Space Pirate Trainer

Space pirate trainer is pretty cool.  You stand on a platform with 2 guns shooting a bunch of small droids.  The guns can change into a number of different types of weapons including a shotgun, a grenade launcher, a strange tractor beam rope weapon, and a shield which I found to be the most useful.

This is a game that is better in small doses or shared with others.  The game even has a designated party mode if you want to hide the menus entirely and open a fresh local scoreboard.

I almost feel like this is a game a person could get in shape playing.  It starts off easy but you spend a lot of time waving your arms around and dodging bullets.  If you don't want to exercise though I did find a surprisingly effective strategy of sitting on the floor with my shield up like a turtle and shooting droids from cover.

On another note, it might be cool if you could get some gloves as controllers since I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time reaching for the ground or the walls.  It'd be nice to go hand-first rather than controller first.  I've only had the thing for a week and I've already scratched the controllers just slightly.  I also feel like it's unlikely they'd be able to support my weight if I had to use them to break a fall.

Looks like at least one company is working on this already.

Anyways it's a good demonstration for VR and you can have some fun with it.  I do think at $17 it might be a little overpriced though.  Check it out here if you're interested.

7/10

Q.U.B.E.

Q.U.B.E. is currently available on Steam for a dollar.  At that price I'd say it's worth it.  It is a shorter game though (maybe 3 hours to complete).

I liked the puzzles in this game even though it's a bit on the easier side of what I'm used to in first-person puzzle games.  There were a couple where it seemed like the solution had more to do with playing with the physics engine until it works just right rather than finding a solution with logic.

The story wasn't really that good.  The voice acting seemed alright but there wasn't really enough of it to really relate to the characters and the plot wasn't really very deep.  I don't know how much it really matters though as I don't really play these games for the story.

The visuals are actually pretty good especially considering it's mostly just a bunch of cubes (for the first half).  The second half gets a little more work from the artists and it probably has something to do with the way this game was developed.  Somebody built the concept with simple assets, then once the project got legs they put more work into it.

If you want to say the game is similar to Portal you'd be right.  The aesthetics are very similar and Portal is sort of the definitive game in it's genre.  The mechanics are different though and if you like puzzle games because you like puzzles as opposed to some weird fascination in cakes and companion cubes I don't see why this would really be a problem.  There are some neat puzzles in there and it costs a dollar.

8/10

Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series

Honestly I don't know why I'm still playing Telltale games.  There were some parts of this that were pretty cool and I respect that they were to able get many of the more popular voice actors from the show.  It just feels like the games Telltale has been making seem to include fewer and fewer gameplay elements.  Almost as if they're only hiring wannabe film makers who couldn't quite cut it for some reason.

In The Walking Dead, there were large gameplay sections where you would have to walk around and solve puzzles.  Not that this was an amazing mechanic but it was a mechanic.  In this one it's rare to even be able to walk.  It's more common that they only enable the forward button and you have to hold it to get through a hallway.  Fun.  The fight scenes are pretty easy to get through and they've usually decided beforehand whether or not you should win the fight leaving your performance mostly irrelevant.

A bigger issue than the lack of gameplay elements is the lack of choice.  There is some branching to the story but the branches almost always lead back to the same things happening anyways and usually don't take too long to do it.  Whether or not you're a good handmaiden to Margaery doesn't matter, whether you're obedient or defiant with the Whitehills doesn't matter, how you treat Ramsay doesn't matter, I could go on.  The same things happen either way.  Your strategy isn't important.

These games are supposed to be like choose your own adventure books not like sitcoms.  That's what made The Walking Dead cool.  Watching a 5 minute cutscene then holding W for a little while before getting to the next cutscene doesn't constitute gameplay.  Telltale needs to stop making these games so long and start focusing on making them good - polishing something shorter.  This feels like mediocre Game of Thrones fan fiction.

5/10

Overwatch Open Beta

Overwatch is similar Team Fortress 2 in a lot of ways.  2 teams of heroes with unique abilities face off trying to hold various points on a map.  While every Overwatch character is different they're divided into 4 basic types.  Offense, defense, tank, and support.

There are player upgrades but they're all cosmetic which is nice as it keeps things balanced.  This is something that Team Fortress 2 actually doesn't do.  I mean to say that the upgrades in TF2 are mostly cosmetic but the fact is you can unlock new weapons.  It's true that TF2 tries to balance these unlockable weapons but being able to further customize your play-style is an advantage.

The graphics are beautiful and the Overwatch world is inherently interesting.  I will say that based on the trailers I've seen it doesn't make a ton of sense though.  Some of the heroes seem to be "good" characters and others are "bad" yet the teams are a mixture of both and there isn't really a particularly good reason for attacking or defending the objectives.  Not that this really has to make sense.

Ideally the team ends up being fairly balanced but it did seem to me that the offense characters were the most popular.  My personal favourite character was Tracer.  She can die fairly easily but zipping around the map is a pretty fun way to play the game.  I also appreciated Pharah; flying around launching rockets at unsuspecting opponents was cool.  I had picks for the other 3 class types as well; Bastion for offense, Roadhog for tank, and I liked Lucio for support (not that I really liked playing support that much).

