Do yourself a favor and change up your weapons sometimes.

Honestly, I’m having a hard time finding negavites with this game. Most of the negatives I can say about this game are rather minor and don’t detract from the amazing gameplay loop. While I can totally understand that this game can feel repetitive to some, I feel that the gameplay loop and unique arenas are addictive enough to stand up on their own two feet.

I’m surprised that a rhythm game is this much fun and provides challenge for every playstyle. Even when you can’t keep rhythm like myself, you can still enjoy this game. You can also disable the rhythm mechanics completely. You’ll be able to experience the whole game but not be able to submit your score to the leaderboards. But, like I said earlier, you’ll miss out on one of the fundemental mechanics that make this game so much fun to play.

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys action/shooter games. Especially if you enjoyed games like Blood, Nightmare Reaper, Quake or Doom. Do be warned that this game is on the short side, but is in my opinion totally worth full price. The amount of polish and care that has been put into this game is fantastic. At first I was afraid that this game was going to frustrate me like all other rhythm games do, but this game is polished to a fine diamond that really makes me want to stay in rhythm since it feels so rewarding to finally beat my score.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: The Legend Of Zelda – Tears Of The Kingdom (Switch) ~ Where To Now?

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Wikipedia – Zelda.com page

In 2017, Nintendo changed the open world adventure game genre forever with Breath of the Wild. We got a game where freedom was the central mechanic in the game. You could play it however you want and have your own unique adventure. Two years after the release at E3 2019, we got our first teaser that a sequel was in development. In May 2023, that sequel finally released. Now, is this sequel worth our time and money? I played this game and after several hours, I’m ready to give my opinion on the game. I haven’t beaten the game yet, but I’m quite close to the ending, hence why I place this review in the first impression category. So, let’s dive right into Link’s latest adventure and let’s take a look if it’s a game we should be playing or if it’s one that we are overhyping since it’s getting high scores across the board from other reviewers. Here is my honest opinion, and if you want to say something about this game and/or the content of this article… Feel free to do that in the comments down below! Enough stalling, let’s go!

Where to now?

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In this game, we take control of Link. In this story, Link and Zelda are investigating strange tunnels underneath Hyrule. While exploring these tunnels, they come across some ancient evil. This ancient evil awakes from its slumber and after a small battle, Zelda disappears, Link gets wounded and the Master Sword almost gets destroyed.

After that, Link gets rescued by a strange figure who heals his wounds. But his arm was beyond saving so that strange figure gives his arm to Link. After that, Link walks out of the cave where he was recovering and finds himself in the sky, ready to explore the new world… so he can start his quest to try to find and rescue Zelda.

Since you can experience this story at your own peace and order, it’s difficult to review this story. Due to the fact you can experience it out of order, some dialogues have to be kept vague and generic. Since, writing separate dialogue for each possible option would be a nightmare to write, program and debug.

Yet, I feel that in this game… The story and world building is more present this time around compared to Breath of the Wild. In Breath of the Wild, I felt that each town was its own mini-story with only the main plot holding those stories together. But, in this game, there are a lot more things in the world that gives life to the world. The main and side story segments are more spread around on the map. I can’t really put on my finger on exactly why, but I felt that Hyrule was more alive this time around compared to Breath of the Wild.

Something that can also make or break your story is the voice acting. In this game, apart from your grunts and things of that nature, we have a silent Link. The voice cast for the English version is extremely solid. Overall, I find that the voice acting in this game is good. Here and there, some scenes are dancing on the line of over acting, but I don’t dislike it. I think that the biggest issue is that a lot of people were used to the characters being silent. When characters are silent, you tend to put your own voice and tone on that character. This makes it impossible to find a voice for the character that everybody will like. So, I can understand why people dislike the voice acting in this game.

Honestly, the voice acting still drew me into the game. I feel that they are going on a good path forward here, and Nintendo should start to experiment with putting more voice acting in their games to see what works and doesn’t. Since, I that’s one big thing I missed in a game like Pokémon Scarlet and Voilet. Granted, the grunts of the NPC’s make them adorable, which fit this game nicely.

So, overall, with a world that feels way more alive and a story that’s more present while you are exploring the game… I feel that they improved that over Breath of the Wild by a more than a mile. Yet, I feel there is one issue at the start of this game that I didn’t have with Breath of the Wild. I quite often asked myself, “where to now?”.

