3D Gunstar Heroes Review (3DS)

As bizarre plots go, Gunstar Heroes is classic 16-bit era madness. You are in charge of protecting planet G9 from Colonel Red who to resurrect a huge robot named Golden Silver and then take over the planet. To stop this Professor White has hidden the four mystical gems that control the robot, but they won't stay hidden for long because with the help of Green (a Gunstar brother who Red has kidnapped), the Colonel will soon close in on the robot's power source.

What the plot amounts to is a number of side-scrolling, action-packed levels with lots of jumping sliding, diving and shooting for One or two players. Each level presents something new - one minute you might be running along quite happily, guns ablazing, and the next you might be sliding down the side of a mountain, or falling headlong into a futuristic mine cart, with your balance swapped between floor and ceiling. The game keeps you on your toes and the pace never lets up for a minute. It's an exhilarating ride.

Graphically, Gunstar is set in a sort of crazy Anime-inspired cartoon world. The emphasis is on big explosions and unleashing as much colour and movement as possible. It's hard to imagine how the Mega Drive coped with all the action and now it's running even more smoothly on the 3DS. Levels invariably finish with a number of manic boss battles with each monstrosity proving stranger than the last and generally filling half of the screen. In keeping with Treasure's standards, everything animates and disintegrates wonderfully and at the time this was about as good as it got on the Mega Drive in terms of the sheer amount of effects.

Much like the other side scrolling games that have made the move to the 3D Classic series there is nothing amazing in the 3D effect. There's some nice scaling and rotation but the game looks equally impressive just zipping along without the effect on. The now standard options for changing between the Mega Drive or Mega Drive II for emulation and having the Japanese and International versions available are also found here. The biggest addition to this version is a new mode which lets you cycle through all the available weapons instead of being reliant on the weapon drops.

Pure quality of presentation aside, the gameplay of Gunstar Heroes is every bit as good. With so much happening at any one time, it is essential to have a responsive and flexible control system. The game allows you to customise your shooting method - it can either be set up to fire while the player is moving, in the direction that the player is moving, or it can be fixed in one direction while you leap around in another. Additionally, our heroes can rely on a few other moves to avoid enemy fire; you can slide under obstacles, jump up to higher levels from below, and somersault off the walls, damaging anything and everything upon your descent. It's fluid and responsive action, and exactly what you need when you find yourself stuck in the middle of increasingly tight situations and set-pieces. 

Overall, Gunstar Heroes is an exceptional title. It looks great, it plays better and even the sound is orchestrated to make everything as hectic and adrenaline-pumping as possible. If there is a fault to be found, you could say that the game is perhaps a little too easy, given its straightforward design. But the two-player consolation ramps up replay ability, and even now the remit has hardly dated at all - meaning it is just as enjoyable and playable as it was upon release. Highly sought after (and rightfully so), Gunstar Heroes proves just how blisteringly good Treasure are

Overall 9/10 

Colour Blind Issues - No
Review Code - Yes 

 

 

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate Review (PS4)

Another year and another Assassin’s Creed steps forth to fulfil our running and stealth based needs. The games have certainly come a long way since Altair first donned his white garb and disrupted the Middle Eastern streets. Since then we’ve moved to Italy, Turkey, France, America and even the Caribbean. Our next destination is Victorian London and we eagerly dived in hoping to find a game to put into the series’ ‘good’ category.

We’ll have to be honest and say we didn’t really spend enough time with Unity to form an opinion on it so we are coming at this after the excellent Black Flag. We loved Black Flag and it’s about as close as we are ever likely to get to a modern version of Sid Meier’s Pirates! Jumping into Syndicate was a change of pace right from the start and the game certainly has a personality of its own. Syndicate is like sneaking your way through Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes version of Victorian London. 

This time you take control brother and sister Evie and Jacob Frye who come to industrial London to loosen the Templar grip and stop them from taking over the world. You can switch between both characters freely and each one is a bit better at certain things. Evie is better at stealth and knives while Jacob is a better fighter and is better with a gun. You can level up your assassins by completing the various tasks and missions and then choosing what to spend experience on. You can also level up more quickly by paying real money which is something we are never a fan of. That said we never really found the ‘pay to win’ mechanic intruded upon our play through and is easily ignorable.

Evie and Jacob are excellent characters and each has a distinct personality. Their voice acting is excellent throughout and everything always stays the right side of ridiculous cockney accents. The strong voice cast help to make the story seem important and interesting and it’s one of the stronger entries in the series from a narrative point of view.

London itself is pretty much completely open to you from the very start. Different areas display the recommended level for you character to be but there is nothing stopping you going and trying to undertake side missions if you so wish. There are far fewer viewpoints though, so fast traveling around can be a bit of a pain. You do have a train which trundles around the map (and acts as your mobile base), which you can also fast travel to and this proves very useful at times.

