My experience with Outright Games – Part 1

After playing some of the delights that GameMill Entertainment had to offer I decided at some point
I would take a look at it’s sworn brother in licenced shovelware, Outright Games. They too have
published a fair few licenced games in their day ranging from making games out of cartoons to even
movies to even youtubers (yes, I mean even youtubers – have a look at Race with Ryan). They will
publish anything that will make a quick buck, take a look at their Wikipedia page and you’ll very
quickly get a good idea of what kind of games they publish. Now onto the reason why I bring it up
today, I thought it would be a long while before I’d touch anything from Outright Games, but I guess
fate had other ideas as low and behold, Humble Bundle, of all things had a bundle which had a load
of Outright Games included in it. It was called the ‘Heroes of Film and Television’ bundle and it
exclusively had Outright Games published games in it, so I dug deep, all of £15 or so deep, and got
the whole lot. I made doubly sure that all of the money was going to charity, and none going to
Outright Games and made the plunge. I recently tried the first three games and thought I’d share my
thoughts on them.

Game 1 – Trollhunters: Defenders of Arcadia
Developed by WayForward and based off the TV show of the same name, Trollhunters is a 3D side-
scrolling platformer, a very basic one at that. To be honest, I’d expect more from WayFoward,
developers of the great Shantae series and other good platformers. But I also know that they’ve
made their fair share of shovelware on the Nintendo DS. I played the first three levels and found
them to be pretty much the same, you go along a straight path with slight elevation differences and
get an enemy thrown at you once in a while and they are barely a threat. Collect trollcoins or
whatever and find socks and gnomes, socks are a delicacy to trolls apparently and I couldn’t
remember why the gnomes are important. I just found the whole thing bland. I won’t talk on the
story as I hate talking about such things. Art style was alright, I guess.

Game 2 – Ben 10
Now this one is a big stinker, developed by Torus Games, I had a look at the kind of games they’ve
made over the years, and I have to say, shovelware, shovelware, shovelware. They’ve put out so
many games, it’s unreal, I’ll have to make a note to take a look at their games at some point for a
separate set, although it’ll be hard to decide what will make the cut seeing as they’ve made so many
games. Now, onto Ben 10. I have fond memories of watching the original TV series of Ben 10 when I
was a kid, never got into Alien Force or whatever it was called and when they rebooted the series, I
just uttered one word…’why?’. So this game is based off the reboot, it’s a 3D beat-em’-up style game
with boring, clunky gameplay. It was like I was playing some shovelware on the PS2 with how clunky
it was, ended up bashing the same clown enemies again and again. At least graphically it looked
alright.

Game 3 – Transformers: Battlegrounds
I was actually pleasantly surprised with this one, developed by Coatsink which from what I saw has
been developing small indie games and they look pretty alright. T:B is a turn-based strategy and
don’t get me wrong, it’s a fairly simple one at that, but it does the job. If you’ve never played a turn-
based strategy before I might even recommend this for first time players. I will also say I’m not a fan
of Transformers but I have seen some of the Michael Bay films, so I’m not this games target
demographic but I thought it was fairly enjoyable regardless. You move characters in a grid and take
down enemies. It was pretty enjoyable, so enjoyable in fact that I decided to keep playing even after
I stopped the video for YouTube. So maybe I’ll do an update post at a later time.

After all is said and done you may think that I haven’t given much explanation as to whether these
games are good or not, but in reality there just isn’t much to say about them. I’d say the only one
worth even trying is Transformers: Battlegrounds and then you should draw your own opinions on it.
I am not a damned game reviewer.

Modern Shovelware: A Hunger Never Sated

For my next rant I wanted to talk about something that I know very well, shovelware. I have played a
lot of shovelware on my YouTube channel so I like to think I might have some authority on moaning
about it. I guess most people would ask why I would subject myself to such things, but in all honesty,
I like experiencing a game for the first time, no matter the type of game, it’s the reason why my
channel BioLyze is solely dedicated to playing games for the first time, a first impressions if you will.
Playing games from the likes of Phoenix Games and Blast Entertainment brings me an indescribable
joy, knowing that there’s a high likelihood of the game being trash and finding out that its not too
bad after all, and then just ripping apart the ones that actually are bad. It’s more fun than you’d
think it would be.
 

