Stew's Reviews

22/M/Scotland Gaming robot powered by sugar. Sometimes I write reviews. Find me on Steam! https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198073447683/

[caddicarustv]

YES, they finally did it! Super Mario Bros 1 is portable!!11!!1!!

In all seriousness though, thanks so much to @nintendouk for sending this across. Absolutely adorable, and I’ve now even got a fancy desk clock! https://www.instagram.com/p/CHyNICjDlrP/?igshid=1ktd8a1xpjiz7

[stewy497]

Crazy how a speedrunner could potentially get less playtime out of this than the original game & watch.

[markocomics]

Is there something wrong with Overwatch?

I have been playing a quite a lot of OW, I took a really long break but started playing it again recently. I still find it somewhat fun, but I noticed that I get pretty frustrated and angry a lot. I’m not really sure if that was a case back when I used to make comics and such, but for some reason it really feels so damn frustrating game. I’m not really sure what is it, because it hasn’t changed THAT much.

Maybe it’s because it’s all about hard counters, like if I want to play certain character but there’s few characters on opposite team which just makes your life so miserable. I still really like the game but damn, does it make me mad.

Nothing much to say, just my thoughts on my recent experiences.

[stewy497]

Oh good, it's not just me. All ammunition for the single player arguement; how am I supposed to enjoy a game that actively frustrates me because of the practiced, joyless cuntblasts on the other team? We don't all have all day to git gud, some of us have responsibilities, unfortunately.

[stewy497]

I thought Nintendo had ceased production on these things. Well, whatever. Got one now, time to see how many of the classics hold up.

[stewy497]

Excelsior, Stan Lee.

[stewy497]

Stew Reviews - Dust: An Elysian Tail

What’s this, two reviews within a week of each other? What absolute madness is this? Could it be that Stew finally grew a sense of discipline and decided to start posting consistently? To that I say, dream on Mister Strawman. I had been planning this review for some time, and the Switch release of Dust: An Elysian Tail last month presented an excellent opportunity to finally tackle it, but at the same time I’d already planned out the introduction to my inFamous: Second Son review, and I didn’t want to miss the window of relevance as badly as I usually do. So, I took the logical option and decided to push myself, just this once. But enough about my scheduling habits, we’re here to talk about games, so let’s do that.

SPOILERS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

As with so many other similar independent projects, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a 2D Metroidvania hack-and-slash platformer, developed by Humble Hearts game studio – that is to say, one dude named Dean apparently trying to look more popular than he really is. As much as I tease him for that however, I can’t help but admire the guy’s dedication to the project – the core gameplay is solidly constructed, the visuals in particular I imagine to have taken a lot of work, and the story manages to apply itself to some surprisingly mature and complex themes despite the slightly childish presentation.

Dust takes place in a world populated with anthropomorphised animals and is set against the backdrop of a war-torn land consisting, against all odds, of mostly lush, green forests and meadows. You play as the enigmatic Dust, a faceless teal-furred canine with an oversized hat and a mysterious backstory. Without any memories of his past, he embarks on a quest to rediscover his true identity at the behest of Arah, a magical talking sword, and a small orange bat/rabbit thing named Fidget. Yes, the plot starts out somewhere between Disney Classics and My First Fursona – a comparison that only worsens with the introduction of soul merging and induces flashbacks to the Final Fantasy VII House - but over the course of the game it acquires more depth and deviates towards more interesting themes.

The aforementioned war is more of a looming threat than something actually present in the foreground for most of the game, but as the plot unfolds it’s threaded through a series of encounters which showcase just how far-reaching the conflict is, as guilty and innocent alike are affected by it. The point where I decided I was fully on-board with it was during the second act, where despite their best attempts to avert catastrophe, Dust and Fidget are unable to save the life of a dying villager – something that Dust doesn’t take particularly well. The sequence works because it’s a subversion of the usual narrative, and Dust’s grief and frustration with himself  reveals a more introspective element not often seen in this sort of story. The contrast with the cartoonish visuals only serves to make it more effective, and it’s only slightly undermined by the voice acting.

