First Impressions Gaming

Hi! Thanks for dropping by, in this blog you’ll see my first impressions of the games that I check out. -mertcan kuranoglu

[first-impressions-gaming]

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Developed by Deconstructeam

Published by Devolver Digital

Release Date 2023

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 17,99 USD

“Oh, fiction. I am not fond of fiction. The universe is already purveyor of stories.” - Abramar

Can we ever really be alone, exiled, banished to the corner of the universe and rebuild ourselves to ‘glory’? Well, the definition of glory is up to you, what it means, what it not means, what it includes, and what it requires of. We are only part of a society, a community, as long as we are allowed and permitted to be, beyond that, we are out of sight & out of mind (well, we’ll see).

We are roleplaying as Fortuna, an excellently skillful witch, who has been in exile for the last two centuries due to foretelling what will befall on the coven she used to be a part of. During his banishment on an asteroid, she in on her own and her tarot cards has been confiscated, thus she calls on Abramar, behemoth, as a companion. Once they get to know each other, Abramar teaches four core elements, fire, water, earth and air, to Fortuna, with this knowledge she decides to craft her own divination deck, not being restricted to commonly-used tarot cards.

Fortuna is visited by an arbiter, who comes to conclusion that Fortuna can accept visitors from now on. She gets visits from friendly faces, witches from the coven and so forth. Fortuna reads tarot for the visitor during the conversations, and dialogues and verbal interactions build on these readings. After couple of visits, things take a turn, and it turns out the leader of the coven, Aedena, recently died, who persecuted Fortuna with exile. Among couple of contenders for head of the coven, Fortuna decides to run as well.

What takes place during all these is the actually magical thing here, we are diving deep down into the mind and heart of Fortuna. She is already hundreds of years old, yes, but she has been here, in exile, for two hundred years, she has so much to talk about, to reminiscence, and share with fellow witches. As I mentioned, Fortuna creates her own cards, what we do as the player is this: there are four elements, and we earn these elements during conversations, and we use them to pick three cards, one of them being a background and two of them have objects in them. We create a mixed card at the end, and the game decides the meaning of the card in line with what objects and background are used for that card. 

What I also love here is that, each day we wake up and we read what kind of dream we had last night, such as this one:

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a personal adventure, even though we do not physically move from the asteroid, we do experience flashbacks here and there. This is a game full of soul and touching story, simply gorgeous.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Anger Foot

Developed by Free Lives

Published by Devolver Digital

Release Date 2024

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 24,99 USD

Often, the best idea for a game is to make and twist it into something totally approachable in the most disturbing and absurd setting. Anger Foot is such a game with a vibe that is both chill and uncomfortable in a good way? I think the graphical style really adds to the atmosphere of the game, the characters look like as if they are drawn with crayons with vibrant colours.

The protagonist is an anonymous person who is a collector of limited edition sneakers, and his collection is robbed from his house and he goes after the culprits, the Violence Gang. The game is set in Shit City, a city where crime and illegal activities are upheld and favoured, even the government supports and backs criminality.

Moving forwards, we go after the robbers and the game presents over 60 levels, each level offers a unique level, so that’s a plus, you won’t feel like you are playing similar levels over and over again, and levels are filled by different enemy types, basic enemies with a pistol, heavy enemies with a shield, self-exploding enemies, grenade-throwing enemies and more.

Anger Foot resembles to Hotline Miami in fact, you try again and again until you successfully complete the level, as you try over and over, you get to learn pattern of enemies and you figure out the best approach and defeat the level. In Anger Foot, most of the time, I can still not predict enemies’ pattern even when I fail and try a dozen times, on top this the user interface does not show your Health, you rely on red bars around the screen and you regenerate your Health over time. Still, I would have preferred to see actual health bar because you die with two hits from some enemies, and with three hits from some, due to this confusion I have died so many times, not being able to predict how much of Healthy I have and how much of damage I can expect from enemies. 

The game only offers special abilities through Shoes. You unlock new shoes with the obtained points. Completing a level grants one point, additionally, you can earn two points per level, these are challenges such as ‘complete the level under 45 seconds’ or ‘do not jump/take any damage’ etc. Honestly, I never felt the need to go over a level and re-complete it just to earn extra points. These shoes provide extra abilities, such as ‘kick enemies by sliding’, ‘charge your kick and blast through enemies’, ‘make enemies’ head even bigger’, and as such. Before I got to unlock any shoes, I asked myself ‘why don’t I have any skills, this is so bland…and boring’, then I started unlocking shoes, still, if you ask me, I would like to use more than one ability at the same time, yes, making enemies’ head is useful for headshots, and slide-kick is nice when you dodge enemies, but that’s it, the game lacks, just a bit, flavour. You do complete over 60 levels, but only thing that changes is…your shoes.

Rarely, you get to explore the close-world you are in before a level, in this scene we are visiting a location belonging to the Business Gang:

And here you can see the first boss fight:

Anger Foot tries something new, its concept, world-view, message is purely fantastic, and I love it. I wish the gameplay had more to it.

[first-impressions-gaming]

#BLUD

Developed by Exit 73 Studios

Published by Humble Games

Release Date 2024

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 24,99 USD

Sometimes the best way, the best approach for a game is not to invent something anew, but to employ a back-to-the-roots style, in BLUD we instantly have this sense of 90s cartoon nostalgia and humour it brings. BLUD does not invent the wheel, it makes use of common 90s 2D drawing style and builds and entire game around it. This may sound great up to this point, still there are little things to look out for concerning combat and navigation.

#BLUD has this familiar sense of nostalgia, you know, it makes you feel like this game is from early 90s and you just discovered and started playing it. We play as Becky, a high-school student, who moves to a new town with her father which is infected and invaded by vampires and such monsters soon after we move. Becky accidentally becomes a vampire-slayer through her mother’s heritage, she learns that her mother was such a demonic-killer as well and she did learn all she knew from this French book, once Becky realizes that the French book was not an innocent cookbook, but a secret book embroidered with spells, magic and as such. Becky follows her mother’s footsteps and she’s trained by the school’s janitor, who turns out to have a double life.

Let’s check this cartoony cutscene:

Earlier I said that this game is heavily inspired by 90s cartoons, in graphic style yes, but this is not all! The game makes use of social media that we are so attached to these days, in this universe there is a social media called Perch and its interface looks so much as Twitter, and his CEO resembles to Steve Jobs if you ask me… Perch is your main menu, more or less, you can browse it, see posts of other characters, what they post, their comments under other posts, and quests you are given. The game skillfully gives you quests through other characters and Perch. Quests show up on Perch in body of other characters’ posts, and they give you little tips and tricks as well, such as where you should head over, with whom you should interact, and what you should be looking for. Furthermore, as you progress in quests, those posts are updated, for example if a quest has multiple steps, such as “go to library”, “then bring it over to home”, once you visit library and interact with the item, there will be a new comment under that quest post, this way of progression in quests is pretty neat, this is far from boring when a game commands me to go somewhere and pick up something and bring it etc, in this way you know and feel that you are part of this community in this town, and you are all connected via Perch and you share a mutual world, you are not merely existing as a high-school student who is a novice demon slayer, you are Becky and you are getting to know people in this town, you are still trying to get hang of things. I wish more developers puts more effort into introducing quests to players like this, and not make them as “chores”. Early in the game we are taught that our phone can take selfies, when you are next to a character or a major item the game automatically detects them and you can take a selfie with the characters and item in a single frame, and there are a couple of poses you can do as Becky. For example, if I am next to a person outside the convenience store, the game detects them and lets me take a selfie with them and post it over Perch, and you will see other characters commenting under it. 

