Golf with your Friends is a new multiplayer sports game developed by ‘Blacklight Interactive‘ and published by ‘Team17‘. Golf with your Friends is said to be coming out the 19th of May 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4 and PC. The whole lineup right there. This game is golf at the end day. Let’s take a look.
Golf with your Friends is exactly that… it’s golf. Now we wouldn’t care about this game if that was all it is. Sure it’s golf but it’s golf that’s not boring. For starters there are like 10 levels with themes. You can expect outer space, forests, haunted house, the woods with a lumberjack facility and more. Our favourite is definitely the level with that ancient looking temple, possibly aztec or whatever but it’s cool looking. The track looks like it’s naturally built. Simply put the level design is great.
Now the levels are real cool but that’s not the biggest eye opener about Golf with your Friends. Yes this game is 12 player multiplayer BUT… you can all play AT THE SAME TIME. This means no waiting your turn and mocking your friends lame swings. Instead everyone is trying to get their ball to the hole and yo see everyone’s balls moving and jumping across the tracks. You can decide to race to the hole first or play legit and see who gets in with the least amount of swings. This mechanic alone makes Golf with your Friends interesting and stand out.
There is three game modes. There’s straight up classic golf, a hockey mode where the hole is instead a hockey goal post. There’s also a basketball hoop looking goal too. So mix it up people. There’s customisation too to keep things interesting. You can unlock skins for the balls, fancy trails and even hats. There’s even a level editor where you can create your own courses, share them with other players have them play it themselves or yourself.
Overall Golf with your Friends actually looks like a good golf game. There’s even power ups and items for competitive help. There’s such effects like turning your enemies balls into a square. Trap their balls in honey and even straight up freeze their ball completely. Cool stuff. The developers ‘Blacklight Interactive’ have done a good job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see what Golf with your Friends can really do.
Maneater is a new action role playing game developed and published by ‘Tripwire Interactive’. Maneater is said to be coming out the 22nd of May 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and pc. Sharks are dangerous but this is taking things too far. Humans beware. Let’s take a look.
There is a story in Maneater. The story campaign has been described as ‘full narrative’. It’s narrated by Chris Parnell, the guy who did Saturday night live, 30 rock and even that annoying Rick and Morty. The story is set against the backdrop of a reality TV show. We don’t have the details… or maybe we do but don’t want to share… either way you’ll have to wait fro learn for yourself.
Maneater has a very simple concept. A shark can eat a human so they made a whole game around that with some twists. That’s the whole game of Maneater. Players are a shark and you go around primarily eating humans but you can fight other creatures too like alligators. So basically eat what comes in your way or what you come to. Eat or be eaten basically is the rule here.
That’s the objective… to eat. You grow and get stronger the more you eat and there’s a lot on the menu as Maneater is also open world. You can go through the whole ocean, finding all kinds of creatures and stuff to eat. Not only that, you can evolve to. Yep Maneater is on it’s Evolve today. There’s multiple evolving paths you can take with your shark. There’s a armoured shark where it has like hardened bone structure on it’s body and face for additional protection and toughness. There’s another where you look like a 3/4 shark and 1/4 glow squid deep sea thing. It’s actually cool looking. They come with new abilities and more chaos.
Don’t get ahead of yourself though. Like with Feeding Frenzy, you don’t start off as the big bad shark that everyone fears. Nope! You start as a small little shark. You then have to eat and survive to grow up, get bigger and stronger, being able to face stronger, bigger and more dangerous foes. Both animal and human. Eventually you will be big and strong enough to take on the humans. You can face the local drunks who are unorganised while the coast guard are a real problem. Like seriously they have guns and proper equipment.
We checked out some Maneater gameplay and it’s not exactly what we thought. There’s way more agility and unrealistic shark movement and abilities going on and we like that. You have to find loot to evolve your shark. There’s a number of different areas like beaches, the ocean, gulf coast and even industrial docks. We like that eventually you get cool abilities like smashing through boats completely, leaping out of the water to snatch humans off boats. It’s different from other games and definitely stands out.
Overall Maneater looks like a real cool game. We definitely like the simple concept of it. Jaws, but this shark is smarter, more blood hungry, more powerful and far more dangerous because of it. Sharks eating humans can work. The developers ‘Tripwire Interactive’ have a done a great job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to keep an eye on our sonar for any Maneater activity. Now Maneater may have a evolving hungry shark but that shark is a little goldfish when compared to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Fury Unleashed is a new rough lite action platform game developed and published by ‘Awesome Games Studio‘. Fury Unleashed is said to be coming out the 8th of May 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC. We never heard about this game but we know there’s a whole lot of shooting and battling to be done here. Let’s take a look.
What’s the story? We don’t know. What we do know is that there’s a number of things going on in the game mechanics. This is what their official site said, “each kill you score increases your combo. Hit certain thresholds and your damage resistance and healing powers will kick in!” Fury Unleashed promotes destroying your enemies fast and using your rage. It’s all action, action and action.
Since they strongly encourage you to beat the game in one go, you can expect permadeath. Yes, Fury Unleashed has permadeath and the random generated levels means you will have your typical rouge lite game. So don’t die. The positive is that you get natural replayability. Whenever we think of permadeath and random generated levels, Spelunky comes into our heads.