After the tutorial sky island, we get dropped into Hyrule. So, we think that the world just has some sky islands now. And then suddenly, you learn about something in the underground. So, you think… Oh, caves. But then you find a hole that goes deeper and deeper… Almost to the center of the world. And then you find out that the map almost doubled in size. I felt overwhelmed at what to tackle first and where to go next.

Is this an issue or a blessing? Well, that depends on your playstyle and how you want to tackle this game. I see this game as a giant playground that we can explore and have amazing adventures in. Like I said earlier, the world now feels way more alive, so there is a lot more to do and explore. Yet, if you want some guidance, the main quest line does an excellent job at pushing you towards your next objective. But, do explore around in each area, you never know what you’ll find.

How shall we do this?

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If you asked me to talk about each mechanic in this game, both old and new, we would be here for a while. A long while. The amount of things you can do in this game is so vast, it’s like asking which games you can play with a few balls.

At its core, this game is Breath of the Wild with a lot of new mechanics. And I really mean, a lot. Let’s start by talking about Link’s new abilities. In this game, you have four new abilities. First is the Ultrahand, compare that with Magnesis from Breath of the Wild… but this time you can pick up almost anything. And then, you put two logs next to each other, and you notice that some green liquid puts them together. And then it doesn’t take long before you learn that you can build a ton of machines by putting a lot of things together.

And then you wonder what would happen if I put a rock on your sword? Well, why not use the second new ability, then? Fuse. This ability is just insane. With this, you can create various new weapons and just do unique things. It’s a lot of fun to experiment and learn which things do what.

We do have two other abilities as well. Let’s talk about recall first. With this ability, Link can rewind time on an object for a set amount of time. I’ll explain it with this example. Image an ice-cold river where rafts are flowing over, yet you have to reach the other side. Well, when you hope on the raft and use recall… the rafts goes against the flow back to its previous position, helping you to cross the ice-cold river.

Finally, we have the Ascend ability. This ability feels like a sort of cheat, since whenever there is a flat surface you can stand underneath, you can ascend through the ceiling to the top. And it’s used so well in this game, it’s insane.

You don’t have the abilities from Breath of the Wild anymore, but these just open a whole other way to interact with the world and sets the two games apart and makes both of them unique. Now, I haven’t talked about all abilities, but let’s talk about the new champion abilities.

This is where I have one problem with the game. The new champion abilities are fine, while I miss Revali’s gale. But, the way to activate them is annoying sometimes. After you have completed a champion quest, you unlock their ability. Their spirit runs next to you and when you want to use their ability, you have to get close to them and press “A”. Now, this is where the issue lies.

It’s way too easy to press “A”. Often, I activated one of the abilities by accident. You don’t want to know how many times I activated the Sage of Wind’s ability and saw my sweet loot go over a cliff edge… Or my trying to find the Sage of Fire since I want to break a break-able wall, so I don’t have to use my weapons or a bomb flower. At the other hand, it’s a blessing that they help you fight, and they helped me to get out of tight spots… But, sometimes it works against the player.

Sadly, this isn’t the only small problem this game has. Another annoying problem in my opinion is that when you enter a shrine where all your items are taken away to have a special and unique challenge… Don’t pick up the enemy loot when you want to keep it. Since, when you get your items back, you don’t always get the loot back you picked up. I learned that the hard way. Since, I wanted to charge my battery for Zonai devices.

Oh yeah, that’s another big thing. Remember the Master Cycle Zero in Breath of the Wild? Well, that’s back in a way. But this time, it’s way more than just a bike. Earlier, I talked about how you can build machines with Ultrahand. Well, with Zonai devices you can do some much more stuff. Image making a raft and placing a fan on top of it. Put that raft on the water and activate the fan and away you go. And this is truly the tip of the iceberg on what you can do. Let me just say that people already build things that allow them to fly or make tanks. Yes, tanks.

While there are a lot of build tutorials online… personally, I highly recommend toying around with it yourself. I feel that this game is the strongest when you go in blind and try to do your own thing. I don’t mean that you can’t inspiration from others, but I’m saying that you should make your own adventure in this game. Just like if you want to use the duplication glitches in this game. Yes, there are duplication glitches in this game. While Nintendo is trying to patch them out, a new one or ones are discovered not too long after. Personally, I’m not using these duplication glitches since they would ruin the magic of trying to use what I find for me. But, that’s the beauty of this game… You are free to play it how you want.