Taking selfies with people:

You can check out user interface and menus here

There will be one complaint from me, and it concerns the inventory and usable items.  You will be picking up collectible items and med-kits, I saw that I cannot assign the med-kit to a shortcut, as opposed to TNT bombs, I thought maybe they were unavailable to use at the moment and will be unlocked later. Then I was struggling to defeat a boss, I kept dying for half and hour and I was at my wits’ end, I was going to rage quit for sure, then I re-checked my inventory because I know I have four med-kits and there must be a way to consume them during boss fight, I learned that you cannot assign med-kits to shortcut, you have to interrupt the game, manually open the inventory, select med-kit, press the button, and get back to the game. Why is this so…unfriendly towards players? Why would I need to pause the game, go to inventory and consume the item? I just cannot understand the logic behind this, think of all the games involving combat and fight, there is always a button letting you consume an item to boost your health. This is such a strange interface choice and this was something I had to mention, and this will disturb you each time you feel the need to use a med-kit, just interrupting your game in a boss fight breaks and harms all the flow within. 

This is the boss fight I talk about:

Apart from my ‘rant’ over med-kit, BLUD checks all my boxes thanks to its small yet compact world, humour, fantastic cartoon style and combat.

[first-impressions-gaming]

American Arcadia

Developed by Out of the Blue

Published by Raw Fury

Release Date 2023

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 19,99 USD

These days it is pretty common for a TV show or a movie to tell a story of a dystopian future or present, where the protagonist(s) are kept, maybe put on a show just for fun, and they are not recognized as human beings, but only assets. Well, American Arcadia takes a shot to tell a similar story at a deeper level. I got introduced to American Arcadia in Edge magazine, where the developers are talking about the design and storytelling of the game, and the word ‘Truman-like’ is thrown around a lot, I said “Let’s give it a shot, I like The Truman Show, so I should just take a look at this and see what this is about!”.

The Truman Show is a movie that everybody is familiar with these days, even if you haven’t seen it, you already would know what the plot is about. Truman is this main character of a ‘reality’ show in a human-made city, and millions of people have been watching him ever since he was born, and he eventually breaks the fourth wall, bla bla bla. End of the story. The overall plot of The Truman Show is applied to American Arcadia, but it goes even beyond this, the main difference here is that every and each person under the human-made dome, the city called Arcadia, is a character of the ‘reality’ show, not just the protagonist we are playing as, and we’re talking about twenty thousand people here! So that’s a lot when you compare it to Truman, a single person.

I’ll keep it to a minimum when it comes to the story and how it unfolds because it is highly possible that something might slip and the spoiler might ruin the surprise element for you when you’re playing it. 

In a nutshell, Arcadia is a city under a dome created by a media group, and it is stuck in 1970s specifically, from clothing to entertainment and one day Trevor Hills, the protagonist, gets strange signs and tips from outside, and he realizes something is off, and there’s more to it, and he gets contacted by an employee of the media group later, and the rest of the plot is Trevor trying to break free from Arcadia with the help from the said employee.

The highlight of the game is the graphical aesthetic, when you are playing as Trevor, the game is set in 2.5D angle, you can only go left, right, jump and interact with objects. When you are playing as the woman helping Trevor, you are in first person camera. The colour scheme and environmental designs are such a nod to 70s, and I do appreciate this art design, it works so well with the tone of the game, and this is especially what grasps you right off the bat.

So, the story evolves around Trevor but the message across the story is wider than that, in The Truman Show the audience is in front of TV, and there is zero interaction among them, on the other hand, in Arcadia the audience is able interact and comment on as events are happening in the chat screen (like Twitch). This is a one step further than The Truman Show seeing that the ‘reality’ show is not merely a show, it is an entertainment piece where lines are blurry, and reality itself is not recognized anymore. The head of media group, Vivian, talks about how ‘characters’, who have the lowest ratings, are being removed from the show, a character is there to entertain people, the audience, he or she cannot live a routine life, you gotta act, even though you are unaware that you are part of the show, on air, broadcast 24/7 across the world. The audience even comments and talks about Trevor as we are trying to escape from the security service inside Arcadia and we are just at our wits’ end. From the audience’s point-of-view, we are just a meat for fun, nothing more. They would not even care for us if Trevor is gone tomorrow.

American Arcadia packs a lot in its 6-hour playtime and it really keeps it compact in terms of game mechanics and movement, honestly there are couple of puzzles that I could not just solve on my own so I got the help from Youtube tutorials, if you disregard this aspect, American Arcadia offers an enjoyable experience for all, with its humour, story and lovable protagonist, Trevor.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Tails of Iron

Developed by Odd Bug Studio

Published by United Label

Release Date 2021

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 14,99 USD

Gaming landscape is pretty weird, when you think there is no game on the horizon that might excite you, that’s the moment you come across such a game, this time it is this rat-combatting-frogs-to-restore-inherited-empire game, in other words Tails of Iron. Tails of Iron did excite me, and it surprised me because it was much more than what I anticipated at first. It is labelled as ‘lite souls-like’ here and there, and I am such a gamer who don’t fancy ‘souls’ games, games which are too hardcore in terms of combat and survival.

Tails of Iron is pretty lite souls-like when it comes to combat, meaning that you have to ‘read’ the enemy cues, enemy attacks and you got to make your plays accordingly. Each enemy, especially bosses, have specific attacks, and the game lets you know pretty easily when they are planning to attack with heavy-attack, or when their attacks can be blocked with parry, such as with your shield. The game presents four types of enemies, mainly you deal with frogs, who are your arch enemy since they killed your father, the king, the moment you inherited the throne from him and destroyed your empire, massacred your citizens and laughed at your face. You are there to restore the empire to its glory, and take vengeance on your dead father and king. Godspeed you!

Besides the overall combat, the game presents so much more, first and foremost I love, I adore this hand-drawn 2.5D camera angle style, this is a bit cartoonish and comic book-style. All the characters, including you as the protagonist and NPCs around you, have exquisite details. The environments and levels are structured so well that everything blends with every asset to detail. When you wander around the town, and go to the next mission, the town in the background has much as detail as the assets in the foreground. This style and aesthetic are crafted so well that it made me question “why are all developers and AAA publishers so obsessed with realistic graphics when you can have this?”, this is simply excellent to look at, as you progress, complete missions and kill enemies and collect loot from ground, you obtain new items, such as swords, spears, axes, hats, shields and armour. All of these items are reflected on your character and they transform your character, make him into something totally different, gear you carry and wear are nicely put on the protagonist.

The simplicity and straightforwardness are great in this game, you don’t need to deal with any menus or sub-menus at all, all the info you need is right there on the screen, your items, health, currency and other items. There is no special abilities or skills, you only have your gear and that’s it, the gear you wear have special stats, for example there are four types of enemies and the equipment might grant you attack bonus against certain enemies, so you need to be aware of which types of enemies you are up against and use your gear to your advantage, the thing I could not understand or figure out is that I obtain and unlock new gear, for example armour, and it grants bonus stats for frogs, but I never know or never notified which type of enemy I will be dealing with in a main or side mission. It is not like you can switch your gear on the fly, you can only equip items in safe zones, so when you are in the heart of a mission you have to soldier through with what you have. It is weird that the gear has these stats for enemy types but there is no way knowing which class of enemy I will be fighting in a location. It would have been much helpful if the game let us know which location or environment is occupied with what type of enemy. Isn’t this common sense?