I wouldn’t say that it’s awful by any means, but there’s a certain amateurish, almost caricature-like quality to many of the voices in Dust. The titular character himself is by far the worst offender, as he seems to confuse dramatic, tortured delivery with standing too close to the microphone. Every time he delivers a “wh” sound it comes out like he’s just finished running a half-marathon and listening to it makes me want to tear my own ears out. And considering how many whats, whys and hows the average clueless amnesiac character throws around, that’s a lot of tearing.

On the gameplay side of things, there’s not much to say that I haven’t already said. You jump around on collections of floating rocks a whole bunch, sometimes there’s a group of enemies between you and where you want to be, so you start mashing buttons until the path is clear again. In all honesty, while the combat is perfectly functional and somewhat entertaining, I feel like there could have been more to it – for a magic sword, the list of available combos is rather disappointingly short; light combo, ground throw, air launch, air throw, plunging attack. You’ll have seen every one of them by the time you reach the fourth screen.

Transitioning between moves feels sticky at times too, since many of them have long animation cycles that can’t be cancelled out of, which tends to leave you vulnerable or waste crucial seconds that results in a particularly long streak of hits ending prematurely. Then again, it does mean that the combat demands some degree of skill, as button mashing is more likely to leave you vulnerable than a carefully executed string of movements, which is part of what keeps it entertaining. Annoyingly Dust has inherited that quality of Symphony of the Night wherein the protagonist is thrown back by any incoming damage, which is particularly annoying during the time trial levels. It also makes Reed’s quest almost impossible if you don’t prepare for it, since the required revival stone is expensive and grinding up cash simply isn’t feasible while Dust is constantly taking damage.

The platforming is fairly bog-standard as metroidvania goes, but while in other examples of the genre exploration is demanded to make progress, it feels far less necessary in Dust as the progression is fairly linear. The movement abilities typical of the genre like the double jump or wall climb are simply given to you as you need them. The only purpose exploration serves in Dust is to hunt for treasures and secrets, making it less “exploration” and more “arbitrary backtracking for the sake of 100% completion”.

A treasure chest might give you some decent gear, but enemies also drop crafting blueprints regularly and the shop system makes it trivially easy to acquire the necessary components; any time you sell a material to the shop, it is catalogued and periodically restocked with no input required on your part. You don’t even need to visit a shop to buy materials, since an early quest allows you to craft items without visiting the blacksmith and grants you access to a portable shop to boot. Granted, grinding for the rarer materials would have been annoying, but this makes it zero effort to complete the item-gathering quests.

And as long as I’m complaining, there’s also a secret room in the snowy mountain stage which is literally impossible to find without a walkthrough; you have to find a cliff face in the middle of the level with an hourglass carved into it, and deduce that if you kneel in front of it for ten seconds, a tornado will appear from offscreen and teleport you to the secret room. Yeah, it’s poking fun at Castlevania 2’s obscure puzzle solutions, but acknowledging that what you’re doing is stupid does not equal biting satire, Dean.

Lastly, the final level isn’t great. The lion’s share of it is spent cutting a path through the big bad’s soldiers to confront him, most of which can block your attacks even when lying prone and concussed by a sliding tackle to the ankles. It completely obliterates any sense of flow in the combat, and, contrary to the rest of the game, makes button mashing a valid option. The final boss probably would have been about perfect if he wasn’t supported by these hangnails.

 Additionally, since this is the final confrontation in a long and bloody war, the game sends you in with a squad of NPC support fighters. All this does, however, is clutter the battlefield and make any given encounter impossible to read. I’m not even sure the NPCs are capable of damaging the enemies, but like I said, I couldn’t tell through the clouds of dust and waving spears.

For all my whining, however, I can’t deny that I’ve enjoyed my time with Dust each time I’ve gone back to it, and if there is a second instalment planned for the world of Falana, then I await it eagerly. The beautiful visuals, gorgeous soundtrack and compelling story do a lot to make up for the game’s more annoying aspects. If you’ve an itch or a particular soft spot for this sort of 2D action-platformer then it is a strong contender that I’d definitely recommend.

