The game retains the bright and breezy look of the original

The Wii version was warmly welcomed on it’s release; much in the same way that New Super Mario Bros invoked the nostalgia of the early Mario games so DKCR did of the classic SNES original. Tough as old banana skins and not afraid to show it’s old school roots, the game was a hit.

So where does this 3DS version of the game fit in? Well, the game itself is essentially the Wii game squeezed onto the handheld. As Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate proved, the 3DS is more than capable of this so no worries there. The game itself essentially remains the same, although the edges of the difficulty have been sanded down a little. Make no mistake, DKCR wasn’t afraid to stick the boot in everyone and then so this is welcomed for the people picking this up for the first time. WIth two copies of the game then you can bring along another player for some co-op fun which is always fun when it comes to platformers. There are also new items to help you along the way as well but, helpfully, these can all be turned off for those that really enjoy it when a game kicks you in the unmentionables.

But how many of people will be picking this up for the first time? Who exactly is this release for? The 3DS could always do with new games but the WiiU looks to be in a worse position so surely it would make more sense getting games onto that platform? Do we really need a handheld version of the game that is available on the Wii in pretty much the same form? Sometimes the decisions made by Nintendo don’t make that much sense when you try to apply logic to them which is pretty the case with this game.

Look at that and just imagine the 3D. Or don’t because your eyes don’t work that way, whatever works for you

Nintendo is certainly making it easy for people to pick up this game; it is part of their recent promotion where if you pick up three recent releases you get a fourth free so if you’ve been picking up recent Nintendo games then you’ll probably be able to pick this up by default.

So this is probably a release best thought about without the cynical part of your mind because what we have here is another release of a top notch game on a format which means that it is even easier to play. As long as it doesn’t stray too far from the Wii original then Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D should be another required purchase for the 3DS.

From the start, it’s clear that Dragon’s Dogma isn’t going to hold your hand. Within minutes of being dropped in the opening area you’re taking on a vicious chimera with a party of chattering NPCs shouting instructions at you, without much clue what’s going on. It’s thrilling in an anarchic way, but the combat mechanics take some getting used to. Coming in straight off the back of Dark Souls the lack of a lock-on is both disorientating and bizarre, and feels like a hell of an omission considering the blistering pace of the fights and a fairly shonky camera.

Once you get your head around the system, its intricacies become clearer. At first you’ll choose a class from melee, magic, and ranger; but as the game progresses you have the option of mixing and matching, creating tactical combinations that make battles genuinely fun. This is augmented by the pawn system, Dogma’s unique selling point. These player-created, AI-controlled warriors function as your party, accompanying you throughout your adventures and giving an MMO-like atmosphere. Aside from your own crafted sidekick, you can summon up two additional pawns to help out, and finding the right tactical balance within the group is all part of the challenge. They’re annoyingly chatty though, and you’ll quickly tire of being told that “Wolves hunt in packs!” every time you’re jumped by one.

Still, it’s nice to have a bit of company on your journey. Trekking out into the wide world with your pawns in tow feels properly adventurous, especially when you decide to wander off the beaten track and explore. As the sun begins to set and you and your pawns find yourselves surrounded by enemies and miles from the nearest town, you’ll realise that it’s an atmosphere few other games have been able to match. Gransys can’t boast the variety or size of the likes of Skyrim, but it has its own rough-hewn charm and certainly is beautiful in places. The open-world is packed with forests, caves, crumbling forts, and plenty to discover.

It does also boast some of the most impressive enemies you’ll find in any game. Boss-sized beasts seem to lie around every corner, with almost every battle proving to be atmospheric, intense, and unique. The new Bitterblack Isle area really ramps up the difficulty. It can be reached from the very first village, but woe unto anyone who challenges it at a low level. Gone are the open-fields and sun-kissed coasts of the rest of the world, jettisoned in favour of a Dark Souls-style crawl through ruined dungeons and towers. This is proper end-game material, with a vast array of enemies who’ll maul you in a single hit. It’s evidently there for experienced players, to give an added bit of challenge for those who’ve already finished the game, and as such I haven’t yet been able to get the most out of it.