Fury Unleashed has differently difficulties. Hard mode is said to truly put the players to the test. Easy mode gives players the options to adjust things like the difficulty parameters to their liking. We always say it but giving gamers options and variety are good things.
Now there’s quite a lot to the customisation. There are design options in Fury Unleashed. Wear weird armour, funky helmets, change face, change hair and even “replace their face graphic with your own.” Not many games allow stuff like that but this allows payers to truly make their character their own. You can even set your characters skills. Like with set-able skills and abilities in all games, best to go for what suits your style first.
Even though it is random generated, some levels are hand designed. This means there’s something significant about those levels so be on the lookout and pay attention to details in the levels themselves. There are some permanent upgrades you can unlock. These upgrades stay with you even after you die. So there is a form of progression to increase your odds overtime.
The developers said this, “Fury Unleashed was created by combining inspiration from modern roguelite platformers, like Dead Cells and Rogue Legacy, with nostalgic memories of old-school platformer shooters, like Contra and Metal Slug. We have spent five years polishing our creation to make sure that your experience with the game will be as memorable as the aforementioned titles and we wholeheartedly believe that you won’t be disappointed.”
We checked out some Fury Unleashed gameplay and it’s what we expected bu the action is higher though. You are definitely fighting through a comic book which is a cool style. Each level comic book has their own enemies and environment design. Distinction is important and the level are distinct from each other. We’ve got jungles, buildings, bases etc. Worse of all is that there are 40 bosses! They are big and are definitely distinct from each other. Spelunky had one boss. We’ve seen a giant attack helicopter, organic plant monster, a viper warrior beast and more. They look cool… most of them.
Overall Fury Unleashed looks like a good game. Lots of time and work has gone into it’s development and you will understand when you research the development history of Fury Unleashed. We definitely love that there’s co-op. Playing with friends or family always makes a difference. We like the variety in the bosses and that they clearly stand out for this style. The developers ‘Awesome Games Studio’ have done a good job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see what happens with Fury Unleashed. Now Fury Unleashed may have serious action but it’s all baby stuff compared to the adventures off… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Book of Demons is a hack and slash deck building game developed and published by ‘Thing Trunk‘. Book of Demons is said to come out the 30th of April on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PS4. It’s already out on PC. Games like this tend to gain the attention of less gamers. So it’s already tough for them. Let’s take a look.
Book of Demons is a strange world but understandable. It takes place in, Paperverse, a world that exists entirely inside a pop-up book. So if we destroy the book, does that world permanently die?
It’s your popular good vs evil. About saving the world from the “ultimate devilry”. Book of Demons wants to stand out completely and you can tel with this game mechanic. Players can decide how long they want their quest to be. It’s called a flexiscope. This basically allows players to “divide the game into sessions of any size”. It goes further though as they claim “It even learns your pace of gaming and predicts the time to complete the next session.” Now that’s something different for sure.
Book of Demons is a hack and slash game so expect to move around and attack the enemies that come across your path or stand in your way. Instead pf regular weapons players must use magic cards to attack and do actions. This is where the deck building part comes into play. There are many cards and you need to make sure you have the right ones at your disposal. There are cards which are straight up attacks and some will strength your character and others have effects that help out. So in Book of Demons players will need: good understanding of the cards and what cards is in your deck, timing and execution for combos.
There are three classes: Warrior, Rouge and Mage. The typical line up if you ask us, which you did. The warrior is all about using his sword, strength and charging in. The rouge is all about the set up, poison and many arrows. The mage is clearly about magic, long range attacks and summoning. Wow, we wonder who sounds the best? Each class obviously has their own fighting style and own cards. Matter of fact they each have signature cards. For example the Warrior has stink bomb and shadow sword. The Rouge has Viper cloak and epic arrows. The Mage has Glory Golem and hourglass. What they do is… actually find out for yourself.
We checked out some gameplay and it’s not exactly what we thought it would be. This clearly based on our gaming taste but we don’t like how the characters move. We know it fits the theme of story characters in a pop up book, so they hop and shuffle like pieces of a board game. Not our thing though. The gameplay is straightforward and players should get use to it real fast. The levels are randomly generated so don’t expect the same journey twice. What’s good is variety and Book of Demons has over 70 different enemies like: goatmen, scorpions, succubi, snakes, skeletons and much much more. It’s a game that looks small and simple but there’s quite a bit going on around here. Sort of deep and a good number of in game mechanics. We also like the combo potential with the cards.
Overall Book of Demons seems like an alright game with some good stand put points. It’s clear work has gone into this one. The developers ‘Thing Trunk’ have done an alright job here. We at X35 Earthwalker aren’t interested in Book of Demons at all but some gamers will be and that counts. Now Book of Demons may have a whole world that needs saving but it would have been saved already if it did… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Digimon World is a role playing adventure game developed and published by ‘Bandai Namco‘. It came out 1999 on the PlayStation 1. If you mention this game, a good number of people would know this game. Digimon World is a serious game that clearly wasn’t developed for children even though it said 3 and over on the game case. Why? It’s definitely one of the most difficult and cryptic games. Let’s take a look.