[stewy497]

Stew Reviews - inFamous: Second Son

No, I’m not dead, I’m just really lazy. But now I’m back, and you might be interested to hear that I managed to get my hands on a PS4 at a vaguely non-extortionate price while I was away. So, let’s do some exclusives to justify my reckless spending.

Infamous: Second Son is an indirect sequel to the two prior Infamous games on the PS3. I haven’t played much further than the prologue of the first one, but that doesn’t matter since while Second Son utilises a few concepts from the originals, the story is largely unconnected. In the time since Infamous 2, leading man Cole McGrath has retired to Seattle to run a small chain of electronics shops, leaving the position of protagonist to Delsin Rowe, young Akomish punk and graffiti artist named after his preferred clothing material. In the world of Infamous there exists a small percentage of humans with the ability to manipulate different forms of matter, known as Conduits. Since the events of the first Infamous games, Conduits have developed something of a PR problem, being more commonly referred to as “bio terrorists” and imprisoned by some crazy woman with funny ideas about civil rights.

Second Son kicks off when a prison bus transferring a handful of Conduits crashes in Delsin’s neighbourhood, allowing a handful of them to escape. While investigating the crash, Delsin discovers that he can leech powers from other Conduits; this gives resident crazy woman Augustine, a government Conduit agent who looks like a head teacher dressed by a militant goth, an excuse to maim the Akomish people with jagged concrete shards. Thusly is established Delsin’s motivation to go to Seattle and take in the sights, while also maybe taking some time out to leech Augustine’s powers and undo the damage she caused. On the way he meets and leeches a handful of other Conduits, but none of them are particularly engaging or developed beyond their archetypes – I think the exact moment I gave up expecting compelling storytelling from this game was a line from the Neon Conduit, a pink-haired punk girl with facial piercings and an edgy attitude: “But the drugs, man, they were heaven.” I shouldn’t need to explain why that falls flatter than a pancake off a penthouse balcony, but just in case I do, it represents the character as nothing more than a caricature of a troubled youth, lacking in any nuance or insight. The story also attempts to make Augustine seem like a well-intentioned extremist, but that too falls completely flat since she’s a psychopath. No, seriously. If the concrete torture thing didn’t already tip you off, for all she claims about imprisoning Conduits for their own protection, she doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of human empathy, or that innocent, frightened, misunderstood people don’t appreciate being having their freedom stripped away, or being literally treated like death-row criminals.

I know I usually do my overall summary at the end of a review, but on this occasion, I’m going to skip ahead and say right away that while Second Son isn’t particularly offensive, I have very little actual praise to give it. Second Son was a launch title, and therefore was expected to do little more than showcase the new PS4’s graphical capabilities. In other words, PARTICLES. You can barely see the game past them. Every ability Delsin can use generates them in copious amounts, the same applies for most of the enemies, and the environments aren’t much better. Which is why it’s especially ironic that, on a slimline PS4 at least, the framerate suffers when things get too busy. Such as when the game starts throwing baddies at you en mass, the only way it knows how.

Combat is actually halfway exciting. With most power sets, taking down enemies becomes a decent challenge as each set functions differently and allows you to dispatch enemies in a variety of ways. Well, except for Video. Video lets you turn invisible and run around deleting enemies at your leisure. Effective, but not exactly stimulating, and since it also has the most effective movement ability the game is for all intents and purposes finished once you acquire it. Concrete is one of the stronger options in both combat and storytelling, as it lacks a non-lethal option in a noteworthy case of ludo-narrative synchronicity; Augustine was completely ruthless, and so is anybody with her powers. It’s just a shame that you only unlock Concrete at the end of the game, at which point there’s nothing to use it on, depending on how much of the sandbox you already cleared out.