The detail of London is excellent with horse drawn carriages rolling along the streets and a large population of NPC characters going around their daily lives. There’s been a bit of geographic manipulation but it gives a real feel of a city in the midst of an industrial revolution. When the sky dims and all the lanterns come on it can be very impressive to look at and we never grew tired of wandering around the streets on our way to the next objective.

Speaking of objectives, you are certainly not going to be short of things to do. As well as the main story missions there are countless other side quests to get involved in and endless amounts of trinkets to find. Each area of London is under control of a gang called the Blighters. In order to take it back you need to kill Templars, free work house children, take out gang members and kidnap criminals. These tasks all follow the theme of sneaking in somewhere and then either killing or capturing targets within enclosed areas. 

Once the missions have been carried out the Blighters will challenge you and your gang the Rooks to a fight for the area. These are the only real low point of the game as the enemy gang leaders are huge tanks with massive health bars and you are stuck in an enclosed space with them and not able to use much of your equipment. We got stuck on one for hours as the boss could kill us with four hits and the game kept forcing us into quick time event sequences where he would continually strike at us when his health bar reached certain levels. 

The easiest thing to do is try and kill the bosses when they first appear at the end of the initial gang war sections. If you can get them before they get away then you won’t have to deal with them later in the territory fight.

Aside from the tank bosses the only other major issue we had is the fact it has no colour blind options. There are now a ton of things represented on your map and for gamers with colour blindness you are likely going to struggle with identifying what they are. You now have your enemies, police, ally Rooks, escaping criminals, street kids, carriages and a host of other things. All represented by coloured dots with no other symbol. It’s really bad in this day and age to think that this hasn’t been taken into account and is certainly something that needs to be addressed to make it more accessible.

On top of these side missions you can also get involved in fight clubs, raid cargo, go looking for flowers, beer bottles and other collectibles and take part in ‘memory’ sequences which explore some of myth and folk lore of London. There’s so much to do that we spent hours skipping around away from the main quest and seemingly never even really made a dent in it.

Of course, if the game doesn’t play well then you aren’t going to want to spend hours with it. But this time everything works excellently. Your characters are fluid and control as you would want and combat is pretty much as it’s always been. You get a new gadget to play with which lets you grappling hook to the top of buildings and across large streets which solves the problem of London not perhaps fitting a free running world as cities have done in the past. The only bugs we found were that occasionally weapons didn’t appear in enemies hands and sometimes characters would vanish in cut scenes. 

Overall, we had a lot of fun with Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. It’s different enough from the other games to feel fresh while still holding onto the core of what makes the games great in much the same way Black Flag was. It’s a bit more action based than a lot of the other games and has bucket loads of personality. It’s certainly closer to the quality of Assassin’s Creed 2 than the miss-steps of the series. There are still a few frustrating sections and there will be many that feel the series should have stopped being an annual outing but you can’t deny that when the formulae works it creates a great adventure. Just sort out your colour blind options Ubisoft.

Overall 8/10

Colour Blind Issues - Yes
Review Code - Yes

Persona 4: Dancing All Night Review (PS Vita)

Persona 4 has certainly turned out to be a flexible franchise for Atlus. In the last few years we have had wide ranging spin offs from the core JRPG game. It started with fighter Persona 4 Arena and then the Etrian Odyssey crossover Persona Q. Now we have another genre to add to the mix with this rhythm action game. 

Dancing All Night is told to the player by Margaret (from the Velvet Room in Persona 4), and takes places about a month after Persona 4. It’s a very strange story (even for Persona), and revolves around the idea that Persona’s pop icon Rise is putting on a show with the other cast of the game being invited along as backing dancers. It gets weirder. 

Soon another female group named Kanamin Kitchen (each member is named after a type of meat), start going missing and the team are drawn back into the strange Midnight world. Only this time it’s the Midnight Stage not the Midnight Channel. They soon find that they can’t attack their enemies as violence is banned and all the shadows that inhabit the world are tied together with a strange yellow ribbon. The ribbon brain washes them and traps them into the rhythm of a strange and eerie song that keeps playing. Of course the only way to break the spell is to fight back with music and dancing.

We completely love the fact that everything is played straight with all the characters taking this deadly seriously. It’s completely insane and entirely better for it. After a slow start the story rolls along at a good pace and there are a ton of excellent anime cut scenes implemented to draw you in (though I’m not sure we needed to keep seeing down Rise’s top at every opportunity in them).

If you don’t want to go through the story the game can also be played out as individual songs which when completed unlock tougher tracks and other bonuses such as dance partners. It’s a good way to practice while also allowing for quick hits of fun which suits the Vita very well.

The presentation and structure is excellent so it’s a good thing the actual game underneath it is strong as well. The action takes place with one of the heroes in the centre of the screen dancing and stars flying out towards the left and right edges. Players then have to hit the corresponding buttons that they pass in time to the beat. This utilises three of the buttons on each side of the Vita and gets pretty hectic as you progress. 

