Gauntlet: Slayer Edition

Gauntlet: Slayer Edition is a dungeon-crawling hack and slash game which I played on the PS4.  It's easy to pick up and with a few exceptions it doesn't really get that much harder.  This makes it a good option to play with friends when you're just looking for something casual.

Each playable character is upgradable but not to a very large extent.  Comparing this system to Diablo 3 (another game I have on my PS4) it's considerably easier to learn and there's much less need to spend time navigating menus.  Many of the upgrades are cosmetic but some of them change your attacks.  The new attacks aren't necessarily better though, they're just different.

Another comparison that can be made between Gauntlet and Diablo is that the original Gauntlet likely provided inspiration for Diablo but today Diablo is clearly the stronger franchise.  I'm sure the success was largely because of Diablo's multiplayer.

After each level is complete the players are told how many kills they've achieved, how much gold they've earned and who was the greediest.  This is very relevant because the gold goes to whoever picks it up first and limits the upgrades of the other players.  Somehow I ended up getting this "award" in most of the levels we finished despite one of my friends using a powerup to turn all the health pickups into money.

All in all it's a good light game.  It's one of the better PS4 options to play with somebody who doesn't really game that often but experienced gamers can appreciate it as well.

7/10

Super Time Force Ultra

I can't think of any bad games that use time control as a mechanic.  STFU is a rogue-like platformer with a twist.  When the player dies, they can spawn a new character at any point in the previous play-through before their death.  This allows you to layer more and more characters on top of each other in order to kill enemies faster, pick up hard to reach collectables, and finish the level as quickly as possible.  

For me at least, the game didn't seem overly difficult until I decided to started trying to win the badge for finishing the level in record time.  30 do-overs is enough to finish most of the levels normally.

The different characters are a pretty cool feature of the game.  Not that they're balanced though, there are some characters that I found myself using again and again, some that were pretty handy in special circumstances and some that I looked at only once before giving up on.  With the ability to double-jump, activate a shield, and kill enemies without aiming, I found the character from Journey to be pretty stacked for instance.

Although it was good, the game was very short.  I'm sure if I were to attempt to complete and unlock everything it has to offer it would take quite a long time though.  Deciding to collect the optional badges is also a good way to add time to the game, and difficulty.  I feel like more games have been doing something like this lately; including optional elements to make the game more difficult rather than including a difficulty setting.

8/10

Fallout 4

Fallout 4 starts out with a bang.  You get the power armour and a minigun almost right away and end up fighting a deathclaw.  These are all things you wouldn't have seen until much further into Fallout 3.  At the same time though the power armour becomes upgradable and it's power source start's off in short supply.

I wanted to wait until I finished this game to write a review for it which makes it a little difficult to write this review.  It took about 40 hours to finish the main plot spread out over a month and a half for me. By the time I got to the ending though I was pretty over-powered and it was pretty easy to complete.

In most games it seems like the main plot is sort of the premium content and the rest of the missions are something similar to filler.  This really isn't the case with Fallout 4 though.  In fact, I preferred exploring the wasteland independently more than I did following the main quest.

The weapon crafting system was a very cool feature.  However, it's inclusion did mean that the shopkeeper's rarely had stronger equipment than what I had already.  In the previous games allying with stronger factions like the Brotherhood of Steel was the best way to get good equipment.  In Fallout 4 this didn't really matter so much.  

This game is huge.  There's a ton of content and I don't really think I'll have the time to get through all of it.  This is probably a game I'll keep coming back to over time though.  Just exploring a single building or completing an individual quest should use around an hour and was an enjoyable way to spend time for me.  I recommend this game.

Spoiler alert:  I picked the Institute.

8/10