It’s a shame that such a game has to be plagued with niggly issues, but sadly there are plenty. Visually it can veer between quite nice and laughably bad. Enemies clip in and out of areas, character models can look almost last-gen at times, and it boasts some hilariously bad animations. Accidentally pressing the grab button near a cow resulted in my avatar mounting the beast and crawling all over it like a drunken Spiderman, which had me laughing my head off for a solid five minutes. The spirit of Laddergoat lives on.

It’s first-time players who’ll get the most value out of Dark Arisen. The whole of Dragon’s Dogma, plus the extra content, for a low price is a decent deal. And there is a good, perhaps even great game in here, though you’ll have to look past its technical limitations, the unforgiving difficulty, and rank presentation to find it. Dark Arisen is the flawed gem in a generation that has seen the open-world fantasy RPG go from strength to strength. It certainly isn’t for everyone, but there’s the potential here for something special in the future.

It seems they’re super-keen for people to play the 3rd installment of their RPG series On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.  A game which we covered when they released Episodes 1 and Episode 2.

Whilst we can only apologise that we never covered Episdoe 3, it seems that you can try it out for yourself if you hop over to THIS WEBSITE TODAY!  All you need to do is enter a captcha code to prove you aren’t a robot and you’ll get a lovely STEAM code.

So get your Cthulhu-hide boots on and get cracking!

The crater now houses cities and nations bordering the centre hole. Players are tasked to explore the irradiated overworld as well as the dark unknown areas under the surface, all scattered with towns, random encounters, and everything that has evolved or been built to survive the cataclysm.

You can choose to assist or undermine the interests of the various factions of the Krater to gain valuable resources and clues to the story surrounding the center hole.

Krater has an interesting blend of action-RPG elements and squad-based tactical combat. You are able to populate a squad with up two three members, mixing the classes and loadouts of your crazy crew.

There are four classes available to fill you squad and wreak havoc. The regulator – the ranged class, the Bruiser – the damage absorbing tank, the Medikus – your healer, and the Slayer – the high damage dealer class.

You can have a huge number of team mates in your roster, and are able to swap them out into your active squad at will.
This can be quite necessary at times as each class has “mutant variants” with different abilities. Each member will have different implants and boosters depending on what you’ve implanted their brain with, different weapons and gadgets, and even injuries that can persist with each member for some time can mean they lose effectiveness in situations.

Crafting systems allow you to customise your arsenal, using the materials found in the irradiated wasteland to craft anything from toxic paint guns to concrete-dumbbell hammers. With direct access to the cerebral cortex of your squad mates, you can apply boosters and implants to their brain to accentuate the abilities of your team. Just plug it straight into the grey matter, it’ll work. Gadgets allow you to either define or diversify your squad with things like grenades and buffs, giving way for some variance in the combat styles of each squaddie. Hitting a guy in the face with a concrete hammer? Point blank grenade throw is a good idea!

The atmosphere has some nice diversity. Whilst the world you are playing in is apocalyptic, there is still a nice amount of colour and character within the world and its inhabitants. The animals and fauna have mutated to survive in this warmer, if not deadlier version of Sweden, the populous are gas mask clad, slightly insane, surviving at the end of the world types, but their Swedish terminologies and accents -some to the point of “Swedish Chef” levels of “over the top”- adds a lot of charm to the wasteland.

“We need you to destroy the murdering bandit tribe and save our women”

“Heh…your voice sounds funny.”

Some of the combat can feel somewhat repetitive. Since you have three squaddies at a time, each with two abilities, once you have a pattern down for what ability to activate when, it just feels like you’re going through the motions.

Co-operative multiplayer allows you to take your hardened squad and team up with others to take on missions together, blending seamlessly with the single player experience and allowing you to carry over any skills or experience you have learned throughout.

There’s plenty of character and some interesting story in the irradiated world of the Krater. With enough quests to keep you more than occupied, ranging from the cliché to the far-fetched and some instance character design for you to fill your roster with.

Some of the gameplay can start to grate, but there are steps you can take to mix it up yourself, one thing you can’t get bored with is the crazy and creative atmosphere of nuclear Sweden.

The 39 Steps is in the same weird place as Citizen Kane, most of Shakespeare’s works, and Seinfeld. They are all things we are aware of as part of cultural heritage, pieces from which many of our tropes are drawn from. The audience recognise the reference without having seen the original or even knowing the context in the original. Pop quiz: when does The 39 Steps’ chase scene occur in the story? SquareGo will neither confirm nor deny your guess, as you really should pick up the story of Richard Hannay yourself to find out.