Making steps towards the end

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I know that I’m leaving out a lot of mechanics from this review. To name just a few: the improved stables, the return of the koroks, the whole depths, the wells… There is so much to do in this game, it is insane. Maybe a bit too much since some things can feel a bit undercooked like the main Gerudo quest before the temple.

Everytime I play this game, I feel like I’m taking more steps towards completing this game. Personally, I try to avoid following guides as much as possible since I love the feeling I get for discovering the solution myself.

Yes, sometimes I run into small little problems like having to fight to remove an icon from the map and place another… But, apart from some minor issues, I have a lot of trouble finding negatives in this game. The controls of this game are excellent, responsive and a joy to use. Sometimes I struggle a bit with rotation and Ultrahand but this happens so rarely and most of the time going out and back into rotation mode fixes it for me.

Also, the game is less silent during exploration. The enviroment sounds are much more present and we get the clamic envoriment tracks being played more often. In this game we get a mix of old and new music and the soundtrack of this game is just amazing. I have to admit that I listen to it while I work from time to time. It just brings back memories of me playing the game.

The game isn’t short at all. According to Howlongtobeat.com, this game will take you at least 60 hours to complete if you don’t use a guide or use speedrun strats. But, have you seen that avarge for 100% completion? That’s close to 230 hours.

On top of that, this game isn’t a cake walk. There are a lot of area’s where you really need to be on your guard. It’s a game that where when you learn the mechanics and how to world works, the easier the game gets. Yet, you have to be on your guard. There are ways to make things a lot easier, but these still require either skill, grinding or both.

Now, visually this game is stunning for the Nintendo Switch. Compared to Breath of the Wild, this game is a huge improvement in terms of the visuals, presentation and animations. GamingBolt wrote an amazing article comparing the visuals of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Honestly, I have to agree with GamingBolt on this one. Visually, this game looks a lot better than Breath of the Wild but the Nintendo Switch is showing it’s limits sometimes. But, these moments aren’t too frequent and mostly fix themselves.

Now, this game runs at 30fps. Stable, I rarely to never actually noticed frame drops. Now, some people are saying that this game should run at 60fps or higher or “look better”. I even hear arguments that this game look like it’s stuck in last decade. Please, don’t let these comments pull you away from this game. This game runs smooth and 30fps is still very playable. Also, having a higher framerate (then 30) doesn’t mean that the game runs smoother. For some people, they don’t even notice the difference between 60pfs and 80fps. Why does it matter as long as the game runs smooth? As long as you don’t have any visual glitches and everything reacts like it should without delay? I just want to enjoy playing a game with a stable framerate than worrying about how high that framerate number goes. And that’s what Tears of the Kingdom really delivers in both handheld and docked mode with a minimal amount of issues. But, I honestly think that most of these issues don’t come from the 30fps but more from the aging hardware of the Switch.

You might have noticed that I compared this game a lot to Breath of the Wild. That’s because this game is promoted as the direct sequel to Breath of the Wild and it has a lot of subtle references to it. Just like there are a lot of easter eggs and references to previous titles. Yet, I feel like the two titles can’t be seperated. If you enjoyed Breath of the Wild, you will have a blast with this one.

Honestly… When I started playing this game, I was afraid that this game was going to be more of the same. That it would be a rehash of Breath of the Wild with a new story. But no, what we got is more than that. We got new unique mechanics, two new layers in the world, a more alive world, a lot more side quests and side content… Nintendo raised the bar again. Now, I’m honestly worried that the sequel to this game might become too big for it’s own good.

If I have to be overly critical, then I do have a few things I would love to see improved in the sequel. First of all, make the core mechanic of the temples/dungeons more unique. Please, stop with the “active x amount of terminals” since it just doesn’t help to make them unique. I feel like this time around they blended in more since you didn’t have the interactions with the Divine Beasts. The quest before entering the dugeon is a lot more memorable… But, thank you for letting us enter the dungeons after beating them.

Secondly, while this game brings a lot more to the table compared to Breath of the Wild, the core structure is largely the same. Weapons that brake easily, no real “dungeons” where you find a new unique item anymore, a ton of shrines dotted around the map… And on that level I totally understand why some people are seeing this a sort of DLC to Breath of the Wild. It’s a fair point to make. Something Nintendo can do for example is have less but longer shrines in the sequel. Or maybe even have the abilities in the big dungeons instead of the tutorial area?