The other thing you will be realizing right off the bat is voice acting or the lack thereof. The characters and NPCs are not voiced, you only got to see small signs of what they are talking about, accompanied with a playful tone, and when a main mission is concerned you hear third person narrator explaining what is being addressed and what is there to do. I really like this approach as well, this gives the game a different identity and soul.

I do highly recommend Tails of Iron for its super fun story, easy-to-learn mechanics and straightforward gameplay with a different take on the genre.

[first-impressions-gaming]

RKGK / Rakugaki

Developed & Published by Wabisabi Games

Release Date 2024

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 19,99 USD

Driving and creating competition in a singleplayer game is not easy to achieve, the game you’re presenting should have that force to motivate the player to become better at it, such as parkour games like Ghostrunner or Neon White. If this sort of ‘motivation’ is not found in a game in this genre, the player may not feel to compete in the game at all, this has been my overall experience with Rakugaki, more to follow.

The world of Rakugaki is not well built, we find ourselves in a, sort of, dystopian city and there is so-called authoritarian ruler named Mr. Buff who has been attempting to surveil all the citizens everywhere. As a graffiti artist, our job is to do graffiti on these giant billboards and combat enemy robots in levels. When you are doing this, you also have optional objectives, such as killing every enemy, painting graffiti on each billboard or completing the level under specific time and as such. Then you have a small hub area, where you can purchase and equip new outfits for yourself and your companion robot and unlock new types of graffities to paint on billboards.

My biggest gripe with the game is that, the action and level designs do not match actually, levels seem so random that, my action, movement and traversal mechanics are not in line with environmental and level design, for example I am able to jump, double jump, dodge, air-dodge and slowly fly and descend, on the other hand all the assets in levels are so boxy and rectangular that all my movement mechanics do not add anything to actual gameplay. This game is inspired by parkour mechanics and speedrunning games, that’s clear here, yet this game does not offer this type of fluid experience, let’s take games I previously mentioned, Ghostrunner does one thing perfectly, you are able to move in a fantastic flow, and Neon White allows you to use unique abilities in line with speedrunning. Rakugaki is bereft of core elements here, if you said this was a demo for an actual game, I’d say “okay, this game can be developed and improved further into a full experience”, but no, this is the ‘full experience’ on the table, and I don’t like what I am seeing.

To share with you, I came across a level which was more ‘fun’ and longer compared to rest of them, and here you can see and maybe feel that, as you are playing it, level design does not necessarily help you in directing your flow, you are always up against in a weird position and this really puts a damper in experience when you especially consider that this is supposed to be an action game making use of speedrunning and parkour elements:

Rakugaki is not the best example of these genre, the only silver lining I can find here is that, graffiti art is superb and exceeded my expectations, I really dig colouring, dimensions and aesthetic.

[first-impressions-gaming]

The Land Beneath Us

Developed by FairPlay Studios

Published by Dear Villagers & Gamera Games

Release Date 2024

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 11,99 USD

Have you ever dreamed of a rouge-lite which is turn-based, allowing you to strategize your next move? Well, look no further, The Land Beneath Us combines and blends rogue-lite dungeon crawler elements with neat turn-based combat with a twist! 

The Land Beneath Us has this familiar pixel-artistic style with a unique vibe around it. All the environments you are in are tightly-walled and closed spaces, such as the hub area and dungeon where you fight your enemies and bosses, which means that if you are type of gamer who likes exploring on your own in a game such as Dead Cells, this game may not please you.

The hub area has two rooms, on each side. At the top you can find the portal where you select the region to start a new run and you can unlock new regions by defeating bosses, at the bottom you can find the list of quests, and you need to manually ‘claim’ rewards of quests you completed. The game just throws you a bunch of quests as you go, so you don’t bother accepting quests and whatnot. The rooms on each side have similar functions. In your runs, you earn Gold and Souls. Gold currency is reset each time you die, meaning that you only collect and spend them in runs on Relic and Weapon upgrades, chests that reward you with Relics and Weapons. Souls are currency that you store permanently, and you can spend them in the hub are to permanently improve your abilities and character skills, for example your starting HP, how much Gold you earn in each completed dungeon etc. The rooms have charts called Abred and Annwn, here you can unlock special perks permanently and you earn a point as you beat bosses in each region.

Let’s talk about the turn-based combat, movement and flow of the game. In short, your character moves up, down, left and right as you can guess. The twist is that, you equip four different weapons for your each movement direction, as you move ‘left’, your character moves and attacks with the assigned weapon, and so forth. The game lets you know and highlight the locations enemies are going to move to and attack next turn, and this turns the movement and attacking into something much more strategized. What’s more, the game offers you ‘pattern’ attacks as well, if you carry out a movement pattern the game shows you such as UP-LEFT-DOWN-UP, you get to perform a special skill, like healing yourself, throwing a fireball, stunning nearby enemies. It is also pretty cool that you can randomise the assigned patterns from your hub, if you feel that the suggested pattern is a bit too restrictive to you. 

Below you can find a 10-minute gameplay from start:

The Land Beneath Us is such a cool and fresh take on already-known genre with a unique movement and skill system. 

[first-impressions-gaming]

Goodbye Volcano High

Developed & Published by KO_OP

Release Date 2023

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 29,99 USD

Growing up is never easy, especially when you feel that your life could spur into…so many things that the possibilities and probable outcomes might scare you. Well, possible results and consequences are not the only thing that scare the characters in this game. Goodbye Volcano High is set in a millennia ago, the planet is still in pangea shape, and dinosaurs which are in human-ish shape walk on the earth, we learn from news that an asteroid is headed towards our planet earth and it is possible that the life would be…no more in case of collision. We could all die within two weeks, so what are we waiting for?

Goodbye Volcano High is a linear visual-novel, even though the player is given dialogue choices throughout the game, I can safely say that our choices do not impact the overall storyline in any extensive way, our choices do effect, more or less, our relations to other characters, still these affects are not that substantial.

Who are we in this game? The game covers upper-coming teenagers who are in their senior year at high school and we are playing as Fang, who is the lead guitarist and vocalist in a band called Worm Drama. We are dealing with basically future, our lifes, all the possibilities, our career and teenager angst. Is this band the way to go? Should we move on to the next thing? When will our parents accept us as we ‘are’, not as they position and project us in their heads? Not to spoil the whole story, I can merely say that the game keeps it brief and expands on the story sufficiently to wrap everything up under six hours.

As I touched upon in the previous paragraph, we are in a band, so the game makes use of these exquisite scenes where we are playing music with quick-time events, and I gotta say I admire this alternative music blending with pop-rock (or should I say rock-pop? whatevs), you are not only ‘playing’ the song with simple button pushes, you get to write couple of lines of lyrics before you perform it by selecting a line from three presented. This is such a neat feature that I never thought I’d enjoy this much and say “okay I’m impressed.” This allows the player to create a sense of bond, a connection with Fang, and it is also vital to point out that Fang is a sort of ‘flighty’ person, what I mean by that is this: they go through changes throughout the game and these events leave an impact on them all the way. Is our band disbanding? Are we not worthy of being on stage at a music festival? Are we really close to our friends or are they simple acquaintances we made along the way?