Notes soon begin to change to require more complex inputs with buttons needing to be held and pressed at the same time as well. There are also extra points and a ‘fever’ circle that shoots out from time to time that requires the tilt of an analogue stick in order to hit it as it fills the circle surrounding the play area. Filling the fever gauge allows for special events to happen at certain points in the song and adds up to big points.

It’s a solid and fun system and the notes hit precisely with no input lag. The graphics behind the scene are also excellent and keep things lively. The music itself is a collection of various types of Japanese style music from pop to dance and a hint of metal and there’s nothing here that’s going to ready grate on you with the best songs being rather good. 

Overall, Persona 4: Dancing all Night is a good rhythm game in its own right. It obviously has a fairly niche market to aim at and I’m not sure we were all crying out for ‘Persona does rhythm action’ but now that it has we’re rather glad it did. It’s humorous, breezy fun and suits the Vita perfectly. It might not be the next Gitaroo man or Ouenden but it’s certainly something that fans should enjoy and it’s clearly had a ton of effort put into getting just right. Newcomers will likely be completely lost though.

Overall 8/10

Colour Blind Issues - No
Review Code - Yes

Little Big Adventure Enhanced Review (PC)

Little Big Adventure is one of those games that we never quite got around to playing despite having bought it a few times. A cult classic, it has a loyal following and is fondly remembered by pretty much everyone who played it when it first came out. DotEmu have now released this enhanced and updated version of LBA but is it enough to make it work for newcomers?

Little Big Adventure follows the story of Twinsen who has been locked away by the tyrannical Dr FunFrock for having strange dreams about the end of the world. The evil doctor has taken over the planet and holds control through the use of clones which he uses to impose his rule. Twinsen’s first job is to escape from the prison and then set about finding out exactly what his dreams mean and what he can do to save the world.

The game is set out like a semi-isometric adventure where our hero enters and exits different areas via arrows around the edges of the scenes and everyone looks a bit like Weebles. You can talk to just about anyone and everything is voice acted which gives a solid feeling of a functioning world as the various inhabitants impart advice and general gossip to you. There are normally enemies roaming around as well which can be avoided by sneaking or punched and kicked. Shortly after the start you also get a magic ball thing you can chuck at them

The game plays out as an action adventure title where you have to go around and find clues about what to do and then collect objects and use them in order to progress. For instance – in one area you need to get the local people to trust you. They will then help you distract some guards which in turn allows you to get into a house.  It’s the sort of game that doesn’t really exist anymore but one that was very prevalent around the time of the LBA’s original release on the PC. However, it was always a unique adventure game and that feeling still remains to this day.

A number of changes have now been made to the game in order to try and bring it up to modern standards. The most obvious of these is the new set of control systems. We started out with mouse control which turns LBA into a sort of point and click game. However, it’s dreadfully un-intuitive and awkward to use. We found simple getting around the screen difficult and numerous times interactions with the environment simply didn’t work. After a while we found ourselves descending into clicking all over the place near interest points in the vein hope something would register as the right place to click.

Not to be defeated we switched to the gamepad control and everything immediately became about one hundred times better. With movement now under direct control and things like running, jumping and sneaking mapped onto the buttons the whole thing becomes a much more joyful experience. The original keyboard ‘tank’ controls can no longer be used however, so you’ll either have to play the original version of the game that’s included or get used to one of the new schemes.

There is also a new status bar added which displays things like health and magic and if you are in sneak mode or not. You now zoom in and out as well, which certainly helps but could have been further improved by allowing you to pan around your environment in the same way as games such as Baldur’s Gate. Far too often you are left at the edge of the screen not able to see what is right in front of you as the camera doesn’t really keep Twinsen centred but normally scrolls along when he reaches certain points.

A welcome chance is improved saving as it's all too easy to die or get captured. Although you can still only load them from the main menu screen.  While this does stop constant cheap use of the system it's still a bit annoying when you have to go out to the main menu just to load a game. A better system for working out where you are jumping or where exactly the magic ball is going to be thrown is also a very welcome addition.

The graphics haven’t been improved or filtered either so you get a sort of grainy jagged look to everything. That’s not a major issue on the face of it but it seems strange to release a new version of a game without giving it a bit of a facelift - especially when the original version of the game is also included. The map and objective screen could have really done with a facelift as well and we found it almost completely useless as everything just looked like pixelated blobs. A clear list of objectives and locations would have really helped.

It’s certainly not perfect but even as a relative newcomer to LBA once we got into it we really started to like it. The adventure itself is still very solid and there’s a unique humour and charm to everything. We also haven’t really played anything like it before which goes to show how original and unique the game really is. Ok, so more could have been done to make this a really special release but the gamepad controls at least make it playable for newcomers and the game underneath is certainly worth experiencing. With a bit of patience there’s still a lot of magic to be found here and we’d certainly recommend it to adventure game fans.

Overall 7/10

Colour Blind Issues - No
Review Code - Yes