Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (BETA)

As a big fan of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed I was eager to give Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds a spin to see how it compared. As far as a BETA goes, this was very polished and smooth and I didn’t encounter any issues when playing online. The game looks great. It’s bright, colourful, but pretty easy to read even amidst the chaos. And ‘chaotic’ is how I’d best describe playing CrossWorlds.

Item spam is pretty crazy when playing online or with harder AI settings, and this BETA didn’t even give us access to the top tier AI difficulties. Item effects are popping off all around you practically from start to finish. That . . . might need to be a little toned down, because right now, it feels like item usage / management is actually far more important than the actual driving.

It’s not unusual to be leading a race and go from 1st to 12th and then back again all within the space of ten seconds or so because of items being used against you, only for you to use them back and regain your position. Transformed spaced out item pick ups far more and only let you carry one at a time so their usage had to be more considered, whereas CrossWorlds lets you carry two and pick ups are found on nearly every turn.

Handling is pretty good, but you need to make sure you turn off any drive-assists. Drifting feels a little more . . . rigid, I guess, than in Transformed, but it’s something you learn to manage. I actually downloaded Transformed again and played through a few tracks to better compare and . . . yeah, I think I do prefer the handling in Transformed, but there’s not a lot in it, and they’re both fun.

I also really liked Transformed for the Sega nostalgia angle and whilst I’m sure CrossWorlds will delve into Sega history for various racers and tracks, the game is set up to do what so many big and successful live service games do these days – crossover IP. They’re already announced Minecraft, SpongeBob SquarePants and Pac-Man. It’s a clever way to expand the appeal of your game and open the door to all kinds of other crossovers regardless of platform.

The ‘gimmick’ I guess of CrossWorlds is how you seamlessly switch between tracks during a race. It does help keep things fresh because you never know what track you’ll be racing on for the next lap. Visually, CrossWorlds looks great and runs flawlessly, at least from what I experienced. I also like the vehicle customisation and the gadgets that provide various modifiers to play with.

Overall, although I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this BETA I do feel, frankly, like I could just go back and play Transformed again because I’m more interested in the Sega stuff than this other IP and also because I think the item / race balance is far better. I like to feel that my driving skill is what ultimately wins a race, not how lucky / unlucky I am when it comes to items.

I’m also not sold on the price which feels a tad steep, but I guess it’s not that unusual these days. So yeah, I’m kind of on the fence with this one, but we’ll see how it shakes out and what new content they add. And also if they find a better balance when it comes to driving skill versus item usage because it’s a little too messy right now.

Gallery: Stellar Blade

Battlefield 6 (BETA)

I really enjoyed Battlefield V. The movement and shooting felt great. I thought the maps were really good. I loved the destructibility and how it completely transformed the battlefield, directly affecting the progression of the fighting. And I really liked the fortifications system which also fundamentally changed how the map came to play over the course of the fight. Which is why I was so eager to play Battlefield 2042 – at least until I tried the BETA and realised it was kind of f**king terrible.

Spin on to today and a BETA is now available for Battlefield 6. After the massive disappointment of 2042, could 6 win me back over? After sinking about 15 or so hours into this BETA across two weekends in August I’d say my answer is . . . I’m not convinced. Not quite.

The movement and shooting certainly feel good, and I really like the weapon customisation. And the game looks fantastic, without a doubt. But my big issue with the BETA was the maps. There’s a ton of destructibility to the maps but – unlike Battlefield V – the destruction doesn’t really change the ebb and flow of the battle.

It feels more like (admittedly impressive) eye candy, rather than something that truly has a substantial impact upon the gameplay. Yes, you can demolish the front of buildings . . . but those buildings still stand and the ‘corridors’ of the map remain exactly the same from beginning to end.

This wasn’t really the case in Battlefield V in which you could level entire structures and then build significant fortifications within the ruins. There’s no fortifications system in 6 though, which does make some sense given the setting, but it’s a missing component to what made V so compelling. I mean, couldn’t we have had sandbags at least?

And the maps in this BETA all felt . . . small. I don’t know if the full game will feature larger maps, but these maps felt like they were straining to contain a full server of players. The maps felt designed to funnel opposing teams into quite linear, narrow corridors. Ground vehicle use was very limited, and air power use was practically non-existent.

Now, this was a BETA so there’s going to be a degree of confusion as players learn the maps, learn how weapons handle and how best to utilise the various pieces of equipment. Early BETA play is always a tad chaotic. But even so, Battlefield 6 feels just a little too chaotic. There’s so many angles to cover, so many little pathways winding around the main channels. And because the maps are so small and players are everywhere you feel like you’re getting shot from seven directions at once.