You’re up against unfavourable numbers right from the beginning, as the core relays which are your primary source of upgrade tokens are heavily guarded, and fights often descend into spamming the dash button and waiting for your health to regenerate. It gets frustrating since it turns out that denim and sarcasm don’t make particularly good body armour. Less a problem in the later portion of the game, since you can get an upgrade that lets you restore your health with karma takedowns, and this also charges up your clearing attack. Useful for clearing out garrisons, but I feel like the combat could have been more reasonable if the clearing attack had been less pivotal. Had it been the unlockable endgame ability that it feels like, rather than a standard part of your powerset, it might not even have gotten stale watching the associated overdone, particle-smothered cutscene over and over again.

Outside of destroying core relays, the majority of the available side activities – destroying cameras, collecting audio logs, rooting out hidden DUP agents – only contribute to unlocking district showdowns, which only unlocks the district fast travel point, which is pointless because once a district’s showdown is completed, there isn’t much reason to stick around. Even if the fast travel system wasn’t a pain to unlock, your Conduit movement powers are fast and effective for getting around, and make exploring the city fun; in itself another nail in the fast travel system’s coffin, since you need to explore to find upgrade tokens and karma actions to build your powers. That would a good thing, as the essence of a sandbox is that messing around in it is cathartic and contributes towards achieving your goals, but Second Son subverts this by giving you relatively little room for specialisation, restricting you to a paltry handful of available powers and upgrades which ultimately do nothing to affect the outcome of the final confrontation, and in turn rendering moot the franchise’s signature karma system. Ideally there should be upgrades that increase your damage output or improve your mobility and evasiveness to make the final boss easier – incidentally, that would have been appreciated since as it stands the final battle is tedious, repetitive and unforgiving. You could probably finish the story in a single sitting if you ignored the side activities altogether, which would have the added advantage of giving you some actual endgame content for after the end.

While the side activities don’t contribute anything to the story, they do serve the purpose of clearing out Augustine’s flunkies and liberating Seattle from martial law. But that just means that if you do go through the side activities alongside the story as I did, by the end you’ll be left with nought but a dessert trolley of super powers and nothing to use them on. There is something called the Paper Chase, a questline which requires you to register an account on the inFamous website to start; I had assumed this was for customer surveying purposes, but it turned out to be a rather tedious and unintuitive ARG which requires you to peel yourself away from the actual game and spend half an hour shuffling through papers on your browser before you can actually play the damn mission. I didn’t bother, because it defeats the purpose of playing a video game and I have better things to do.

So, bottom line: Second Son stands for nothing, and brings nothing to the medium. I can’t think of a single reason to buy it if it didn’t already look like something you’d enjoy. It’s the video gaming equivalent of junk food – good enough while you’re experiencing it, but take a step back and you’ll find no reason to consume it. I’ll admit that I enjoyed the stencil art gimmick though. I thought it was very charming.

[markocomics]

More Nerd and Jock costumes.

[stewy497]

[stewy497]

Always wanted to try cosplaying this character, and with Vic Mignogna attending Glasgow Comic Con this year I could think of few more appropriate opportunities. Not bad for a first attempt I'd say.

[stewy497]

Turns out that Majorca has a thriving goat population living on its scrubby mountains. My little sister managed to make a couple of friends. Pictures taken at Cala Bóquer.

[stewy497]

My first competitive Commander game

Me: Let’s see… I’ll play Implement of Destruction to untap Traxos, Scourge of Kroog, buff it with Adamant Will for nine power, enchant one of my mountains with Genju of the Spires, and declare both attackers.

Them: Since you have four or more cards in hand, I draw three extra cards and scry fourteen, gain six lands from my Elven Archdruid and use Mystic Snake to block Traxos. Then Rest In Peace exiles your graveyard, and because I have at least twenty seven permanents in play, I get to take a second turn. Genju gets confused because there’s a gibbous moon in the sky and punches itself off the table due to the effect of my Studious Remora’s Signal Beam, and you have to pay three mana to prevent me from drawing extra cards with the effect of my field enchantment.

