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UHQBot

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    Golf With Your Friends Review – Shoot Your Shot

    in Game Reviews

    Posted

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    Publisher: Team17
    Developer: Blacklight Interactive
    Reviewed on: Xbox One
    Also on: PlayStation 4, Switch, PC

    I’m on the 11th hole and the pressure is on. Getting a par here is going to take good judgment, skill, and a little luck. Besides the normal golf stuff, gravity-bending black holes also stand between me and the cup, but I just have to take them in stride; I know I can do it. Golf With Your Friends is an enjoyable minigolf adventure because it balances the absurd, the expected, and the unknown.

    Combining a ball, a putter, angles, obstacles, and physics isn’t what makes this game stand out. What does is that on any given hole I was rewarded for my patience, planning (look around for different paths), and skill nailing the power gauge, but could also be surprised, both pleasantly and unpleasantly. However, I usually came away feeling that I could do it with more practice at the hole. The fine aim function gives you minute control when you need it, the underlying ball physics are reliable (both in how the ball bounces and the importance of angles), and holes’ pars are mostly realistic. Of course, it wouldn’t be minigolf if you could easily chart your way past every axe-wielding ghost, Indiana Jones boulder, pachinko-style tumbler; sometimes you just have to hit the ball and suffer the consequences, good or bad. 

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    Golf With Your Friends

    Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Release Date: January 29, 2016 (PC), May 19, 2020 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch) Purchase

    The game can work against the carefree feeling of blasting into the unknown, especially when holes’ level designs are predominately reliant on luck. Sometimes you have to rely on chance straight away with your first shot. Other times even when you know what you have to do, and you select the right power and path for your ball, your chances at par are still down to luck.

    The PC version of the game includes a course editor and user creations, which are absent from the home consoles. However, the default 11 courses offer plenty of challenges, and if corkscrew ramps, tilting floors, and jetpacks of the levels aren’t enough, Golf With Your Friends adds extra spice with optional power ups (some help you, others hurt your opponents), mode variants (such as hockey with a moving goal/goalie over the hole), odd-shaped balls, and even alterations like sliders for gravity that can be mixed and matched for custom online or offline sessions. 

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    Some of the variables are fun additions to a regular round, and they help spice up a game that doesn’t otherwise have a career mode/progression arc. Customization objects are awarded randomly based on a timer.  In the end, however, I was more interested in the aids such as being able to add  ball spin or more time to how much you can use the freecam to scout out holes. Things like changing the ball shape are fun when it’s against your friends in multiplayer, but are overpowered because they render shooting straight useless.

    Golf With Your Friends captures the spirit of minigolf – you’re going to have some laughs, frustrations, and at the end of the day, not take it all too seriously.

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    Score: 7.5

    Summary: The ball might not always go exactly where you want it to, but it’s a fun time getting there.

    Concept: Combine inventive and challenge minigolf courses with a hearty selection of custom modifiers

    Graphics: Golf With Your Friends is colorful, but the whole package looks pretty basic

    Sound: Each level’s looping soundtrack is simultaneously forgettable and catchy, which is to say it’s perfect for a minigolf game

    Playability: The camera can get frustratingly locked close to the ball when it’s pinned against rails

    Entertainment: The ball might not always go exactly where you want it to, but it’s a fun time getting there

    Replay: Moderate

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    Crucible Review - A Slow Struggle

    in Game Reviews

    Posted

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    Publisher: Amazon Games
    Rating: Teen
    Reviewed on: PC

    Hero shooters are all the rage these days, so games in the middle or bottom of the field struggle to compete against the lead dogs. Crucible is one of those games, where its mediocrity only earns dismissal. Crucible is like a bland and forgettable meal – inoffensive going down, but quickly passed over for something with a little more flavor and spice.

    Crucible’s heroes fail to entertain on the personality and character level, but they often have memorable and interesting moves that cater to perfection and learning. With the exception of the adorable robot Bugg, most of the cast lacks appeal. With color-by-the-numbers characters like Military Man, Berserker Lizard, and Fish Sniper, the heroes feel like they were ripped from the pages of a rejected comic book.

    On the loadout side, learning a character’s nuances is highly entertaining. For example, the militant Sazan has a set of skills that's easy to understand on the surface, but has lots of room for growth and skill. Discovering how to distance myself to juggle my assault rifle, shotgun, and throwing knife cooldowns was a fun exercise. Mastering a moveset, both partial and perfectly, is satisfying and applicable to many of the heroes.

    Click here to watch embedded media

    The map, with its event spawns that help drive the action, is a suitable environment with plenty of spaces to play in. While there is only one map, it's constantly changing with different spawns to mix things up, and you can learn the locations of various landmarks to duck behind cover or jump off a ledge. Event spawns differ from game to game, but many are simple NPC enemies. Other events like power capsules enhance your whole team, but much of the time you may not see another soul as you complete these tasks in an arena largely devoid of activity.

