• Format: PC (version reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: SEGA
• Developer: Game Freak
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.sega.co.uk/games/tembo-badass-elephant

When you think of Game Freak, you’d be forgiven for struggling to think of anything other than Pokémon. Over the last twenty years, the developer has practically become synonymous with their animal battling franchise despite their development of games such as Drill Dozer or HarmoKnight. Tembo the Badass Elephant also stars a battling animal as its titular hero, though that’s where the similarities end.

Tembo the Badass Elephant barely has a story. Players take control of Tembo as he is called back into the service of the army to take on the nefarious forces of PHANTOM across the three regions of Shell City. While the game won’t be winning any literary awards, this threadbare plot is really all the game needs. The events are told rather well in short motion comics detailing the transitions between each region with a vibrant and inviting art style.

The levels themselves also feature this style and it’s really a pleasure to look at, perfectly capturing the cartoon aesthetic that it’s going for. It works well with the 3D environments, the two disparate styles meshing together to form one cohesive look. There’s also a surprising amount of visual diversity in these levels, even within the same region. There are dilapidated cities, lush forests, mechanical strongholds, craggy mountains, a fairground, and even a train in which to take on PHANTOM. They all look great and stand out, as well as taking a few of their unique elements and turning them into level mechanics.

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end. Tembo may be a “Badass” Elephant, but he is not a “Badass” platformer hero.

Tembo has a small arsenal of abilities. He can charge, turn his trunk into a hammer for an uppercut, do a butt stomp, and hurtle diagonally to the ground in a ball. While they all work fine alone, there are a lot of situations in which you have to chain them together and the whole thing falls apart. We can’t count the amount of times we needed to charge ahead and transition into an uppercut, only to stare agape as the moronic elephant then decided to use his ball hurtle ability to fly off the stage despite not being told to do so. We tested that a lot, and it still baffles us as to why he insists on doing this. We suspect Skynet interference.

Outside of mechanical gaffes, it’s all just a bit boring. Tembo’s charge is fun the first time you run forward knocking a wave of enemies into the air, but by the tenth time you’re required to do it you might scratch your head and wonder if Game Freak didn’t really know what else to do with it. They certainly never do anything interesting with it to raise the difficulty, as they achieve that by just throwing more enemies on the screen rather than any clever level or enemy design.

While the levels look great and are pretty sizeable, they’re extremely dull. Aside from one taking place on a moving train, there are none that do anything particularly interesting or new. In a world of Freedom Planet and Shovel Knight, you can’t just release a run of the mill, pedestrian 2D platformer any more. It’s even more of a problem when Tembo features sprawling, diverging levels with lots of hidden areas to seek out, but no compelling reason to do so.

The game’s bosses range from dull to shrug-inducing, with a little bit of bafflement mixed in. The first boss is a giant tank-slash-dragon that shoots fireballs at you and that’s kind of it. It took us a while to figure out how to defeat this boss not because it was hard, but because it would have been insultingly simple had a required element actually ever been on screen. It’s a terrible example of mechanical communication and level design that is incredibly confusing from a developer of Game Freak’s calibre. A later boss is similarly simple, if not for the previously mentioned mechanical problems that will send Tembo hurtling into projectiles at the behest of Skynet.

There are three types of collectibles in each level: peanuts, ten survivors for Tembo to rescue, and the hearts of the PHANTOM troops. That last one may not have been entirely accurate, but you’ll rack up points for each PHANTOM member killed. It provides the game some replayability if you really want it to. Unfortunately, you also need a certain amount of PHANTOMs killed to unlock each boss level, which involved redoing levels in the second region. That’s never fun, so it fits well in Tembo the Badass Elephant.

Game Freak are known for fantastic music thanks to the Pokemon games and even have a rhythm game under their belt, so how they managed to put together a completely forgettable soundtrack for Tembo is – and this seems to be a word that epitomises this game – baffling.

Tembo’s sprawling level design combined with its dashing and ball attacks remind us a lot of the 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games, unfortunately mired by the unresponsiveness and mechanical issues of Sonic’s more recent 3D outings. The 2D platformer has seen a resurgence in recent years with a wealth of excellent examples of creativity in design. If you really want to play Tembo and aren’t an elephant enthusiast, go play any one of those instead. Any one at all.

• Format: PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games
• Developer: Technocrat Games
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/technobabylon/

Game code provided by PR

With Technobabylon, Wadjet Eye Games once again delves into the realm of science fiction, this time developed by the debuting Technocrat Games. Joining the likes of the excellent Gemini Rue and Primordia in this catalogue is certainly a daunting task, but Technobabylon sits right alongside them as another hit for the publisher.

What sets Technobabylon apart is that it leans a little more heavily into the cyberpunk realm of the gargantuan science fiction genre. The game takes place in the city of Newton, a metropolis where nearly anything goes: Genetic engineering is commonplace, androids serve a myriad of day-to-day functions, addicts log into the Matrix-esque Trance, and the government has been largely replaced by the city’s governing AI.