Me: …

Me: But do you take any damage?

Them: I take three damage.

Me: VALIDATED!

[stewy497]

My custom order from Wormwood Gaming finally arrived! D&D is about to get significantly more insufferable interesting.

[stewy497]

GIF Sound Mashups

GIF Sound - Combine animated GIFs with music or sound effects from YouTube to create funny mashups.

There was a discussion in one of my group chats about the funkiest animals. Peacock spider won out in the end.

[stewy497]

Apparently Canada and Scotland switched places while I wasn’t looking.

[stewy497]

Climbing at Ratho Centre. Abseiling still goes against every survival instinct I have, but I suppose that’s something that goes with practice.

[stewy497]

Stew Reviews - Celeste

So, after a full year of umming and erring over it, I finally gave in to peer pressure and got myself a Nintendo Switch. I’ve got the usual no-brainer titles to go with it; Mario Kart and Odyssey, Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Rayman Legends, and The Binding of Isaac, curiously enough. But out of all the games I’ve played on this new system, the one that most cried out for analysis was a little indie project from Matt Thorson by the name of Celeste that Nintendo seem to be particularly eager to push.

Keep reading

[stewy497]

Stew Reviews - Celeste

So, after a full year of umming and erring over it, I finally gave in to peer pressure and got myself a Nintendo Switch. I’ve got the usual no-brainer titles to go with it; Mario Kart and Odyssey, Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Rayman Legends, and The Binding of Isaac, curiously enough. But out of all the games I’ve played on this new system, the one that most cried out for analysis was a little indie project from Matt Thorson by the name of Celeste that Nintendo seem to be particularly eager to push.

I didn’t pick up Celeste immediately because from the gameplay trailer I had assumed it to be a slightly generic platformer. When I did pick it up a few days later, I found that mechanically, Celeste can be considered a contemporary of Super Meat Boy which I really like, being a tough-but-fair 2D pixel art precision platformer in the try-die-try-again mould. The gameplay isn’t particularly revolutionary, so I guess in a way I was right about it looking generic, but it is very solid and rarely unduly frustrating. The main innovation here is that you collect strawberries rather than bandages, and your basic move set is enhanced with the ability to climb walls and a short directional dash which you can use to quickly reposition yourself in mid-air. The physics are reliable and the platforming puzzles are all competently designed, being built around the dashing and climbing mechanics, so they always feel central and never like some gimmicky tag-on. Thusly, navigating a screen on the first attempt with a smoothly rattled off sequence of calculated jumps gives a feeling of indescribable satisfaction. Each level is visually distinct and has its own slight variations on platforming mechanics, such as dash extenders or trajectory-altering winds, so the game retains a stable core that doesn’t end up becoming stale. The game suggests that gathering the strawberries is completely optional and in the end grants little more than bragging rights, but it’s entertaining enough that I generally want to go after them while still being challenging without making me break the Switch into three pieces – not in the sense that it’s meant to, I mean – which few games can claim to achieve. There are also secrets to find, B-sides and crystal hearts, and admittedly their function isn’t readily apparent until you reach post game, but they do have one so they count towards something other than meaningless 100% completion. As satisfactory as this all is however, where Celeste really grabbed me was in the story.

Some minor spoilers ahead for the sake of analysis, so you may want to skip the next two paragraphs if you want to go into Celeste fresh.

You play as Madeline – assuming you decided not to abuse the enter-name-here feature – a young red-headed woman who has arrived at the foot of Mount Celeste with the intent to climb to the mountain’s summit. Right off the bat it’s quite obvious that Madeline is dealing with some deep-seated emotional issues, from the way she stubbornly proclaims how much she needs to reach the summit and the occasional cryptic dialogue exchange or dream sequence. One conversation in particular flat out states that she suffers from panic attacks, so presumably it’s some form of anxiety disorder. The thrust of all this is that climbing Mount Celeste serves as a metaphor for Madeline overcoming her problems, which as a writer and as someone who has experienced mental health issues myself, I can appreciate. It might not be the most complex piece of symbolism in the world, but it works and it works well. This theming is complemented by the gameplay itself too in a nice example of ludo-narrative synchronicity, as in the face of your literally hundreds upon hundreds of failed attempts, only your own determination not to give up can propel you onwards.