It felt, I hate to say it, more like a Call of Duty match at times. I don’t think the TTK is too fast – I think the problem is that there’s no real ‘break’ from one combat encounter to the next due to the size and design of the maps. As soon as you spawn you’re fighting, killing and dying before you can even catch a breath.

Conquest, as a mode, is chaotic by nature, but Breakthrough – one of, if not my favourite mode in BFV – should be more controlled, more deliberate and more orderly with clearly defined points and paths to attack and defend. But in BF6, Breakthrough feels just as chaotic as Conquest and once again, I think it’s the small maps that are to blame.

My least favourite map was Liberation Peak in which you can spawn and see a thousand stars staring back at you – the stars being sniper scopes because the map is far too open and if you stick your head out of what little cover there is it’ll be blown clean off in seconds.

So yeah, not really a fan of the maps so far. I don’t hate them or anything, they just all feel so small and those ‘battlefield moments’ when the chaos of the sandbox comes together to produce a spectacular scene feel very few and far between. It now just feels like another standard shooter. But this is only a BETA so we’ll see how the game and its other maps shape up on release.

Now Playing: The Alters

In The Alters you play as Jan Dolski, the sole survivor of a deep space mining mission that’s gone disastrously wrong. Stranded on a hostile planet full of dangerous anomalies and the unrelenting approach of a sunrise that will incinerate everything in its path, Jan must find a way to survive and escape – but he won’t be able to do it alone.

Jan is going to need help and that’s where his ‘alters’ come in. Using the quantum computing technology of a mobile mining base combined with the special properties of the element ‘rapidium’, Jan can create clones of himself – but not just clones. These ‘alters’ are tailored by the quantum computer (QC) to fulfil specific roles that Jan cannot – a technician, a doctor or a scientist for example.

By analysing Jan’s life, the QC can create ‘branch’ life paths for the clones, giving them the necessary skills. The alters are created to be used like tools – not people. But they are people, and they’re all Jan. Or rather, they’re like an alternative version of Jan who made different choices in their life.

The Alters is one of the most unique games I’ve played in a long time. There’s a third person exploration aspect as you take Jan out onto the planet’s surface to locate and harvest the various resources you need, but also to investigate and overcome obstacles in your path. The game is split into three main acts, each of which takes place in a new location on the planet.

Each location is visually distinct and more expansive (and challenging to navigate) as you progress. Each also features new anomaly types to contend with. You’ll have to research and develop new tools in order to advance and escape the approaching sun. But everything you do costs resources, so you’ll also need to locate resource nodes and set up mining installations across each location and assign either Jan or his alters to operate them.

But when you return to your mobile base, the game switches tack to a base building and people management sim. You’re given a 2D side perspective of the base. This is where Jan and his alters live and work. It’s their home and their refuge from the radiation and anomalies on the surface and it’s also their only chance of escape.

As you progress through the game you’ll be able to expand the base, constructing new modules to gain access to new base functions – some required to produce the tools or resources you need to survive such as a workshop or a greenhouse – but others to improve the lives and moods of your alters such as personal accommodation or social spaces.

The alters are Jan, but they’re also not Jan and they don’t all necessarily get along with each other or with Jan himself. They’ve all ‘lived’ different lives and have different perspectives on life and on how to approach the situation they all find themselves in. And those are perspectives that Jan can learn from. Through his alters he can see all the different ways his life could have gone – for better or worse.

Expanding the base takes resources. A bigger base requires more resources to maintain. More alters require more food. The base management aspect of The Alters is a balancing act of various priorities – figuring out how to maximise your available resources, deciding what to research, what to build or where to assign your alters. Because if you can’t keep your base stable and operational and if you can’t keep your alters happy then they will turn against you.

I really love the story and character aspects of The Alters. It’s one of those thought-provoking premises that – yes, it’s been done before in other media – but it translates really well into a game thanks to the ability to give the player a choice in not only what kind of alters they want to create, but various choices throughout the story as to how they all (or just Jan) can survive and escape.

I don’t want to spoil any specific story aspects here because I think it’s best going into The Alters without knowing too much about the direction it takes but I can say I thoroughly enjoyed playing through the story and I certainly want to do a second run with a different selection of alters.

That said, I can’t say that your choice of alters in terms of gameplay progression really makes that much of a difference – you can build an infirmary without a doctor, for example, but even if you have a doctor alter, you’ll probably never need to ‘assign’ them to the infirmary because there’s never any real need to do so.

I do feel like they could have pushed the replay value more by making each alter choice more impactful upon how you progress and expand your base. The alters are all different in terms of personality and they each have their own ‘story’ to work through – but ultimately, you can assign them all to the same key roles (maintenance, mining and crafting) regardless of their specialisation.