The city and its world are built incredibly well with news stories, optional conversations, and emails doing a great job of transforming Newton into a near-tangible place. Wadjet Eye’s trademark pixel-heavy art style doesn’t even inhibit this sense of reality thanks to some clever animation tricks; early on there is a screen on the street with some easily discernible rotating text. While you can’t quite read the text, it still lends the player an idea of the world’s state of technology.

The game’s story is equally well-realised and serves as a compelling narrative. A mindjacker is forcefully removing data from the brains of certain individuals in Newton, killing them in the process. The story begins here with Central putting agents Regis and Lao on the mysterious case. Meanwhile, Trance addict Latha Sesame’s problems are only just beginning with her explosive ejection from her apartment. These three narrative threads are tied together excellently.

If that’s not enough to get cyberpunk fans chomping at the bit, the execution should be. The script is well written, particularly in the quippy back and forth dialogue between Regis and Lao, as well as Lao’s very dark and witty humour that further humanises the pair.

There are some incredibly small touches in the writing that go a long way. Very early on in the game, the player can access a particularly heartbreaking e-mail congratulating the mindjacker’s victim on his engagement. For some optional text for a throwaway character’s demise, it creates quite the impact. This continues throughout the game in the forms of more optional e-mails, dialogue, and newsletters, all of which are worth reading through.

The story has some huge twists along the way that are well delivered and are steadily built up throughout the game. There are also plenty of moral quandaries for players to mull over, often presented as a choice for the player rather than being treated with a binary right/wrong mentality, so the player is forced to question and think for themselves – the mark of any great story.

The only sore spot in the script for the entire game is unfortunately a big one. Without spoiling too much – since the game is absolutely worthy of your time – one of the characters’ motivation for doing some fairly terrible things is incredibly difficult to empathise with or even believe. This character has some objects held ransom, but the objects no longer have any use and are treated with aggrandised importance, even being referred to as something with far more gravity – likely in the hopes of creating impact. Unfortunately, it just served to create confusion in why on Earth this character would be manipulated over something long past its expiry date.

The fantastic voice acting lends the writing even more weight, the performances from the three main characters instilling them with spades of personality. As good as the script is, it’s great to see it was done justice by some great voice actors. Even the more minor characters went the extra mile, giving some subtle insight via accents or inflections.

As mentioned before, the art style is Wadjet Eye’s heavily pixelised style. While this may elicit groans from some, this is probably the first time it’s been done well enough that we didn’t have a single problem with it. It never gets in the way of world-building or characterisation, and the face pop-ups during conversations have been rendered with a wealth of expression that puts several games with larger budgets to shame, further emphasising the strengths of the script and voice acting.

In terms of gameplay, you probably know what you’re getting yourself into at this point since it’s a fairly standard adventure game: Navigate with the mouse, collect items, merge items, and solve puzzles. These puzzles are generally quite good, and while they do venture into some pretty overly oblique territories at times, they never get frustrating enough to turn players away. There is, however, one puzzle that relies on knowledge either not presented in the game or tucked away somewhere very well hidden involving body temperature.

Despite one rather glaring plot issue, there is very little to find fault with in Technobabylon. If you’re a fan of both adventure games and cyberpunk or science fiction in general then picking this up is a no-brainer, but there’s also enough high quality storytelling to entice others into the city of Newton, too. If they’re anything like us, they’ll leave wanting even more.

• Format: PC (version reviewed), Mac
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
• Developer: EuroVideo Medien
• Players: 1
• Site: www.daedalic.de/en/game/FIRE

Game code provided by the publisher

EuroVideo Medien’s Fire is a point and click adventure game that, on the surface, seems to have it all. Cavemen dally about with aliens, travel to the primordial ages and back again, shape-shift into animals, and even take a trip to the moon. The problem is that none of it means anything.

In Daedalic Entertainment’s latest published game, narrative takes a backseat. The game opens as the game’s protagonist, a caveman idiotic even by their standards, gets kicked out of his village after leaving a fire burning all night. A short apple-induced psychedelic trip later, the apple tree’s spirits become trapped and scattered throughout the world. Naturally, the caveman must find them.

That’s all there is to the story, setting up a thin veneer of context for the ensuing puzzles that unfortunately suffer for the lack of compelling rationale. Adventure games have come a long way since being little more than a series of convoluted puzzles for the sake of it, but Fire seems to be stuck as far back as its protagonist.

If this is intentional, it was a job well done. Despite the framework of a basic point and click adventure, a lot of the puzzles are very creative and well executed. An early puzzle features three cavemen who must be manipulated through the music created by a group of furry, beatboxing animals who happen to love strawberries. There are also a handful of puzzles that take the player’s interactions with the game into account rather than the character’s, such as moving a platform at the behest of hovering the cursor over it, chipping away at a rock by swiping the cursor back and forth, or navigating a maze to the next screen.

Prehistoric bees couldn’t fly up, apparently.

The puzzles aren’t all great, however, as a few of them are either overly simple, frustratingly convoluted, or require enormous leaps of logic. One puzzle that exemplifies this is the shape-shifting one which features the caveman turning into a selection of animals. At one point you have to put a rock on a pedestal to ensure the mouse form can get across a rollercoaster-like contraption. The rock is only necessary, however, because the mouse insists on stopping in mid-air instead of simply allowing his momentum to carry him forward to his next target, which he has ample room to reach. The purpose of all this is to reach the tree spirit that lingers up in the air, despite the fact that the caveman was in the form of a bee only moments ago. He’s not the smartest of neanderthals, but why he didn’t just fly up and pop the bubble trapping the spirit is more of a head-scratcher than any of Fire’s puzzles.