So, as a man who talks a lot about old school shovelware I wanted to give the once over on more
modern shovelware so that’s how this video came about. I ended up playing the most recent games
published by GameMill Entertainment, the modern-day equivalent of Blast Entertainment, why that
analogy? Due to GameMill licencing whatever they seem to get their grubby little hands on, whether
it be The Walking Dead or King Kong. They are doing the same thing that Blast did with old movies or
cartoons, just GameMill pick licences that are a bit more modern. They must be making some
money, or they would have died off long ago. Outright Games is another notorious one nowadays,
but they are a subject for another time, and believe me, their time will come…

 

 

Going the Distance

Recently I did a video talking about how people distance themselves from video games nowadays, now that statement can be taken in several ways and realistically it’s up to interpretation, but I tried to cover as much as I was willing about the so called ‘taboo’ subject. Why is it taboo? Do you hear anyone talking about this, I bet you don’t, people tend to shy away from this subject and why do they do it? Whether it be intentional or not people tend to be extremely biased when it comes to games, if they don’t buy games day 1, they fan boy over their favourite franchise. If they don’t fan boy over franchises they like, they buy games day 1. The duality of man, lol. Distancing yourself is the act of distancing yourself, plain and simple. Okay, really, it’s whatever you interpret it to be, for myself I made points in the video attached to this post. It can be many things, but the plain and simple would be ‘purposely or unconsciously not involving yourself in the inner works of the video game world, whether it be research into a company before you buy a game or not accepting criticism for a franchise you enjoy’ those are just vague reasons, like I said it varies from person to person. Hype is a disease, and no one wants a disease, right? Hype can cause distance and make you do things you’d normally not do, hey, I’m as excited for GTA VI as the next person but it still won’t change the fact that I’ll wait for PC and a steep price drop, and if that doesn’t happen then I’ll simply won’t play it. I won’t make the mistake of what I did with Red Dead Redemption 2 and play it on PS4, I think that was half the reason I got a PS4 because the only game I ever actually finished on it was RDR2. Had a few other PS4 games but never finished them, still waiting on CTR: Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fuelled PC release, like that will ever happen.

The key point is to have standards when it comes to games and not to just except bad practises from these companies. If you really want to play a game judge whether it will come to your platform of choice and if it is great, then how much is it worth to you, in my opinion no game is worth $60/£50. Let’s use the recent CTR: Nitro-Fuelled, I think it’s worth £25 at best, again this is my price point not necessarily what the game should be sold at but what I’m willing to pay. So, this means I’d have to wait for a sale, then it’s not on PC so I’d have to give in and get it on something like PS4 or Switch, or, I could just say no, I’m not willing to purchase it on those platforms and wait and hope it comes to PC. It’s having standards, we’re all adults here (I hope) so you should value your hard-earned dollar and what you choose to spend it on gaming wise. Not throw 60 bucks at it day one and barely play it because it’s not what you expected it to be. Have some damn self respect.

 

My experience with the Bandai WonderSwan

I wanted to collect something, something obscure. So, I thought about it for a long while and in the end decided on the Bandai WonderSwan, my collection was going to be whatever I could collect, no expectation, no limit. I wanted to do the Super Cassette Vision but holy moly those games are expensive, you could say that about the WonderSwan, but back when I started collecting it in 2015 it wasn’t so bad in terms of price per game as it is now. So, I started collecting and ended up picking up around 15 original WonderSwan games and 15 WonderSwan Colour games and had a Digimon like original WonderSwan and a red WonderSwan Crystal. It just occurred to me; you might not know what a WS is (I’m going to be using an abbreviation now as I’m already sick of typing WonderSwan), google it and be enlightened. I’ll put below the list of games I had, I say had because I don’t collect anything anymore and ended up selling my collection recently, it did hurt a little bit as I was somewhat sad to see it go but seeing as my mentality towards collecting has shifted over the last year to more of a ‘I’m a hoarder’ mentality, I pretty much outright reject collecting now unless it’s something very minor, for example I had a load of old playing cards kicking about, I ended up chucking them due to the condition they were in but kept 1 joker from each pack and now keep them as bookmarks. It’s a small thing but it makes me happy, got a few books on the go now; Moby Dick, Grimms Fairy Tales, and The Bible if you’d believe it. I’m not religious but I went to a catholic school and always wanted to see what the fuss was about so now I am.

 

Pretty long tangent I know so let’s get back to the WS. I didn’t really play it that much to be honest, the games I ended up playing the most was Wonder Classic, Side Pocket and One Piece: Grand Battle Swan Colosseum. Wonder Classic is a golf game which is pretty bare bones in terms of a video game, but it worked, and I enjoyed it when I remembered to bring my WS with me on a journey instead of my DS or PSP. Side Pocket is a pool game and is a little more difficult to get used to but once you’ve got the hang of it it’s pretty decent. One Piece: Not typing the whole title out again, is a 2D fighter and by far my favourite game I had, played really well for a handheld One Piece fighter and had a fair amount of playable characters, didn’t get particularly far in the story though as it does become somewhat challenging.