Hannay has made his fortune in Rhodesia. Expatriated from Scotland as a child, he has returned to Britain to take up a life of leisure in 1914′s London. He becomes involved in web of deceit, intrigue, and other such spy words. Accused of murder, Hannay will have to go on the run in order to stop a plot before it can take place, a plot with international consequences.

The Story Mechanics would have a difficult task in adapting the story of Richard Hannay into a game; it is at once both a part of our cultural radar and completely off that radar. So they didn’t. Instead, The Story Mechanics created a ‘digital adaptation’, a visual novel with no decisions to make, diverging pathways, or other gamifications beyond a few simple clicks for extra information.

These optional extra tidbits are usually worth it. Look at that kid’s pimp coat!

Such straightforward storytelling faces two major challenges. First is to offer something more engaging than simply reading the book. The Story Mechanics managed that through a mixture of media. The majority of the story is split between text on beautifully painted backgrounds and animated scenes complete with actors voicing characters. The most noteworthy departure from these styles are the old fashioned shadow puppet plays (like the image at the top of the page); these have only musical accompaniment and recount past events.

The choice to have generic ‘actors’ for the animated scenes doesn’t feel too weird in practice.

The second challenge is to avoid walls of text. This goes beyond adapting the original text to a fewer number of words. It is as much about allowing the audience to digest the story at a reasonable pace and was one of the major flaws of The Sea Will Claim Everything. Not only were there solid walls of text, those walls were composed of small text–line after line of dark lettering filling the text area.

Text is not only correctly broken up into accessible chunks, it is also dynamic. When the audience decides to progress the text, the next set of lines may come into focus while the previous lines become blurred. But perhaps Hannay’s attention is drawn to the window; now the line of text moves through the window, drawing the reader’s attention more keenly. Illness and disorientation are similarly reflected with a fantastic layering of frantic thoughts, appearing out of order and even overlapping.

Everything The Story Mechanics have achieved in this digital adaptation is solid. The illustrations are lovingly detailed; the acting is without a trace of being phoned in. The story is perfectly distilled. But there is something missing–some extra spark to bring The 39 Steps truly to life. It could be slightly more interactivity for exploring scenes or minor decisions having an impact in simple background events, even if they have no effect on the actual story.

Hopefully such elements will be incorporated in to their next work. Who knows, perhaps their next attempt will the next of Buchan’s books about Hannay. There are five in the series all together, and he’s not an all together unlikable chap, old boy.

‘Mob of the Dead’ takes place in Alcatraz, starting with a brief introduction where zombies kill the four dubious protagonists during a breakout (to a rather sweet reworking of ‘Rusty Cage’ by Soundgarden).  You begin the game as a ghost and can reclaim your body, but many of the tasks to progress through the game require you to do so in your incorporeal state.  Consequently, there are electrical suicide booths to allow you to do yourself a mischief in order to activate power in the cells or obtain parts of a plane.

There are a few new weapons like the Uzi and the uber-powerful Tommy gun to keep you alive, some rather weird Hellhounds who occasionally eat your zombie foes and the occasional boss zombie to eat up all your remaining ammo.  Ultimately you need to build the plane to get off the rock, but along the way there will be plenty of waves of carnage to defend against.  Unlike previous levels, ‘Mob of the Dead’ feels a lot more coherent to a new player and will no doubt be of great interest to those who enjoy this particular brand of game type.

He’s got no face, he’s got no face…

As for the standard multiplayer maps, each offer something different in both aesthetics as well as playing style.  The first is ‘Encore’, a beautiful recreation of a London stadium complete with iconic red phone boxes and London Eye, if you have time to enjoy the view between firefights.  There’s a blend of sniping positions and tunnels or corridors for close in action as well, which makes for a nicely balanced map.

By contrast, ‘Vertigo’ takes place on a high-rise building and is arguably the most open map of all.  Cover is usually in a single direction and requires both teamwork and staying on the move to avoid being picked off by a newly spawned enemy or stealthy opponent.  There are sections where you are in danger of stumbling off the sides, but sadly not a lot is made of this dynamic.  Instead it’s built for quick reactions and distance shooting.