This puzzle was also bugged. In order to shape-shift, the caveman is supposed to place three stones on three panels. However, simply going to the screen to the left will trigger the leftmost panel indefinitely, removing the need for the third stone altogether and allowing players to skip over a chunk of the puzzle. Admittedly this is the only bug we came across, however.

The game’s method of communicating to the player is also something of a mixed bag, adding to these problems. Sometimes Fire does a wonderful job of nudging you in the right direction such as having the caveman dance when he inches closer to a solution. Other times, the game really suffers from a lack of dialogue since animations just don’t do enough for players to intuit the correct direction.

There is one thing Fire gets unerringly right: Art. The game features a vivid and colourful art style that borrows heavily from some of the great cartoons of our childhoods. Character design in particular is fantastic: a cat with an 8 ball for a stomach hangs out beside a dinosaur with a curtain covering his brain, which somehow worked its way into his stomach. Everything is presented in a very distinct manner, so players won’t have to worry about any nasty pixel hunts.

The soundtrack is largely forgettable, though never nauseating either. The music evokes a very prehistoric feel with its simplistic drum beats and maintains an upbeat feel throughout that perfectly meshes with the art, so while you won’t be humming any of the songs or searching out the soundtrack, it certainly sets the right mood.

The poor shaman never thought to look up before beginning his dance.

Fire relies on its joke a lot, and they’re a tad too hit and miss. While accidentally blowing up a shaman to gain his rainstick or turning cavemen into slabs of meat via the power of music tickled our funny bones, a giant mobile phone popping up in prehistoric times and forcing you through rote minigames that make stale jokes about microtransactions, porn pop-ups, and tindr’s existence before turning into a spaceship are clear attempts at randomness that fell a bit flat with us. Humour is perhaps the most subjective thing on the face of the planet though, so judge those examples for yourselves, readers.

Fire highlights the genre’s greatest strength and driving force by omission: Story. As unique and challenging as the game’s puzzles are, a lack of compelling narrative to weave them all together creates the sense of working through exercises in a text book, albeit a very pretty and creative one.

• Format: PC (version reviewed), Mac, Linux, PS4, XB1
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Headup Games
• Developer: Bigmoon Studios
• Players: 1-4
• Site: www.trappeddead.com/EN/
• Game code provided by the publisher

Trapped Dead: Lockdown is an attempt at taking the action RPG genre made popular by the Diablo series and injecting it with zombies. Taking on such a task was never going to be easy, as veering too far from the formula would be gambling on Headup Games’ ability to add compelling new mechanics. Adhering too strictly to the formula without the expertise and budget of the Diablo and Path of Exile teams carries its own risks in coming across as a poorly made copycat. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened.

To summarise Trapped Dead: Lockdown as “Zombie Diablo” should be seen as shallow and reductive, but it’s sadly accurate. Though it perhaps gives this game a little too much credit, since it removes all semblance of depth and polish inherent to the Diablo franchise and replaces it with painfully generic undead enemies.

This is an incredibly basic action RPG. You choose your character then navigate the maps, clicking things until they die or explode. The problems start coming when Trapped Dead gets so many of these basics wrong.

Level design is laughable, each featuring linear paths devoid of the periphery areas to explore that makes fans of the genre sink so much time into it. The missions in these levels quickly become tiresome as they fall into a routine of entering a new area, completing a soulless series of fetch quests, and moving on. There is also no map, making some of the more convoluted levels that twist the path into an oblique, empty roundabout a chore to get through.

Along this insipid cycle, your character earns levels and skill points to spend. Unfortunately, this also bears a shocking resemblance to a puddle in its depth: There are five attributes you can spend skill points in, though it makes no sense to divide them up rather than just shove them all into the stat that correlates to your chosen character’s strengths, turning it into a rather superfluous process. The skill trees have no branches and are designed to encourage a very set route, so you’ll just be unlocking new abilities every level with the barest veneer of choice attached.

There are five characters to choose from: Marine, Butcher, Exorcist, Marshal, and Assassin. While the Butcher and Exorcist are very distinct in their propensities toward melee and spiritual attacks respectively, the Marine, Marshal, and Assassin are all variations of “this guy does both melee and ranged,” although they do admittedly specialise in different combinations of weaponry.

The genre’s combat has never been particularly engaging on a mechanical level, but it’s always made up for it with outlandish animations and ability customisation. Trapped Dead once again gets this completely wrong. We played the melee focused Butcher who had a single attack animation that was repeated over and over again, regardless of weapon type. Yes, he swung around two-handed weapons in a single hand in a rather egregious, lazy oversight. His abilities, which all boiled down to either a defensive cooldown or an AOE attack, were also poorly animated. His slam ability, for example, has no animation of the actual character despite its name. Instead, electricity just fans out from beneath his feet, presumably surging up from the concrete at the behest of the entirely un-animated slam.

