Tag Archives: review

kairo
May 16 2013

AtomP Reviews – Kairo, [Richard Perrin]

By Tom Hooper aka Atomp

 

Kairo is a first person exploration and puzzle game where the player will progress through a series of puzzles planted within varied architectural constructions of awe inspiring construction.

 

The gameplay itself revolves around interacting with the environment mostly through pushing or standing due to the lack of an interact key binding. This is an interesting move and I’m guessing it was done to avoid the inherently ‘gamey’ nature of “Press E to Interact”, in which it succeeds as the interactions feel fluid and natural. Not only this but I feel that this element of game design assists in portraying the nature of the ancient and alien technologies at play within the game world, for example the first interaction is pushing a stone throne back along a track into position by physically walking against it. The feeling of pushing this mechanical piece combined with the sound of stone against stone creates a feeling of fluid and natural interaction far in excess of that provided by “Press E to Push”.

 

This is really the essence of interaction and the rest of the gameplay is focused around exploring the environments and solving a variety of puzzles. Many of the puzzles have a hub mechanism with multiple puzzles required to unlock further progress, this is a good move as it avoids the risk of linearity and provides the player with a choice if a certain puzzle temporarily stumps them. The puzzles themselves are generally contained within a certain room (although often that word does not do the architecture justice as I will discuss later) although as mentioned they can combine to provide a larger solution to a hub area. These are done well and as a player you aren’t going to be confronted with Myst-like ambiguity in the puzzles, this isn’t going to be a pull-lever-and-unknown-changes-happen-somewhere situation. Continue reading →

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Screenshot of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
May 9 2013

AtomP Reviews – Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon [Ubisoft]

By Tom Hooper aka Atomp

When April 1st comes around and Ubisoft use the date to announced a standalone expansion to FC3 (Far Cry 3) set in a 1980’s vision of 2007 it’s somewhat difficult to know how seriously to take it. In this case it turns out it should be taken pretty seriously, the news that is, the game should not be taken seriously at all.

First of all it’s worth pointing out that this is most certainly an offshoot of the original FC3, it shares the same engine, combat and great deal of base assets. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the combat in FC3 was between great and fantastic depending on your play style. The story of Blood Dragon actually addresses the problems with the FC3 story, which was apparently written with an underlying layer of irony which unfortunately is a little too underlying in that it wasn’t entirely engaging. Blood Dragon on the other hand has a plot that is entirely unapologetic as to its own absurdity. Attempt at underlying irony has been replaced with a homage to a variety of 80’s movies, Jason Brody has been replaced with Cyber-commando Sergeant Rex Power Colt and the antagonist is no longer a shady businessman in illegal goods but instead rogue elite Colonel Ike Sloan heading Omega Force in a plan to to destroy the world (even more).

Lets focus a little on Sergeant Rex Power Colt; first off he’s voiced by Michael Biehn which is a massive deal. This is Sergeant Kyle Reese of Terminator, Corporal Dwain Hicks of Aliens, Lieutenant Hiram Coffey of The Abyss… what more could you possibly want from a voice actor playing Sergeant Rex Power Colt in a 1980’s vision of the distant future of 2007?! The character himself has a cyborg arm and eye closely resembling the exposed robotics of the T-800 in the Terminator series and a character built to be the cheesiest action hero possible, complete with frankly astounding one-liners. In FC3 there was always a very distinct chasm between Jason Brody as a story character and the actions of the player as Jason Brody, the body count, weapons proficiency and general bad-assery were always brought crashing down by the whiny Jason in the story sections. This may have been an intentional divide but in effect all it did was break immersion by tearing away the role-playing aspect as soon as one of the awful story missions came up. This is where I bring Blood Dragon and Sergeant Rex Power Colt into the equation, because the good Sergeant is actually a bona fide, genuine, one-hundred percent bad-ass. What happens when you’re playing like a boss, silently-yet-violently tearing through a base takeover using nothing but (neon) knife and (neon) bow and Sergeant Rex Power Colt decides to speak up… he throws in a perfectly timed and situationally appropriate one-liner. The advantage of having the player play like a bad-ass whilst playing as a bad-ass protagonist is that they complement each other perfectly. This is the protagonist that the Far Cry 3 combat engine was yearning for and it is so very very well done. Continue reading →

Man Week Title Card
May 2 2013

Man Week AtomP Reviews: Euro Truck Simulator 2, [SCS Software]

By Tom Hooper aka Atomp

As a part of this weeks theme I figured I would go for something a little more discreetly masculine, however it is not necessarily so and can be as gender neutral as your willingness to accept or reject social norms entails. (With the amount of debate over the state of gender depiction in the computer game industry at the moment I’ll leave that there.) Today’s particular game will be SCS Software’s Euro Truck Simulator 2, the direct sequel of ETS1 however also an indirect inheritor of the studios various other titles. Now, stop! I ask that you take that initial impression that you got when you saw that it was a simulator and put that on hold for the time being, because it’ll be important that the sometimes shaky implementations of other simulators aren’t unfairly brought against ETS2. With that said you may also be considering why you would be interested in such a seemingly niche game, to which i say once again, put that thought on hold.