Goodbye Volcano High is a compact that delivers its message and successfully closes its story at the end, the game leaves us with great soundtrack, fantastic personality of Fang and this long-lost, unreal and imaginary world we call earth today.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Gerda: A Flame in Winter

Developed by BirdIsland/PortaPlay

Published by DON’T NOD

Release Date 2022

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 19,99 USD

Sometimes all a gamer needs a cozy point-and-click adventure with winter setting, or is it just me? Well, this game, Gerda: A Flame in Winter is all that and additionally it is set in World War II in a town in Denmark which is 10 kilometre away from Germany border. Let’s get to it.

As I said, the game’s premise is presented to you openly, Gerda is story- and dialogue choice-based game and you basically draw your path via your choices in conversations, also, each day you, as Gerda, wakes up and there will be two or three locations to visit, but sometimes you can only visit one of the locations, most of the time you will get to visit all of them. The game limits you to choose one of many locations when you are at a point that impacts the story progression heavily. In this game you are in a town of Denmark and it is occupied by Nazi soldiers, so there are 4 groups of people in this game and it is up to you balance your distance to them, when I started the game I was like “Of course I will not be in favour of Nazi occupation or soldiers, no way”, yet the game very skillfully suggests you that you should balance all sides to the best of your abilities. The 4 groups that I mentioned are: Danes, Germans, Occupation (Nazi soldiers) and Resistance (the underground party made up of Danes who try to topple occupation). As you can see, not all Danes are in favour of the secret party named Resistance, and not all Germans are in the same side as Occupation (of Nazi soldiers), thanks to this, the game offers you a much more three-dimensional way of thinking, and it adds to it. When you are conversing with people around the town, let it be German and Danish citizens, Nazi soldiers, or strangers, your dialogue choices impact your relations to these groups with positively and negatively. And I should note that, this is a cool feature, your relation and view of to somebody (any person in the town) or one of the groups can be affected even if you are on your own, which means that your way of thinking and decisions do impact your relation to groups based on points. You don’t need to be in a conversation with somebody to have an impact on your relations, your relations are also impacted when Gerda writes a diary log each morning, and it is up to you what to write there. If you choose to write something in favour of Nazi occupation, then here you go, your Occupation relation is affected positively. 

The game’s point system is both intricate and easily-understandable at the same time, the driving force behind the need to balance all sides is that, if you favour one or two groups heavily, you will not be getting much help from other groups, limiting your conversation options as a result of this.

Gerda is such a great character as well, she is a nurse in the local clinic, who is happily married to Anders but early in the game an unfortunate event falls on them, and you will go from there. The game’s all winter-y atmosphere is improved by the graphical design as well, and this approach is pretty similar to 11-11 Memories Retold, a game that I reviewed last year which is set in World War I and employs pastel-ish impressionist artistic style. 

In this clip I’ll show you two locations, the first one being the local tavern and the second one the train station. We visit, converse with people, and able to freely wander as long as the environment allows:

Gerda: A Flame in Winter is a kind of game I’d like to see and play more often that I can finish in two days (Gerda will takes you about 6 hours to complete), this is such a fresh take on World War II setting with a more zoomed-in approach and story with pleasant graphic style and memorable characters throughout.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef

Developed & Published by Rogueside

Release Date 2022

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 19,99 USD

If you have ever heard of Warhammer 40K or played any game with the label you might get the sense that this is another gritty, hard-hitting, serious game from the franchise. But no. Shootas, Blood and Teef is the opposite of what other 40K games stand for. The franchise is developed by numerous studios therefore each game has a different tone, setting, lore behind it, genre etc. Yet, they all follow the same serious approach with the lore, not this one though. Shootas, Blood and Teef does not take itself seriously that much, it employs a hand-drawn graphic design almost cartoonish and slightly comic-like.

What’s the deal with this game? A short cinematic welcomes you, in a very cartoonish humour the general gets jealous of our ponytail and…steals it and kicks us out of the helicopter and abandons us to die. Okay, that’s an interesting way to introduce the player to the game’s story. What you can expect next is a 2D, bullet-hell, run ‘n gun, killing waves of Orks, boss fights, various weapon types and more. The total playtime of the campaign is under 3 hours, which means that you can just finish it within 2 sittings, so the singleplayer aspect of the game is not that rich for my taste, you can play co-op with your friends so that’s a plus at least.

The game offers a linear story progression laid out in chapters and different environments, throughout the game you’ll come across checkpoints where you can purchase new weapons from MEK Shop and edit your loadout. The game offers 5 weapon types in total, which are pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, rocket launcher and more. Also you get to choose one of 4 classes at the beginning of the game, but not mid-game. For example, if you save the game, exit, then continue the save, you can change your class. The game does not restrict you to one specific class in the campaign, I mean the total campaign is under 3 hours, so that’s nice we can try out new classes as we please.

I’d like to show you couple of gameplay videos so you can get the gist of it:

And this is a boss fight where I die, I did struggle beating this boss particularly because it shoots in a straight path but there is only one ledge I can sit on, but the boss shoots there too if I move there, so it was almost impossible to dodge boss’s bullets because the environmental design isn’t in our advantage:

Consequently, Shootas, Blood and Teef is a fresh take in 40K universe that does not invent the wheel, apart from its short campaign it gets job done and blends 2D and bullet-hell pretty well.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Harold Halibut

Developed & Published by Slow Bros

Release Date 2024

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 34,99 USD

Have you ever thought that you are some kind of ‘person’ because you are ‘told’ you so? What’s more, you are what you are, and nothing can surpass that? And you are up against a dictatorial and colonizing regime? Well, all these are hard to process, I give you that, Harold is, like, an everyday person, he is so average that he is afraid of excelling at anything, he is frustratingly average, sub-par, even uninteresting to some extent. That’s the exact thing Harold is great at, he is so ‘normal’ that he holds great potential to grow.

Where are we? Who is Harold? What’s the story? And, lastly, what kind of surname is Halibut for fuck’s sake? These questions are all valid. Let’s answer them one by one. The game runs a quick recap after around 30 minutes: the reason where we are and why we are there is rooted in the cold war. During cold war, prominent families, business people and foundations kicked off an initiative due to the inevitable war which could end engulf the entire world in flames and end human life altogether, that’s why the initiative comes up with a spaceship with limited amount of people onboard which set out to settle on a new planet where humanlife is possible, two centuries later the spaceship crashes on a new planet, which is called Fedora I these days, the planet is not habitable by common standards, that’s why people her live in enclosed spaces underwater, a city inside of spaceship and enlarged tubes.

Harold Halibut is a game that was in 14 years of making, a game which is made of hand-crafted clay in stop-motion style, the trailers don’t make the justice enough to the game, once you dive into the game and play it first-hand, you get to appreciate and recognize the true art and passion beyond the game. We merely come across such a game that has been given excessive care and attention that makes it unique and original. 