No shoddy take on a beloved genre would be complete without a buggy driving segment.. One of the levels sees you gain access to cars, flipping the perspective and prodding you to mow down the scarce clumps of zombies while you go about the previously mentioned dull missions. This was a nice change of pace in one way: It’s the only time the zombies actually seemed like zombies.

Enemies come in three brands: Shuffling zombies, slightly more mobile zombies, and dudes with guns. There is no variety therein, and for some reason they’re all bullet-sponges, taking copious amounts of hits (with the aforementioned lack of animation variety eliciting many yawns along the way) from the best available weapon in the hands of a melee specialist with every skill point sunk into strength. This may be because each encounter only features a handful of enemies rather than the overwhelming horde that is a staple of zombie fiction, so they had to act nothing like zombies.

The bosses are even worse: Versions of regular enemies with health and damage boosted. All you have to do is stand and attack, popping defensive abilities and healing items while you character slaps the bosses with all the passion and fervour of a mildly discomforted kitten. If you die? That’s fine, there is no penalty. Just respawn, come back, and beat down the rest of its health.

It doesn’t help that a few enemies are ridiculously bug-ridden, either. Toward the end of the game, you have to fight a few more “dudes with guns” wearing suits and, if you’re using a melee weapon, your character will stop about a yard in front of the enemies and start waving their weapon in the air between him and his foe. There is also an encounter with two tanks that will kill you just for walking near them, even if they’re moving away from you, and trigger a loop of dying and respawning while stood at the checkpoint.

The game’s UI is also ugly and cumbersome. You can’t see all your gear at once, having to click each slot to see what you have. You also can’t sort merchants’ wares at all. Speaking of ugly, character models are inhibited by technical limitations without a discernible art style to cover it up. Multiplayer? Doesn’t work.

Trapped Dead: Lockdown is a thoroughly dour experience that gets so many facets of the genre wrong, it begs the question of why Bigmoon Studios, with their clear ignorance of what makes Diablo and Path of Exile tick, wanted to make the game anyway. A cynic might think they took a look at the rise of the Walking Dead and the action RPG and combined it for a quick, uninspired cash grab.

• Format: PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Gearbox Software
• Developer: Gearbox Software
• Players: 1 offline, 1-4 online
• Site: http://www.homeworldremastered.com/
• Game code provided by PR.

In 1999, Homeworld presented an approach to the RTS genre that was so unique in its scope and mechanics that it earned itself an unwavering fanbase that remains to this day. Does Homeworld Remastered Collection retain the wonder of Homeworld and its sequel, or have the intervening sixteen years rendered them dated?

Not only do the games remain unique, but they are remarkably fresh all over again. Since the RTS genre has reached something of a stagnation point due to no real innovation in core areas, Homeworld’s approach of space warfare and a genuinely strategic eye for mission design don’t just carve a niche for the game, but throw lasers and missiles at it until it’s a full blown chasm for it to dominate.

Each mission takes place on a huge map in which you can move your ships on every axis. You’re in space, after all. It’s actually very simple: If you want to move a ship up or down – and there are plenty of reasons to do so – you simply right click to bring up the movement marker, hold the left mouse button, and move your mouse according to where you want to go.

Simplicity to achieve unique and interesting things permeates the entire game. For example, the first game in the package features Salvage Corvettes which act as expected in terms of resource acquisition, but can also be used to go and steal enemy units. It’s a mischievous tactic that is sure to make even the hardiest of RTS veterans grin with glee. The sequel offers an equally nefarious alternative in the Marine Frigate, an enormous ship that dispatches squads of troops to take over enemy ships without having to take them back to the mothership.

Combat takes a similar approach with its various Fighter, Corvette, Frigate, and Capital class ships holding a rock-paper-scissors relationship with each other. The huge variety of them adds some depth, but most of it comes from how you approach each individual skirmish. You’re granted the ability to set each squad into a variety of formations that have a huge effect on the battle’s outcome depending on which ships you place at the front versus the enemy’s own front-line defence. In the sequel, this is taken even further with the ability to upgrade ships, providing you the opportunity to make certain ships more damaging or resilient. The choice is up to you.

The game utilises all of this to create missions that are challenging without being belligerently difficult. For example, units are persistent between missions, meaning you’ll be carrying each ship with you to the next mission. This isn’t always a good thing when you’re immediately attacked by a combination that happens to be particularly strong against whatever you escaped the last skirmish with, pushing you to adapt your approach and learn some of the unit’s tricks such as the previously mentioned Salvage Corvettes. This persistence can be somewhat frustrating when there’s simply no way for you to win – effectively punishing you for achieving only a minor victory – but this is mitigated somewhat in the sequel by the introduction of elite units, boosted ships that survived a mission in which you exceeded the minimum goals.

The game never gets dull thanks to the huge variety in mission types: struggles to seek out resources in a region that’s been plundered long ago, navigating thin strips of space surrounded by radiation and filled with mines, and fending off the “Junkyard Dog,” an enemy Salvage Corvette dead set on stealing your Capital Ships to name a few. This continues in the sequel with highlights including clearing fields of radiation to attack Carriers, or the climactic battle which seamlessly introduces some enthralling and challenging new mechanics.

