Recent reviews by talkingwires

A strong solo effort by Russian artist Artyom Trakhanov. The game's an old school choose-your-own-adventure, with a handy feature to quickly zip through paths already taken to find all the endings, and it takes about an hour to explore every path.

The story uses second-person narration to follow a hapless delivery driver having the worst day of their life. The writing's strong and describes the scenes in vivid, yet concise language punctuated by quick trips into your character's mind for extra effect. The dialogue sounds pretty natural, too, despite the author speaking ESL, but there are a few strange word choices. The whole story just kinda... pops. It's great!

So's the art, which showcases the author's graphic novel and game design chops. It's done in an MS Paint pixel style, and uses looping animation, reveals, quick changes, and overlaid panels throughout each scene, with the occasional sound effect thrown in for good measure. There's some real cinematic flair to this game!

If you're often disappointed by games' amateurish writing and hold Disco Elysium to be a high water mark of the medium, you'll dig this. If you like comic books with gritty, adult stories, you'll dig this. If you're on the fence and are the type of person that pays money for stories printed on paper, you'll dig this.

Disco Elysium is a story about the human condition and man’s place in a cold and uncaring universe, punctuated by humor, pathos, the absurd, and earnest sincerity. It may be my favorite videogame of all time.

The boundless creativity in the directions the story goes, the way the player can express themselves, and the pathos and humor throughout the story are unrivaled. The presentation is top-notch, with a strong visual and typographical language and subtle animations that guide one’s eye through the reams of written text. The voice acting is mostly great—your thoughts being a standout—although some characters have poor takes with odd emphasis or mispronounced words. And the world these characters inhabit is so fully realized one could almost imagine this was a real place, with even the littlest corners of the game unfolding strange and delightful vignettes that say something about the larger whole.

Technically, the game’s in great shape and I only encountered one progression-blocking bug that has since been patched. It plays great with a controller, too, and one can easily play from a comfy sofa, wrapping themselves up in this world like a comfy blanket. Highly recommended!

I had high hopes for Vagrus. I grew up reading the Fighting Fantasy Choose Your Own Adventure books, have sunk many hours into Failbetter Game's text adventure web browser game Fallen London, and played both games in their Sunless series. I also enjoy tactical and grand strategy games, ones like Crusader Kings and Stellaris. This is all to say, I‘m basically Vagrus‘ target demographic. So, why no recommendation?

Simply put, the writing in Vagrus isn‘t up to par. You know the term “programmer art?” It refers to art created during game development, out of necessity to serve as a placeholder. Well, Vagrus has “programmer writing” That is, text with no style or flair that merely exists to have *something* onscreen. How so? Many sentences have extraneous clauses, ones any editor would have struck from a first draft, and this feels like padding out a word count. The descriptions are either too vague, often failing to evoke sense of place. Or, they choose to focus on details irrelevant to the characters or actions happening in that particular scene. If I’m speaking to a character, describe how they move or the way their body language shifts when they disagree with what you have just said, not the knickknacks in the back of their shop. And every character you meet speaks with the same voice, often using modern phrasing or slang. The player character is written this way, too and is quoted, like the other characters, in third-person which is a strange choice.

Some of the writing comes across as needlessly snarky, too, instead of sincere. The phrasing can be flat-out weird at times, which might be a product of the authors speaking English as a second language, or relying on machine translations. Strange pop culture references to other media, like Star Wars, appear from time to time and they aren’t particularly welcome, either, just distracting. All in all, much of the writing feels like a rushed draft. Serviceable, but work that‘ll be edited and punched up later.

The presentation isn‘t doing it any favours, either. Typography is crucial for a game like this, but little care has been given to the typography in Vagrus. There might five or six differently-sized typefaces onscreen at once, with little visual hierarchy or consistency. Margins are too wide, with too many words per line, and are center justified. Tick marks are used instead proper quotation marks. The lack of any kerning creates rivers of distracting white space through the middle of paragraphs. It is all blasé and presented with seemingly little care, let alone style or flair.

Vagrus does support controllers, but how one navigates the various menus and screens is sorely lacking consistency and I often found myself reaching for a mouse to do things like buy a stack of items from a vendor. Speaking of mice, the game could make better use of buttons available on them; the developers chose to use keyboard combos and basically ignore the right or center mouse buttons. A recent patch did finally let players right-click on the map to move which was a welcome addition. One day, perhaps they’ll integrate this “right mouse button” technology in other parts of the game?

