"If there is an app for that"

Apex Legends Mobile review

June 01, 2022 by RSS Feed

I have bounced off of almost every battle royale game there is. Conceptually, I like the format of a multiplayer shooter that relies on teamwork, exploration, and survival beyond quick and precise aiming, but most of them are bogged down with features I'm not interested in engaging with or don't strike the right balance between depth and approachability. Since firing up Apex Legends Mobile for the first time last week, though, I've found myself struggling to put it down. It may not tout the same fidelity of its PC and console counterpart, but makes for a streamlined battle royale experience that maintains a satisfying match pace and depth that many mobilized versions of battle royales fail to do.

Same but different

Apex Legends Mobile is mostly the same game as the original Apex Legends, which is to say it's a multiplayer shooter where teams of three combatants drop onto a massive map with the goal of eliminating all other teams using weapons found scattered across the environment. It also features all of the signature touches specific to the original Apex, like additional mobility options, characters with special powers, a ping system, and more.

Functionally, it feels like a port of Apex Legends. Even the match length is about the same. They key difference though is that this game has no cross-play with the original Apex and has some different tuning and control options for movement and shooting that make it manageable to play on a touch screen and allow for players to develop a sense of precision despite the less-than-precise control method.

Slide, scavenge, shoot

The secret to Apex Legends Mobile's success for me is just how easy it is to dive into a match and instantly be a competent teammate. By default, this game does things like auto-ping enemies and items so you're constantly being useful to your team even if your aim isn't on point. You can also auto-loot gear so you don't have to develop any sort of specialized knowledge about what weapons, attachments, or items you should or shouldn't be picking up.

It also helps that Apex Legends Mobile feels about as great as you can make a mobile shooter feel right out of the box, and if that doesn't work there is a staggering amount of customization options you can dial to your exact preferences. Given all of the options at your disposal (including competent controller support), there's a way to make just about anyone feel comfortable controlling it.

The apex of unweildy menus

It's astounding how Respawn Entertainment has managed to simplify its battle royale while still cramming in all of the depth of the original game, but it comes at a cost. When you aren't actively in a round of Apex Legends Mobile, the game is a nightmare of menus and splash screens that are both hard to look at and unintuitive to navigate.

Everything from choosing the kind of match you want to play to redeeming battle pass rewards just feels a lot harder to do than it should, and every moment the game uses to try and show off animations or cinematics, the whole thing ends up feeling really slapped together. Out of all the things to drop the ball on, I guess it's fortunate that the sloppiest parts of Apex Legends Mobile don't affect how matches play, but that doesn't mean that these aren't problems that need to be fixed. I'm not sure the menus will get too slimmed down over time due to the game's free-to-play nature (which, by the way, seems very focused on keeping gameplay balanced and promoting/selling cosmetic items), but I'm hoping the nested maze of menus at least gets a more coherent flow and better navigation buttons down the line.

The bottom line

Apex Legends Mobile is the most fun I have had with a battle royale game, on mobile or otherwise. It makes all of the nitty gritty aspects of playing such a multi-faceted experience easy without stripping out depth, and offers such a multitude of options to get yourself feeling like a precision player even if the overall experience isn't as sharp and honed as PC and console battle royales.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/apex-legends-mobile-review/

Catalyst Black review

June 01, 2022 by RSS Feed

Super Evil Megacorp's latest mobile release is a multiplayer top-down shooter known as Catalyst Black. You may know this developer from their previous work on the now languishing MOBA Vainglory, which was a game designed to clear the hurdles that otherwise make this genre inconvenient to play on mobile devices. A lot of the same design ethos has been poured into Catalyst Black, resulting in some fast and fun shooting action despite its bothersome free-to-play design and the fact that it has essentially zero personality.

Shapeshifting shooter

Catalyst Black is a team-focused shooter where every player has full control of their loadout and abilities. On top of choosing a primary and heavy weapon of choice, heroes can equip a wide variety of special actions (i.e. teleportation, shields, healing, etc.), passive talents (i.e. faster reload, auto-shielding teammates, etc.), and even their character's overall appearance to make the exact kind of hero character they might want from other hero shooters like Overwatch.

One of the main selling points for Catalyst Black is also that every character has the same ultimate ability: to transform into magical monsters known as primals that allow you to shift the tide of battles considerably. As with hero characters, primals are fully customizable in that the handful of available monsters have unique sets of abilities that can also be swapped out for the ideal loadout.

Condensed combat

Across the four primary game modes in Catalyst Black, players can find themselves teaming up for a standard death match, skirmishing to complete objectives using limited lives, taking part in large-scale territory control contests, or all working together to cut down monsters in a completely cooperative coliseum mode. Outside of these options, Catalyst Black also has a rotating 5th game mode that can be things like capture the flag or a unique mode that places bounties on unique AI enemies for teams to try and rack up points faster by taking them down ahead of their opponent.