    Team clashing is the best part of the game, with skirmishes that pick off players and small-scale engagements taking the spotlight. True 4v4’s are interesting, but there’s a distinct lack of teamplay elements. The combat is weightless outside of a few big attacks, with little feedback or punch to most weapons and abilities. Everyone simply does the same thing they would normally be doing in a 1v1 scenario and hopes things shake out. Crucible lacks any in-game voice communication, which forces you to connect with people you already know via other services. For example, letting teammates know you're sacrificing an objective to glean an edge elsewhere is an important memo to relay, as they may go and fight otherwise and end up putting the other team even further ahead. A ping system attempts to mitigate this, but it’s not practical. Depending on the game, you may not even see the other team much, as you both farm dinosaurs and pick off stragglers in 3v1s or trade control of points of interest.

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    One of the larger issues is the PvE component, which tasks you to essentially spend time dunking on dinos and spitter creatures between encounters with the other teams. The battles against these NPCs are fun for a few games, but then they become an absolute bore and a chore. The PvE component does everything it can to tear you away from fighting other players, instead forcing you to slaughter uninteresting one-note blobs of XP wholesale instead of actually playing the game.

    Of the three game modes, the only one worth mentioning is Heart of the Hives. If you’re going to play, this is the mode to check out. Two teams of four battle over PvE objectives, so you have cool decisions to make, like when to engage with the somewhat dangerous PvE entity or if you should cede a flag capture to the other team so you can grab some levels and powerups for an easier win. Like many other aspects of the game, this mode provides fun for a few games, and then fades from memory altogether. Eventually you realize that you could be doing something else or playing something more fun than being slowly dragged across the map on a dino-chain for what might be a slightly satisfying team fight.

    Crucible isn’t a bad game, but it’s not a good game either. In the context of today’s hero-shooter environment, that makes it a lost soul, struggling to find a strong sense of identity. With time, perhaps Crucible can find reasons to stay on the menu, but right now the recipe is diluted and dull.

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    Score: 6.75

    Summary: The hybrid PVE/PVP experience has cool concepts, but many of them fail to resonate in a meaningful way.

    Concept: Play as a variety of heroes in a third-person shooter, team-based environment

    Graphics: The environments can look slick and colorful, but a permeating sameness prevents the details from making an impact

    Sound: The effects and music are competent, but they can’t carry the experience by themselves

    Playability: Highly accessible to new players, with room to grow in terms of mastering timing, skills, and strategies

    Entertainment: Crucible has genuinely interesting character movesets, but is dragged down by a lack of combat impact, PvE that turns into a rote chore almost immediately, and sluggish pacing

    Replay: High

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    Timelie Review – Making Every Second Count

    in Game Reviews

    Posted

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    Publisher: Urnique Studio, Milk Bottle Studio
    Developer: Urnique Studio
    Rating: Teen
    Reviewed on: PC

    When a child awakes in the middle of a mysterious facility full of hostile robots, she begins looking for a quick exit. Along the way, this innocent girl discovers she has precognitive powers that allow her to explore future timelines until she discovers the optimal route to safety. That's the premise to Timelie, Urnique Studio’s tightly designed stealth puzzle game that occasionally challenges your reasoning and critical thinking skills, but runs its course too quickly.

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    All of Timelie’s levels are miniature mazes that have you dodging security drones as you make your way toward digital keypads to unlock the exit. Navigating these mazes is relatively simple, and your goal is almost always obvious, so the challenge comes from your limited windows of opportunity to dodge patrolling sentries and reach your target. Fortunately, your nameless heroine can see into the future. Practically speaking, this means that you can pause and rewind the action by scrubbing through a timeline at the bottom of the screen, which lets you fine-tune your movements through each tangle of hallways. Weaving through guard's eye lines and narrowly evading their grasp is always satisfying. Once you’ve perfectly orchestrated your escape, you can watch a real-time video of your plan in action, which is neat in concept. In execution, I was usually happy to skip these playbacks thanks to the main character’s slow movement.

    In the middle of this adventure, you befriend a stray cat. This cat can squeeze through narrow vents to reach new areas and can meow to distract guards at key moments. Because this kitty can’t reach keypads, you have to bounce between control of the cat and the girl, using their skills in tandem to outwit an army of security robots. Controlling two creatures at once is a fun wrinkle that adds welcome depth to Timelie’s otherwise simple structure, and I had the most fun carefully coordinating both of my characters’ movements like they were performing a well-rehearsed dance.

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    Even after the addition of the cat, Timelie’s puzzles never grow complex enough to be fully satisfying. A few sequences forced me to stop and consider all my options, but Timelie quickly runs out of tricks to throw at you, which makes the experience feel somewhat shallow overall. Additionally, during some of the late-game puzzles, I had to rewind to the beginning of a level’s timeline to correct an early mistake (which I didn’t know was a mistake at the time), forcing me to replay the whole stage. Most levels only take a few minutes to navigate, so this is a minor inconvenience, but it adds a sense of monotony to some of Timelie’s cleverest puzzles.

    Several games offer players the chance to rewind time and pause the action, but I’ve never grown tired of this particular power fantasy. I appreciate Timelie’s stealth-based, tactical approach to time manipulation. But just as Timelie starts to hit its stride, I hit the credits. Timelie isn’t the most comprehensive exploration of time manipulation, but its bite-sized puzzles are a welcome distraction.

