The Thief, The Mother & The Empress: Print Edition

 Available now!

Now Playing: Ace Combat 7

This is the first time I’ve played an Ace Combat game so the usual caveats apply – I’m not the best person to say if it’s a good entry in the series or not and I can’t compare it to previous games. All I can do is review what I played. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is an arcade-style flight combat game which isn’t a genre I typically play or have much experience with. The game is set within a fantasy world but features real world aircraft – which feels a little weird, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The story is a little . . . messy. I don’t know how much it ties into or follows previous games / characters of the series but I don’t think you’d need to play / read up on them to follow what’s going on. I wouldn’t say the story itself is bad, more the way it’s told.

At the beginning of the game you’re introduced to a character called Avril who I initially thought I’d be playing as but instead we start the game as a mute, faceless pilot called Trigger. The story also focuses on an enemy pilot – Mihaly – who I also thought we might switch to at some point in the campaign to see the ‘other side’ of the conflict. But no, you only play as Trigger throughout the entire game.

Like I said, it’s not bad it’s just kind of weird when the game spends so much time on these other characters you’re not actually playing as. Oh, and I need to mention that hilarious moment when one character takes an entirely unnecessary and utterly bizarre parachute jump towards the end of the game. It’s supposed to be dramatic, but it’s so ridiculous and silly I couldn’t stop laughing.

The game also has a lot of dialogue cut in during missions which you can’t always pay the closest attention to because you’re in the middle of a fight so you’re left wondering what was said or what your new orders are.

Frankly though, I’m not going to pretend the story / character aspects of AC7 really matter all that much. They do the job of seeing you from one mission to the next and provide the context you need to understand why you’re blowing shit up.

The campaign of AC7 is fairly substantial with 20 missions to play and lots to unlock. I played through the entire campaign twice in a row which gives you an idea of how much I enjoyed it. I do feel like the campaign could be more guided in terms of unlocking aircraft that perform different roles for different missions.

The game just lets you pick whatever you want to fly (provided you’ve unlocked it) regardless of the mission type and whilst I think that’s good for subsequent plays, it might have been neat if you unlock different aircraft type the first time through.

For example, a bomber type for an air to ground offensive mission. It would just vary up the campaign a little more in the early stages when you’re restricted to only a handful of aircraft because you’ve not yet earned enough credits to unlock new ones.

The missions offer a good variety of environments and objectives. And the game looks and feels great to play. It is very ‘arcade’ in the sense that every aircraft can carry 80 or so missiles and you can perform high speed, break neck U-turns that would probably kill a real pilot, but I can’t say that’s not fun and I never really got tired of shouting ‘Eagle 1, Fox 2!’ every time I fired a missile at an enemy aircraft.

AC7 also has a great soundtrack that really pumps you up during certain moments of the campaign. Even if you don’t really care much about the bigger picture, you’ll still enjoy and be engaged by those individual moments.

There is a multiplayer mode in AC7 but at the time I played it, the mode is entirely dead so I really can’t comment on it. There’s also no VR support which is incredibly disappointing considering the game did have a few VR missions released for PSVR, but these haven’t been included in the PC release. I would love to play through this game again in VR. I know there’s ‘unofficial’ support, but it’s not exactly ideal.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ace Combat 7. It’s a solid, fun and engaging game with decent replay value that, with just a few tweaks here and there to the story and to the unlock system, could have scored even higher. Oh, and official VR support would have helped too. If you see it on sale, it’s worth giving a spin.

7/10

Daughter Of The Jackal: Print Edition

 

 Available now!

E3 Special 2022

It’s E3 but not E3 because E3 may never be a thing again which might be a good thing but who really cares? Let’s talk about some games that caught my eye!

Resident Evil 4 Remake – let’s hope it’s more like the great Resident Evil 2 Remake than the disappointing Resident Evil 3 one. Also, Resident Evil Village VR – but will it be PlayStation VR2 exclusive? I can’t say I care too much because I really wasn’t that impressed by Village and I don’t see what difference VR will really make. It’s funny / not surprising how the trailer focused exclusively on the Dimitrescu stuff and not the lacklustre Moreau or Heisenberg stuff.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners 2 – Chapter Two: Retribution – the original remains one of the best VR games I’ve played, so I’m hopeful the sequel will expand, improve and refine. That title is silly though. Please don’t f**k it up, I don’t want another Budget Cuts 2. (Review coming soon! Spoiler: it wasn’t good!)

Horizon VR: Call of the Mountain – looks cool, but what is it really? A short theme park ride? A tech demo to show off the PSVR2? Or am I just being cynical? Will it come to PC? Will Forbidden West come to PC? I care more about that, to be honest, but I’d play this too. Honestly, Sony would be mad not to release their PSVR2 content on PC, even if there’s a delay.

Speaking of PC releases of Sony stuff, we also have Spider-Man now coming to PC. I’m sure I’ll give it a spin. Stray – a game where you play as a cat. That looked neat, I guess. And then there was The Callisto Protocol – which is a new Dead Space in all but name and I’m totally okay with that.

What else? Flashback 2? I don’t know what to think about this but I guess I’ll keep an eye on it. Fort Solis – creepy game set on Mars? I like Mars. Speaking of Mars, there’s also The Invincible – which isn’t actually set on Mars but it kind of looks like Mars so that’s okay.

Continuing the theme of creepy sci-fi we have Routine – it’s not set on Mars but on the Moon and I also like the Moon, and the System Shock Remake – which I’m pretty interested in even though I’m not a massive fan of the original. Maybe this new version will win me over.

What’s that? You want more creepy sci-fi? I guess Redfall is kind of creepy sci-fi, but it looks less creepy and more tongue-in-cheek. Left 4 Dead with vampires? Maybe not a totally fair comparison, but that’s the general idea. Scorn is definitely creepy sci-fi. Disgusting, creepy sci-fi.

