Category: Reviews

Retro Monday: Zool

Where do I begin? Well, let’s try with the visuals. Visually the game is actually pretty decent with some interesting sweets used on the first few stages.

Now we come to the gameplay, the most important thing for a game is to have interesting or generally just good gameplay, Zool fails in that respect, it controls are naff, the game seems to be very faced paced, but kind of unable to keep up with itself, everything about the gameplay screams C rate trash.

I don’t really have anything positive to say about the game other than it made me want a Chupa Chubs lolly.

It’s actually quite hard to say much about the game negatively or positively as it’s just nothing of interest to note, due to the game being so mediocre.

Verdict: Avoid

Retro Monday: The Simpsons

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This week was the week that we celebrated the 1st year anniversary of Retro Monday, and to celebrate I managed to get 3 other people to play a co-op game with me, that game was The Simpsons for the Arcade.

The Simpsons was released in 1991 and was your classic Konami beat ’em up. The game itself was a side scrolling 2D brawler where you play as the Simpson family trying to rescue Maggie from the evil clutches of Waylon Smithers. You get to play as Marge, Homer, Bart and Lisa,  they all have the same basic attacks though I believe there is a difference in their ranges.

Visually the graphics are nice and many of the classic Simpsons characters can be seen through out from Barney Gumble to Side-Show Bob to even more obscure characters.

We managed to play through the game to completion, but it was no easy feat, the difficulty on normal folk isn’t to bad, but the bosses and some other enemies have some pretty cheap mechanics that are involved just to take your money, we blasted through a ton of credits by the end. The game is fun to play though and with people it’s a great laugh as we quoted Simpson references as different characters appeared on screen, or just in general. The one thing I can say that playing this is immense fun with a group of people, I don;t think it’d be as enjoyable on your own, the whole point is the 3 playere co-op.

All in All I would recommend this game whole heartedly due to it being a genuinly good Beat ’em up, but if you can get a few friends together you’ll have a whale of a time.

Verdict: Recommend.

Monthly games review – Pumped BMX+ (PS4, PS+)

It is entirely possible to argue that Microsoft and Sony are taking gamers for a ride by charging extra to access online multiplayer features through Xbox Live Gold and Playstation Plus, especially as the latter was not necessary to play online with the Playstation 3. Each service offers several “free” games each month as long as you have an active subscription with them as an incentive, the idea being that by paying a flat fee of around £30-35 per year (this price fluctuates with online deals, competing retailers and seasonal sales) you get a handful of titles each month meaning that you could technically never have to buy a game for your console of choice and stick to the offerings that Sony/MS present.

Is this worthwhile? Part of the problem is that we often don’t know what is going to be on offer each month and the quality can fluctuate greatly. There have been a few exceptions; The Banner Saga 2 was available as part of Microsoft’s Games With Gold program at launch. Following on from my article about how to save money on games, I am going to periodically present a first impression of some of the games that turn up on these services as often they are less well-known indie games that are not popular or frequently discussed or whether they’re potentially worth buying on their own if for whatever reason you either don’t have any of these services or want to know if they’re any good regardless.

The first game I’m going to talk about my first impressions of is Pumped BMX+, a two-dimensional sports game which was on Playstation Plus in November 2016 but is also available on Xbox One, Steam and the Wii U.

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I went into this expecting to be disappointed; the version available here is a consolidated mobile port and I was wary it would be a simple Trials knockoff with some fiddly tricks thrown in. It is one of the better examples of a game making a jump from phones to “real” consoles; there are no microtransactions or examples of copy-pasted UI to betray its history and apart from its slightly basic visuals this could pass as a standard indie game developed to a smaller budget.

You control your slightly blank-faced BMX guy on a 2D plane as you navigate jumps, do tricks in the air and grind rails to complete sets of objectives for each level. You might have to do a particular trick, get a certain score or pull off certain combos to unlock the next and more difficult set of challenges. The control scheme has been successfully translated from touch screens to a controller; you hold down X to accelerate, release it as you are about to jump, use the right analogue stick with the shoulder buttons to pull off tricks and spins then hold X again to land quickly to keep momentum for the next jump. You can just blitz through the levels or chose to get deep into the score/trick system to complete every set of objectives which push you to improve through using the tools provided. It keeps the mechanics (relatively) simple and challenges you to use them better as you progress; a framework which made Trials, Trackmania and other games like it so appealing and rewarding.

My only complaints are that from what I’ve seen the level design is a bit basic; you’re not going to get the wild variety of strange and out-there levels of Trials Evolution here. Also the soundtrack is incredibly annoying, I turned it off after a few levels so to keep the right atmosphere you might want to find some early 2000s skate punk or the soundtrack to your favourite Tony Hawk game instead.

Pumped BMX+ was a pleasant surprise that I may well come back to every now and again and is one to watch out for in Steam sales/future Games with Gold promotions.