PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate Review (PC)

A few years ago PixelJunk Shooter first appeared on the PS3. Still one of the best games on the Playstation network it is finally now available on the PC. The first game had already been released but now the team have and combined Shooter 1 and 2 and spruced it up a bit to create Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate.

The plot, such as it is, has you sent in to rescue your crew mates after mysterious goings on while mining on the planet of Apoxus Prime. To do this you have to fly your craft around tight underground caverns while using water, lava and magnetic black liquids to your advantage. It’s reminiscent of Thrust with its inertia and gravity based gameplay but your craft will stay still if left alone. You also won’t die from hitting walls (which is a good thing or it would have been nigh on impossible).

The game is a 2D styled shooter where you manoeuvre your ship around a section of an enclosed map. Normally you will have to get water to turn lava to rock or lava to melt ice or some other combination of dropping one liquid onto another. You’re doing this because you need to get to and rescue all the lost crew members in each area. If too many of them die you have to start the level again. It’s wonderfully inventive and a whole lot of fun and there are hidden areas and diamonds to collect along the way as well.

The level design is nigh on perfect throughout the game and the difficulty curve is just about right. The huge boss monsters found at the end of each world may cause some frustration but they provide tense and heroic showdowns of David and Goliath proportions and once you work them out shouldn’t take too long to get past. The difficulty level ramps up considerably once you enter the second part of the game (Shooter 2), but it’s all still achievable.

Shooter Ultimate is now split into six main areas each consisting of five levels. There are the initial outer rocky areas, the ice caves and then the mine. After the mine something happens which we won’t spoil but you’ll be dealing with a host of new gases and liquids.  Each individual level is split into sections which require everyone to be rescued before a bulk head opens to the next.  Each has its own tricks and traps and will keep you on your toes throughout. If it gets too much you can always call a friend in for co-op action.

You’ll also need to think quickly as the game has a wonderful way of getting you to forget what you’ve just learnt. For instance, for the first area you are trying to keep away from lava (overheating causes you to crash), but then in the ice caves you’ll come across an inversion suit which makes lava cool you down and water heat you up.

It’s a game that keeps throwing new ideas and things at you to keep you interested. The water suit and lava suit are just the start and you’ll soon be switching around and dealing with freezing lakes and clouds of gas as well as the usual lava and water. The key thing is that everything stays fun and creative throughout. Once you’ve completed the game you’ll probably want to dive back in to further explore the levels and find all the missing diamonds and any crew you missed along the way. There’s even a hidden level to try and unlock and online combat.

PixelJunk Shooter is a game we’re still playing on the PS3 to this day. The fact a whole new audience can now pick it up is great and this really is one of the best games of its type. Q-Games have crafted something special here and the years have done nothing to diminish its appeal. With PixelJunk Shooter 2 included as well it becomes an essential purchase for PC owners. We’ll be playing it through for yet another time and we would recommend everyone else do the same.

This was always going to be a certified hit with us as long as nothing had gone wrong in the conversion and from our experience this offers all the fun of the original. PC gamers really need to play this as it’s simply a masterfully executed, great little game packed with more invention and ideas than most massive AAA releases can even come close to.

Overall 9/10

 

Goat Simulator Review (PS4)

Starting out life as a joke idea and then developing into a cult hit on the PC, Goat Simulator has garnered enough success to now make its way to the current generation of consoles. So will this be using the full power of new systems to present something simply impossible on older consoles? Well no, but there’s nothing else quite like it either.

It’s very difficult to know how to review Goat Simulator. There’s no story or real aim to anything with it being a physics playground to play around in - in which the player controls a slightly homicidal goat. There are a few things to collect and occasional timed races and score challenges but basically this is you, a goat and lots of things to charge into and lick.

There are two areas to pick from which take the form of an urban neighbourhood and a waterfront area. They are pretty well stocked with secret locations to discover and silly things to play around with and then it’s up to you to make your own entertainment. It has to be said that the game is funny in a jack-ass kind of way and some of the things to discover are a kind of twisted genius. Our personal favourite was when we catapulted ourselves onto a skyscraper and rammed DJ Deadmau5 off the edge during a gig. This then gave us a giant mouse head on our goat and spread the message ‘goa7 and stuff’ across the screen. 