Thirdly and finally, I’d love some quality of life improvements. A search bar on the map would be amazing for example. Also, give us the ability to pin a side quest AND a main quest to the map instead of abusing beacons for that. And if I’m allowed to really nitpick, I feel that in this game the visuals of a discovered shrine and a not yet discovered shrine are too similar… I “rediscovered” shrines quite often compared to Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom took the new formula in Breath of the Wild and expanded on it. It added a lot more depth. If Nintendo takes this formula and polishes it even further and change things around they’ll have an instant hit on their hands. Don’t get me wrong, this game is incredible but it has some flaws that can’t be overlooked. Some critisms like it being more of the same are in a way valid, yet if that bothers you… is up to you.

I honestly feel that this game totally deserves it’s score. It’s one of the best games I have played and will play this year. I highly recommend it to everybody who enjoys playing Zelda games, action/adventure games and open world games. But, I feel like Tears of the Kingdom blows me more away then Breath of the Wild. But, that might be because I’m now more used to the new Zelda formula compared to the previous time.

In any case, that’s everything I wanted to saw about this game for now. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article and until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

First impression: The Safe Place (PC – Steam) ~ Playing With Emotions

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Steam store page

Remember two games I have talked about in the past before? Little Kite and Repentant? Well, the developer Anate Studio released his newest game last month. The developer was so kind to provide me with a press key to review and talk about this game before release. But, due to life getting extremely busy… I didn’t have the time to actually write something about this game until today. As usual, you’ll get my 100% honest opinion about this game and if this new point-and-click game is worth your time or not. If this world is really a safe place right now, or if we should do something about it. In any case, let’s dive right into it, and feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article. I’m always curious to read those.

Editorial note: this article is written while the game was in v1.1

Playing with emotions

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Just like in all previous Anate Studio’s games, this game tackles heavy subjects. In this game, the story is about self-sacrifice and a troubled childhood. In this game, you play as an engineer, Alexander. He lives in the post-Soviet era, which was in the midst of an economic crisis.

One night, he meets a young girl called Christina while waiting for the bus. Things go south from there, and Alexander commits a murder in front of her and covers it up. While the girl promises to keep silent when he helps her, things might and will go even more south from there.

In terms of writing, the story is well tense. There are two majors threats loomed over our main character and they are equally thrilling. Should Alexander deal with the troubles of the economic crisis, or should Alexander make sure that all the traces to the murder are covered up? This struggle also comes back in the writing, making it even more tense for you as the player.

Something I want to mention as well, is that I found it extremely lovely to see the dev diaries on the studio’s YouTube channel. For example, in this video, we see how the first scene is inspired by a real life bridge in Ukraine. You see it all come together in a time-lapse, and you see how much detail and love has been put into this game.

This whole game is also voice acted. I have to say that compared to the previous game, the voice acting has improved quite a lot. The voice acting is a lot less monotone and has a bit more feeling into it. From the three games I have played from this studio, I feel that this is the best voice acting yet. While the voice acting has been improved, it’s still a bit jarring that there is no lip-syncing. So, you will hear the characters talking but not see them talking, you know.

The only critique I have about the voice acting is something I’m unsure is a critique of the voice acting, sound mixing and/or the visuals. It sounds and looks the same when you have thoughts and spoken dialogue. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen very often, so it isn’t a big problem. But, maybe for the next games, have a sort of little distortion on the thoughts and display that text in cursive. Something quite similar has been done by the ports of 999: 9 Hours, 9 Doors, 9 People, and it works extremely well when you are not picking up on context clues.

Before I move on, this time the game is only in English and Ukrainian. I only speak Dutch and English and a bit of French. I know a little bit of German, so I’m only going to stick with the language I understand and I can judge. So, this comes from somebody who doesn’t know any Ukrainian but from what I heard from the voice-over demo on the developer YouTube channel, it sounds pretty good as well.

Drawn by hand

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I touched upon this earlier, but visually, this game is extremely detailed. Just look at this screenshot I have placed here. Every environment you visit is highly detailed and looks amazing.

Now, I have chosen this screenshot intentionally. Since, there is a minor issue I want to talk about here. On the desk in the bottom left, there are several items you can pick up. When you click on the desk, the camera zooms in. But, you can still move your character.