Harold is an assistant to a professor in this restricted society, he does not do anything ‘exceptionally well’ per se, as he talks about himself, he is just a person who takes care of what is assigned to him, he assists in the lab, he cleans the water filter, he cleans the graffiti that is drawn on lab district from time to time. You know, you feel like your life has a turning point, maybe you don’t get to recognize it at that exact moment, but once you look back, you say ‘yeah, that was the moment everything changed, for good or worse’, Harold experiences such a moment, and you say ‘Harold, nothing is going to be same for you now’, that’s when an unknown being gets stuck in water filter, a being that looks like a fish in a human-size body, Harold looks after it with the help of the professor and after couple of days the being, called Weeoo, wakes up and Harold’s professor produces a translation device to communicate with Weeoo, then she takes Harold to her hometown, the professor aggressively asks and command Harold to find any kind of object or item which can tell more of this land, city and habitants of it which have been unknown to Fedora I. Harold comes across and picks up a ‘jelly’ which is like a book, but you get to experience it first-hand instead of ‘reading’ it. Then the word gets out, the regime in Fedora I takes matters into their hands and softly colonizes the land, runs research there.

As Harold, what is your day-to-day routine like? Well, once you wake up, you get to carry your main missions, and you can also complete side missions if you wish to do so, actually I really like side missions in this game simply because they breathe more life into the game. One example I can give is that, there is an old man named Buddy who is responsible of receiving and delivering letters around the city, once we get to meet him he invites us to read letters which were not delivered to the recipients, and they are left unread in the post office. We visit Buddy and we get to read those letters, and we recognize and acknowledge that there is much more life than than we are introduced to.

Without fully spoiling the story for you, I’d like to draw your attention to political critique side of the game, as I explained previously, Weeoo takes us to her land, we return to Fedora I, then the administration takes control of the situation mostly, and…what we experience the next is this colonized version of the before-unknown land, we see that All Water Corporation built tube system for transportation, set up a kiosk next to it, there is even a person selling hot dogs. This is borderline absurd yet so meaningful at the same time. Why are we, as humankind, dominate, take control, invade, conquer, defeat the locals and exploit everything to its core? Harold Halibut portrays these questions in a unique frame, as Harold, we know and feel that we are uncomfortable with the whole situation, still he does not go against the regime’s orders and actions, he is a simple pawn. 

The game was in Version 1.0.6.0 when I reviewed it, and it had technical difficulties here and there, the game crashed three times randomly, and crashed couple of times when a chapter ended. Apart from this, the game does not have sticking issues.

Harold Halibut is an excellent work of art, its way of indirect narration through metaphors and analogies are through the roof, its criticism of colonialism is straight-to-the-face yet unexpectedly goes deep. Precisely wonderful.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Open Roads

Developed by Open Roads Team

Published by Annapurna

Release Date 2024

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 19,99 USD

A story based on tight-knit relationship that branches out to past and long-lost and long-forgotten memories is always ‘doable’ on paper. But not always executed that masterfully. Let’s put it this way, you should not force plot-twists for sake of employing plot-twists into your story, there is a time and space when a plot-twist can be introduced to the audience, and Open Roads just…attempts to serve the plot-twist to the audience before warming the audience up to it, you know, there should be a continuous path to the said plot-twist to make it happen at right place and time. Open Roads screws it up, big time.

Let me rewind the tape to the very beginning, we are playing as Tess, who is a young woman/adolescent teenager who is still a high-school student, and there is her mother Opal. From the vibes, you can get the sense that Tess hasn’t been that close to her mother Opal ever since her parents got divorced, and there is the absent father figure, of course, with whom Tess messages on phone a couple of times throughout the game, we only get to know him through his messages and what Tess and Opal say about him.

The game opens in the house of Tess’s grandma Helen, who recently passed away, and we come to visit her house and see that’s left of her, we go through her personal items and rooms, though not that deeply. Of course I’ll not be spoiling the story for you, so I’ll avoid any story-related plots other than early-game.

When I started the game, I got the sense of What Remains of Edith Finch, I was ‘okay, I am digging this’, but early on you face the reality that the game does not live up any expectation progression-wise. What sticks out the most is that, the story continues in a…boring way. It is pretty challenging to put into words and explain it actually, so we are in our dead grandma’s house, we look around, we see personal items here and there and Tess talks about them, when you come across specific items, Tess and Opal converses over it, and you move on, the one conversation you hold over is grandma’s ceramics in the basement, and you keep going. You get into the car, Opal drives you to the next location and it goes like this. At that point, the game did not grab me one bit, when two characters talk about ceramic hobby of a dead person, these people are daughter and granddaughter of the said person, I expect some level of sentimentality, who was Helen, what did she do, why are we in this house and how is it related to us? I don’t get any answers, and I don’t feel excited to keep playing as a player, well I had to keep playing it to review this game.

I mentioned Edith Finch previously, in that game when you interact with items or visit rooms of your family members, you experience something totally new to you, even something stranger to you, and that excitement and wonder are source of flow of the game, in Open Roads, my sentimentality towards the story and characters do not change, or go up or down at all, it is so…predictable and bland. When I say ‘predictable’ I mean it, at the end of the game the game tries its best to throw a plot-twist at you, and all I could say ‘meh’, you know what, the visual novels or story-rich games don’t have to include plot-twists for sake of them, I don’t need that ‘wow, I did not expect that’ moment most of the time, recently I played If Found…, a story-rich game which wraps up under two hours with zero plot-twist, and it ends beautifully, like an ode to un-lived days. Open Roads feels the need of a plot-twist right at the end before the game folds, but it does not feel authentic or original.

Here is a clip where you interact with objects, if there’s anything more to them, Tess talks about them, otherwise you look at them and leave the item without additional interaction option:

Moreover, the game falls short of my expectations when it comes to characters and voice-over. The voiceover quality of Tess and Opal has a standard, the thing is, their characters and facial expressions don’t match voice-acting at all, which breaks and impacts general immersion and experience, for example when Tess says something Opal does not see coming, her facial figure does not adapt to her line and voiceacting at all. Even though the voiceacting did a great job, the lack of lip-sync puts a dent on overall immersion. The characters’ facial expressions and movement are not crafted for each scene, each character has couple of facial expression and they are in a loop, so when the voice of Tess is surprised, hesitant, anxious, or a bit scared, her expressions do not match her voice at all. I did not enjoy myself at all, I wish I did not see characters on the screen and I could have just listened to them, that way I would be more into them, like a podcast, you know.

This is one of many instances of voiceaction and lack of lip-sync:

As a conclusion, I had to mention a certain moment in the game, where Opal brings us hamburger and we eat it in four steps, and I cannot just wrap my head around this, what is this? What is the purpose of this? I thought this’d lead to something, but no, this is it. Extremely weird, extremely unsettling.

As a fervent advocate of story-rich linear games, I cannot recommend Open Roads to anybody, the game lasts less than 3 hours and unfortunately it does not offer a compelling story, please skip this one, it is not worth your time, believe me, it was not worthy of my time either…

[first-impressions-gaming]

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

Developed by Insomniac Games

Published by SIE

Release Date 2021

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 59,99 USD

It’s a great joy, a rare one, to get the chance to play a non-frills singleplayer game with to-do-point mechanics. Mechanics are vital parts of a game, how it works and how the player is supposed to play the said game, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is on another level, it is super fun, mechanics are kept to minimum, and they don’t get in your way when you’re playing, and everything is steady and consistent. Rift Apart deserves all the praise I can present here and more.