Let’s start of by saying we really like this game and spent many hours back in the day playing it. It’s fun and brings back memories. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s cryptic and difficult. The story of Digimon World is… well they don’t really tell you much. Let’s be honest, who was playing this game when they were a child and knew what was going on? What you do get told is that the island is in danger, Digimon have lost their memory and that you have been pulled into the Digimon world by Jijimon to help. So you must go around and bring Digimon back to the city, File city. That’s it. Get to it. We don’t know who the villain is and you won’t find out more information until way, way later in the game. So even the story is sort of cryptic.
You start off with either a Argumon or Gabumon depending on whether you selected day or night as a preference. You have an empty backpack and your one Digimon. What we will say is that Digimon World was ahead of it’s time. It basically was open world. You can literally go almost any in the game from the start of the game. You could reach the dino region, grand canyon area, the beach and more bit once you get over a special bring in the canyon you can truly access almost everywhere. What you do end up doing is going to the gym next door. This gym is the place you’ll spend most of your time really and is the most essential place as it’s here where you can train your Digimon. Your Digimon like enemy Digimon have stats: HP, MP, offense, defense, speed, brain. It’s quite obvious what these stats do, except for defense. Does defense determine how likely your digimon will block attacks or reduce damage from enemy attacks? That was never explained. Each time you do a training your Digimon’s respective stat will go up by a set amount and will cost you 1 hour of in-game time. We remember spending all day in the gym just boosting our stats to get a strong Digimon. Eventually when enough time passes your rookie digimon will digivolve into a champion. Yes there are five classes: baby, in training, rookie, champion and ultimate. sSo simply, train, digivolve be strong enough to explore the island, find digimon to bring back to the city and win your battles. Now let’s get to the complex stuff.
The most complex thing is the digivolution and the mechanics surrounding it. You get a few clues but ultimately you don’t know what to do. Numerous gamers have admitted that they didn’t know what to do either. In the official booklet you get some information on how to get argument to merman, monochromon and greymon but that information doesn’t feel accurate at all as we tried but never got a greymon. You always get a champion digmon but not always an ultimate digimon. Ee remember seeing our champion digimon die and fade away so many times and not know why. They were healthy, no virus, good stats and little to no care mistakes. Turns out the other factors are number of battles and your digimon’s weight. How are kids suppose to know and get strategic with all this information. For example to get let’s say Megadramon, you firstly need all your stats to be high, battle many times we think 15 times minimum (again not sure) weight must be around 50-55. Some digmon is said to require care mistakes. This doesn’t make sense since the whole game trains you to avoid making care mistakes but you’re suppose to know to have a few for certain digimon. Not fair. Even when you met the criteria for an ultimate (well you think you do) at times your digimon still just fades away. You don’t even get to know why. Just try again and hit the gym. Now that X35 Earthwalker is older he has gotten ultimates far more consistently like 3/5 times but that’s because of additional information and what we learnt online which wasn’t really a thing back then.
Another complicated thing is why does your champion sometimes digivolve into Numemon. Now yes we know you can get him with care mistakes but we remember times when we didn’t get care mistakes but still got him. Maybe we are mistaken since that was years ago. Numemon is disgusting, weak, gains less from training and everyone hates it and doesn’t want it. It serves no purpose… or does it? We know there’s a suit that if you bring Numemon to, he and only he can slip into it, instantly becoming an ultimate digimon with some serious power and you need that digimon to enter the toy mansion. So even trash has it’s use and this trash digimon has a completing game essential use but what kid would know to do that? You avoid getting numemon. Numemon can become Sukamon who is also trash poop digimon and even shaped like poop. It’s also weak but get this. Sukamon can become etemon only if it has high stats like 400 offense and speed. It also must have a weight within 10-20 and battled more than 40 times. Remember that sukamon is naturally very weak and has a lame starting move, so naturally players avoided fighting with him as he struggles badly. How is a kid suppose to figure the out and know to battle with it 40 TIMES! In defence of the two trash digimon, if you get their stats high and give it certain filth techniques like quick poop throw and the giant poop technique, they can actually be quite tough and fast enough to interrupt the attacks of stronger digimon. Remember that. They are trash but aren’t complete trash.
Next is the techniques. You start off with either ‘spit fire’ for Argumon or ‘sonic jab’ for gabumon. Both honestly good moves. The game does tell you that you can learn new moves through training the brain and battling but that’s it. When raising the Digimon brain stat, you have a small chance of learning a move when you pass 50. For example when you raise your brain to pass 150, 250, 350, 450, 550 etc, there is a SMALL chance you’ll learn a random move that your digimon can perform. It’s basically random, you may not learn anything at all from 0-950. The easier way to learn is to battle. This also isn’t explained. We don’t exactly know what determines if you learn the move or not. It’s random really. Do you learn the move when you get hit by the attack, block the attack or they just do it, do it a certain number of times it’s not clear nor explained. We have had matches were we successfully block a move three times or more and still not get a move. Twice we learnt a move from the enemy even though that enemy never got to do the move. They just about started the process or animation for the smallest fraction of second but got hit. Literally, Tyrannomon learnt red inferno and Leomon learnt war cry first time even though the enemy never got to do the move. We didn’t even know they did the move during the match we just saw “red inferno learnt” at the end and was like “wait what? How? Oh well we’ll take it”. We once with Leomon first and then carried over with Andromon faced the ice ogremon in freehand near the top where there’s three of them many many times in a row to learn the move buster dive. We faced them individually over 20 times! We got hit by buster dive countless times, blocked it many times and still didn’t learn it. We eventually did but took forever. So look at this, it took us over 20 battles and getting hit numerous times to learn buster dive but learnt red inferno and war cry instantly, first try even though the enemy didn’t get to do the move once.