We won’t reveal any more of the surprises but there are plenty of jokes like this hidden around the levels. You can also mutate your goat with jetpacks, spinning attacks and all manner of other things to create chaos. It’s a big crazy toy box and it’s certainly fun to muck around in for small amounts of time. Whether you are likely to be spending hours of your life ramming people into swimming pools is another thing entirely.

Your goat has a fairly wide range of moves to play around with. It can lick things to drag them along, jump and forward roll in air. It can even perform a ‘manual’ where it proceeds to skate around on its head. You can wall run and also trigger a rag doll effect with a press of a button. It’s all very silly but in a good way.

The lack of focused goals will no doubt put some off but for those wanting to mess around and have some fun this works very well. It’s not particularly polished and you aren’t going to be playing it for hours on end or returning to it in a year’s time but you can’t deny that sometimes it’s fun to run into a petrol tanker and cause an explosion that sends you up to the moon.

Overall, Goat Simulator makes us smile simply for the fact that someone not only made it but then decided to port it to console. It’s a wild and unruly sandbox that doesn’t conform to game industry norms and that can only be a good thing. Above all else anyone playing it will be having fun more times than not and isn’t that what gaming is really all about?

Overall 6/10

Frozen Synapse Prime Review (PC)

Written by Thomas G.J. Sharpe

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with Frozen Synapse. In equal measures frustrating and exciting, but I cannot hold the former condition as a fault in the game. It was always my impatience and my lack of forethought that caused me to lose games. Arguably, this is a sign of a thorough game, a formidable design and a ruthless challenge. Indeed, the original game posed one of the most interesting multiplayer situations I've recently encountered.

Frozen Synapse Prime is a ground-up remake of the original Frozen Synapse. A squad-based, tactical, cyberpunk themed chin scratcher. With a varied squad of combatants, you direct their movements, aiming, engaging and so forth, using an intuitive waypoint system. It is devilishly easy to learn and with Prime, The developers have refined the interface. The use of a radial, key-bound menu is better than what was a clumsy list. This is a significant point, as the ease of ordering the squad around the arenas should be as elegant as possible, as underneath is a game of precision, preparation and consideration.

The twist is the ability to plan and waypoint enemy squad members, to predict the outcome of your movements. If your machine-gunner moves here, does he get brained by a shotgunner? Slight adjustments can save lives, allowing you to get the jump on your enemy. This is where Frozen Synapse as a concept really shines. You can agonize over decisions, as most of the time, one careless move is enough to tilt the advantage toward your opponent in a critical way.

For me, the original was all about the multiplayer, although the single player campaign is nothing to sniff at. The dialogue is fantastic, the story classically cyberpunk, tongue in cheek and full of character. I however find the missions and A.I underwhelming after the excitement of peer-to-peer, and this is where I predict most of my time will be spent with the game. Honestly, I lose most of my games, but it keeps me coming back. It is similar to X-COM. It doesn't give an inch, brutal but it is never the game.

Aesthetically, this sequel is a huge advancement, however much the Tron-esque futurist-minimalism was both atmospheric and playful. Where before the neon walls were devoid of humanity (fitting for the context of the story), the new arenas are steel-panelled joylessness, functional and brutalist. It looks great, and they've kept the battlegrounds uncluttered. The music is, as before, a slick blend of tense ambient classiness. Sound design in general is subtle, well-placed and sparse.

Overall, a worthy successor to a game that now looks like proof-of-concept. I am confident that veterans will on the whole welcome the update, and certainly the accessibility of this tough game has been increased for the newcomer. Not a lot is really new, but it was pretty much spot on before, and I look forward to being dispatched by my tactical and intellectual betters over and over again.

8/10

Frozen Synapse Prime Review (PS Vita)

Set in a futuristic dystopian city, Frozen Synapse is a turn based strategy game which tries to do things a little different. We’d love to tell you about the plot but we couldn’t get to grips with it. Basically there’s some people doing bad stuff and you are fighting against it in order to win the day.