The gameplay is all translated fairly well into the game’s multiplayer which brings the races of both games into battles that reward players’ big picture strategies, not just their execution or micro-management skills.

Homeworld Remastered Collection’s presentation is also impeccable, faithfully recreating the atmosphere of 70s and 80s sci-fi through masterful cutscene direction. This is done by things such as the screen lingering on alien ships as they slowly turn to face the player in an eerie silence, or using the gravity void of space to create a sense of vertigo in the player by panning around objects at an angle that should be odd. This is bolstered by some excellent voice acting that matches the vibe perfectly.

Animations add to this with little touches such as the mothership and your units warping in at the beginning of the mission in a way that seems so incredibly alien, it challenges our ideas of how movement is represented instead of lazily abiding by them to get the point across easier – a gamble that pays off enormously with the added depth achieved. The graphics themselves aren’t technically amazing, but they’re used well to create impressive visual moments such as the dogfights you’ll be sending your ships into.

This is all in service to the traditional space opera that is the game’s story; the last of the Kushan’s journey to their homeworld after unknowingly breaking a treaty preventing them from engaging in hyperspace travel. The Kushan’s battle against the Taiidan is filled with endearing hallmarks of the genre such as rebel fleets, benevolent aliens, and a human ship AI that come together in a completely serviceable story.

It’s a shame, then, that the original game’s remastered form suffers from a litany of bugs likely due to being shifted to the sequel’s engine. Nevertheless, Homeworld Remastered Collection comprises a pair of fantastic, unique games that hopefully serve as the launching pad for a successful revival of the franchise.

11 bit studios have released DLC for the critically acclaimed This War of Mine that does two wonderful things.

The first is partnering with some of the stars of the street art world. M-City, Gabriel “Specter” Reese, SeaCreative, Emir Cerimovic, Fauxreel, and Mateusz Waluś have all chipped in original artwork. These pieces of art centred around the core themes of the game itself – the human condition and state of humanity during war – will be found dotted throughout the locations of This War of Mine, creating a “unique in-game gallery” for players.

The second is giving 100% of the money earned from the DLC’s sale to War Child, a UK-based charity that helps children suffering from conflicts and war all across the globe. They’ve even won a BRIT Award!

So if you’re feeling charitable and own This War of Mine, you can head over to DLC’s store page on Steam where it can be purchased at three tiers of pricing: £0.79, £6.99, and £14.99 for the UK, or $0.99, $9.99, and $19.99 for USA. It seems there are no differences in content between the three tiers, so it all depends on just how charitable you’re feeling.

If you don’t already own This War of Mine, which we thought was an excellent and respectful look at the horrors of war, this DLC presents a good time to do so. The game can be found here.

• Format: PC (version reviewed), iOS
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
• Developer: Shining Gate Software
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.decay.se/
• Game code provided by the publisher

The best examples of horror in media are rarely those concerned with men donning hockey masks or knifed gloves, but real human issues. Decay: The Mare purports to do exactly this with its tale of a drug addict in rehab, but this is quickly revealed to be a thin facade to trick players into an egregiously shallow experience.

This is mostly down to the fact that this entire drug addict component is completely done away with after the poorly-compressed opening cinematic coated in film grain. The first two of three episodes don’t even feature any narrative threads outside of audio logs, plagued by poor writing and melodramatic voice acting rampant with pauses so blatant in their intent that they’re rendered a comical pastiche, much like the rest of the game. These serve to lay some groundwork for the ill-considered, threadbare plot that is delivered in the span of about a minute during the game’s climax. There’s also something about gang warfare in there that is completely random and disconnected from everything else, but that is also introduced and quickly concluded in the span of about thirty seconds.

Visually, the graphics fit the theme of low-budget horror that the writing establishes. It looks like something out of 2001, where games attempted realistic graphics but simply didn’t have the technology to fit the art style. Everything from the art to the animations is coated in a thick layer of this bargain-basement slime, whereas a more interesting artistic approach might have covered for these flaws. Outside of some mildly interesting imagery in the first episode, though, perhaps there was just an immense dearth of visual ideas; there’s a talking hand-in-a-bag and that’s about it. The monster – who is just a man with an unfortunate skin condition – suffers from this as he looks more amusing than scary.

“It’s just a rash! Honest!”

None of it ever comes across as scary or malicious, a problem that plagues the set pieces. There are a handful of jump scares scattered throughout the game’s three episodes, but they’re heavily forecast and lack a sufficient build in tension: After the first time you’re interrupted by static to be shown a lone chair in a room, you’re expecting the second where the chair is replaced with something else. Similarly, the screen lingers on a hole so long that the eventual scare is completely ineffective.

The only time any sufficient tension is built, it’s wasted on one of these impotent jump scares. During the second episode, the player is given a camera that is later used to navigate a room bathed in darkness where the only sound is heavy breathing. It’s genuinely discomforting, but it’s thrown away on a comical body on the return trip.

This camera is also used in a number of puzzles involving hidden numbers, but it’s really just another layer of obfuscation on an otherwise overly simplistic puzzle. The third episode also features another new puzzle-solving mechanic in the form of a pocket watch that can reverse time, but it’s only ever used twice to move obstacles out of the player’s path and then completely forgotten about.