Next is how you get certain digimon to join the city. This is probably the most cryptic for sure. Don’t listen to those who lie online saying they beat Digimon World when they were 8 or 9 etc. They are being stupid and lying. Some of these digmon are cryptic. You have some like Pixiemon, mamemon and metalmamemon who only show up in specific rooms and no one tells you where they are. So just look around and explore right? Not that simple as they only have a 3-5% (We think 5) to spawn in that room when you enter it. This means if you never knew they were there in the first place you will walk past an area that already has digimon in it thinking nothing of that area. It’s literally based on chance. Hows a kid suppose to know that you have to go to this specific place and keep entering and leaving until they show up. When you first play the game you don’t even know they exist. X35 Earthwalker remembers the first time encountering Pixiemon. He was intrigued and surprised as he never saw it before. Talked to it and said it’s an ultimate digimon. He knew it must be strong but wanted to give it a try with his champion digimon and recovery items. Pixiemon destroyed his digimon easily. It wasn’t even a fight… it was abuse. He did get revenge on pixiemon though. Another cryptic digimon is fridgimon which will only show up if your digimon is sick and in a certain room in freezeland. Not only that but your digimon needs to either be a baby, in training or specific fire type digimon like greymon, tyrannomon, argumon etc. How are you suppose to figure that out? First of all Digimon World teaches you to never let your digimon get sick and if it does, you cure it straight away with the medicine item or head back to file city quick with autopilot to go to centarumon. If your digimon stays sick for too long, it will literally die and lose a life. If anyone says found it by chance… we don’t believe you. That means you are saying you happen to have a baby or in training digimon in freezeland which if dull of powerful and dangerous digimon who would destroy you so there’s no reason to bring them. Or you had a digimon, went to freezeland just happened to get sick in the right room and that digimon happens to be a fire type and the right specific fire type? Nope don’t believe you. Digimon don’t get sick naturally really, unless they consume an item that warns you that it could cause sickness , so normal players avoid those items. Second when sick you cure them immediately or auto pilot back to file city so you wouldn’t be there for a while to trigger the event. We skeptical today. There are many digimon to get that are cryptic.
Lastly let’s talk about difficulty. Digimon World is a very hard game. The first digimon you encounter in native forest aren’t strong at all and you can beat most of them comfortably with your first digimon. When you get to the jungle, dino region and mount panorama they get tough and require a strong digimon to beta. When you get to freezeland, misty trees and especially factorial town the digimon there are extremely strong and should be avoided. There was a platinum sukamon (or silver) which had over 4000 HP! Wow! There are many digimon with over 3000HP with some brutal attacks. You need an ultimate digimon at some point to really make it far or a very strong champion with good moves and lots of healing items. Some battles are to get digimon back to the city are brutal. Facing ultimate digimon like Pixiemon, mamemon and metalmamemon are terribly hard fights as they have over 5000 HP and even moves that can do over 1000 damage. Then you have didigmon like Greymon, Airdramon and etemon who surprise attack you without warning and either catch you off guard with a few items or a baby digimon or deal unpreventable damage upon ambush. You have no warning that they are coming. Some digimon like ogremon forces you to fight three on one. Gururamon fights you twice. It ain’t easy out here. Your best bet is to have an ultimate digimon. We’ll too bad to those who played this game back in the day as kids because we couldn’t get ultimates unless by pure chance. We use to try avoiding every digimon we came across to prevent using recovery items. There also wasn’t a well known way of making money in Digimon world. You got money from battle or selling items. Now there are good strategies. You can bring your digimushroom to the trading moyjamon in freezeland to get medium recoveries which you can trade with another to get s def discs which can be sold for 2000 each. So 15 mushrooms = 15 medium recoveries which = 15 s def discs which when sold = 30000. Or you could sell your cards to that giant frog creature in the gecko swamps and use your points to get super recovery for 20 points which sells for 1250 each.
Overall we enjoyed Digimon World. It’s a game from the childhood days. Even before having a memory card for the PS1, seeing how far we could get in a Saturday. Learning the techniques to see what’s out there. This was difficult and unfair in a number of ways but was a to of fun too with lots to do. This game was RPG, open world, adventure and very deep and detailed and it was released back in 1999. It was ahead of it’s time. We have seen some people do a whole play through but clearly are using online guides and all always go to start of with greymon to get metal greymon to get skullgreymon which is boring and not relatable. Too much copying. We have the most fun playing it ourselves. This game is available still and we suggest you give it a try. Just know that training in the gym is a grind but there are ways to speed up training like hawk radish, training manual and certain digimon you invite to the city. No two playthroughs are the same so try it and have fun. Now Digimon World may have bee fun and ahead of it’s time but even it is nothing special when compared to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Stranded Deep is a new open world survival crafting game developed and published by ‘Beam Team Games‘. Stranded Deep is said to have came out the 21st of April 2020 on consoles. It came out on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It’s also out on PC. The really question is “how deep are we stranded here?” That’s what matters. Let’s take a look.