Vagrus has some technical issues, too. UI elements occasionally fail to load, type scaling only affects some of the text in the game, and I experienced several minor bugs and two crashes. Fortunately, the developers have provided considerable post-launch support and do not seem adverse to reworking and improving existing systems. Not the writing though, as that is considered to be done. Even written in stone, you could say. So, even if the techincal and UI issues are be ironed out in the future, the clunky writing will remain. As it stands now, it‘s hard for me to recommend Vagrus.

The cogs, and gears, and whirlygigs, they are all just set dressing. *Cogs* is really just a sliding puzzle game, with the animated bit and bobs meaning “this piece must go in a certain spot.” Those hoping for something more free-form, or akin to *The Incredible Machine* will likely be disappointed.

*Cogs*’s supported resolutions range only from 800x600 to 1280x720, aka 720p. Full screen mode doesn’t scale either. So, windowed mode is really the only option on modern displays and those running a 4K monitor will likely have to scale their entire desktop to play this game.

*Cogs* is a passible time-waster, but those seeking any depth ought to look elsewhere.

Those going into No Rest for the Wicked expecting a Souls-like may be unpleasantly surprised that foremost, it's an ARPG like Diablo. The combat mechanics and level design do emulate the best of the Souls games, but much of what you'll actually be doing in No Rest involves chopping trees, mining ore, and fishing to feed a crafting system that is too opaque and grindy to feel like much fun. The bones of a good game are here, but at this point in the Early Access cycle, it is hard to recommend No Rest For the Wicked.

The combat is feels weighty, the stamina and poise systems could become great, enemy attacks are clearly communicated with windups and sound effects. Trading blows with some monstrous boss is easily the best part of the game. Another highlight is the world itself, with a detailed, yet painterly design. Paths loop back on themselves in unexpected ways, notes scattered about tell a story, of sorts. The shader and and particle effects in a rain storm can be truly stunning!

So, why don't I recommend it? Well, I think No Rest launched into Early Access a year too early. Its first few hours make a poor impression with technical issues, a tutorial that explains mechanics that are hardly ever used again, and just as it wraps up and the story's getting started, it throws you back into the first area to grind resources and XP before you can equip most the gear you've found. When I reached the town hub, I thought, "Surely, I can get geared up, now!" But nope, turns out all the vendor buildings are in ruins, go chop trees and wait for an hours-long countdown before you can make use of them.

Weapons scale off of one, sometimes two, stats, and have minimum requirements to even be equipped. You may points in a skill just to try out some new mace or bow, no click with the weapon at all, and then find out there's no way to respec your character. That's exasperated by a UI that fails to convey much of anything. There are no tooltips, or in-game explanations of stats, or even why you should spec into one over another. Maybe I need to "get gud," but some mechanics do not seem be working as intended, or fail to give the player enough information to know why an action didn't have its desired effect. Parrying is wonky, and trying to sneak up on an enemy will usually result on them spinning around and attack just before you get in poking range. The close camera hinders more than it helps, and since enemy spawns are randomized, it's not uncommon to be moseying along—pausing to catch fish and mine ore, of course, because you'll always be doing that on your way anywhere—and catch a fire grenade to the face from an off-screen enemy. They could at least add barks or ambient voicelines to warn of what's up ahead.

This is all atop major technical issues. The game stutters like crazy as it loads and unloads assets as you move through the world, and that's on a fast M2 SSD and RTX 2070 and medium settings. The stuttering and hitching happen in combat, too, which is… not ideal. Hard to react to incoming attacks when No Rest[/i/] is lurching from one frame to the next.

I'll be following No Rest for the Wicked's development with interest, and will check it out again, further down the line. Like I said, there is a great ARPG-Souls mashup here, but as it exists at this moment in time, it's a hard game to recommend.

Everybody seems to have an opinion on Destiny, whether or not they've even played it. Many gamers have a long and sometimes troubled history with Bungie, the studio behind Destiny. The under-30 crowd probably grew up playing Halo, their breakout, Xbox-exclusive hit and may not even be aware of the company's history before that franchise. But Bungie always had grander ambitions than being pigeonholed into a single genre, or writing around a singular avatar character. Destiny's their attempt bring a universe to life.

And they've been successful, mostly, but wasn't always so. Mechanically, the game is top of its class from the animation and sound design, to the art direction and environmental storytelling. The "feel" of firing a weapon in Destiny simply hasn't been beat. It's everything surrounding the mechanics that have historically been contentious, the MMO bits and business model. The first Destiny stumbled out of the gate, but a couple expansions later, eventually found its footing. The second (and ongoing) game famously almost killed the studio, until the Forsaken expansion turned things around.

So, is Destiny any good? After ten years of storytelling that culminated with the latest expansion, The Final Shape, yes, and I believe that the game's stronger than it's ever been. But, that's just my opinion, another drop in the ocean of opinions on Destiny. After all these years and ups and downs, I'm still playing Destiny, and I think you should, too.

