It’s been a good while since I got hips deep into a turn-based RPG, in fact, I believe the last one to really capture my imagination to this extent was Octopath Traveller a couple of years ago.
A very different beast, Chained Echoes calls to mind 2018’s Crosscode in the visuals and style of traversal in the game world, but the setting and narrative feel more traditional and classic in terms of the delivery.
It turned out the disks were for a cancelled FMV-heavy video game adaptation of the distinctly average Canadian horror film Cube, from 1997. Shame, it could have been something special.
There was clearly a lot of fuel in the tank in pottering around handing out tickets, catching crooks and generally doing pretty standard police work. I was genuinely disheartened when Autobahn Police Simulator 3 failed to capitalise on what could have been a wonderfully quirky game based on typical police work…
BUT... then along came Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, and whilst this admittedly isn’t a super-high-scoring-rootin’-tootin’-Frozen-In-Time-Games-Freezer-10/10-recommendation… there really is a lot to appreciate here, and again – patch up and build on, hopefully, end up with a pretty top-class game, although that does feel some ways down the line.
Going into the gallery, it’s fair to say that I had high expectations - they were definitely met.
Admittedly, the sheer amount of movie franchise-based games did get a bit wearying, but LEGO City Undercover and the more open-world, sandbox games were highlights, and so – when offered LEGO Bricktales to review, I just assumed that there would be an inherent quality to whatever approach was taken here (as I’d not heard of the game beforehand) and yes, LEGO has (mostly) woven their magic again, and this time in a game that feels the most traditional ‘LEGO’ game yet.
It was only available in Korea and was so scary that some people emailed the developer to ask them to make it less scary so that they could complete it.
Now, I have no idea how true all the legends are - but it’s always been a game I desperately wanted to experience.
That said, it is very much possible to make games that don’t stand out from the crowd – and that’s kind of the high-wire on which Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader teeters.
Being ill, I couldn’t really focus on anything too hips deep, and was really fancying some kind of casual, zoned-out fun…and stumbled across Gigapocalypse in our ‘to be reviewed’ list. It was just the tonic.
Nope. within the first twenty minutes, I could see where we were heading, except it now included technical problems. Now, this game is obviously made on a budget, so I do cut it some slack, but it does things that make you think, “if you’re on a budget… just don’t do it, horror is the perfect genre to scale back and subscribe to the motto less is more”.
I can safely say that this is the first game I have played that is based on a Persian poem, namely Khosrow and Shirin, written by Nizami Ganjavi in the 12th century. I won’t go into what the poem is about because it unfolds in front of you as you play the game.
That is until you receive a message from a mysterious person who wants to meet, kicking off your adventure.
So every attempt at it elicits a sigh. However, the trailer for Hell Pie showed what seemed to the naked eye to be a surprisingly polished 3D platformer. Having fancied this genre for a while - the last I played was the sublime A Hat in Time - I thought I’d give Hell Pie a goosey, and by Jove, it was a wise move.