Third on the list is ‘Magma’, set in a post eruption hit Japanese town.  This is one of the most anarchic designs set over multiple levels with plenty of ruined building, flowing lava and uneven roads to contend with.  There are even train carriages hanging precariously acting a makeshift tunnels for alternative routes and hiding spots.  It’s a very bright and colourful map that was definitely the sort of thing missing from the initial offering when the game was released.

If only Danny Boyle choreographed the firefights…

Indeed all of the maps in the DLC are much more vibrant and interesting than previous designs, so perhaps the biggest disappointment is the final one of the four, ‘Studio’.  There is an overwhelming sense of deja vu when you play this one and that’s for a very good reason; it’s a remodelling of a map from the original Black Ops game that was called ‘Firing Range’.  The new skin looks impressive, based on a Hollywood studio complete with Saloon, Alien invasion, Miniature Tokyo, Medieval castle and Pirate sea front, but should people really be paying for the same maps that they have played before?  The recent free download of ‘Nuke Town’, which was updated for Black Ops 2, suggests Treyarch weren’t sure either.  At a cost of 1200 MSP, which equates to nearly £10, it really does seem like being shortchanged.

What is true though is that ‘Mob of the Dead’ and the new maps offer a refreshing addition to the comparatively bland maps released with the game and there are no shortage of players who have stumped up the points to play it; you will not be left without players to join and compete against.  Whether you think it is worth the price depends largely on how much you play CoD multiplayer.  If you play even semi regularly, it might well be worth a punt, but those who only briefly dabble would be best to put their cash towards another game instead.

The  customization options currently in the game (which recently launched into Open Beta) are impressive. With 5 classes you can currently choose from and a handful of races, there’s plenty of variety to start out your own new character, with more being teased as “Coming Soon”. The amount of in-depth tweaking you can do for your avatar’s look is also impressive, from simple effects like tattoos, scarring to the always iffy “boob size” sliders. It’s a nice amount of options here to truly make your character look unique.

When you get into the game, you’re presented with tutorial pop-ups with voice over to help you get used to the controls and how the game works. Unlike other MMO’s, Neverwinter functions more like a third-person action game, with your mouse controller the characters viewpoint, with a key bound to allow mouse movement over the menus. You have a limited amount of ability slots available, and this means you’re slowly introduced to them to learn your skills thoroughly. It’s a great way to help new players, and even MMO veterans, to learn the ropes of this foray into the Neverwinter world.

The initial quests you’re tasked with are instanced in your own small world, where other new players will be few, but there. These quests are also pretty generic and standard when it comes to this type of game, but they’re engaging because of the voice acted characters directing you to the city of Neverwinter after you emerge from a crashed ship. This introduces you to the combat well, however, and it’s where the game stands-out as very fun from the get-go. Character classes act similarly, but feel unique enough that there’s reason to try out all of them (or at least a couple, due to the character slot limitations.)

Once passed the tutorial sections, you’re introduced to unique dungeons that are scattered around the initial part of the city that you get to play around in, and seems to be the main hub for all players to trade, buy items and generally socialize. This section is always packed to the brim full of players and is jam packed to the point where it’s a bit awkward to move around, especially if you’re system can’t handle it. Thankfully, these separate dungeons are unique to you (or your party).

The quests that take place in these dungeons are interesting, as they feel like old school dungeon crawling, with loot dropping form some enemies and special nodes to find that, dependant on inventory or class skills, allow you to search for items that are useful for crafting and other abilities. It’s a nice thing to see that, even those that are locked out due to class skills, can be accessed with the correct kits. This allows you to completely clear a dungeon if you prepare for them in advanced. These tend to have mini and full scale bosses scattered around which change up the fighting style considerably. The abilities of the bosses make the fights incredibly fun and interesting, meaning you’re not always fighting the exact same way or using the same few abilities all the time.

As always, playing in a group is always a good idea when trying to clear content, as it makes the game slightly more enjoyable, especially with friends. Though the game itself is entirely fun on its own, the extra social aspect is encouraged by the game itself, and loot is distributed in a way that no one is left out and everyone gets what they want in terms of shiny new armour and weapons.