Weapon of Choice is a run-and-gun in the vein of Contra or Gunstar Heroes. The game differentiates itself with its "death brush" mechanic — time slows down when you're hit, letting you avoid death — and multiple characters that you can swap in if the one you're playing goes down. You have the opportunity to carry one downed character with to the next level, preserving them for your run. Lose all your characters, and the run's over.

The game has a unique look, pulled from a kid's sketchbook. The art assets lack cohesion, and everything looks like paper cutouts assembled atop each other to create each level, or sections of an enemy. It calls to mind Flash game of yore, with animation created through bending and morphing the sprites. Little is done to differentiate the foreground from the back — all the colors are extremely saturated — and it sometimes hard to tell what is a platform and what is in the background. It's certainly a unique look, even if it doesn't look particularly appealing.

The plays as rough as it looks. Character movement lack any precision, with double-jumps being more of an extended drift. Combine that with the "spider pack" — a tool that lets you automatically latch on to any surface — and it feel like you're floating through the levels. Each character comes with a unique gun and mechanic, but these aren't particularly well thought out or useful. For example, one character has a double split off in the opposite direction when you double-jump, but the camera jerks awkwardly away each time and her gun fires in a strange pattern that makes it less than helpful.

Each level has branching paths, tied to the story, and with different people/beings navigating you through them. These paths are tied to the story, but like the artwork, it's cribbed from a teenager's notebook and mostly nonsense. There is music, unfortunately. It's short, generic, and grating heavy metal riffs on endless repeat, and I quickly turned it off. The game is short, too, with a run to the end taking about ten minutes. Playing another run and choosing a different path through the levels adds some replay value.

In the end, Weapon of Choice is just mediocre. It's not a bad game, just a sloppy and generic one.

If you have fond memories of playing Subspace back in the day, but always wished the game had a single-player mode, SPAZ is the game for you.

A top-down shooter, your ships handle like the one from Asteroids, with thrust and momentum affecting your crafts as they goes flying across the battlefield. You have an entire squadron at your disposal, but can only directly control a single ship at a time. The others are handled by the AI, but you can and you swap between ships with the press of the button. Each ship can be upgraded or swapped out for different ones better suited to the challenges at hand.

Instead of flags and bases, the game pits your squadron against varieties of enemy ships. Your squadron jumps from system to system in the galaxy, mining for resources to upgrade your ships while completing different missions. There isn't too much variety in the gameplay, with most of the missions boiling down to "blow up everything that isn't yours." There is a story, too, but it is pretty thin.

I got a kick out of the game, mostly for the nostalgia of playing something similar to Subspace. The lack of variety and paper-thin story hurt the game, and give little reason to grind your way to finish. But for the price, it's fun while it lasts, and I'm hoping for a sequel or add-on that fleshes out the core gameplay further.

If you've been gaming for any significant length of time, you've probably played one iteration of Worms or another. The original game was released in the days of yore, when tweaking your system amounted to fiddling with your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to get sound working. Over the years, Team 17 had released dozens of sequels and spinoffs, to varying degrees of success.

Worms Reloaded takes the classic gameplay and adds new weapons and game modes such as Puzzles. Most of the improvements are found in the high-rez sprites and Internet multiplayer, with the core gameplay remaining unchanged. Think of the game as a definitive version for playing online against friends (or enemies).

The game has also been ported to OS X, but the port is incompatible with its Windows counterpart. Unless you already have some friends who game on Apple machines, your chances of finding a match online are pretty much nil. Since the single-player mode is basically training for online play, skip the port if you care about multiplayer at all.

Boom. Headshot!

UT remains a classic multiplayer FPS that continues to influence game creators to this day. When it was released, Epic Games was competing with id Software for the FPS crown. Both companies decided to focus on multiplayer, with offline play supported by bots. While id's Quake 3: Arena went with stripped-down gameplay polished to a high sheen, Epic crammed in as many features and game modes as they could.

Besides the standard Deathmatch and CTF modes, UT introduced new modes like Assault that focused heavily on team-based action. Mutators that changed different aspects of the gameplay could be applied to any match and added lots of variety. Each weapon had a primary and secondary mode, which greatly increased the strategies available with each one. And while UT had the standard corridor-based Deathmatch maps, it also had huge open maps that were a sniper's dream, and many of them were larger than had ever been seen in a FPS at he time.

The classic gameplay still holds up, though most players gravitate to the game's successor, UT2K4, which took everything good about UT and cranked it up to 11 while adding many more unique features. If you want to see where modern shooters have their roots, UT is a great place to start playing.