“Stop poking my eyes for America!”

Puzzle design as whole, in fact, is incredibly basic. When it isn’t a literal list of instructions, it feels like one: You get a scrap of paper that tells you exactly which direction you need to go in a “Lost Woods” style series of rooms, and a few scraps of paper telling you exactly where to look for nails to thrust into a teddy bear’s face to appease the hand-bag’s fetish for plushie mutilation (it seems). It’s a bit like Care Bears meets Fifty Shades of Grey or something? There’s also a combination of button presses on a statue’s head that you just brute force until you stumble upon the correct combo.

Players navigate between these puzzles using controls that have been lazily translated over from the game’s mobile roots. Arrows at the sides will turn the player’s view between the static screens, while clicking on objects within these will interact with them. This, along with the lack of a map, can make it quite easy to get lost within each episode’s very small levels. That can be quite frustrating when the player knows exactly which room to go to but the game refuses to communicate its logistics well enough – but this is somewhat relieved by the hint button that will point you in the right direction. Though having to rely on a hint system to navigate the place only serves to highlight what a mess the maps are, really.

This also leads to copious redundant screens plaguing the player’s journey through this noxious title, such as having to click a button to face backward so that they can enter the door instead of just having the button send them through it. This doesn’t even fly on mobile any more since 3D landscapes are perfectly achievable there, so why on Earth would it be okay on PC?

The only positive aspect of Decay: The Mare is that it’s mercifully short, its torturous journey through the three episodes uttering its final insipid sigh and crawling back into its grave after only a couple of hours. This game utterly fails to achieve anything, and can’t be recommended to even the most forgiving of horror aficionados.

• Format: 3DS
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Developer: Nintendo EAD, Grezzo
• Players: 1
• Site: http://zelda.com/majoras-mask/
• Game purchased by the reviewer

After the largely successful release of Ocarina of Time’s 3DS port, the next obvious – and highly requested – step was a similar treatment of Majora’s Mask. It took three years, but Nintendo have finally acquiesced to the high demand and opened the gates of Termina once again, this time with a third dimension!

It’s quite probable that those who sought out a review for this game have a fondness for the original and are more interested in how this version utilises the more powerful hardware. Those of you are in luck: There’s a huge boost in the graphical finesse of Majora’s Mask 3D, allowing for a much higher fidelity of the game’s vision of Termina. The added power of the 3DS not only allows for the much better textures and character models on display, but also enhances the unique atmosphere with certain new techniques. The introductory sequence alone employs fog and some phenomenal lighting that grants it a new chilling sense of mystery.

This tone was perhaps always Majora’s Mask’s greatest strength, and it’s been faithfully preserved in this update. Upon stepping into Termina, the first thing players hear is a melancholic tune that embodies the quietly solemn mood that follows for the majority of the game in a number of ways, particularly in a lot of the haunting imagery used: Early on there is a wilted Deku scrub who is described to look just like Deku Link, and those diligent enough will discover certain hints as to why. The Happy Mask Salesman himself carries a mask on his pack that resembles a screaming, anguished face that peers over his shoulder.

Perhaps the best way Majora’s Mask uses these to set its tone is to have them serve as the underpinnings for the world of Termina; the previously mentioned song is followed up by an equally resonant whimsical tune in Clock Town that serves as a stark juxtaposition. In terms of art direction, it’s the same vibrant Zelda that players have known and loved for twenty years, but adorned with darker furnishings such as the wilted Deku scrub, the iconic moon, and an emblem of said moon above the door of the mayor’s house. It eschews subtlety for very brief peeks into the darker nature of this world that capture the player’s imagination at every step.

Even some of the townsfolk embody this as they jaunt happily around town, with blackened eyes on an otherwise innocuous face. This is much more notable with the new character models made possible by the 3DS’s hardware, most of which are fantastic and offer some minor, characterising flairs.

The biggest change in Majora’s Mask was the time mechanic, which has been tweaked ever so slightly here to make for a more player-friendly experience but remains largely intact. Players have three days to save Termina from certain destruction; the passage of that time however can be sped up, slowed down, and reset entirely. Through clever use of certain mechanics, however, this never feels stifling.

Carefully placed save statues dot the land and Link learns a song that allows him to teleport to these early on, saving the player a lot of time getting back in a lot of cases due to skipping over certain lengthy puzzles. So if the player runs out of time, they can simply reset the clock and give themselves a full 72 in-game hours to explore the new area.

These owl statues make travelling the world so much better.

Items are also granted in key locations that allow for a similar expedition of certain quests. One area features a mini-dungeon followed by a stealth sequence that can not only take up a large portion of those three in-game days, but will also require you to return through them. The first time through however, the player receives the hookshot that can be used in the area to skip the mini-dungeon and a large portion of the stealth sections in a fraction of the time in subsequent visits.

