Duck Souls+

Things aren’t quite what you expect them to be with Duck Souls+

If you’re judging by its title, you probably expect roguelike mechanics, clumsy control mechanics, a lot of atmosphere and punishing enemies at every turn. If you take a look at screenshots then maybe you’re thinking a cute little one screen puzzle platformer.

That last one is close to the truth, its also misleading. Yes, Duck Souls+ is cute, its brightly coloured and fun to look at, its also a one-screen puzzle platformer, but don’t let that fool you into thinking its easy as its anything but.

Unsurprisingly you play through the game as a duck, challenged with retrieving the lost duck souls or something to that effect, the plots only really referenced very early on and isn’t important to what follows. Once that little intro sequence is done with you’re plonked on a full-screen level and challenged with getting from one point to the other before being allowed to move onto the next one. As you progress more challenges are thrown in your way. You’re then given a few levels to get used to each new obstacle, first on its own and then mixed with other obstacles you’ve previously had to learn.

Thankfully Duck Souls+ realises that we’re all at differing levels of skill, with developers Green Dinosaur Games providing two difficulty levels, Normal and Hard, the main difference being the former gives you well-placed checkpoints in levels allowing the player to take a breather and figure out the next step without worrying that a mistake will see you sent right back tot he beginning of the level. However, the beautiful thing is, you can drop out and change the difficulty level at will without there being any gateway preventing you from progressing if you choose to chop and change between either of them. Add in that the levels never really outstay their welcome and you have a short sharp, entertaining little game that’s perfect for both long gaming sessions and just picking up and playing.

It’s that last point that I’d like to build on a little. I played the PSN version of the game, which is compatible with both PS4 and Vita, and whilst there’s no Cross-Save feature here, meaning you have to play through each installation individually rather than being able to switch between the two at will (a feature that the Switch version benefits from due to it being one system with two methods of playing it rather than two separate consoles). I tried it on both systems and personally found the more confined screen but smaller controls felt much more accurate than playing it on the households main TV using a Dual Shock 4, in fact, the Vita’s d-pad is absolutely perfect for this game, add in the systems sleep function and I found myself picking it up and playing it in little fits and starts rather than the more dedicated time I tend to have with the PS4.

The games price point is definitely worth a mention, at £4 on the PlayStation Store, its ridiculously cheap, the budget pricing gives the impression that its a budget game, but it genuinely feels anything but. the presentation is nice and a lot of care and thought has gone into the level design, decisions such as the interchangeable difficulty level sitting alongside this price point does make it slightly disposable, but there’s also far less pressure on the player to just “Git Gud!”

Formats: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (version tested), Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation Vita (version tested)
Release Date: September 8 2019 (Steam), April 2020 (Other Systems)
Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Developer: Green Dinosaur Games

Miracle Mia

It’s been a while since I actually reviewed a game, the last one being back in September for Sayonara Wild Hearts, so a couple of weeks ago when Shademare reached out to me on Twitter and asked if I would be interested in taking a look at their title Miracle Mia, I perused a few trailers and thought sure, why not?

Miracle Mia is best described as a story-driven 2D action game. You play the titular Mia and have to fend off a variety of foes using her magical tennis racket as you progress through a series of pastel-coloured and beautifully realised locations. What makes the game unique is the aforementioned tennis racket, enemies aren’t defeated in the traditional sense of just hitting them (though that is an option), the idea here is to repel their attacks back in the direction they came from (or towards another opponent) in what is, in my opinion, quite a clever mechanic.

On that mechanic, the key thing here is just how well it works, the game moves at a decent pace and you never really feel like the controls are lagging behind you in any way, they’re perfectly responsive which comes in handy as the difficulty ramps up.