The Last of Us Remake on PC? Thanks, Sony, keep ‘em coming. Don’t forgot Forbidden West, eh? Forza Motorsport – I really liked Horizon 5, so maybe I’ll give this a spin.

And finally we have the big one – the one we’ve all been waiting for – Starfield. I must admit, I got kinda excited about this. I know I shouldn’t. I know what Bethesda are like. But maybe . . . just maybe it won’t be another Fallout 4 disappointment.

The demo looked a little rough. The character animations look stiff. I’m sure there will be a f**k ton of bugs that will never be fixed but . . . for all its flaws, I sunk an obscene amount of hours into Skyrim. Granted, that was mostly thanks to mods but still . . . I wonder if Starfield can capture that same magic. I’m going to choose hope. Don’t let me down, Todd.

Now Playing: Halo Wars

Halo Wars, originally released on the X-Box 360 in 2009, is a console designed RTS game set within the Halo universe. Although I do like the Halo series and I’m a fan of strategy games in general, I was always wary of playing Halo Wars because, at the risk of sounding like a PC snob, I wasn’t entirely convinced that an RTS game designed for console would be all that compelling to play.

But here we are in 2022 and when I saw Halo Wars on sale on PC, I figured it was time to give it a shot and see if I was wrong. So was I? Well . . . no. From a strategy point of view, Halo Wars is very simplistic. There’s not a great deal of depth to the game in terms of mechanics. This doesn’t make it bad, just . . . not very compelling for anyone who has played pretty much any other PC RTS game over the last several years.

But, to be fair, I’d say Halo Wars is well designed when you take into consideration the limitations of the original platform, the fact that everything had to be easy to manage and control from a gamepad, and that most of the audience of Halo Wars at the time of its release may have never even played an RTS game before. When you factor in all of that, Halo Wars is actually a pretty impressive achievement.

They really did make RTS work on console and make it accessible to new players. That said, it’s not like consoles hadn’t seen ports of PC RTS games before Halo Wars – I sunk countless hours into Command & Conquer and Warcraft 2 on my Sega Saturn. But those games clearly weren’t designed for the console platform whereas Halo Wars was designed from the ground up purely for console with console limitations in mind.

Only it’s not only on console now, but on PC, and on PC those limitations can prove rather frustrating. The worst example of this is precise unit control – even though you can now play Halo Wars with a mouse, units in the game still move and reposition largely independently of your command. Because Halo Wars was originally designed for a less precise controller method, making it easy to select, group and move units. They form up together, move at uniform speed and attack targets at will.

 
All you really need to do in Halo Wars is pump out units, select various upgrades, press to ‘select all’ and then click somewhere near the enemy. The ‘strategy’ of Halo Wars is more about choosing your build order and what upgrades to pick first. It’s simple, but it works, and if you were new to RTS and playing this on a gamepad at release, I’m sure you would have had a good time – especially if you were a Halo fan.

Because Halo Wars does feel very much like a Halo game when it comes to sound, music, visuals and – most importantly – story. The main campaign is a fairly substantial affair with extensive CG cut scenes leading into every mission. It is, overall, a pretty decent campaign with a decent level of variety in terms of maps and objectives. And that’s really where Halo Wars rises above its simplistic gameplay – with the narrative driven campaign and the variety on offer within.

Beyond the campaign, Halo Wars has a pretty decent Skirmish mode where, unlike the campaign, you can also play as the Covenant. There’s a few different modes and several maps and I had some fun with it after finishing the campaign but honestly, once you know an efficient build / upgrade order, you can largely sit back and just let the game play itself. Select all – move – win. I’d frequently Alt-Tab out of matches whilst I waited for my units to build because there really wasn’t a lot else to do.

Overall, Halo Wars is kind of a difficult game to recommend. It’s certainly not a bad game and, as I said, it’s actually very well designed when you take into consideration when and how it originally released. But in 2022, on PC, it’s a basic, fairly dull RTS that’s only really fun to play through if you like the Halo series. If you don’t give a shit about Halo, but like RTS, I really wouldn’t recommend it.

But if you do like Halo and RTS then you’ll probably enjoy playing through the campaign once, maybe a few skirmish matches and then you’ll say ‘that was okay, I guess’ before uninstalling it. I am curious about Halo Wars 2 though, considering it was designed for both PC & console at release. Maybe if that comes to Steam, I’ll give that a spin.

6/10

Steam Sale: Bonus Round

I’ve been buying various games on sale over the last few months, some of which I’d always planned on picking up, but others I’ve just bought on a whim without really knowing much about them.

Up first is Disco Elysium which, at the time of this post, I’ve already finished and published my review. I kind of liked and loathed it in equal measure.

Halo Wars is another game I’ve already played and finished at the time of writing, and it will be my next review, so you don’t have to wait very long to learn what I thought of it. Spoiler: it was okay.

I liked the first Budget Cuts so when I saw the sequel go on sale I just had to pick it up. I’m hoping it can build and expand upon all the good things the original did.

Whilst everyone may be raving about Elden Ring right now and I’m sure that’s a game I’ll eventually get around to playing, I’m actually more interested in playing Sekiro because it looks like a more unique twist on the ‘Souls’ formula in terms of combat.

And finally we have Ace Combat 7 which . . . I have no idea about. I’ve never played an Ace Combat game and I don’t know if I’ll like it and I kind of wish it had a VR mode but the videos I watched looked kind of fun so I guess we’ll see.

Oh, and not pictured here are a few games I’ve claimed for free on Epic but totally forgot about such as Vampyr which I also hope to find time to play.

So many games, so little time.