The story in Stranded Deep is your typical standard stranded story. You control a man who was on a plane. Something goes wrong and you end up stranded somewhere in the vast pacific ocean. You are alone. Yes, you are the lone survivor. Like the movie ‘Cast Away’. You start right from there. You get to a nearby emergency raft. The game then gives you control after some time has clearly passed due to it now being day. Then you can either raft away (if you think that’s wise) or head to the nearby island. Then the real game begins. Time to survive.
Yes, players have some options. You can set your difficulty, gender so male or female, whether to use the existing world of generate a new one, whether to have permadeath or not and even decide whether your world has sharks and snakes or just make them passive (which is for babies and gaming wusses). Like why would you not have the enemies in the game. This isn’t Minecraft. Or is it? It’s good that you got options and can make some changes to the game. Options is always good.
This game literally reminds us of Raft. If you think about it like that, then you know what to expect and what to do. You run around, explore the place, find supplies, gather resources, fend off against threats and off course crafting and building. At this point you know what to expect. Not much to say. Gather your wood build a hammer, build the foundation for your base of operations.
There are threats in this game though and so they should be. Players, if they aren’t complete wusses and babies, will have sharks and snakes in their game. These two are threats and can end your life. Sharks have aways been a famous enemies concerning island and water survival games. If you fall in the water or didn’t see a shark but went into the water then you will get a nasty surprise. Survival games like this need an actual threat. What numerous island and other survival games fail at is not creating fear. When you are stranded with no help, surrounded by danger and all alone, the average person would be scared. Pikmin created fear and did it well for it’s colourful friendly style. Players made sure to get all their pikmin back to the onions or stay close before it turns night. These survival games don’t have that feeling. You see something you easily know how to handle it and then you quickly reach a point where nothing can stand up to you and there’s nothing to be afraid of. We believe that Stranded Deep will have the same issue.
We checked out some Stranded Deep gameplay and it’s what we thought it would be. It’s a like Raft but more graphically realistic, deeper and has more going on. There’s krakens or giant squid creature in the sea which is cool. We need more threats like that. You can build machines that can fly, collect trophies like in Terraria. We feel like there’s more emphasis on survival in Stranded deep though. It definitely has more detail too. Raft is still a fun game but Stranded Deep wants to be the biggest most serious island, water survival game. We like that you have to go underwater to explore and even search sunken ships and find goods. There’s a day and night cycle. You can hunt animals for food and even use spears or a spear gun.
Overall Stranded Deep looks like a very good game. We just really hope the threat level is turned up. It needs to feel like a survival game. The water has to be scary. It should make you never want to go in. The crafting looks cool with what you can eventually make. It looks good too. Like Sea of Thieves, the water looks amazing. The developers ‘Beam Team Games’ have done a great job with this game from what we can see so far. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see more of what Stranded Deep has got. Now Stranded Deep may have creatures in the water but even those things know to obey… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Streets of Rage 4 is the new action beat em up game developed by ‘Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games, Dotemu‘ and published by ‘Dotemu and Yooreka Studios’. Streets of Rage 4 is said to be coming out the 30th April 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC. We are definitely looking forward to this game. Let’s take a look.
Streets of Rage is one of, if not the best beat em up game and now we are getting Streets of Rage 4. We knew about this game along time ago but didn’t write on it. There’s a lot to say but we keeping this one short.
Firstly we have no information concerning the story. Mr X’s brain was destroyed in Streets of Rage 3 so you can assume he’s actually dead dead this time. So maybe a new face has taken over the area. You know how it is, when the boss it down, other gangs want to take their shot or maybe a relative or child of Mr X. Who knows? What we do know is that there’s lots of bad guy faces to punch in, combo and swing at with a pipe… just like the good ol days.
Firstly we like the Streets of Rage 4 art style as it’s clearly going for a more flowing modern look. The animations are definitely good. Each attack and move looks smoother and clearly than before. Unlike that one move Max had in Streets of Rage 3 where he’s suppose to be punching the head of a barbed enemy but looks and sounds like he’s breaking their necks. The special attacks and abilities have more special effects and flare making all the moves look powerful but off course we have no idea how strong or weak yet. The game is definitely colourful and we like colours. Who doesn’t like colours?… you grandpa.
We got straight into the visuals this time because it’s Streets of Rage, you know what to expect by now. It’s straight up beat em up. Move through the level and trash the enemies that come your way, find, pick up and use weapons to defeat your enemies and off course, work with a friend as it’s always been 2 player co-op. There’s even new characters, as there should be. Yes the main characters Axel, Adam and Blaze are all here (they better be) but we know have two new characters: Floyd Iraia (the big dude with mechanical arms) and Cherry Hunter (the cool black girl with an electric guitar). Both definitely stand out and got their own style and tricks. Something is different though.
There is now a Battlemode. It’s in the name but it’s against each other. Take on your friends and see who is the best fighter or who has the most rage in the streets. It’s four player co-op! Not only can you play as the main characters of Streets of Rage 4 but you can also play as past characters from previous Streets of Rage games and even better the past versions of them. For example you can take control of Axel from Streets of Rage 1 and fight with his moves from that game. You can play as an from Streets of Rage 3 or as Max or Skate from Streets of Rage 2, or Adam from the first game etc. So in a battle mode you can have four friends or family fight against each other but each player is a Blaze from each Streets of Rage game: 1,2,3 and 4 to see which Blaze is the queen of fighting. Now that’s an excellent idea. Smart move by the developers as they knew fans would want to see the past too.