It’s a real shame that the WS didn’t come over to the west, but I can also see why, it had a short life span, and the Game Boy was dominating in both regions, it won the war in the end and the WS fell into obscurity. I just hope that maybe in the future we might get a WonderSwan Mini console or something with some of the many Bandai games released for the system, I think people would like that, because I know I would.

Also the Digimon games that came out on the WS were pretty good, had a go on Anode Tamer and thought it to be decent, Bandai really need to consider doing a Digimon: WonderSwan Collection for modern systems, I’d buy it.

 

SOL #1

Blame myself, fault I cannot comply

Feelings of damage undertaken within palpitations in my mind, fault, mine to bear. The mentality of
oneself is quite unmistakeable, feelings below the heart surround the heart and butterflies quivering
in acid. I, myself, and I cannot fathom how the body may shudder, try as I try, I presume what the
sensation is like.

Should I blame myself? My mothers ache has returned. The desolation within her soul risen anew, I
am lost, I cannot save her, why must we be tormented within our minds of such trivialities, why can
we not be strong.

I am in a pool infested with sharks, my mother looks at me, and I at her, she turns to the forest, I
scream for her, she does not hesitate, the forest has consumed her, I cannot move from fear of
myself, I am held back by these carnivores for if I lament against the waves they will surely stir. I
want to help, though I am stuck, with these feelings, with this pity, unable to comprehend, although
I try, and I must. Only they can step through the darkness, into the light of the morning star. I can
never put myself in the place they stand, I hope I never can, for I am afraid that I too will be
consumed by the forest.

Restrain my emotions, become one with the desert, I will sink. Distancing myself from myself till I am
nothing but sand, and I can no longer see from right and wrong, all will be calm. I cannot comply, for
I care too much, I must stand firm in my purpose, for I am the only one who can and I must support
the foundations of those that I hold dear, even if it means my own destruction.

Blame myself, fault I cannot comply.

My experience with Alien Rage: Unlimited

Most people would probably look at the title of this article…rant…I don’t know what to call this, and say what in the blue blazes of fried Digimon is Alien Rage: Unlimited. Well, I don’t blame you.

ARU (Alien Rage: Unlimited – you think I’m going to keep typing out the games title in this, you’ve got another thing coming) is a 2013 first-person shooter developed by CI Games, in it you play as some hardcore marine type of bloke who loves killing aliens whenever the opportunity presents the ability to do so. Your mission is to kill aliens because they be stealing resources and can’t share like adults, I don’t know, it’s something like that, the story takes a backseat throughout the majority of the game. The intro is really the only place where the story is dumped on you, after that you can further your lore cravings with audio logs…yes…audio logs, one of the most laziest ways to pass on information to the player and they don’t even travel with the player like in BioShock or something, once you find one you have to stay where the audio log is and listen to it there and then, because if you move away from it, it’ll stop, why couldn’t they allow me to listen to it while on the move, who knows. I won’t spoil the ending, there isn’t much of one to be honest as I always hate spoiling things, I’ll always try to avoid spoiling the game for people if I can.

Gameplay is as you’d expect, you go from room to room, corridor to corridor shooting aliens…it works, it’s the strongest element of the game but still it does get very boring at times as the game is unnecessarily difficult, the lowest difficultly setting is called ‘challenging’, not ‘easy’…’challenging’…and the variety of aliens is limited, not unlimted as the title would suggest, the levels geometry is very bland too. Look, I’m not trying to just excrete all over this game, but it doesn’t have many positive points to list. There’s a good amount of weapons you can use and you can take the aliens weapons too, the bosses are fairly different…umm…umm…you can unlock perks to power up your character, there’s these really annoying TRIPLE KILL, HEADSHOT, EXPLOSIVE notifications that come up during gameplay when you happen to kill an alien in a certain way like it’s an arcade game or something, it also shouts them out like the dude narrating trailers does. It’s funny at first but after a few hours becomes really annoying. Thank alien Jesus that the game is like 5-6 hours, I couldn’t imagine a 10-hour campaign with those stupid TRIPLE KILL notifications going off every time you decimate three aliens in a row. The game also likes to throw at you some unwelcome variations in gameplay like a turret section (gotta have one of those right?), controlling mech section, etc. which I wouldn’t mind as much if they weren’t terrible to play and just shows the games inner jank.