As a gamer I have never played a Ratchet and Clank game before honestly, this is my first time going into the franchise, this title is one of the launch titles for PlayStation 5, which later released on PC with additional technical capabilities and features. In my playtime I tried to keep the game at steady 60 FPS therefore I did limit some graphical settings to medium, as a result of that, you may see some slight pixelated assets here and there, otherwise the game looks extra sharp and crisp. 

Rift Apart takes the story from the previous game of the franchise, Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus, which was released back in 2013, so it is highly likely that you are familiar with the franchise or the preceding game, the game opens with a short and concise tutorial section which plays as the sequence that sets the tone and scene for the rest of the game. Ratchet and Clank are galactic heroes and a parade is being held in honour of them, yet Ratchet and Clank acknowledge that they have been out of the game for sometime and haven’t done much since their last mission from the previous game. Right at this point the parade gets invaded by Doctor Nefarious, the long-time arch nemesis of Ratchet and Clank, during the fight between them and Doctor Nefarious’s goons, Clank surprises Ratchet by showing that he fixed Dimensionator recently, Nefarious grabs it and opens dimensions one after the other, and we get sucked into them respectively. As parallel universes are created and visited, we find ourselves in a parallel reality where Doctor Nefarious is the beloved and feared dictator of the entire galaxy. From this point onwards, we play as Ratchet, Clank and Rivet (who is another rebel in this parallel reality).

Now I’d like to share some gameplay clips, here is the first boss fight:

This is one of the high-action scenes, where you’re required to make quick decisions:

As can be seen in the clips, action-adventure spirit is greatly executed on gameplay level, backed up by superb environmental detail and vivid locations. One thing that stands out prominently is that, I never felt the need to interact with menus in this game, the game is always on-the-go, and the game always guides you to the next location without making you feel ‘okay I should arrive the targeted location’, that’s why the map that can be found in menu is never needed. The world is offered to you before you and the linear story progression takes you to the next place smoothly.

The game makes use of dual-reality setup as well in a number of missions, basically you switch between two dimensions and progress as they allow you.

Lastly, you can purchase and upgrade new weapons with the currency that you collect by destroying boxes around and killing enemies:

Also, the menu offers map, cosmetic items for the character and light codex entries that can keep you up with story of the franchise:

Rift Apart is a great family-friendly action game that will make you fall in love with, it is lively, enjoyable, teeming with energy all-around.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Marvel's Midnight Suns

Developed by Firaxis Games

Published by 2K

Release Date 2022

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 59,99 USD

Superheroes and non-stop action are a traditional combo in gaming, recently we have seen The Avengers, Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, but none of them actually were a success, both financially and in terms of user-retention. So, if all these action games based on superhero franchises fail to hit the sweet spot for gamers, what can be the alternative for it? Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a superhero game based on Midnight Suns and The Avengers heroes, developed by the legendary studio Firaxis Games, which is famous for turn-based strategy games like Civilization and XCOM. With this in mind, in this game the most prominent aspect is the turn-based combat. Let’s get to it.

Who are we? We are roleplaying as The Hunter, who is the offspring of Lilith, a.k.a Hydra and we have been in deep sleep for the last three centuries and we are woken up by Midnight Suns to fight Lilith. At this point the game takes you to the character creation screen, and you can select the gender of The Hunter. Female and male voices are voiced by relevant actors and I should directly say this that, the female voiceover does not vibe with the character and overall experience at all, the voice is always flat, her voice never sounds the way it should be, for example when The Hunter is conversing with a fellow superhero in hub area, her voice does not move with the dialogue, that’s why I would recommend you to go with male character, at least male voiceover feels like The Hunter is right here before our eyes, and not a simple voice recording bereft of touch and feeling that should be captured in the moment.

Please see the clip below, The Hunter’s voice lacks the required tone and play which is pretty unfortunate for me because the cover art of the game presents The Hunter in female form, so I thought ‘okay the female voiceover should be the to pick here’ but it has been a let-down personally:

As I talked about in the opening, the game makes use of turn-based card combat system, but that’s not all. Almost half of playtime, you will be interacting with other superheroes, from Magik to Blade and Doctor Strange, in the hub area. The hub area is made of couple of interactive locations and these are Blade’s Yard where you can upgrade cards on the condition that you have two copies of a card and you can train with another superhero daily and you and the hero can earn XP and boost your friendship level with the said hero. The higher friendship level you have with a hero, the better synergy and combo you will get in combat. Then there’s Forge with Iron Man and Doctor Strange. Strange lets you work on artefacts that you earn as a reward from missions and these enable you level up and do research. These researches provide you bonuses for abilities, extra XP in training arena and crafting hero abilities, legendary hero items and more. On the other hand Iron Man is there to help you craft new cards each day, he crafts cards automatically and you get to pick which one to keep, once you collect two copies of a card here, then you can visit Blade’s Yard and upgrade your card. 

Here is how you craft cards, in other words ‘Gamma Coil Analysis’:

And this is how we upgrade cards and train with fellow superheroes, which is called ‘daily sparing’, honestly I expected more than what’s presented here, you click on the button, and it ends instantly, there is no conversation, no action, nothing at all. It is like a gimmick. This boosts your friendship level with the picked hero and earns XP for both sides.

You can also customize your own room with basic furniture and decorations, this reminded me of the customization options available in Hogwarts Legacy, these are nothing fancy though, actually it does not even matter how you customize the room, 95% of the time you are in the room, and you will visit there only to ‘sleep’ after a mission. For example, I put some chair and table just to see if I can interact with them, but not at all. They are pure cosmetics that you can purchase with currency you earn from missions. 

I’ll touch upon two other topics and get to gameplay later. The game puts emphasis on interaction with other superheroes in hub area, and the game requires you to ‘hang out’ with them after each mission. I understand this concept, bonding with them, creating a friendship and building on it, yet this game does not deliver a believable or fully-immersive way to experience it. You can ‘watch a movie’, ‘stargaze’, ‘have a drink’ with them the conversations you hold during these activities are not that deep and I didn’t find them outstanding in any aspect, the reason behind this is that, they don’t add anything in value to gameplay or story. Here and there superheroes talk about their backstory and the game attempts to portray a more 3D personality with an intimate touch, yet it falls short almost all the time. Take a look at this clip, where The Hunter watches a movie with Nico. It is so weird and uncanny, I don’t see any reason to comment on this at all. The game says the characters are going to watch a movie, but all they do is talk and talk, and on the screen we see stop-motion frames which looks like a western-inspired, but…what is this? Why is this mechanic so bland, lifeless, soulless? I wish the developers did not put this sort of mechanic into the game, this feels rushed, and unpolished:

Lastly we arrive to Hero Ops section which is Captain Marvel’s own room, here you can send a hero for special ops in exchange of currency, and in return you receive rewards such as cards for the hero you select to send in. At first I thought we would roleplay as the hero, but no, you click on the button, and nothing happens further. The hero you prefer to send will be unavailable for a day, which means s/he will be unavailable to you for the mission you are going to play that day.