There’s more! The developers of Streets of Rage 4 have not just brought the characters and designs from the past but also the music. Players can play levels and stages to the old music. Remember those banging tunes from Streets of Rage 1 and 2? You can hear them while you play now. We are sure there’s some cool ones from Streets of Rage 3 but we weren’t a big fan of the music from that one. This shows the developers are aware and paid attention to what has been said about the past games and applying that information to this new design. If they play it smart like this all the way through then Streets of Rage 4 will be one of the best games so far easily.
We are so glad they brought Adam Hunter back into the battle. When he wasn’t there for Streets of Rage 2 we were annoyed but we understood as he was captured but there was no excuse for Streets of Rage 3. We missed that character and so did fans. Now he’s back and has real power. There are counters, explosive moves, ultimate like attacks, flashy acrobatic movement and more. Also in case you couldn’t tell from the names Adam Hunter is Cherry Hunter’s dad. Father and daughter fighting side by side and kicking butt. Nothing can make a dad more proud than seeing his little girl drop kick big dudes. That’s better than a graduation any day.
We checked out some gameplay and it’s not what we thought it would be initially but it’s better this way for sure. The combat is looking real good, the levels have variety, the battle mode brings another layer of gameplay and fun, the variety of music including the music from past will get shoulders moving while fighting. The many many chapters you can unlock allowing you to play as the past game versions of these characters is an excellent idea. We haven’t seen anything concerning bosses but we know with all these moves, abilities, characters, help and combos with co-op partners we know the bosses have to be a big threat. They must match the hype. Lastly we aren’t a huge fan of Axel’s design. Why does he look so much older than the others and so out of shape. He’s really broad and looks like he sort of has a tummy. Does he still have his mobility? Wished he looked more in shape like the others. Blaze is looking beautiful and dangerous and she made the smart move to wear a jacket this time as she will need the extra protection from these dangerous thugs.
Overall Streets of Rage 4 is looking like an awesome game so far. We like the visuals, the gameplay, the characters and even the designs. Looks like there is content to last for a good time too. We hope there is no health bar or number of uses for pipes and bats like there was in Streets of Rage 3 (bad mechanic). The developers ‘Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games, Dotemu’ have done an amazing job so far.
Bless Unleashed is an Xbox exclusive MMORPG developed by ‘NEOWIZ Round 8 Studios‘ and published by ‘Bandai Namco‘. We have played Bless Unleashed for a good while now and it’s definitely a good game and even has something that other games failed to do; however we have encountered some designs and features that have ruined things for us. Let’s take a look.
The first thing layers will notice about Bless Unleashed is the combat. It’s slow, sort of unresponsive and stiff. For example you swing at the enemy after knocking them down and sometimes you go over them or through them slightly. All you have to do is readjust but it can cost you a free strike on the downed enemy as the crusader class. Also you can’t use your shield fast enough after attacking, there’s such a delay that you have to wait a whole 2 second or slightly less until you can raise your shield. So you about to finish your combo, see the enemy about to hit you, you try to raise your shield as soon as the combo finishes (well in time) then get no shield, smacked across the head… and then your shield comes up which is too late. Also the Crusader class it punished as the full combo can never be finished before the boss attacks you. aYou aren’t really allowed to use your power, especially when fighting the dungeon enemies. You have to rely on others to do the damage while you hold block forever which isn’t fun. A delay with the shield isn’t fun either. Combat needs to be improved, smoother, faster reaction slowed also.
Now let’s mention some good stuff about Bless Unleashed. Bless Unleashed has shown that the developers really thought some elements out. For example we like that there are two in game currencies in the game that are very easy to get your hands on. You can even convert regular gold into star seeds. With both gold and star seeds players can use the fast travel teleporters. Not only that, you can activate those teleporters even when you aren’t physically at one of them which is good design. Another great thing is that you get lots of upgrade and fortification stones. They are real easy to get and even some defeated enemies drop them. You need these stones to upgrade your weapons and equipment. So you don’t have a problem getting the chance to upgrade. Now this is a negative also but a bigger positive in some ways. Other players are always present in your world except for strict moments concerning the story where it has to be you alone. Now this is annoying as other players can kill the enemies you are hunting but the major benefit is that you get all the help you normally get all the help you need with powerful bosses found in the open world. For example you almost always find players waiting for a big boss to spawn so when he finally spawn there’s like 17 players all attacking it. So you will get help.
Next thing that makes Bless Unleashed not fun is the amount of bag space you have. To be fair, there is a way to upgrade the amount of bag space. You have to collect 4 bag pieces and take them to the bag specialist guy who increases bag space by 1. Yes, it’s that small. You always run out of space. Maybe they need to increase the stack numbers for the fortification and upgrade stones and the ingredients like leather, thin branches etc. That would certainly help. Increase the bag that you start with and increase the stack size. It’s absolutely annoying when you want to open up a chest award or get new items but you have to decide what to get rid of since every single item counts as a space except for stacks which off course count as one. Not fun at all.