Visually speaking the game is okay, you get some nice environmental set pieces now and then but most of the game is inside the alien facility, that’s all I have to say there. From looking at the games Wikipedia page most people’s main point of negitivity was the games lack of originality, which of course it was. This developer literally said, “let’s get together to make a bog-standard alien shooter”, they weren’t trying to make the next Halo or whatever, they made the conscious decision to make the blandest alien shooter they could muster. No originality, no heart, no substance. What a disappointment, why did they even bother, I’ve played Euro-Jank that has more innovation than this, I’ve played simple series games with a better story than this, I’ve played shovelware with better gameplay than this.

 

If you’ve given up, you’ve given up.

My experience with ArcaniA: Gothic 4

So, from the title of these mad ravings, you can gather that I will be raving about what a lot of people refer to as the ‘black sheep’ of the Gothic series, ArcaniA. I ended up picking this game up forcheap back in the day on Steam, I can’t remember what I paid for it, but I think it must have been 80-90% off it’s original price, I also picked up Fall of Setarrif, ArcaniA’s only expansion, but I won’t be talking about that, and you’ll know why soon enough. When I started the game, I honestly thought I’d be dropping it soon after as the UI, gameplay and visuals were in the lacking department, but I gave the visuals some leniency due to the game being from 2010. What kept me playing were the character interactions, I love the main character, seriously the dudes a bro. He has such a no-nonsense approach to conversation, and I love it, later in the game he even outright asks characters if they are going to be sending him on pointless fetch quests, which of course they still do, but it’s these interactions between the main character and the NPCs that really make the game for me and kept me playing.

I might as well go over the usual slop that people go over regarding any piece of media. The visuals were quite good for the time but unfortunately the game is quite old now and you might experience some graphical glitches here and there while playing on more modern systems, like I did, besides that though visually the game is fine. I think there is some mods kicking about that can fix these issues, but I couldn’t be bothered to fix them as the graphical glitches didn’t bother me too much, just the lighting was strange at times. 

 

Gameplay is very basic, like…super basic. Again, I wouldn’t know as this is my first experience with the Gothic series but a lot of Gothic fans state that the previous games had a lot more to the combat than this game. There’s a combo system which kind of works, you also have spells but the only useful one is the fire ball spell, in my opinion, the ice and lightning spells are more for freezing and stunning enemies as the final upgrade to the fire ball spell is a fire ball that once hits causes AOE fire damage to whoever was in its range and sets enemies on fire for a short time, which is why it’s the best. You can dodge roll which is useful, and you can guard with a shield, but you can’t have a shield with a two-handed weapon, which was my preferred choice of weapon, so I didn’t really use it. Two- handed weapons did more damage overall and some later enemies can drop some very decent ones. Enemies are stupid, they have a telegraphed attacks and once you learn them, which is very easy, you will not have any issue with dealing with them. Only issues arise from when you are fighting multiple enemies but then you pick them off one at a time until they are all gone, keeping an eye on your surroundings. Forgot to mention the bow, best weapon in the game, you and cause sneak damage to enemies and if there’s a group, at the right distance, pick off one or two enemies before they even get to you. There’s a crafting system for potions and weapons, that’s all I have to say with that, it works.

 

The quests vary, most of them are bog standard go here kill this type of affair, or go here collect this, or go here talk to this NPC, etc, etc. I won’t speak on the story as I hate all forms of spoilers regarding stuff like that, I personally find the story to be okay, nothing special just okay. Again, it’s the dialogue and interactions you have with NPCs that make this game for me and sometimes you also fall in love with the jank, this game is definitely not for everyone though. Toward the end of the game, I avoided most enemies though as it feels that once you reach the monastery the quality of the game takes a nose-dive, maybe they ran out of budget or time or something. But after the monastery all but a few of the side-quests disappear, the number of monsters increase and your level of care for the game will be waning. Doesn’t help that they throw a long af cave of monsters at you before the last boss, making you want to stop playing even more. I only fought what I needed to towards the end of the game. Also, they replace the FMV CGI cutscenes with power point presentations shortly after the monastery, it really is like that was the turning point of the game in terms of quality and budget.

Okay I’ll stop moaning now, in the end I enjoyed my experience with the game for the most part, up until the monastery, did I mention that was the turning point of the game, oh I did, well I thought I’d better mention it again, just to be safe. Fall of Setarrif…well my enjoyment of the base game went from pleasant buzz to tolerable to I just want to be done with it, so do you think after beating the game I’d be willing to give the expansion a go, not a chance, have you seen the reviews on Steam? The base game sits at mixed while the expansion sits at mostly negative, can you blame me for giving it a hard pass.