The actual gameplay and combat mechanics really shine here thanks to experienced team of Firaxis, the combat is turn- and card-based, you prepare your deck with default cards and ones you earn as you progress and craft. In each turn you can play 3 cards, you can redraw 2 cards, and you can move only 1 superhero. It is also helpful to note that, once you play an action card, such as attacking an enemy, the hero moves by default and the location where the hero will end up is shown on the screen. If you play your cards and strategize your heroes well enough, you will be moving all of your characters each turn, this is especially useful because there will be enemies which do damage in a big area impacting your heroes, so the only way to avoid those attacks is to move heroes manually or move them with your cards as you attack. Also you should not distribute your heroes across the battlefield randomly, the enemies do attack the closest enemy usually, and you can see which hero they are targeting with the superhero icon above the enemy.

As you can see in these clips, the combat is pretty smooth and straightforward, the importance is put on synergy among superheroes you choose for the mission, for example Blade is better for direct attack, Spider-Man is more useful for combos and temporarily rendering enemies unable to attack. As you progress and craft new cards you shape your decks for heroes accordingly and create new dynamics for combat.

Midnight Suns offers a great turn-based gameplay experience, if you are willing to put up with unenjoyable cutscenes and ‘filler’ side content then you’ll have a pleasant time with it.

[first-impressions-gaming]

The Medium

Developed & Published by Bloober Team

Release Date 2021

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 49,99 USD

Has there been any phenomenon in your life that you felt the presence of dual reality? A different world apart from the world you have grown used to? Well, Marianne has felt this, has experienced this feeling for years in The Medium, and she is expecting to get answers to understand it, to grasp the meaning of ‘it’, what it means, what it entails, what it ‘is’ in essence.

The Medium presents itself as a psychological horror so it does not make use of jump-scares that often, the core of the ‘horror’ elements are within this eerie vibe and sense of the world we are in, which means that a person such as me who do not enjoy horror movies or games can enjoy this game because the game does not make use ‘scaring’ you all the time to keep you hooked into the game. The atmosphere itself is stranger to you, and you never know what lies ahead, and what awaits you. Welcome to Niwa Resort, dear guest.

So, what is this game about? We are playing as Marienne, a female in her 30s, who has been having same nightmare for a long time about a girl being shot by the lake. Marienne has had this feeling of ‘dual’ world reality for a while but never came to explain it to anybody the whole time, an unknown person named Thomas calls Marienne, invites her to Niwa Resort to meet, saying that he knows what she has been experiencing. The game is set in 1999, post-soviet era Poland. Niwa Resort is the main location of the game, a resort that has been shut down after a massacre that took place, and it has been abandoned ever since with no clear-cut explanation to the incident.

In order not to spoil the ‘fun’ of it, I’ll talk about the mechanics and overall aura of the location. The major promise of the game is ‘dual’ worlds, Material and Spirit Worlds. Once you read these names, you may think ‘oh, Material one is the real world, and the other is just the mirror universe’, but no. The Spirit World is just as ‘real’ as the Material World. The message narrated by Marienne is that Spirit World is a realm that most of the people cannot see or fathom, Marienne has been able to experience Spirit World bit by bit over the years, and she knows that Material World does not exist on its own, there is more to it. This is when Spirit World comes into the topic. Spirit one is not a distorted version of our ‘real’ world, it’s a world on its own with its rules, conditions and existence. This dual reality becomes more contrasting as you step into Niwa Resort and as you progress, this feature is not just an eye-candy, it has more to it. First and foremost, Marienne exists in both realms at the same time, which means that when you are walking in Material World, your character is also moving in Spirit World, therefore you cannot independently move Marienne in each world at the same time. What’s more, if you come across an obstacle in a world, such as the stairs are damaged and you cannot progress, you cannot progress in the other world as well. Your, sort of, physical presence is bound to both realities and you cannot just simply ‘exit’ the world you are in. What you can do is that, you can ‘step out of’ your self in Material World and move around in Spirit World only, but you have limited time with this. For example, if your path is blocked in Material World, you can leave your Material self behind and move with Spirit one and find a way around to enable you to progress. 

Dual reality:

You know what? I just love that how this game impresses me with unexpected dual realities, this surprise element is especially crucial at beginning chapters, this awakes an emotion in you ‘do you really know the realm you are in? Well, let me introduce you to Spirit World’.

‘Insight’ feature is another major mechanic in the game. In this mode, the game guides you and highlights foot tracks, objects to interact, enables to see items which hidden or concealed. In addition to these features, there are some objects you will come across that are essential for story and progression, once you focus on these objects on the highlight parts you get to listen to voices from the past, including routine conversations between people and inner voices. These ‘echoes’ work as codex entries for you, which fill in the gaps in the story right before the mysterious massacre. As a player, I welcome these light-flashbacks because I wish to care for the location I am in and these voice recordings from objects are just great. 

You can take a look below at echoes:

The Medium is not the ultimate game for horror or thriller, what it offers is that a mix of adventure and horror game with linear gameplay and straightforward story, building an original story and world with dual realities enabling the player to experience two worlds at the same time. 

[first-impressions-gaming]

Atlas Fallen

Developed by Deck13

Published by Focus Entertainment

Release Date 2023

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 39,99 USD

I’ll be honest with you, this is not a ‘full’ review, this is only ‘first impressions’ since I played the game for around 2 hours and just could not find the will personally to continue playing the game.

Atlas Fallen was one of the games I really wanted to check out from last year, announcement and launch trailers look just great, this combat and traversal systems look so smooth and and the gameplay looks refined…well, not actually.

First and foremost, when I cannot get the ‘gist’ of a game’s story or opening act I just look up game reviews or game’s wikipedia page to get a deeper sense into it. When the opening act finalized, I was like “wait…what did happen…who are we…who am I supposed to fight? For what reason?” There were so many questions that desire answers, and the game keeps going piling on new questions and plotlines on top of another one and does not explain anything at all. I checked the game’s wikipedia page and game’s page on stores, Wikipedia does not have any story-related info, and Steam page does not mention anything about what this game is ‘about’. I mean, I played games for sake of their pure action with zero plotline or narration, yet, Atlas Fallen has this strange world, characters and NPCs talk about gigantic warfares from ancient times and a decade ago, there is fuck*ng gigantic V-shaped element in the air, and there is zero consistent narration in the game. Who am I here? Where are we? What are these enemies or monsters I am up against?

The fact that the game does not follow any meaningful plot is the reason I could not put up with it more than 2 hours, my criticism will unfold in the next paragraphs with user interface and overall mechanics better. First, the game opens in clouds, we are playing as Avatar-like blue man running away from titans or giants, then we fall from the sky, then we customize our character, and wake up. At this point I thought that we were customizing the Avatar-like man that just fell from the sky, but no, that is a separate character you will meet later. You customize your character and find yourself in this travelling caravan and there are grim looking soldiers, you converse with NPCs here, and you suggest to uprise against the soldiers, who are kidnapping you to someplace else, and they say no, then off you go to fight monsters commanded by the soldiers. Just keep up with me, okay? While you are fighting monsters, you come across this cuff, you wear it, it gives you superpowers, and it turns out that Avatar-like blue man is inside the cuff talking to you, whose name is Nyall. You return to the caravan, you beat up soldiers. To this point, the game has made zero sense because I am not familiar with the story one bit, I mean, there has to be some underlying plot just working its way to some peak moment. There has to be, there should be! The game had better ‘wow’ me at some point before it is too late, but no, the game does not contain any story, it all feels so randomized that I cannot enjoy myself, I don’t know who I am, what I am doing, what I am fighting with and, once again, where are we?