Overall it's a very well put together game that I expect will continue to grow and could very easily move into esports.  I'm on the fence about purchasing it though.  This is the kind of the game that'll take a pretty big time commitment to get good at and I would want to play a game like this with friends.  If they had split-screen on the PS4 I would definitely invest but it seems that they have no plans for that.  It's a very good game though and it seems pretty well-balanced considering how different the heroes are.

8/10

Soma

Soma is the third game by Frictional Games I've tried.  The others being Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.  It has a lot in common with it's predecessors.

The gameplay of Soma isn't overly impressive.  Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a great horror game that was fairly innovative when it came out.  This game doesn't add anything to the mix however and is actually less interesting mechanically.  Really, the story of Soma could probably be planted into any kind of game.  I'm not sure there's any real reason for this to be a horror game other than because it's what Frictional Games seems to specialize in.

At one point I remember sitting in a dark room with nowhere to hide and a monster across from me.  After several seconds the monster decided to come get me but my only consequence was respawning in the exact same place and having the monster removed.

I can't say I really found the game to be very scary.  In The Dark Descent, much like the movie Jaws, a lot of the fear comes from not actually seeing the monsters.  The player would lose sanity when they looked at them, the camera would become distorted, and if they looked long enough the player would lose.  There was also a very memorable scene with an invisible water monster.  In Soma there's no penalty for seeing monsters and once you've seen them having them lumber up to you isn't really as freaky.  I also felt like I spent more time hiding in closets and behind doors in The Dark Descent while Soma was more about waiting for a monster to walk a repeated pattern and leave you an opening.

On the plus side what Soma does very well is tell a story.  It's a great plot that I spent basically all my free time on until I finished it.  I'll avoid mentioning any spoilers though but it's science fiction that brings up thoughts of artificial intelligence and what it really means to be alive.

I also think the visuals were generally pretty nice and especially the camera effects.  The camera would play with bloom, technical and biological distortions, and all sorts of neat things.  Walking through the abyss was particularly well done.

Overall I enjoyed Soma even though I didn't love the game mechanics.  The world it takes place in is very engaging and it does a good job of building a theme.  I recommend the game if you're into science fiction.

7/10

The Witness

The Witness is a puzzle game set in a beautiful environment.  The art for the world is fantastic and every area feels different.  The core game play's puzzle involves drawing a line toconnect one node to another with various conditions. 

This is a hard game.  That being said, not all of the puzzles in this game need to be finished in order to get through the game which provides some relief.  Myself, I finished the main plot but certainly not all of the puzzles.  Still I thought it was challenging and especially some of the ones near the end. 

The game does a good job of letting the player learn the new mechanics without using any words.  Many times I would encounter a symbol that I hadn't seen, then I would search the island for a simple puzzle with that symbol in it so that I could learn how it works.  This had me really getting to know the island.  

As for the plot, I will say if there's anything to get I didn't get it.  It felt more like a collection of snippets from writers and poets than anything cohesive.  It is a beautiful environment though and I certainly felt drawn into it.

The game world is certainly beautiful but it's a bit funny how much attention it received in this game's marketing when the player actually spends most of their time looking at simplistic looking puzzles.  It seems it's easier to market an art style than it is a puzzle mechanic.  I'm not sure this game would do as well if it only had the puzzles and not the environment.

The puzzle itself is good though and the production values in this game are great.  I had a hard time putting it down until I finished the story.  If you like puzzle games I recommend this.  I might wait until the price drops a bit from $40 though.

8/10

Undertale

When I first started up Undertale it reminded me of something like Earthbound or Pokemon.  It starts off pretty simple with a tutorial that you might even call painful to get through.  The first character you meet, Toriel, holds your hand through a few puzzles and is too worried to allow you to do anything for yourself.  Toriel also encourages you to talk to the randomly encountered enemies until she comes and helps you. 

It's a fairly unique way to start the game and at least for me it had the effect of making me really want to get into it.  It takes a lot of time to spell out some things that are second nature if you'd played RPGs before.  However, Undertale is not like other RPGs.  

I didn't really know much about Undertale going in.  I knew it was an indie game with great reviews and that was about it.  In Undertale's kickstarter it was called "A traditional role playing game where no one has to get hurt" which is something I wasn't aware of.  When Toriel said I should be talking to the enemies in the game, I thought it was a joke.

Every enemy can be talked to and you don't actually have to do any damage to them.  They will keep hitting you though while you try to talk them out of fighting.  You also don't gain any experience points if you don't kill them.  Wanting to level up my character I found myself monsters largely because I wanted her to be strong enough to handle the challenges ahead.  This wasn't really necessary though I think a totally peaceful play-through might be more difficult than a violent one.

It's a neat and quirky for non-ethical reasons as well.  For instance, when I tried to "SELL" an item in a shop, the storeowner told me that they wouldn't be in business for very long if they bought every piece of junk that was offered.  It's also neat how the enemies' personalities are all complex and how the game combines a bullet hell game with RPG mechanics.  There also seems to be a lot of hidden content and if you do a second playthrough, some of the dialogue will change and some decisions will persist.

It's a good game that's been getting a lot of attention lately.  It's also cool that this was made by only one person (or at least mostly, there are names other than Toby Fox in the credits).  I recommend this game.

8/10