Another thing that’s not fun about Bless Unleashed is the upgrade of weapons and equipment. We will focus on weapons as that’s our experience with this issue. So firstly you need the right amount of in game currency which is fine. You need enough fortification and upgrade stones which is fine. Now when you upgrade a weapon when it’s a rare there is a chance that your weapon upgrade can fail. This for starters is stupid. If we have the goods, and the materials then give us the upgrade. This isn’t Raid: shadow legend where you can fail the upgrade. Not only can you fail but your weapon can break too. When your weapon breaks during a fail, you can’t upgrade that weapon again until you repair it which requires a repair kit item which isn’t cheap by the way or easy to obtain. Not only that when your weapon breaks it goes down one level. So your level 4 sword you tried to upgrade, breaks and is now back to being a level 3! THAT’S STUPID! You can be severely punished for attempting to upgrade. So let’s give a very accurate example. You have a level 3 rare sword and you got the right amount of stuff to attempt an upgrade. It fails. You sword is broken and it’s now. level 2 and you need a repair kit to repair which you get at the limited time store. Now that it’s repaired you have to repair again just to get back to your original level of level 3 just so you can attempt again which you could also fail again. That’s NOT fun at all. Also bad like Raid: Shadow legends you don’t get told your odds of success. You don’t know the risk when you want to upgrade. So it’s unfair.
Now the one thing Bless Unleashed did that others didn’t do is the more realistic female model designs for NPCs. We have mentioned this before but in the first area in the festival. There was some women who had on high heels which off course effects the figure. We noticed that the calf muscles and Gastrocnemius looked exactly like how a real life women’s lower leg would look. This is a big deal to us because other games don’t do that. They all have very similar model designs. Some developers have lazy moments. We wish more games have diversity in their character designs, especially for NPCs.
Now another problem that Bless Unleashed have is the attack combos for the Crusaders. You have round about 4 actual combos but the problem is you will only really be using 1. The main one where you tap RB, RB, RB, RB, B does the most damage. So why would you use the other combos? Well you can use the RB, RB, RT, B combo which has an area effect so it’s good for a group but there’s no reason to use the others as it’s less damage. The shield one that knocks the enemy in the air isn’t needed as your strongest combo has big knock back so you get the distance anyway. So there’s no point in having them. They are pointless. If there’s a hidden actual purpose for those other combos then it’s not clear and we don’t know. Give the player combos that actually matter. Why can’t one have a poison effect maybe, while another combo may lower defence or boost your attack damage or whatever. See? We are better at game design than all these designers.
The last and biggest failure of Bless Unleashed and the single main reason why we don’t even feel like playing the game anymore… the levelling up. Simple put, it takes forever. There’s only two ways to really progress in this game. Level up, which grants more health and strength, and upgrading your weapon for more damage. We already discussed that many are too scared to upgrade and the fails prevent you from doing that, so all you are left with is levelling up. Never has levelling up felt so slow in a game. We have done all the side quests that we can find. We have fought and killed many enemies and that doesn’t even take you halfway to levelling up. We aren’t joking. Rewatch the clip above. We got 1659 experience points which is 0.134%. This is from an enemy which is 4 levees higher than us by the way. This would mean in order to get 100% so we can level up, we have kill that goat 746 times!!!!!! Nope! Sorry! Not doing that! It gets worse. The next story mission we need to complete to progress is to defeat a dungeon boss. We can’t fight it because you have to be level 19 to enter the dungeon. We just turned level 18 by finishing the last mission and as you can see in the clip above, we are nowhere near being level 19. We did all the side quests we could find. No we aren’t going to ride around the whole big map in order to try and find more. They should be available from the map or whatever. We learnt that fighting stronger monsters only grant pathetic amounts of experience like 0.134% worth. We are stuck. No! We aren’t going to sit there and slay a goat 746 times! We have lives to live, we got a business to run, friends to socialise with, family to spend time with, online church services and more. WE’VE GOT A LIFE! We heard some player go back to find the global Map bosses that spawn into the world. One, those bosses spawn like every 20mins. They literally take forever to spawn in. Two, they don’t give as much exp as you would expect. This is the biggest killer for us concerning Bless Unleashed. So no, we aren’t playing it. We rather go back to playing Tera and Skyforge.
We didn’t want to completely bash the game in as it’s a good game truly and well made. That’s why we threw in some positives about the game in this blog post. It’s just there are some stuff that makes the game not fun at all. Players shouldn’t be afraid to upgrade their weapons. Players always want upgrades. We have a purple epic upgrade stone but we don’t want to rick using it, then grind back the resources needed to upgrade again because your last upgrade failed. It is completely stupid to lock the story behind compulsory level u missions. Side quests, fine but not the main story. We literally can’t progress until we are level 19 which takes forever to get there. The whole point of videos games is entertainment. You are suppose to have fun. Since we aren’t having fun, we can conclude that Bless Unleashed failed to complete its purpose. We will wait to see if there are any changes but until then, we will be playing other games. Bless Unleashed may be a good game but without the fun it’s not good enough for… the ‘Earth Walk!’
‘Deliver Us the Moon’ is a sci-fi thriller game developed by ‘KeokeN Interactive‘ and published by ‘Wired Productions‘. Deliver us the moon is said to be coming out on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on the 24th of April 2020. It’s said to be coming to the Nintendo Switch also in 2020 but no exact date. It’s already on PC but we don’t count that. So for us, this game is new. So we are in space and there’s a moon that needs saving? What? Let’s take a look.