This silly opening act finalizes and we are in hub area, a town. We get to interact with NPCs, travel around, complete fetch quests for people with zero narration-drive. The trailers make sand-travel pretty cool, but the actual experience is nothing like it, it is ‘meh’ at best. Let’s get to user interface and mechanics now:

The game introduces source materials at the very beginning randomly and with zero explanation, this is something I am scared of actually because the game throws at you so many little things but do not give you tutorial, and expect you to fully understand them. For example, as you travel or wander around you collect plants and flower, collectibles, and the game automatically unlocks a new skill for you with zero input, rewards you with unique currencies and lets you unlock a new perk. As I played the game, it felt more and more like a mobile game, one where you play it for half an hour and you unlock so many things but you have no idea what their purpose are, and slowly you cease to progress at all and you are left with nothing substantial.

I have reviewed at least 70 games so far, and this is the first time I felt the need to criticize voiceover quality in a game, there are countless instances and scenes where multiple characters speak and their volume level don’t match, furthermore when it is a scene one characters is yelling or talking loudly, the other person’s voice is strangely calm and don’t fit the conversation and context at all.

Atlas Fallen disappointed me when it comes to user interface and navigation in menus, every menu and screen feels so…unpolished.

As for menus:

You have ‘Gauntlet’, that presents you Essence Stones, which are active and passive skills, these are unlocked by source material that is obtained from killed monsters. You can set your primary and secondary weapons here as well as check out combat moves for weapons.

In ‘Idols’ you will find passive abilities, honestly I don’t understand why there are multiple sections for abilities

In ‘Armour’, you can check out character stats, upgrades and Perks. Perks are different than Idols and Essence Stone skills, these Perks are unlocked through a different and rare currency.

You have your usual Map and Quests menus too.

Under ‘Journey’ menu you can see all the source material (to unlock Essence Stone abilities) in the most tedious way, codex entries for monsters and superficial story logs, and Formulas. Formulas are achieved through progression, once you are rewarded with a Formula, it means that specific Essence Stone ability is available to be unlocked.

Simply taking a look and navigating through these menus is a hassle itself, the reason is that, they are not well organized and there are loopholes here and there. Why are there 3 different skill section which are more or less same or similar? On top of that, they are unlocked with a unique progression but the game never explains how they work, such as the currency needed to unlock a new skill in Perks. How do I earn it? What is it called?

Essence Stones section is the most cluttered one, and this is the main skill menu that you will interact most, as mentioned previously, through progression the game offers you Formulas, and you can unlock new abilities in this section, the major problem here is that there are 3 tiers, and each tier has its own skill-set, yet the game does not categorize skills at all, it shows you all the skills, and you can only see which skill is for what tier as you move your cursor above them, and you cannot organize or customize the order in this screen, resulting in a disoriented skill menu. I wish the game implemented a straightforward skill-tree, one that is actually helpful and useful. 

I’ll show you the actual gameplay, in this clip I exit the hub area, travel around, come across enemies, and battle them. My biggest gripe, that you can see in the clip, is that the game presents itself as if it is offering an immersive world in trailers, but no, this world is far from immersive, it is the opposite of that. It is a bit challenging to put into words: the world we are in fees like are created in parts, such as hub are, empty deserts, hills, mountains, point of interest locations which have objectives and NPCs; it feels all these parts are created separately, then put together, and this is the final product. When I travel, fight enemies, return to hub area, something feels off here. Locations and environment do not match, and you feel this is not a unified world, this is more of a mix-n-match environment. Let’s take Greedfall for example here, which is an almost open-world game and when I travel across locations and fight enemies and get back to mission location, I never felt ‘this world does not vibe with me’ feeling, when you play a game you expect it to make ‘sense’ even if the game is set in most absurd plot with unreal characters. There has to be consistency and integrity of the world I am in should be connected across the world. Atlas Fallen falls short in this case, as I explored the world more, I grew even more stranger to it. It does not feel natural, it does not feel finished.

Adding to my previous paragraph, the level design does not live up to expectation at all, the game points at a location that I have to reach, but the location does not show up on Map, you only get to see direction arrow in-game and the distance between you and the destination. The world has these mountains and hills, and objective locations are located on top of these mountains, or below them, but you cannot make sure which direction you should go. Why is this simple thing is a challenge itself? An average player should be provided with clues and hints for the destination, in this game I cannot grasp where I am going or where I am supposed to go to access the location.

The only positive thing to note about Atlas Fallen is the combat system. The combat is fluid, it is fast, it is a bit challenging in a fun way and the game always pushes you to use your combo attacks, dodge and freeze abilities. Apart from this, Atlas Fallen is a game I would not recommend to anybody with a healthy mind.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Go Mecha Ball

Developed by Whale Peak Games

Published by Super Rare Originals

Release Date 2024

Tested on Xbox Series X 

MSRP 19,99 USD

I’ll be straight with you, I intended to review Dead Island 2, played it for around one and a half hour and just quit, then I came across Go Mecha Ball in recently added game section in Xbox Game Pass, and the screenshots attracted my attention, downloaded and checked it out.

Go Mecha Ball is the most addictive game I have ever played recently, there is this love-hate relationship I have with roguelite games, I worship some of them, yet I loathe the rest, it is more like hit or miss. Go Mecha Ball is fluid, simple, straight-to-the-action game that I cannot recommend enough. 

In a nutshell, you play as a pinball and mech hybrid with bombastic abilities and agile movement in this roguelite game, where your goal is to eliminate enemies in each level, and each level has three waves of enemies, every other four levels you combat a boss. After each level, you are offered three choices, you are free to unlock a new ability or improve your base stats, such as cooldown reset, damage etc.

What’s more, the game has two currencies one of is ‘gold’, the other is ‘purple-ish’, to be honest the game does not name these currencies so there you go,  before each boss battle, you visit an area where you can purchase abilities, replenish ammo in exchange of ‘gold’ coin, also you can level up your overall level. With purple-ish coin, you can purchase and unlock Upgrades, Abilities and Weapons at the beginning of each run, you unlock a random item in your selected category here, and you get to select and equip them inbetween levels. 

You can see the area before a boss battle below, also the launching into the fight arena looks just ridiculously great:

The range of weapons are also diverse, you can equip and fire weapons ranging from submachine and assault rifles to sniper rifles. Of course, you start with a single weapon, and new weapons drop during levels, and you get to swap with different guns as you go, for example in some level shotguns are pretty useful when you are close-quarters against enemies, in other levels sniper-like weapons get the job done when you need precision and long-range kills. 

And this is your main hub area:

When it comes to Abilities don’t forget that you always start without any ability, you equip them once the game offers you abilities and upgrades after each level, and you can only equip 2 abilities at once. It is good to know that you should be selecting abilities that you can create combo attacks. There are abilities with sticky grenades, EMPs that stuns and damages enemies, Spin Attack that allows you to spin and knock out enemies, Smash with which you can jump and pound the ground and shock nearby enemies.

To give you the feeling of what is feels like in-game, see the clip below:

Go Mecha Ball is a mindless, high-action roguelite game that does not stop even for a beat, it’s insanely addictive with top-notch level design where you can move smoothly and fight your enemies in your own way.