While these are all excellently implemented, the design of the game surrounding them takes an unfortunate nosedive in its second half, the shortcuts becoming irrelevant in the face of the tedium of some of the quests. There is a quest that involves capturing seven eggs in jars, resulting in a dull back-and-forth journey each time if you’ve only managed to accrue a single jar. While it’s made evident that additional jars will help, it’s not clear exactly where they are; seeking them out would just take more time and possibly result in a forced time reset, losing all the progress the player has made so far and thus making it a less attractive option. The fact that the jars are necessary for the eggs at all is a punishment to those who either haven’t explored or haven’t explored in the right places, rather than a reward for those who have.

Similarly, there is a mini-dungeon in which you have to constantly bring some items to the mummy-like Gibdo enemies, resulting in the player again going back and forth between vendor and Gibdo for the handful who require items unavailable in the dungeon itself since it’s impossible to know which item will be required by the next one. It’s like you’re being punished for not using a guide, even more so when it bleeds into the game’s dungeons. It’s also a particularly egregious example of an oblique and asinine stance toward game design that has fortunately dwindled since the original’s release.

Those players fond of the original will love this journey back into Termina, but there’s not enough improvements to the core of the game’s second half to entice those who weren’t. It’s a real shame; a few additional tweaks could have elevated this very good game to a masterpiece.

• Format: PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Wadjet Eye
• Developer: Grundislav Games
• Players: 1
• Site: www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/golden-wake/

There’s a certain mystique to 1920s America, generally surrounded by the allure of the mob and the continued expansion that the nation was facing. There was a volatile mix of ingredients that make for some fascinating stories. Grundislav Games do a good job of telling one such story, though their execution is not without its drawbacks.

A Golden Wake tells the story of Banks, a real estate mogul from New York who relocates to Miami in order to make a name for himself. During his tale, he gets a few curveballs thrown his way, making for a highly sympathetic tale of the frustration of futility, and what lengths they can drive someone to. It’s written in a way that fosters this sense of empathy despite all of the morally questionable things Banks does to achieve his goals. This is mostly thanks to the dialogue which does a fantastic job of putting players in Banks’ shoes, justifying his choices even when they’re not necessarily the correct ones.

The game oozes the style of the 20s. Dialogue is written with era-appropriate words like “copacetic” that harken to the era, though it’s never done to an extent that sacrifices ease of understanding. The voice acting does a similar job of playing on players’ expectations based on mobster movies and the like, while the soundtrack features a lot of saxophone.

Like most games in the Wadjet Eye catalogue, A Golden Wake features the publisher’s trademark pixel art. While this doesn’t allow for a lot of expression or personality from the characters on a surface level, the voice acting picks up a lot of the slack here and injects the pixels with a host of personality: Banks’ enthusiasm swells in his speech, while Doc Dammer’s unapologetically skeezy voice acting does a great job of complementing the writing. Some inconsistent sound quality unfortunately harms a lot of this dialogue, and the presidential Merrick’s delivery is extremely flat and stilted.

The writing of the text also goes a long way in filling in the blanks. Descriptions provide a lot of detail thanks to excellent writing. Early on, examining a billboard will go into meticulous detail of “the model’s vacant stare gazing down upon you and your fellow pedestrians,” also bringing attention to the bustle of the street. It goes a long way in bringing some life to the game’s world.

These descriptions also set the scene on a more character-oriented level. Upon arriving in Miami, an examination of the train station tells the player about Banks’ uneventful trip and how it didn’t hinder his excitement, reinforcing the eager enthusiasm that he embodies.

While these are great ways of covering up the art style, it’s no excuse for it. More detailed visuals would only further complement these components with a higher level of fidelity, allowing for an even more immersive game. The animations are particularly jarring; movement is incredibly unnatural and everybody floats rather than walks.

Mechanically, A Golden Wake is fairly simple and doesn’t deviate too far from point and click conventions where it counts. Players simply have to left click to interact, right click to examine, or click on an item in their inventory to use it. It’s a welcome deviation from some of the more convoluted contextual menus present in other games.

There are a few gameplay systems present that focus on manipulating people or events into Banks’ favour using his silver tongue. It’s a devious sense of power that plays to our more wicked sides that want to lie, cheat, and steal our way to the top, and it can be just as exhilarating as a particularly powerful shotgun.

These take a few forms, but most of them centre around a system of persuasion that tasks players with appealing to their target’s particular personality traits. While it will generally tell you these particular characteristics through either dialogue or the Seller Intuition system, it still presents a challenge as the choices aren’t always obvious in their effect.

More traditional point and click puzzles are also present. While they generally veer away from anything too convoluted, there is one particularly egregious offender early on in the game. Players have to interpret a randomly generated date to derive a safe combination, but something like “January 5, 1913” becomes “1-0-5” rather than anything that makes sense; inserting the zero doesn’t really resonate with most players without it actually being present.

While most of the puzzles are disconnected, their paths intertwine to tie them into a singular, cohesive narrative. For example, you might go to the Men’s Club to hire a pilot and stumble upon an antenna required for a model train. This weaves everything together and makes for a constantly compelling game.

The game falters when it veers away from these traditional puzzles, however. There is an action sequence that involves driving a car beneath a plane, but the on-screen buttons are horribly unresponsive. Combined with the poor communication of which button accelerates or decelerates, it devolves into an exercise in frustration.

There are also a few technical issues. There are no resolution options, forcing the game to run in a tiny section of the screen surrounded by four huge black bars. There’s also no option to change the mouse sensitivity, forcing players to endure the sluggish cursor for the entirety of the game.