The menu system also has some timed events that tick down next to the mini-map, such as double XP for specific dungeons and PVP events. This is a great idea and can help encourage players to move out of their comfort zone and seem more of the content available to them. It’s something that’s not often seen in MMO’s and definitely not something that new games try that often, but it’s a great idea and well executed with new events cycling through regularly, allowing you to see exactly what’s coming up that you might want to try.

Overall, the game itself is looking promising. It’s too early to say how the micro transactions will be received by players, but the amount of content available to free players is immense. Not to mention the game at its core is extremely entertaining, meaning that you can get complete fulfilment even without spending a penny. The Foundry is also an intriguing idea, which always player generated content to be played by everyone. This means that the content available will be regularly added, adding a lot of replayability to the game and length added to the lifetime of the game later in life.

There’s a lot to like and look forward to when Neverwinter is finally updated to 1.0, but because of it being in Open Beta, if you’re into Dungeons and Dragons, the Neverwinter games previously or even want to try out a new MMO, you’d be kicking yourself for not trying out this game. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

The question of death is an important one (and in the game). Starved, mauled, driven insane; any of these things could kill, and in Don’t Starve death is final. This charges even the most menial of tasks with excitement. Traipsing about searching for saplings and flint to build an axe? Sounds trivial, but in the bigger picture no axe means no fire. Without fire to light up the night you are likely to be eaten by a grue. Literally.

Even with that said the basics of everyday existence could become wearisome. An average day in the life consists of clicking manically on every tuft of Grass, Flower, Sapling, Rock, harvesting the same necessities again and again. Anyone who considered the idea of a survival game tedious beforehand is unlikely to be converted.

However, beyond the minutiae of daily existence there is a good deal of depth and structure. The crafting tree has several tiers and there is always something to be working towards, be it a cooking pot or warm winter clothing. The balance between what is desired — fancy new crafted items — and what is necessary for basic survival feels well struck. It’s important to have a plan and to manage within the time given, ie the hours of daylight or the days before winter hits.

The crafting menu is extensive, but it can be difficult to know where to start or what to work on next at a glance, and the game does not easily afford the time to pour over it. The inventory system also feels somewhat lacking, with all items being thrown in at the same point (even when switching between equipped tools) it’s simply impossible to organise.

Small niggles aside, everything else is sublime. The sound design is both functional and pleasing, serving to underscore the quirky-adorable visuals. There is great attention to detail here; breath steaming in the winter cold, the expression on a baby animals face when it sees danger and goes hurtling back to its parents, every animation feels lovingly crafted. The writing, although almost entirely confined to flavour text, is delightfully silly.

The last point to touch on is that of replay factor, an important one for the genre. Levels are randomly generated, a gameplay device that goes hand in hand with permanent death. The crafting tree is ample and it would seem unlikely for any player to explore it fully on their first or second play through. Additionally, new characters are unlocked by playing, each of them mixing things up in an interesting fashion, eg “The Soulless Automaton” who can eat spoiling food without penalty. Or “The Silent” who, and I quote, “Has trouble staying alive”.

When all is said and done Don’t Starve is compelling, the sort of game that sucks away hours of your life at an alarming rate. It makes no bones about being uncompromising, and permanent death may not be to everyone’s tastes. However, this mechanic permeates the game at all levels, giving a sense of momentum and danger to what might otherwise feel repetitive. The result is a game with a confident execution and a striking style all of its own. Don’t Starve is an excellent example of its genre, and more than worth a look.

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is the latest title in much loved classic Jagged Alliance series.
You are the unseen commander of a mercenary outfit who have been hired to help free the fictional island of Arulco from its dictator queen. To do this you must hire your mercs, and buy their equipment by completing missions and moving your way up in the world of hired guns.

Building your team and arsenal can be quite satisfying; you’re able to tailor your squads and their equipment to your own style on a functional and cosmetic level.  You can salvage the weapons you find or use your hard earned cash to buy the cutting edge weaponry and world class mercenaries.

Pictured: Cutting edge weaponry.

Instead of the old turn based gameplay, Jagged Alliance is now a real-time strategy experience, incorporating a small turn based mechanic in the form of “plan & go”.