This leads to it feeling a bit janky in my opinion. Since, at first I didn’t know how to exit the zoomed in screen and when I learned I could just click on the top to walk away… I felt like you didn’t know what the restrictions were in the zoomed in area. So, if you work with a mechanic like this… Make it evident to the player how they can exit that zoomed in screen and don’t allow the character to move.

In any case, I wanted to talk about the visual presentation of this game. Overall, this game looks amazing. In addition to that, the animations in this game are decent. Some of them don’t really work in my opinion. I mean, the back and forth swaying from some characters feels out of place. It feels a bit unnatural. I can understand that from a gameplay standpoint that it makes the characters stand out more, but it looks a bit silly sometimes. Something I would love to see in future games is that the characters are more expressive, especially in dialogue. Now, they go through the same short animation cycle, and having them more expressive would make the game come more alive.

I hope that you aren’t getting the impression that this game is unpolished or that it’s broken. It isn’t. I’m just quite impressed by the leaps forwards that the developer made compared with the previous two titles, and I just want to see their games become even better. For example, in the previous game you only had a few hints you could use, and you had a set number. In this game, the hint system is miles better. In each area, there are several statues hidden. These statues can unlock an image sequence for you to get a hint. But be careful, since you can unlock an image sequence for a puzzle you already completed. And on top of that, there aren’t enough statues to unlock every hint tree. So, look for them and use them wisely. Since, they are hidden extremely well.

If you know what to do, this game will take you roughly two and a half hours. This game is longer than the two previous titles in this trilogy. Yes, the two games mentioned in the introduction are part of this game. Now, you don’t need to play the two previous games to understand everything in this game. But this game is as long as the two previous ones combined.

Sound support

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Earlier in this article, I said that the characters should be more expressive. But, there is another side of the coin. Sometimes, the lack of animation works in the visuals in their favor. Since, the sound design and sound effects make your head fill in a lot of details.

The sound effects really play a support role, sometimes to make the world come more alive. A small piece of advice I’d give is that in the next game you have some sort of subtitles for the sound effects as well for the hard of hearing/deaf people in your next game.

Something that shouldn’t change is the soundtrack. The soundtrack fits this game like a glove. It sounds atmospheric and creepy sometimes. And like I said, it fits the atmosphere amazingly. A rather common complaint from the previous game was sometimes the music and sound effects were louder than the voice acting, this is anything but a problem in this game.

This game controls extremely well. In this game, you almost exclusively use the left mouse button to control the game. This makes the game quite easy to learn. You might think that due to the very detailed art style, it’s not always clear where to click on. But the cursor turns into a nice hand icon when you can interact with something, and you can click the magnifying glass in the left corner to make sure you have investigated every spot.

Now, sadly there are a few complaints I have about this game. The first complaint is that activating the running in this game is quite tricky sometimes. I wasn’t always able to get the running to work, and the main character walks rather slow sometimes.

The two other complaints I have about this game are more UI based. Which is a shame, since they drag the amazingly crafted UI down. For of all, I find it a mistake that there is no save time in the load menu. This game has an auto-save system, but it’s unclear what the latest save is. There is also no way to manually save, either. So, you’ll have to rely on the auto-saving of this game. And that doesn’t happen quite often, only after certain specific events.

The second complaint about the UI I have is something of a pet peeve. Since there are multiple words for something, it’s always handy to have each item named. For example, you have a broom handle or broom stick. These names I’d love to see in the inventory. Since, when you don’t play this game in one sitting, it’s extremely handy to quickly hover over the items to quickly catch up with the items in your inventory.

All in all, this game is a huge improvement compared to the previous titles. The puzzles are quite challenging, and it feels quite rewarding to figure them out. The game has some issues for sure, but comparing the first titles of this developer with this game, it’s impressive how far this developer has come. A better hint system, better voice acting, a longer story and adventure… There is also a demo for this game if you are unsure if you want to pay the 12 euros for it.

The biggest issues I have about this game are rather small in the overall picture. My biggest annoyances in during playing were the running not always working as I hoped and the back and non-expressive characters during dialogue. I mean, the voice acting is so much better, but the animation needs to follow. You can’t have two back and forth sawing characters having a heated discussion.

So yeah, if those are the only two major complaints about an adventure game that’s well written and drags you into a emotionally gut-wrenching story with amazingly handcrafted enviroments… I mean, what’s stopped from me to recommend this game to everybody who enjoys adventure and/or point-and-click games? Nothing! I’m convinced that the next games will have more improvements since this developer works almost alone on these titles and the quality he is able to put out is really worth your time and attention.