No matter which way you decide to play, Catalyst Black mostly revolves around outwitting your opponents and working together as a team (though it helps to have good and quick aiming, too). Luckily, the action in the game is super easy to control and maps are full of interesting features like brush to hide in, obstacles to take cover behind, and even random monsters that will attack and kill you if you aren't careful.

Cobbled together customization

Catalyst Black is about as easy and convenient a shooter can be on mobile. It has high quality social features for managing friends and lets you drop in on matches at a moment's notice. Queue times for matches are also lightning quick and each mode serves up a different average match length, ensuring players wanting long sessions with the game or quick bursts of action can have a good time.

With all of this customization and comfort comes a trade-off, though. By keeping things so modular, Catalyst Black doesn't really feel like it has a firm sense of self. The AI mobs, primals, and other unique features of the game feel like they are there purely to make the game stand out, and otherwise don't feel like they gel or give additional dimension to the experience.

On a final note, perhaps the most irksome thing about Catalyst Black is its free-to-play structure. Progression in the game involves collecting currencies to make weapons and abilities more powerful than those of other players, which ultimately tips the balance scale in favor of those willing to put money into the game. In my time with Catalyst Black I haven't felt like I've played a match with someone who paid to be powerful, but the fact that this is possible is annoying and could eventually become a big problem for the game.

The bottom line

Catalyst Black is a fun shooter, but it's hard to get too excited about any of the other stuff in it that makes it unique. I definitely plan to keep returning to it because of the way it feels and the variety it offers, but I find little else endearing about it, which is a weird way to feel about a game.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/catalyst-black-review/

Gunfire Reborn review

June 01, 2022 by RSS Feed

Gunfire Reborn is a roguelite first-person shooter that's entirely focused on loot. In each run, you are constantly finding various weapons, ability upgrades, and passive modifiers in an effort to mold yourself into the perfect soldier to battle against waves of increasingly complicated and powerful waves of enemies. The experience at times can feel like a slow burn, but Gunfire Reborn is quite possibly the best way to do some cooperative shooting on mobile.

Furry FPS

There is very little setup to Gunfire Reborn. You play as one of a handful of gun-toting anthropomorphic animals who are tasked with blasting their way through dungeons and slaying bosses. There's no real story that unfolds along the way, unless you count the evolution of the loadout and abilities you equip to your character.

As you load directly into new biomes to fight the next sets of tough enemies, you need to keep your weapons and abilities up to snuff. Enemies may drop random weapons with procedurally generated modifiers like "50% chance to spawn a ball of lightning" or "reloads 75% faster off an empty clip" and certain levels have chests, hidden stages, or predictable checkpoint spots where you can pick up passive talents and spend coins you've been collecting to upgrade your existing gear, heal up, etc.

Multiplayer mayhem

As a shooter, Gunfire Reborn isn't particularly complicated. There's some basic traversal options and a few guns with unique firing mechanics, but most of the game is reliant on your ability to circle strafe or use environmental cover effectively while being smart about how to tune your character with the random upgrades you find along the way. Between runs you also get the ability to spend a special currency on unlocking and upgrading abilities that provide permanent power boosts to help you get further along each time you start a new game.

The run, gun, die, repeat loop of Gunfire Reborn is nothing new, but it helps that its guns and abilities intertwine with an elemental system that adds a lot of variability to how you build your characters on each run. Also, perhaps the biggest plus side of the game is its ability for up to four players to team up on runs, which makes for a more chaotic experience that feels less like you're stuck on an endless upgrade treadmill... at least by yourself.

Longtime looter

There are definitely unique aspects to how Gunfire Reborn's abilities work, but if I had to lay a complaint about the game it's that so many of them are passive or simply reliant on procedural generation to the point that none of them really work to make the game feel unique to control. The voxel-like in-game graphics also don't help the game look unique, as they somewhat deaden a lot of the inspired character and art direction present here.

On a final note, it's worth noting that Gunfire Reborn may feel best with other players, but run lengths can go on for over an hour which might be hard to manage playing on a mobile device. If you're playing single player this is way less of an issue, especially since Gunfire Reborn has a good checkpointing system, but playing solo can also definitely makes the game feel a lot less lively.

The bottom line

The best times I've had with Gunfire Reborn were when I set aside the time to matchmake with other players and play an extended session. I'd even go as far to say it's now my go-to cooperative game. The game is still enjoyable as-is playing solo, but the long upgrade treadmill and somewhat generic look and feel can make the single player experience feel a bit dull by comparison.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/gunfire-reborn-review/

Who Muted Uncle Marcus? review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

Wales Interactive have firmly established themselves as some of the most prolific FMV developers out there, putting out three titles on the App Store last year and already ushering in an absurd virtual party-turned-murder-investigation with Who Muted Uncle Marcus? in early 2022. This game puts you in the shoes of Abby as she grills her eccentric relatives after a family meeting where a deadly plot unfolded. Despite a concept that should set the stage for a fun locked-door mystery, Who Muted Uncle Marcus? feels forced and arbitrary at almost every turn.