With the major gameplay mechanic changed, what’s left is an amalgamation of real-time and turn-based strategy. Whilst the idea is interesting, the execution results in a tactical mess with situations in game suiting both styles of engagement, but in reality, barely works in either.

Instead of feeling like you’re commanding a squad of elite soldiers, you’re left handholding moronic man-children with machine guns.

Nothing is as responsive as you want it to be, so nothing feels “tactical”. Upon issuing an order to shoot at an enemy, I was left with three squad members staring at a hatchet wielding assailant as he ambled quickly towards them, instead of three highly trained mercenaries snapping to their target and opening fire.

A game like this should let you feel like a master tactician, but the fact is that the mechanics are just too restrictive and you lack the exact turn by turn control that gives players that feeling.

The Steam page for this game brags that it features; “Convincing characters who interact with and comment on the game events”, and “All the dialog has audio”. I wish it didn’t.

Some of the dialogue is so terrible that a wall of text would have been preferable. One member of my mercenary team, named “Fox” has the personality of a ditsy witsy, dull as doornails, adult movie actress (not that I know what they sound like).

All of her dialogue is grating on the ears, and you can’t help but wonder “how the hell did she get given a gun?!”, and the icing on the cake, Instead of character traits like “medic” or“marksman”, ones that my other two squad members had (Bull and Grunty), one of hers is “nudist”, obviously a skill extremely useful for any elite soldier.

Not to say that the other soldiers are anything special themselves, a lot of the time they all end up confused and walking into each other, clueless as bullets rain down around them.

Graphically, the game looks good. From the top down view, everything looks pretty detailed, all the animations are smooth and the scenery works well to compliment the gameplay style, but when you zoom in up close everything looks quite flat. In the dialogue menus the facial animations look extremely robotic, and show no expression.

I love the taste of a good tactical experience in my gaming buffet from time to time, but Jagged Alliance unfortunately fails to deliver. There are some really nice mechanics and experiences in the game. Building your team and seeing each member grow as you train them is satisfying to see. But I fear that the early game issues and tedious management does too much to stifle the whole game experience.

The main thing to note first of all is that the game looks great; the HD versions looked good but were based on older PS2 games whereas this is all new. It doesn’t look spectacular, probably because the game can run on both the Vita and the PS3. This Vita-less reviewer couldn’t test that functionality, but for those that have both systems you can download the Vita version and even transfer your game saves between the two.

Thieves in Time follows on from the old PS2 games and puts you again as Sly Copper, a master thief and part of a lineage stretching back generations. This is explored in the game (notice the word Time in the title?) as pages from the Thievius Racoonicus, a book chronicling all of the Cooper family tree, are changing which means that someone is messing with time. So Sly must get his old team back together, jump in a time machine and fix things.

The levels are big and take a fair bit of running around to get around them, as it should be

Fix things by sneaking around and stealing stuff. It’s fair to say that Thieves in Time doesn’t deviate too far from the previous games so Cooper-fans should feel comfortable straight away. There’s lots to do in the game, not only the missions but collecting all the stuff that’s dotted around the expansive levels. Maybe a little too much stuff, making the game sometimes about arbitrarily collecting lots of Thing A in order to unlock Thing B. The controls sometimes let you down in the more complex platforming sections but the game remains fun enough for you to push on past these moments,

A lot can be put up with thanks to how Thieves of Time is presented; the cut scenes looks great, the animation of all the characters is great, the only fly in the ointment is the voice acting. This is because, Good Lord, Sly Cooper sounds like the smuggest sounding person anthropomorphic animal in the world. He really does. And this might be a personal thing and you can play the game with the sound down and subtitles on. But it does grate and also highlights that while the story is a good piece of fluff, it’s not the best written fluff.

This is Murray, one of the other characters you can play. If Sly sneaks, Murray beats. With fists.

That’s probably the worst thing to say about the game: as you unlock Sly’s ancestors throughout history they all add slightly different ways to play the game and unlockable costumes and items keep you on your toes as well keeping the repetitiveness at bay. That isn’t to say that it goes away completely but the game has enough charm to carry it through, despite the smugness.

Thieves in Time is well worth picking up for previous Sly Cooper fans, especially for those people with a PS3 and a Vita. For people new to the series they may not have the connection to the character to see past some of the niggles but it’s still a game worth dipping your toes into.