So Deliver us the moon is set in the future. Not too far but the “near future”. It’s an apocalyptic time. Earth’s natural resources are gone. They are depleted. So off course mankind decides to take their search to space to find the good stuff – we mean resources. They get to the moon. Things are going well. The “global powers” have worked together to make the ‘World Space Agency’. They also discovered and got their hands on a new energy source. Everything is literally going well… for once…. until (it never goes well forever) one day earth loses all contact and communication with the moon. Years later is when the player comes into play.
So, in Deliver us the moon, players take control of the so called Earth’s last astronaut. Your mission is simple, get up there and find out what happened. This kind of sounds like another regular person who gets called up into space to find out what happened and repair stuff… Isaac Clarke from Dead Space. Well it gets a bit different from here as you are not alone for this journey. In Deliver us the moon you have a small robot called ASE. So with ASE you will explore the moon, hopefully gathering information, get some clues as to what happened and off course solve the mystery of what happened here.
So yes, it’s a space exploration game really. You along with your ASE robot will traverse the moon and even get to explore abandoned facilities. There is stuff, buildings and things left behind from previous “lunar missions”. This means you can hopefully learn from their mistakes and see what’s going on. Surely there is no danger out here on the moon… right? Rely on your robot to learn what took place in the lunar colonies.
Off course being a sci-fi game, players will need to make full use of the technology available to them. There are useful tools like cutting lasers, robotic arms, some awesome space suits which come with their own effects. There’s even rockets! We know we will put those to good use. If we something we don’t like, we blow it up. Simple rule. We at X35 Earthwalker do not condone blowing things up in real life.
Now if you are a gamer that doesn’t like using their head for some reason then you’ll, have a tough time here as Deliver us the moon has a number of puzzles. It’s described as “intricate puzzles”. So make sure to use your head. There will be numerous obstacles and danger is confirmed. We don’t know if there’s an actual enemy around or whether it’s environmental danger etc. Judging from the overall design of the game, we believe it’s definitely environmental.
We checked out some Deliver us the Moon gameplay and it’s what we expected except for the additional stuff. We liked that you get launch a rocket from space that you get to experience that. We like the level of freedom for exploration and that there is multiple means of exploration. You can drift through space with zero gravity and just chill really. You can explore the WSA space station on foot,
zoom across the surface of the moon in a rover. There’s even a monorail for you to get to the real far distance places much easier and faster.
Overall Deliver us the Moon seems like a cool game. It’s definitely has emphasis on the atmosphere. We wonder if this game will have actual enemies as it’s not clear. The graphics are excellent and what you can see is very well done. The environment is definitely what you would expect and it looks great. It’s the moon, what else do you expect besides the same colour and rocks. The developers KeokeN Interactive’ have done a very good job from what we see so far. We at X35 Earthwalker are quite glad to see another space game. Now Deliver us the Moon may have an adventure and mystery in space but it’s very bland and obvious when compared to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Project Witchstone is a new adventure role playing game developed and published by ‘Spearhead Games‘. Project Witchstone is said to be coming out in the second quarter of 2020 on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. We never heard about this game to anyone talk about this so we are interested. Let’s take a look.
In the world of Project Witchstone everything is defined and effected by your “every action”. We actually don’t know anything about the story. We have to actually say this but the official website for Project Witcher isn’t good. It’s so hard to actually get the information they are presenting. Yes we know the game is in Kickstarter 2020 so it’s limited on information.
Project Witcher is literally all centred around your decisions and how you do things. For example you can choose whether to be truthful and straight up or deceitful. You can even plant evidence on others to incriminate them which is bad off course. You could be the good guy and instead free people by killing their oppressors. So yeah, what you do matters. We have heard many games try the whole your actions have consequences thing but most don’t do it well at all.
Now when it comes to combat it’s all turn based. So we got strategy up in this game and we like strategy games. There isn’t much information on it. What we do know is that it has the general RPG style. So expect combat, spells. There also isn’t much of a story either as the whole game is supposed to be centred around you and that you can shape the worlds you see fit. Get entire factions mad, causing others to get into fights with each other. So basically in Project Witchstone you can do whatever you want.
Project Witchstone also wants their world to be alive. As in the inhabitants are doing stuff and things are happening around you. For example, some inhabitants have their own likes and dislikes, you can become friends with them, make them enemies and they can even own properties.
We checked out some Project Witchstone and it’s better than we thought. Our advice, look at the gameplay first before you read about it or go to the official website. It has great graphics and great attention to details. It definitely looks great. Animations need to be better though and a better flow of action. There is stealth elements to the game as in you can assassinate enemies to take them out instantly. So there is a good number of stuff going on in the game.
Overall, Project Witchstone seems like another game with loads of ambitions and trying risking difficult but unique stuff to stand out from other games. We respect that and hope that Project Witchstone does well at what it wants. We hope the decision and consequences have actual effect and mean something. The developers ‘Spearhead Games’ are doing something interesting here. We at X35 Earthwalker just have to see what becomes of this. Now Project Witchstone may have consequences from decision but those are irrelevant when it comes to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