There’s some element of platforming here, with Miracle Mia utilising jumping, dashing and teleportation techniques to traverse the terrain, there are times where you have to rely on quick reflexes and times where you’ll be battling whilst also performing some mildly complicated control pad gymnastics, though for the most part, these moments are usually filler between fairly static battles. The challenge comes from moments where you have to combine a variety of things in order to progress, such as dashing through opponents in order to stun them but making sure you don’t stay on a fragile platform for too long. It really does make for some energetic play.

Aesthetically, its very pleasing, the variety of locations are wonderfully realised and carry over a very Japanese aesthetic, though I’d have to say that the magical girl theme to pretty much all the main characters only really works from a distance, when characters faces appear closer alongside speech bubbles (in order to further the plot) it does tend to look very generic. Thankfully though these moments, whilst common, tend to happen whilst you’re playing so aren’t massively distracting, allowing you to soak in the tones and themes presented to you as you progress.

Unfortunately though, its the story and its presentation, that does begin to drag this game down, then there’s its length, now I’ll admit, I didn’t reach the end of Miracle Mia as it began to strain on my ability to stay interested, it just seemed to be quite a long experience (there’s a chapter select and I think I counted ahead to over 20 chapters), with everything that was introduced in the time I spent with the game, it didn’t really need to feel like I was going to have to spend a lot longer with it than I already had to see its end, there were enough interesting ideas on show for a short, sharp experience, after all, its better to leave the player wanting more than it is to have them wondering just how much more there’s going to be.

Formats: PC (Steam)
Release Date: 23 August 2019
Publisher: Shademare
Developer:  Shademare
Code provided by Shademare for review purposes.

RICO

Buddy Cop movies are great right? All that comedy and action thrown into one roller coaster of a movie! Who doesn’t love Lethal Weapon (well, apart from 3 and 4), 21 Jump Street, Rush Hour and The Other Guys? And now you can play a part in that too thanks to RICO. Because here is a game that takes half of what we love about those movies, the action, and encourages you and a buddy to take on the “Wunza” roles as you bust down doors and burst open some perps heads. Sounds great, right?

Well, it is. It works like this, there are three game modes, Quick, Case Mode and Daily which all sort of intertwine with each other. Case mode is where you will be spending most of your time, here RICO takes on a Rogue-like quality, you’re assigned missions from a mission tree that are progressively harder, you always start in the games Killhouse with only a handgun in your arsenal, as you progress you can purchase better guns, attachments, grenades or heal. However, once you die its game over and you’re back to the Killhouse to start a new case with only your starting handgun available. I’ll admit it took me a while to figure out that you do get to keep your equipment, but not for this mode, it’s all there, waiting to be selected in Quick mode. Which leaves you with the headache of “do I buy that gun again or do I spend money on health”. What does carry over however is the Traits that you unlock by earning experience and leveling up, these cover abilities like quicker reloads or damage multipliers and are assigned to your chosen character where you can pick up to three unlocked Traits depending on your play style. The latter mode is Daily, here the developers upload a handful of different scenario’s, one for each difficulty, with set equipment where the aim is to post a fast completion time to the online leaderboards. Once each scenario is completed your given credits to unlock skins for your guns.

Now like I said, the concept of the game is that you and a mate play this cooperatively, bursting into rooms and shooting the bad guys, There are other mission completion elements too, sometimes you’ll be tasked with collecting evidence, which is just discovering a randomised number of green brief cases, or diffusing bombs. These tasks can be assigned to you from the outset or appear as you work your way through a level and are much of a muchness. The fun ones are when the game asks you to complete a set amount of sliding kills, or clearing a number of rooms whilst still in slow motion, and here is where the co-op play really excels as you are often in a position where you can approach certain rooms from two different entry points, allowing you or your partner to provide a distraction whilst the other applies the skill. However here there’s also the risk that your partner could get in the way which was a situation my eldest daughter and I found ourselves in a few times when we were playing couch co-op.