Released by SCS Software in October 2012, Euro Truck Sim 2 is the sequel to SCS Software’s 2009 Euro Truck Sim. These are not the only titles SCS Software has created within this genre as others such as German Truck Simulator, Trucks and Trailers and the officially licensed Scania Truck Simulator show that this studio has a significant level of experience in this field. If there is any studio that could pull of a great truck sim based upon past releases alone, SCS Software would be it. The game includes fully licensed brands for the vast majority of the manufacturers available and you can be sure a company would unlikely give the go-ahead on that if they felt that the software didn’t accurately display their product.

Euro Truck Simulator 2

Continue reading →

Warframe
Apr 24 2013

SEAM – WARFRAME

Welcome to another rendition of Steam Eearly Access with Morphman (SEAM for short). This time we’ll look at a futuristic cyberpunk game that recently hit Open Beta (open for anyone to join to test the game for bugs and give suggestions).

Warframe sends you to a future version of our solar system. When it is, who you are and why you are there is all clouded, you don’t need to know such things. You are awaken from your cryosleep with no memories at all by your superiors. You are Tenno, an elite soldier in the war against the superiors enemies. You are wielding the Warframe, an exoskeleton that enhances you beyond the laws of physics, and you are excelling in the art of guns and swords, holding no preference over the other. All you know about your past is what your superiors tell you, you are of Orokin origin, an ancient race of Earth, masters of technology and gene-splicing and your world has been taken over by the enemies of your masters, the foul Grineer, the mechanical proto-human Corpus and the vile Infested. Continue reading →

penti-2013-04-01-a
Apr 23 2013

Penti – Bosk, A Dip In The Nature (new video and single)

The serene notes of Isdiri Misti Sini had us at the office enthralled. When we got a note that Marco Porcelli, aka Penti, had released yet another single, I jumped over it as soon as I could, popping up that press kit and put the song on.

I can tell you right away, this song couldn’t have come at a better time for me, after all the stress on a particularly busy day, hearing that guitar whisk me away to a far off land, where the grass is always green, but the leaves have just turned autumn red. This song is more than just ambiance thou, it is an experience!

Bosk makes perfect use of all instruments in an expertly put together composition that never strays away from the emotions, but still manages to enhance them as the song progresses. As the final tones ring out, I found myself shocked to be sitting there in my chair, as I could’ve sworn I was walking through a green field of grass, bordering the sea, atop a hill and watching the seagulls in the distance. I listened to it again, and these same images popped into my head, even as I was doing other things and again, when the final tones ring out, I find myself shocked to just be sitting there, looking into nothing at all.

Porcelli has a way with his music to take your mind off everything else and just follow his vision, but here is a scary (or perhaps proving) point: I checked out his video for this song, and it mirrored the images in my head perfectly!

Such is the power in this wordless piece of art, that I didn’t have to see the video to see exactly what Porcelli himself had envisioned for the song. Continue reading →

Dishonored Feature
Apr 18 2013

Dishonored, [Arkane Studios] Review

By Tom Hooper aka Atomp

This review is fairly late in terms of the original release of October 2012 however the recent release of new Knife of Dunwall DLC has brought me back to it. Whilst I haven’t yet played the DLC through thoroughly enough to review it, I have played the original a great deal.

Dishonored is a first person stealth action game set in the alternate reality Victorian-era city of Dunwall, itself set in a rich and detailed game world. Dunwall is placed on the isle of Gristol and is the capital of the Empire of Isles; which consists of Gristol, Serkonos, Morley and Tyvia. Beyond the Empire lies the somewhat exoticised Pandyssian Continent, an Africa analogue. Whilst the game takes place within this world the player is limited to acting within Dunwall however the vast detail and lore on the game world is astounding and allows an immeasurable sense of immersion through flavour texts and the like scattered throughout the levels. The use of Tyvian wine for example or books covering the history of the Empire give the player a real sense of being a part of this immense world. The recent history of the Empire shows a massive move towards the whaling industry as discoveries in the field of Natural Philosophy uncovered immensely useful properties for the whale oil once refined. I will leave the background there in terms of the story because it is so much more interesting when uncovered naturally. If you play this game take your time to read everything and immerse yourself fully into the world because there is a great deal to be discovered.

Continue reading →

snapshot2
Apr 11 2013

Don’t Starve, [Klei Entertainment] (P)review

By Tom Hooper aka Atomp

Today I’m returning to my somewhat recurring unforgiving-survival-games theme with Klei Entertainment’s Don’t Starve. This is a currently in beta 2.5D wilderness survival game with liberal sprinklings of science, magic and a hefty dose of character. As is your standard for survival games it’s necessary to explore, collect and craft your way into reasonable comfort and then fight to maintain the very same. On top of this is the rogue-like/survival hardcore brutality of significant progress loss on death.