As you draw closer to the peak, you’ll meet and interact with various supporting characters. They’re all quite reliably grounded and likeable, and each of them strike a chord in different ways. First off is Theo, let’s call him our frame of reference as the most “normal” person in the story; a wanderlusting and aimless amateur photographer who’s also climbing the mountain, occasionally slightly brusque in his manner but also pragmatic and sensible with it. Then there’s a portly and spectacularly neurotic hotel owner who may or may not be dead and tends to overthink and worry to the point of paralysis; a half-mad old woman who lives at the foot of the mountain; and an evil red-eyed palate swap of Madeline representing all of her uncertainty and self-doubt who constantly tries to sabotage her ascent... You know, the usual stuff. Their interactions are well written and touching, with two particular moments close to the summit sticking in my mind.

Speaking of characters and their interactions, one object of note is that while the majority of the game is, as I mentioned earlier, presented in low-detail pixel art, for dialogue and key story beats the visuals employ cute, hand drawn illustrations. On their own they’re quite enjoyable to look at, but being spread out by large expanses of pixel art makes each one feel far more special and worth savouring. I found myself taking screenshots of the ones I particularly liked just so I could go back and look at them again later.

Overall, I can find very little to complain about with Celeste. About the only recurring issue I could name would be that the input for the left joystick might be a bit unforgiving; it seems like half of all my deaths could be attributed to Madeline dashing a different direction to the one I wanted. You can mitigate this to some degree by switching to the directional buttons, but good luck if you need to change direction more than once; while all other controllers use a single cross-shaped button because it makes it easier to find the direction you want, the Joy-Con’s four individual buttons mean that my thumb keeps getting confused and prodding the space between them. Yes, the Pro controller has a more traditional D-Pad, but it’s positioned below the analogue stick rather than above it like every other controller, so reaching for it feels unnatural and off-putting. And besides, I played most of the game in portable mode anyways, so it’s a moot point. I suppose the easiest fix for this issue is to simply play a different version of Celeste, since it’s available across all platforms, but I can still recommend the Switch version because, like The Binding of Isaac, this game’s model is well suited to being portable, and I enjoy being able to have my pick with how I play it.

Secondly, for a game with such strong writing, I get the feeling that the writers neglected to proof read their final draft. The end of the second level hints at something or someone in Madeline’s past, but after she wakes up from the dream sequence where this happens, that particular story beat is never brought up again. If you’d hoped I would forget about it, Matt, perhaps it would have been worth coming up with another level or two to pad the runtime and improve the odds of that.

The last incredibly petty thing I have to say is that it’s often unclear whether or not Celeste’s mechanics are diegetic – that is to say, whether they exist within the context of the game’s story or purely for the sake of gameplay. Yes, I know that I’m probably the only person who cares about this, but it got on my nerves and it pads out the word count so I’m going to talk about it anyways. Part of the reason for this is that Mount Celeste is established as a supernatural setting that brings certain qualities out in those who scale it, but it’s hard to see where the dividing line is. Is Madeline actually capable of dashing in mid-air? A feat like that should be physically impossible without generating the force of a nuclear blast, but it’s demonstrated in cutscenes multiple times so I suppose she must be? What about the dash-extending space voids in the second level? The whole game it seemed those were simply part of Madeline’s dream, but then during the final climax when the game’s throwing everything it has at you, they return alongside everything else. But like I said, I’m the only person who cares about this so it’s hardly a deal breaker. I digress.

So, bottom line: a narrative triumph with solid and entertaining core gameplay. To be enjoyed by anyone who can face a challenge, and a must-play for those in the indie market.

[stewy497]

Looking for a guy named Phat Tony to get punched by my friend.

Must own a casino specialising in domino games.