And if you’d excuse me now…. I have a game to finish. So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

First Impression: Okami (Wii) ~ Drawn.

Okami-wiiHD remake site

So, this game has been remade into a HD remake. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite Wii games. It’s also one of my favorite games ever made. Now, it’s a big shame that I never wrote about this game. In addition to that, I haven’t been writing about Wii games as much as I like. The console is pretty close to my heart. Since it’s the first console I owned AND I got it for finishing my studies at high school. This game originally came out for the PS2. I was really amazed that the PS2 could handle this kind of games. But I learned that later, since I felt like this game was made for the Wii. The motion controls truly blow the PS2 version out of the water. But, is this game as good as I’m claiming? Or am I blinded by nostalgia here? Well, let’s take a look to this game. Feel free to leave a comment on the game and or my article. But anyways, let’s start. 

Game of legends

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The story in this game is something special. The opening scene gives you a feel that the story is going to be one you have experienced already before with other characters.

But trust me, the opening of this game doesn’t show at all what this story has in store for you.

I nearly had beaten the game, but then a friend of mine saved over my save file by accident. So, I lost all my progress. I was really bummed out since this is a rather lengthy game. I peeked at the walkthrough, and while I was nearing the end… I had put around 40 hours into this game.

At it’s core, you can compare Okami a bit with the Zelda series. While that series focuses more on saving Zelda with a twist, Okami gives you something truly different. As good as everything in the game is based on Japanese lore. I’m not kidding you. At the end of this game, you have seen a lot of Japanese myths and stories, without even knowing it.

For this reason, I won’t go every in-depth with the story. It’s too beautifully crafted to have something spoiled for you. The only thing I will tell you is that you play a wolf god who travels with a bug-sized warrior-artist.

The writing can be funny at some times and I had times where the story nearly made me emotional. This story is one that takes your attention and doesn’t give it back until you have beaten the game.

HD graphics? No need for that!

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I use this game as an example to defend Nintendo when people are bashing them for not having a console that can render HD graphics. Now they do with the Wii U.

But this game in general proves a point. You don’t need amazing realistic graphics to have an eye-candy game. The art style truly looks amazing. You get the feeling that every character, scenery, animation… is drawn by hand. Well, not just drawn, water painted. Which is a lot more difficult then just drawing. Because when you mess up with paint, you can’t easily erase it.

The game looks stunning. You can truly feel the love and devotion the team put into this game. And every single place is memorable in it’s own right. Because this is an adventure (action) game, there is backtracking. But in this game, that’s not a bad thing. Since almost in each area, there are parts you can only access with certain powers you obtain later in the game. So, you can discover new things and find treasures even after the main story has already happened on that place.

I can honestly talk about the visual aspect of this game for a long time, but sadly, I have to mention a negative here. There is a rare bug that I experienced several times. There is this weapon you can use to attack enemies with. It’s a yellow magenta kind of thing; While it’s one of my favorite weapons to use, the graphics can go glitch out. You know that you’re affected by this when you don’t see the heads of the characters anymore, since they are stretched out. And I have even worse news, you will have to skip cutscenes then. Since they all glitch out. The glitch can only be fixed by running to a save portal and saving the game. When you restart then, the graphics are thankfully fixed.

Playing this game

okami-wii-ps2-screenshot-wiLong time readers of my blog know the drill by now, this segment is actually the part where I close off the first impression. But I have only talked about how beautiful this game is and how strong the story is.

Now, I can’t fit the gameplay, music, difficulty, controls and such in this final segment. It wouldn’t do the game justice.

Surely, I will talk about those things more in depth in  the review, if I ever write it, so don’t worry. You will hear my opinion on it.

Honestly, I truly think that you should play this game for yourself. This game is a game that benefits more playing blindly then reading up about it before you play it. A great tip that I give you is that you have a tablet or a laptop close to look up the actual myths and lore behind the game. Since you will find amazing stories.

To close off this article, let me get one thing clear. Is this game a clone of the Zelda formula? Well, yes and no. There are a lot of similar elements to the Zelda formula but it has it’s own unique elements that make it a very different game then Zelda. But, what I can tell you for sure is that this game is a blast to play for every Zelda fan! You would be a fool to let this game go under your radar and never play it.

Anyways, I think I’ll leave it here. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I couldn’t stop myself writing about this game. Hopefully I see you another time!