The core to your survival is the satisfaction of three meters; health, hunger and sanity. Different items and foodstuffs prepared in different ways will all affect these three in some manner, be it skipping through the wilderness picking flowers to improve sanity, eating a grilled rabbit to satiate hunger or using a healing salve for your health. This is pretty normal stuff in survival games, even the sanity meter has analogues in other games (Project Zomboid for example, a game that I still need to write about), however Don’t Starve does the whole thing very well. The lack of a manual or hand-holding or warnings means that eating something unknown could very well be the end of you on that particular attempt. There is also a large variety of different consumables which can be gathered, acquired and processed through a variety of different techniques and equipment. For example roasted berries are the possibly the simplest, created using just a handful of berries and a campfire. However to survive on roasted berries would take considerable effort as the regrowth rate on the bushes is slow, the bushes themselves spread thin and the eventual cooked product being inefficient. The game world provides solutions to these problems in some form or the other, although you may starve before finding them the first time. Continue reading →

Featured
Apr 10 2013

SL Viewer Walktrhough – Starting at the top, V3 Walkthrough

So you want to get into Second Life? Well, for that you need a client to run Second Life from, in addition to an account. The client is called a Viewer and in the next few weeks I am going to try and explain the difference between different viewers for you, starting with the standard viewer, also called V3 (since it’s the 3rd version of the SL standard viewer, or V3.5 in some cases since it’s slightly updated since its release). Viewer 3 can be downloaded here!

V3 is far from basic, it contains every feature Second Life has to offer, and Second Life has a LOT to offer. However, this is not to be confused with everything OSGrid has to offer, OSGrid is a “spinoff” from Second Life taken from an earlier version and developed separately, and as such it has some features not offered as standard in Second Life. Some of these features are so called client based, meaning it won’t affect the “world” in any way, but it enhances your experience of it. It may be everything from the ability to color the texts in chat to built-in animation overriders. The viewers required to use these features are called Third Party Viewers and I will go over them in future articles. We have some articles on this subject already, so if you are impatient, you can read those and figure out the differences that have come since those were written.

As a new resident, most of the features won’t mean much to you, so if you get hung up on something I’ve written about here, ignore it and move on. Continue reading →

Torchlight 2
Apr 4 2013

AtomP Review: Torchlight 2 [Runic Games]

By Tom Hooper aka Atomp

Torchlight 2 has been around for awhile now, however the recent release of a fairly important patch has inspired me to review the experience. Torchlight 2 is an Action RPG in a style similar to Diablo 2 and the sequel to Runic’s original Torchlight from 2009 with some significant additions and changes. The glaring elephant in this room is of course Diablo 3; a supposed competitor, a game destroyed by ActiBlizz and their always-online RMAH rubbish. I have little concern for anything ActiBlizz, especially when the company is in full ‘cash-cow’ mode and therefore this will be the last you hear of Diablo 3 in this review.

The original Torchlight was a fantastic ARPG with a simple but attractive art style and addictive gameplay however it had pitfalls: The longevity of the game was limited as the main story could be completed relatively quickly and a good class might take 30 or so hours to level. This doesn’t sound too restrictive as there were three classes to play, however the limited variety of enemies and environments means that by that 30 hour point you’ve seen everything countless times. Torchlight was also single player only, which isn’t inherently a bad move but in the context of its Diablo 2 inspiration represented a fairly glaring feature omission. Despite these problems Torchlight still remained a very enjoyable experience and considering what I paid for it, my 37 hours were absolutely fantastic value. Continue reading →

poppet-hp-2012
Mar 29 2013

Jack Caffrey in Poppet by Mo Hayder

Mental asylums have long been my favourite setting for a good horror novel. There’s just something about total insanity and the fact that you can’t trust your own senses that makes it that much scarier. Mo Hayder depicts this setting in a very natural and realistic way, as her words comes to life in my mind. Reading about how a shared illusion can spread like a virus at a mental hospital full of impressionable people, and how any sane person who doesn’t watch out can themselves get wrapped up in this hallucination.

The latest Jack Caffrey novel starts out strong by depicting the Monster Mother in her attempt to “hide herself” in a rather graphic and unexpected way that made my stomach curl up. In two short paragraphs, I had to pause three times just to look away from the words. To even try to imagine what is going on inside the head of these people is very hard, but Hayder makes it easier when you get to experience everything from inside the head of Detective Inspector Jack Caffrey, as he stares down the eyes of evil itself in this nerve-wrecking thriller.

Poppet by Mo Hayder is a sure buy for me and it was released yesterday (March 28th) and is available at Amazon and a teaser from the first chapter can be found Dead Good Books.