Whilst all of this sounds great, and when it all works, RICO is genuinely great fun to play in co-op, it definitely doesn’t really work as a single player game as there’s very little meat on the bone here. There’s also a few minor niggles too, for a start it’s really weird playing a first-person shooter that doesn’t have any rumble feature, it makes you feel disconnected from the onscreen action and is a genuine shame when you get your hands on one of the games shotguns as they’re really satisfying to use within the games claustrophobic environments, adding a kick from the pad would have accentuated that further and made them great fun to play with. The sensitivity is also a little off, it feels too twitchy on its default setting, and whilst you can alter this, it initially put me off the game a little to begin with. However one thing that did spoil RICO more than I would normally like to admit was that due to its procedurally generated levels furniture can sometimes get in the way, I got stuck on more than a few chairs and on more than one occasion when tasked with finding piles of money or collecting evidence I was blocked from reaching the item I was searching for by an office desk or changing blind that had been placed in my way.

These are minor gripes though because like I’ve already said, when played the way RICO wants you to play it: sliding through doors, breaking them down and unleashing lead into the heads of bad guys, RICO is gloriously good fun.

Formats: PlayStation 4 (Version Tested), PC, Switch, XBox One
Release Date: 12th March 2019 on PS4, 13th March 2019 on XBox One and 14th March 2019 on PC and Switch
Publisher: Rising Star Games
Developer: Ground Shatter
Key provided via Keymailer

Drowning

Drowning is a game that is about a school boy (its never expressed that the narrator is a boy, but the games creator has stated in its synopsis), moving from Year 7 to Year 8 and ultimately Year 12 (so the game starts with the narrator being 11 years old) who is suffering from depression and how he deals with having depression during his school years.

It’s a strong subject, and the manner in which the tale is told suggests its a deeply personal matter to Polygonal Wolf. As you slowly walk through the games different locations, following a strict path, text appears suggesting a conversation between the narrator and their own mind. It’s all sensitively done and at times genuinely moving and cathartic, and aside from the occasional grammatical and spelling error (for which I’m not one  to judge!) its down to Polygonal Wolf’s talent to get, what I presume, are his own thoughts and feelings down in a manner that the player can relate to.

 

The tale is told as you walk through some beautiful settings, all created in a low polygon and pastel effect with the tone changing, alongside the music, as the narrator gets older and their depression becoming deeper. What starts off as an almost innocent walk through some woods, full of bright sunshine and bold colours, later develops into dark, cold atmospheres that it would be easy to say are cliche but perfectly fit with the words that appear on screen.

However, whilst Drowning is great at getting all of these feelings down, when the narrators mental health begins to find its own voice, and begins to challenge what it is being told, be it positively or otherwise, the dialog can feel a little clumsy and forced, as though the writer knew what they wanted to aim towards and just headed straight for it, much like the linear path that the player is forced to walk along. It never really feels like you are part of the conversation, nor that there is any room for discussion to go beyond a certain path, which ties into the way the game handles its multiple endings.

The initial ending is easy to unlock, its literally following the path laid out in front of you until the game reaches its conclusion and the credits roll. But there are three other endings to walk through, all of which involve convoluted exploration that, due to the linear nature of the path (there’s nothing to suggest you can leave the intended path at any point unless your literally pushing against the walls on either side at all times) I can’t see how anyone would figure out how to unlock them. I personally only experienced them after following a guide to see if they offered anything different.

That being said, an initial run through for one ending only takes about half an hour, personally speaking as someone who has received treatment and is still undergoing treatment for depression, Drowning is a title that I’d urge anyone to play through in order to either maybe understand their own inner monologue and realise that, actually, this happens to an awful lot of us, or if you care for someone you know to be struggling, it could help give you a better insight into why they act the way they do.

Formats: PlayStation 4 (Version Tested), PC, Switch, Vita, Linux, Mac
Release Date: 31st January 2019
Publisher: Sometimes You
Developer: Polygonal Wolf
Key provided by Sometimes You via Keymailer