Technical issues and pixel art don’t hinder A Golden Wake’s ability to whisk players away to its stylish rendition of 1920s Miami, but it does make it somewhat less remarkable. While the world is immersive, the story compelling, and the characters interesting, it’s disheartening to know that it could be even more so.

• Format: Wii U
• Unleashed: Europe: Out Now, North America: 26th September
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Developer: Koei Tecmo Games
• Players: 1-2
• Site: www.zelda.com/hyrule-warriors/

Zelda and Dynasty Warriors isn’t exactly the kind of combination you’d expect, is it? While Zelda has always featured combat, it’s always had a more puzzle-like nature opposed to the hack and slash that the Warriors series is known for. So how exactly have Koei Tecmo made a game that is both Zelda and Warriors?

Hyrule Warriors’ foundation is in its combat, composed of a Warriors backbone with a few Zelda elements scattered throughout. There are two types of attack – the regular and the heavy – that can be strung together. It’s an incredibly simple system that finds depth in the variety of combos serving different purposes: Some situations will call for juggling, while others are better faced with attacks that can force a wide range of enemies backward, for example. There are also special attacks that take this to higher levels, either in terms of damage or area of effect. If you collect enough magic, Focus Spirit will boost this as well as attack speed and damage. It presents a huge variety of ways to tackle each situation and encourages experimentation.

The thirteen characters were also designed with this in mind, as they all have varied styles of combat. Sheik, for example, is almost entirely about juggling the enemies, while Fi focuses on gliding through them while cutting them apart. Not only that, but the characters with different weapons can be used dramatically differently when equipped with them; Link’s sword and shield set couldn’t be any more different to his magic rod.

There’s a character for everyone, and they all do a great job of making the player feel incredibly powerful which seems to be the game’s focus. Animation and sound design mesh together perfectly to accomplish this. While Impa swings her huge sword around to send waves of enemies flying, and Link summons a giant rock pillar out of nowhere to fill the more ludicrous of power fantasies, Fi’s nimble dance wouldn’t have the same amount of gravity to it if not for the empowering metallic clings and clangs that accompany her every step. If a sense of empowerment was indeed Hyrule Warriors’ main goal, then it’s been pulled off with a perfection that has very few rivals.

The large levels feature a number of keeps and outposts – areas that spawn either enemies or allies – which are naturally the focal point for each conflict. At higher levels of difficulty it becomes quite challenging to both maintain your own positions while taking the enemies’, but it’s equally rewarding to do so for a number of reasons: the gratification of overwhelming your enemy or the Skulltulas and heart pieces you can unlock for doing so.

There’s a huge number of these to find, and it’s one of the biggest components that make the game so compelling. Golden Skulltulas will spawn after meeting certain requirements, forcing you to streamline your process of engaging the level. This can lead to several-hour-long quests on the higher difficulties that will have you tearing your hair out, but are incredibly satisfying to complete.

Weapons with varying damage values and qualities will drop in these maps as well as materials, instilling the game with a healthy dose of loot fever that will have players going back time and time again just as much as in more traditional loot games. There is also a bazaar where these weapons can be merged, transferring one of their qualities to another weapon of the same type that opens up a horde of customisation possibilities.

Materials you find, on the other hand, are used for crafting character-specific badges that boost damage, unlock new combos, or make items more effective. The rate at which the higher quality materials drop provide huge incentive to replaying previous levels for the reward of more power.

There are also a number of bosses to tackle throughout the game, and this is where Zelda mechanics are seamlessly integrated into the game. Players unlock iconic items such as bombs and a bow during their journey, which are mainly used to take on these bosses in much the same way as they are in the Zelda games. King Dodongo, for example, becomes vulnerable to your attacks after being fed a few bombs during his breathing animation that precedes a fireball attack.

There are several modes that use these mechanics in different ways. Legend Mode features a series of levels that don’t really deviate too far from the tug-of-war, but structures them in such a way that is highly compelling: Players will generally be encouraged to mix up which characters and weapons they use to keep things new and fresh until the second half of the mode, and there’s a constant influx of dramatically different environments to battle through. Free Mode features the same levels but places no restrictions on your choice of character.

Adventure mode mixes things up quite dramatically. Rather than having purely tug-of-war gameplay, there are a few carefully constructed encounters designed to push the player to learn more about the game’s inner workings, such as defeating hundreds of enemies while being chased by Gohma or killing twenty enemies in a one-hit-kill environment. These are navigated via an 8-bit Zelda map that unlocks new characters and weapons, providing a lot of meaningful rewards for a job well done. Challenge mode is one map that runs you through several of these encounters, and seems a bit tacked on as it doesn’t provide much in the way of rewards.

The entire game is made with a very strong reverence for Zelda, from the level design that features an entire shrine to Link’s past to the traditional Zelda soundtrack with a twist of Warriors’ electric guitars. It all makes for a rollercoaster ride through the Zelda universe.

Hyrule Warriors is neither a traditional Zelda nor Warriors game, but is perhaps more akin to a movie remake: The same story told by a team of people with different methods and sensibilities.