I also have to mention a bug I hit during Act 1 that made me ‘fail’ the game despite completing the goals of an assigned task. I had to restart from scratch, losing 8 hours of play. That wasn’t super fun, but I did race back to where I was in much better shape in half the time. Once you understand all the systems of The Alters and how they connect and interact, it becomes a lot easier to manage.

Overall, The Alters is a very unique and original game that successfully combines an engaging premise with a strong narrative, great characters and a cool mix of third person exploration and base management. It’s one of those games where you can honestly say there’s nothing else quite like it and if you’re a fan of thought-provoking sci-fi then I definitely recommend checking it out.

8/10

NSO Retro: Sin & Punishment (N64)

Is the N64 retro? I guess so, but I don’t have to like it!

Sin & Punishment is a rail shooter that originally released on the N64 in 2000 in Japan, but it wasn’t officially available in the West until its release on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007. And now it’s available via Nintendo Switch Online, which is how I played it for the first time.

The only thing I knew about Sin & Punishment was that it was a rail shooter and there are certainly aspects of Sin & Punishment that remind of another rail shooter I did play and come to love back in the day – Panzer Dragoon.

You’re locked on a linear track with a rapid fire gun you use to shoot and destroy enemies that appear within your path. Your gun has two modes – a free-aim and an auto-lock. Enemies do fire their own projectiles or energy beams your way and whilst some can be targeted and destroyed, others can only be dodged.

You have a slow left-to-right movement that allows you to precisely side step incoming fire, and a quick roll that allows you to simply get the f**k out of the way. You also have a jump and double-jump ability that you’ll also use to avoid fire or environmental obstacles.

But that’s not all – you also have a powerful melee attack for enemies that get too close (and in some cases is the only way to defeat them). Your melee attack can also be used to deflect certain enemy projectiles right back at them, inflicting significant damage.

Unfortunately, the game does a terrible job of signposting which projectiles can and can’t be deflected, so there’s an element of trial and error in every boss fight (and Sin & Punishment features many mini-boss fights) in which you just have to take some hits in order to figure out what to dodge and what to deflect.

It’s a fun and effective combat system that forces you to be as focused on your own movement as you are on the enemies you’re shooting. Things can get pretty damn hectic at times as you’re faced with multiple incoming projectiles. You need to dodge fast, deflect when you can and just keep on shooting, even if you can barely see what the f**k is going on – but that’s where the auto-lock mode comes in handy.

Does it get a little too hectic at times? I’d say so. Even on the ‘Easy’ setting, Sin & Punishment can prove challenging, but fortunately you’re able to brute force your way through most things. On higher difficulties I imagine a degree of muscle memory comes into play. Your timing has to be precise and you need to know exactly what to target and when because you’re not just fighting enemies, but a stage timer that’s constantly counting down.

Take too long to defeat an enemy and your health will rapidly drain to zero. Speed is as important as precision and you soon learn that you don’t need to target every enemy or every part of a mini-boss to succeed – sometimes you just need to blast them down as quickly as you can before your timer runs out.

Sin & Punishment is a pretty short game – I cleared it on Easy in about 2 hours or so – but it does offer replay value in the higher difficulties which include additional bosses or boss stages. And it is, overall, pretty fun. It’s certainly no Panzer Dragoon, but it’s still worth checking out.

The visuals hold up pretty well, even if some parts of the game suffer from that ugly early-3D polygon clutter that can make things a little tricky to see and the character models are . . . uh, I don’t know what the f**k is going on with those but I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about them later.

And don’t ask me what Sin & Punishment is about because I really have no f**king clue. It’s completely baffling to me even after watching all the cut-scenes and reading a plot summary on Wikipedia. The dialogue is so bad and bizarre it’s kind of funny – but that’s only when you can hear it because the voices are so bloody quiet.

The game does end with you fighting a planet though so that’s pretty cool. No idea why, but who cares?

Now Playing: South Of Midnight

In South of Midnight you play as the appropriately named Hazel Flood, a young woman who discovers her true calling as a ‘Weaver’ – someone gifted with magical abilities that allow them to see and manipulate the ‘Grand Tapestry’ of reality. When Hazel’s mother is lost in a storm, she must use her newly discovered abilities to try to rescue her – and along the way, uncover the dark secrets of her own family history.

But she also, as a weaver, has the power to heal open wounds in the Tapestry by stitching together tears caused by powerful outbursts of grief, loss, guilt or shame. Throughout her journey to find and save her mother, Hazel encounters various characters and mythical creatures burdened by their own past traumas and by collecting the pieces of their pain, Hazel can find a way to help them.

From a story, character and lore point of view, South of Midnight is great. I don’t know how much of the game is based on actual folklore, but it certainly provides a refreshing, unique and engaging setting and mythos to explore. And Hazel is certainly a lot of fun as a protagonist. It’s the setting, story and characters of South of Midnight that keep you engaged and make you want to see it through – which is a good thing, because the gameplay, sadly, does not.