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    Score: 7.75

    Summary: Urnique Studio’s tightly designed stealth puzzle game occasionally challenges your reasoning and critical thinking skills, but runs its course too quickly.

    Concept: A young girl works to escape the confines of a robot-infested facility only to discover that she can control time

    Graphics: Timelie’s environments aren’t detailed, but its smart use of color makes for a few interesting backdrops

    Sound: This generic orchestral score doesn’t add much to the action of this wordless adventure

    Playability: Controlling time is perfectly straightforward, but characters plod along at a snail’s pace

    Entertainment: Mastering time is fun and weaving past enemies in the nick of time is a thrill, but fine-tuning some of those near misses can be monotonous

    Replay: Moderate

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    Fury Unleashed Review – Old-School Shooting With A Roguelike Bite

    in Game Reviews

    Posted

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    Publisher: Awesome Games Studio
    Developer: Awesome Games Studio
    Rating: Teen
    Reviewed on: PlayStation 4
    Also on: Xbox One, Switch, PC

    A run in Fury Unleashed often concludes with either you or a boss falling. This epic fight often comes down to both sides just having a sliver of health left. The spoils of victory are obviously greater than defeat, but even death can be rewarding, as every run potentially unlocks a new weapon, and perhaps enough experience points to level up and upgrade abilities. Developer Awesome Games Studio has created a balanced roguelike that delivers fun run-and-gun action and challenging battles that get a little less painful each time you attempt them.

    Holding true to the Contra and Metal Slug games that Fury Unleashed draws inspiration from, you zip around stages filled with enemies, rotating the analog stick every which way to open fire. The controls are responsive and fluid, allowing you to quickly dash to new positions, and alternate between firearms and melee should enemies get too close. You can even bounce on enemy heads to make them explode, bank grenades off of walls, and use special attacks to freeze foes in place. All of this nicely made action is even better when you are playing with a friend, which is sadly only offered as couch co-op. If the game seems too hard, you can always lower the difficulty. The game is easy to get into and even easier to get lost in, given just how fun and rewarding it can be.

    Click here to watch embedded media

    If you chain together kills, you hit combo thresholds that activate abilities that give you an edge, such as various damage resistances and healing. The entire game is set within the panels of comic books in which you battle a random assortment of creatures, humans, and machines (most dying within a few hits, but rare variations of enemies in a red hue play the role of mini-bosses). The variety in the enemies is a bit light, but I like how some panels explode in unexpected ways, whether it’s Venus flytraps or turrets emerging from walls to join other foes.

    If you die along the way, you are sent back to the comic’s first panel, only it’s different, and every following panel is also rearranged, sometimes bringing better rewards and other times deadlier foes. A giant boss waits for you on the final page, and should you be able to take it down, you move on to a new comic book with an entirely different theme with its own set of adversaries. This setup works well for lightning-quick playthroughs, which is fantastic since you often want to level up or change gear after a run. The comics are linked and arranged in random ways, so you don’t have to finish a run when you find the last panel; you can always spend more time in a book by going back to see what each missed panel holds.

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    Since weapon and armor drops are all over the place, the randomized levels almost always deliver satisfactory loot. I may not find the exact weapon I want in each run, but I never find myself sticking with something I don't like for long, and am also able to pick up plenty of armor along the way. The true challenge is risking all by taking on a side task handed to you by an NPC. They ask many things of you, such as only using melee strikes to kill specific enemies or launching yourself through a dangerous gauntlet of obstacles, all for an unknown reward. These challenges create variety in the levels and make each run a little more interesting.

    Fury Unleashed’s story is its biggest surprise, as it focuses on the comic-book creator, who is down on himself and feels lost creatively. His story unfolds through text messages and social media posts that show how he and others feel about his work. When the first story moment is revealed, it’s a bit of a record-scratch moment, but once you pick up on what is happening, the story is fascinating to see unfold. It isn’t what you would expect from something that looks and plays like Contra.

    Like Dead Cells before it, Fury Unleashed is one of those roguelikes that is hard to put down, as you know the next run will only give you a better shot making more progress to unlock new comics, gear, and ultimately a better chance at taking down the final boss. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, whether you’re playing solo or co-op.

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    Score: 8.5

    Summary: Mowing down enemies for rewards that stick with you is a lot of fun, especially when it plays this well.

    Concept: A roguelike that plays like Contra and doles out meaningful rewards that help make subsequent runs easier

    Graphics: Stylish and bloody. The action is easy to follow, even with numerous enemies, spinning sawblades, and rockets crowding the screen

    Sound: The intense soundtrack is sometimes buried by the explosions and chaos, but that’s also when the sound is at its best

    Playability: The controls are responsive and surprisingly deep, allowing for quick dashes, grenade tosses, special attacks, and weapon switches to be performed as you bounce across platforms

    Entertainment: The action pops and is excellently crafted. You always feel like you are on the verge of making more progress, which is a great feeling for a roguelike

    Replay: Moderately High

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