Console / Platformer / Reviews

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

We have been playing a lot of the new Donkey Kong lately and both of us are loving every minute of it. There aren’t a lot of couch co-op games anymore so it’s always nice to find one that we can both enjoy. Here are some of my thoughts about the game:

krankyThe Good Stuff

The overall presentation is fantastic. Everything from the theme, the visuals, and the music is just top-notch.  The frigid viking animals that show up to cause trouble are immensely more interesting than the little totem people in Donkey Kong Country Returns. I would like to see the return of the Kremlings and K. Rool but these guys are more than welcome for now. As I mentioned before, the music is just fantastic and easily one of my favorite parts. There is a nice mix of the classic DKC stuff along with some new pieces.

The gameplay is immediately familiar to anybody who has played the classic DKC games or Returns. You can roll to gain speed and take out baddies, jump on their heads, grab vines and barrels, and ground-pound. They seem to have gotten rid of the blowing mechanic from Returns but honestly I doubt anybody will miss it. You can also play the game completely waggle free with the gamepad or Wii U Pro controller. The forced waggle of the previous game was a major detraction. They also seemed to add back deeper water levels and mechanics, including a breath meter and and some new aquatic moves. (more…)

2 Comments
February 25, 2014
PC / Reviews / RTS

Banished

This past weekend I picked up a really great city-building strategy game called Banished.  The concept is simple: You are a banished group of exiles who have to settle a new area to survive.  Will you die or start a new thriving civilization that will go on for hundreds of years?  If you’re me, you’ve probably died a dozen times already.

banished
Build bridges across water to access new areas and resources.

Banished looks and sounds simple on the outside.  You simply have to make buildings and keep your people healthy, happy, and their bellies full of food.  There’s so much more to it, though, when you realize each of those mechanics are fully developed and very close to reality.

It’s all about risk and resource management.  Want to plant crops?  In other games it’s only a matter or assigning land to be farmed and workers to tend the crops, but in Banished you have to worry about which crops can survive the temperatures when it gets cold or be harvested in time.  An early winter will ruin your crops.  Working in the snow will lower worker efficiency, cause them to become ill, and then the least of your concerns will be whether or not your pumpkins withered.  Oh, and I should probably mention that if you farm in the same place for too many seasons your soil will be ruined.

Banished Snowstorm
Build a tailor to stock warm clothes to keep villagers alive in the winter months

Every resource requires real thought.  You need firewood to stay warm in the winter.  Firewood comes from wood logs.  Chopping down trees is simple, but once you chop them down they take time to regrow and mature to the point of yielding good wood again.  Distance matters so it’s not like you can just run to another big section of forest.  Reducing your forests will reduce the deer population… and then you might starve.  See the trend?   (more…)

24 Comments
February 24, 2014
Console / Reviews

Toukiden

For the past several days I've been exclusively playing Bravely Default right up until Toukiden came out on Vita. I'm still playing BD but now I'm just switching back and…

10 Comments
February 14, 2014
Board Games / Reviews

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

robinson-crusoe-adventure-on-the-cursed-islandI saw Robinson Crusoe pretty early on when I was initially exploring the board game world. The game has seemed to be very high on ratings list and popularity charts but for some reason I was just turned off by the theme. Still, so many people recommended it and it made top lists for a lot of players. Also it’s supposedly a very good solitaire game. So I decided to look into it more and was actually pretty surprised by the kind of game it is. It seems to be more about the surviving, which has always been appealing to Keen and myself. We loved playing survival games like the Island Troll Tribes custom map in Warcraft III and I suppose it extends out to other games like Minecraft and Rust. Something about just trying to survive really harsh conditions can be a lot of fun.

We picked up the game and so far we have only played about 1 and a half times. The first half game was cut short because we were both pretty sure we were playing it wrong and we were. The second game we did manage to play through the first scenario but we didn’t quite make it. The game is really hard and Keen isn’t entirely sure we’re still playing it right but we both agree that it was still a lot of fun regardless of the poor outcome. (more…)

4 Comments
February 8, 2014
Reviews

Tomb Raider: Fancy Hair Edition

Tomb-Raider-Definitive-EditionI recently picked up and beat Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for PS4. Having never played the original game I’m not entirely sure about the differences. Supposedly the graphics are much nicer and there are new skin lighting and hair physics or something like that. I don’t know the exact extent of all that was done but apparently it was enough to make it the “definitive” version of the game and it runs at 1080p and 60FPS. I don’t care so much about the 1080p part since my TV is only 720p but I guess the 60FPS is nice. Still, I find high frame rates to be a bit unnerving at times. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to playing PC games on my crappy computer and only getting like 15-20 FPS. I’ve never really been a frame snob like Keen.

So I figured I break down some of my favorite and least favorite aspects of the game.

+ The game play was actually pretty darn fun. It’s a third person shooter/action game that features a lot of environment traversal via jumping, climbing, rope sliding, and so on. The gun play felt nice and tight and I don’t have any real complaints in this regard.

+ You get a bow! Bows are cool! Every game should have a bow. Plus you can shoot rope arrows! Rope! On arrows! You’ll just have to trust in my enthusiasm. If you knew me then you might understand.

+ You can earn exp and purchase new abilities. Well, mostly passive abilities but still. You can get things that increase the salvage and exp you get or unlock abilities that make you a better killer. There are three different sections to choose from. Something like: Survival, Hunting, and… I’m blanking out. I think it’s weapon related. They aren’t really skill trees and you can pretty much choose anything you want to purchase aside from a few abilities which are linked, requiring a previous kill, and some abilities only unlock once you have purchased a certain number of skills.

+ Salvage can be used to upgrade your weapons, which is pretty awesome. You can increase stuff like damage, handling, and even add some new abilities to some like silencers, exploding arrows, fire shells, etc. Who doesn’t enjoy upgrading stuff? I wouldn’t care to know them!

+ The weapons are pretty cool. Aside from the bow you get an assault rifle, a pistol, and a shotgun. As you upgrade them more and more you eventually get better versions of each. You also get a swanky climbing ax used for, well, climbing but you can also bury it into enemy skulls all sneaky like.

+ There are some optional tombs that you can raid (Oh, now I get it) which feature some pretty cool puzzles. I like puzzles and think all games should feature them. Why not, right? Keeps ya sharp!

+ There’s a lot of stuff to collect but fortunately it is made easier by some special glowy survival vision deal plus you can just find a map that shows the location of everything.

+ Fancy PS4 visuals plus it supposedly runs at 1080p 60FPS, if that’s your thing. (more…)

6 Comments
February 4, 2014