The core gameplay mechanic in Frozen Synapse is the fact that the turn based combat is resolved simultaneously. Instead of one team moving and attacking and then the other team, here both teams put their moves into play and the turn is carried out at the same time. This means that you can never be certain where the enemy is or how they are thinking. Anticipating your enemy’s moves is the key to success. In order to help out you can run a simulation of the turn but this rarely covers all the angles and you’ll soon stop relying on it.

Combat mechanics work on a kind of rock, paper and scissors mechanic with different units having different strengths and weaknesses. Shotgunners move quickly but have limited range, Snipers move slowly but never miss, machine gunners are the middle ground and rocket and grenade soldiers create even more havoc. The trick is to get the right units engaging in the correct way and mistakes can be very costly often resulting in losing several units in a turn.

The combat takes place on a self-contained square grid with walls, doors and windows placed within it. You have to constantly check both your and enemy troops line of sight and carefully manoeuvre into positions to trap the enemy. Missions are wide ranging and everything from destroying all the enemies, stopping them reaching a point or collecting objects is present. It’s basically a big toy box full of classic squad based scenarios waiting to be played around with.

It must be said though that the game takes a fair while to get to grips with. It wasn’t until we had put a few hours in that it stopped seeming fiddly and imprecise. This isn’t helped by the early levels not exactly easing you in either. Once you do get to grips with it though it’s clear this is a superior tactical game and every map becomes a puzzle to solve where nothing is every truly lost or won until the very last turn.

The level of control you have over your troops is excellent and you can issue them all kinds of commands. As well as just pointing them to a place to walk you can adjust their view as they move, order them to engage or ignore targets in certain orders and even make them duck under windows to avoid fire. You’ll need to master everything the touch activated command wheel has to offer as soon the maps go dark with only the enemies last known positions plotted and any careless step normally resulting in death.

As well as the single player there is a host of multiplayer options and battling other players is where the longevity of the game is going to be. Brilliantly it also contains the post style setting of Everybody’s Golf. That way you can plot your move and your opponent can do it later on without needing to be online at the time. Imagine it like playing chess by post but with more guns.

Overall, Frozen Synapse is an intelligent and superior strategy game. It’s a genre that should be catered for more on the Vita and this shows how you can create something excellent from a well-chosen set of rules and materials. There isn’t really anything else like it out there and any fan of games such as Xcom should get this downloaded as soon as possible.

PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate Review (PS Vita)

A few years ago PixelJunk Shooter first appeared on the PS3. Still one of the best games on the Playstation network it is now available with cross-buy on the Vita and PS4. It always looked like a game that would fit the Vita and now the team have got the physics engine working and combined Shooter 1 and 2 together you can enjoy the madness on the go.

The plot, such as it is, has you sent in to rescue your crew mates after mysterious goings on while mining on the planet of Apoxus Prime. To do this you have to fly your craft around tight underground caverns while using water, lava and magnetic black liquids to your advantage. It’s reminiscent of Thrust with its inertia and gravity based gameplay but your craft will stay still if left alone. Your also won’t die from hitting walls (which is a good thing or it would have been nigh on impossible).

The game is a 2D styled shooter where you manoeuvre your ship around a section of an enclosed map. Normally you will have to get water to turn lava to rock or lava to melt ice or some other combination of dropping one liquid onto another. You’re doing this because you need to get to and rescue all the lost crew members in each area. If too many of them die you have to start the level again. It’s wonderfully inventive and a whole lot of fun and there are hidden areas and diamonds to collect along the way as well.

The level design is nigh on perfect throughout the game and the difficulty curve is just about right. The huge boss monsters found at the end of each world may cause some frustration but they provide tense and heroic showdowns of David and Goliath proportions and once you work them out shouldn’t take too long to get past. The difficulty level ramps up considerably once you enter the second part of the game (Shooter 2), but it’s all still achievable.

Shooter Ultimate is now split into six main areas each consisting of five levels. There are the initial outer rocky areas, the ice caves and then the mine. After the mine something happens which we won’t spoil but you’ll be dealing with a host of new gases and liquids.  Each individual level is split into sections which require everyone to be rescued before a bulk head opens to the next.  Each has its own tricks and traps and will keep you on your toes throughout. If it gets too much you can always call a friend in for co-op action.