I didn’t have the highest of expectations with regard to the gameplay of South of Midnight and I still came away disappointed. You traverse each chapter through a combination of basic platforming and puzzle solving. The platforming isn’t challenging and the puzzles aren’t difficult – frankly, calling them ‘puzzles’ at all is a bit generous.

It’s not bad. I actually, at least early on, quite enjoyed myself as I explored each chapter. Your main path is fairly linear, but there’s plenty of optional trails to investigate, usually ending with one type of collectible or another. The problem is, the platforming and puzzles never really evolve, grow more complex or more challenging.

Which is also a problem for the combat – the third and by far weakest pillar supporting South of Midnight’s gameplay. Like platforming and puzzles, the combat is very simple and it never really evolves or grows more complex. Every fight takes place in the same circular arena. Every fight sees the same 4-5 enemy types spawn in, and every fight sees you simply run up and bash them until they ‘unravel’.

It’s tedious, repetitive and incredibly easy – bumping up the difficulty just gives enemies more health which makes things take longer. I actually lowered the difficulty mid-way through South of Midnight in order to rush through the fights as quickly as I could. And a few chapters before the end, I enabled the option to skip them entirely – yes, that’s how bad they are.

The game does give you a few new skills as you progress but nothing that truly evolves the combat beyond ‘run up to enemy and bash them’. The most interesting skill is the ability to toss your cute companion – Crouton – at an enemy to turn them into a temporary ally.

It’s a real shame, because I feel like Hazel’s weaver skills could have formed the basis for a more unique and engaging form of combat – maybe something where she doesn’t fight directly, but can cast strands across the arena to turn enemies into puppets she controls – or you, the player controls – each with their own move sets. Maybe she could weave strands to bind enemies, or maybe Crouton could grow in size and do the bashing.

Just . . . give me something more than just ‘bash, bash, bash’. If combat is going to be a fairly frequent and key part of your experience then you need to make it engaging and fun and progressively more complex as you go. But South of Midnight doesn’t do that – aside from a couple of new enemy types and rather basic Weaver abilities (like pulling enemies towards you or pushing them away) the combat is exactly the same from the first chapter to the last.

I feel like South of Midnight really would have benefited by forgetting combat entirely and instead focusing purely on platform and puzzle challenges. That would also feel more fitting for the game as a whole because Hazel is a weaver and a weaver’s powers are focused on healing – not bashing. But the game has a lot of boring bashing, so much boring bashing that I soon got sick of it and began to skip it entirely.

But having to skip a key part of the game isn’t a good thing. Yes, it’s great the option is there for accessibility reasons, but it also feels more like an acknowledgment that the combat is kind of shit. And it didn’t have to be! Maybe it’s just a lack of experience. But as I see it, if you can’t deliver a decent combat experience, then maybe it would have been better to focus on and really beef up the puzzle and platforming aspects?

The only ‘combat’ in the game I actually enjoyed were the handful of boss fights – but that’s because the fights play more like a simple puzzle with a patten to solve. You don’t actually do a lot of bashing – well, not until the final boss fight which is a very tedious series of arena fights. I didn’t skip those because I wanted to see if the game would offer something more unique like the previous bosses – but it doesn’t. It’s like they just ran out of ideas.

In terms of visuals, South of Midnight looks fantastic. I love the style and animation. I love the creatures you encounter and Crouton is adorable – even if you only ever use him to run through very short, very linear little hollows to collect or activate something.

It’s funny the first time you toss the little fella to somewhere you can’t reach on foot, but there’s only a handful of situations where that’s necessary. Crouton and how you utilise him to progress – opening new paths or solving puzzles – could have been another mechanic that grew more complex and clever. But like everything else, it just doesn’t evolve at all. Its another (very) annoying missed opportunity.

I found South of Midnight incredibly frustrating to play – not so much disappointing – just frustrating. Because there’s some really great stuff in here. Story, visuals, characters, setting, lore – and some great music that ties cleverly into the gameplay during the handful of boss fights. And the basic gameplay mechanics are here – platforming, puzzles (plus Crouton) and even combat (if the game really embraced the ‘weaver’ aspect) – but it doesn’t do anything engaging with them. They all work, they’re all functional. They let you move from A to B but that’s all they do. And I need more than just ‘functional’ to my gameplay, despite how great all the other aspects might be.

Overall, South of Midnight delivers a great experience in terms of story, characters and setting, but a very poor gameplay experience. It’s so frustrating because the building blocks are here, they just don’t get utilised in a way that the game needs. As a result, it’s really hard to recommend South of Midnight and I really hate saying that because the story and character stuff deserves a wider audience. Maybe get it on sale and just skip all the combat. It’s not ideal, but you’ll probably have a better time.

6/10