You’ll also need to think quickly as the game has a wonderful way of getting you to forget what you’ve just learnt. For instance, for the first area you are trying to keep away from lava (overheating causes you to crash), but then in the ice caves you’ll come across an inversion suit which makes lava cool you down and water heat you up.

It’s a game that keeps throwing new ideas and things at you to keep you interested. The water suit and lava suit are just the start and you’ll soon be switching around and dealing with freezing lakes and clouds of gas as well as the usual lava and water. The key thing is that everything stays fun and creative throughout. Once you’ve completed the game you’ll probably want to dive back in to further explore the levels and find all the missing diamonds and any crew you missed along the way. There’s even a hidden level to try and unlock and online combat.

PixelJunk Shooter is a game we’re still playing on the PS3 to this day. The fact a whole new audience can now pick it up is great and this really is one of the best games of its type. Q-Games have crafted something special here and the years have done nothing to diminish its appeal. With PixelJunk Shooter 2 included as well it becomes an essential purchase for Vita owners. We’ll be playing it through for yet another time and we would recommend everyone else do the same.

This was always going to be a certified hit with us as long as nothing had gone wrong in the conversion and from our experience this offers all the fun of the original. Vita gamers really need to play this as it’s simply a masterfully executed, great little game packed with more invention and ideas than most massive AAA releases can even come close to.

Overall 10/10

PixelJunk Shooter: The Depths of Disaster Review (PC)

A few years ago PixelJunk Shooter first appeared on the PS3. Still one of the best games on the Playstation network it has finally been made available to PC gamers. Now you can find out what all the fuss is about as you pilot your little ship through a host of physics and element based levels.

The plot, such as it is, has you sent in to rescue your crew mates after mysterious goings on while mining on the planet of Apoxus Prime. To do this you have to fly your craft around tight underground caverns while using water, lava and magnetic black liquids to your advantage. It’s reminiscent of Thrust with its inertia and gravity based gameplay but your craft will stay still if left alone. Your also won’t die from hitting walls (which is a good thing or it would have been nigh on impossible).

The game is a 2D styled shooter where you manoeuvre your ship around a section of an enclosed map. Normally you will have to get water to turn lava to rock or lava to melt ice or some other combination of dropping one liquid onto another. You’re doing this because you need to get to and rescue all the lost crew members in each area. If too many of them die you have to start the level again. It’s wonderfully inventive and a whole lot of fun and there are hidden areas and diamonds to collect along the way as well.

The level design is nigh on perfect throughout the game and the difficulty curve is just about right. The huge boss monsters found at the end of each world may cause some frustration but they provide tense and heroic showdowns of David and Goliath proportions and once you work them out shouldn’t take too long to get past.

Shooter is split into three main areas each consisting of five levels. There are the initial outer rocky areas, the ice caves and then the mine. Each individual level is split into sections which require everyone to be rescued before a bulk head opens to the next.  Each has its own tricks and traps and will keep you on your toes throughout. 

You will also need to think quickly as the game has a wonderful way of getting you to forget what you’ve just learnt. For instance, for the first area you are trying to keep away from lava (overheating causes you to crash), but then in the ice caves you’ll come across and inversion suite which makes lava cool you down and water heat you up.

It’s a game that keeps throwing new ideas and things at you to keep you interested. The water suit and lava suit are just the start and you’ll soon be switching around and dealing with freezing lakes and clouds of gas as well as the usual lava and water. The key thing is that everything stays fun and creative throughout. Once you’ve completed the game you’ll probably want to dive back in to further explore the levels and find all the missing diamonds and any crew you missed along the way.

PixelJunk Shooter is a game we’re still playing on the PS3 to this day. The fact a whole new audience can now pick it up is great and this really is one of the best games of its type. Q-Games have crafted something special here and the years have done nothing to diminish its appeal. It’s perhaps a shame that the PixelJunk Shooter 2 wasn’t included as well (as it is pretty much part 1 and 2 of the same game), but we’ll be first in line to get it when it arrives.

This was always going to be a certified hit with us as long as nothing had gone wrong in the conversion and from our experience this offers all the fun of the original. PC gamers really need to play this as it’s simply a masterfully executed, great little game packed with more invention and ideas than most massive AAA releases can even come close to.

Overall 9/10