Family farce

Who Muted Uncle Marcus? is a game that takes place over a virtual meeting in celebration of Abby's mother's birthday. The game quickly establishes that this kind of call is a family tradition and that it is also conducted in the format of a quiz game, with each family member taking turns to host a round of questions while the others compete for points.

As Abby prepares for this call, she gets another from the black sheep of the family: Uncle Marcus. Marcus calls to tell Abby that he has been poisoned and that the culprit has to be someone in the family. This sets you off on an adventure where you not only try to navigate the quiz game and Abby's family drama, but also try to identify the killer and discover how to prevent Marcus from dying.

Quiz or question?

Like most conventional FMV games, Who Muted Uncle Marcus? presents you, the player, with video clips of all of this action playing out with real-life actors. The action only somewhat pauses (or actually pauses if you use the "Streamer Mode" game option) when you--as Abby--can make a choice about how to proceed forward. For the vast majority of this game, your choices revolve around who you want Abby to pair up for certain quiz rounds with and whether or not you want to try and play the family quiz or shift the conversation toward gathering information about the family meeting that led to Marcus's poisoning.

By the end of the game, you get the chance to accuse certain family members of doing the foul deed, provided you've gathered enough evidence to make a case against them. Then you are treated to one of the game's many endings before being invited to play the game again to try gathering new evidence to unlock other endings.

Abitrary arbitration

Right from the outset of Who Muted Uncle Marcus?, it feels like the creators are not confident in their setup. The script has Uncle Marcus comment on the weird rules of the quiz game (which are clearly the way they are so that you can rotate between people to talk to), and the choices in the game don't align with any particular logic to allow you to actually play detective like you might expect. As a result, the whole thing feels like an arduous and random choose-your-own adventure as opposed to an adventure that asks you to investigate or clue-in on certain aspects of character behavior.

After my second playthrough of the game, I realized that I didn't really care at that point who tried to kill Uncle Marcus. The process of revisiting conversations to unlock new evidence from Abby's cartoonishly horrible family would have been a big ask even if there was a logic to intuit about how to get each character to spill the beans. Instead, some unlocks come by purposely getting certain quiz answers incorrect or not even trying to ask about the family meeting at all. There are also some logic holes I discovered where certain clips talk about information that you may not have actually discovered yet. This all gets exacerbated by the frustrating way in which a clip-skipping system works on repeat playthroughs (which only allows you to pass by certain sections of the game in a blink but makes you watch other segments in their entirety for reasons that don't make a ton of sense).

The bottom line

The concept for Who Muted Uncle Marcus? is fun and full of intrigue, but all that feels squandered when you don't actually feel like you're in control of any investigating. It feels more like a toy you are supposed to poke and prod at until you eventually find out what happens, though it's easy to lose interest in doing that considering the characters and game features you have to deal with to do that.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/who-muted-uncle-marcus-review/

Cat Museum review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

Calling this game Cat Museum is almost a misnomer. Although this breezily paced adventure game features cute cats and a museum of sorts, its landscape also contains a ton of surreal and messed up creatures and locations that are constantly at odds with the game's pleasant color palette and storybook aesthetic. This clash is one of many intriguing aspects of Cat Museum, though the game doesn't quite stick around long enough to feel like it follows through on all of the ideas it plays with.

Eerie exhibits

In Cat Museum, you play as a mysterious boy who just so happens to find themselves in the most bizarre "museum" you can think of. It has artwork on display, but all of them are grotesque interpretations or reimaginings famous works. Some of them are simply hanging on the walls, but others are turned into peek-through photo spots, have eyes that follow you, or are just paintings that have literally come to life and can speak with you.

On top of the strange art there are giant killer monsters with hands for feet, a room built out of giant red blood cells, beds made out of body parts, etc. There's nothing about this place that isn't unsettling, save for some cats. It's not entirely clear why you are in this museum, but making your way through it with the help of a magical, glowing cat seems to be the key to discovering something about the main character and his past.

Streamlined spooks

To make your way through Cat Museum, all you have to do is tap on which side of the screen you want the boy to move in and interact with the objects you come across. Many objects simply add some more flavor and commentary on the game world, but others initiate puzzles that unlock new ways forward. None of these puzzles are particularly challenging from a design perspective, but almost all of them feature you interacting with some horrific tools or creatures.

On that note, I wouldn't say Cat Museum is a particularly scary game. It is clearly designed to make players uncomfortable, but--even with a few designed monster chase sequences--no part of the game feels especially tense or stressful. In fact, the puzzles and challenges seem deliberately low-stakes and straightforward, even though they can involve popping zits on a face embedded in a creatures back or scooping worm-laced popcorn out of a claw machine with human hands for claws.

Curious conclusion

Cat Museum seems very intentionally designed to keep you from ever getting hung up on its simple challenges. With the exception of one puzzle I had to look up the answer to (as the game has no hint system whatsoever), it is very easy to blaze through the game in one sitting. From an exploration perspective, this is wonderful. It keeps any its visuals from losing their shock value and provides momentum to carry you through the whole thing quite easily.

That said, the one barrier I ran into while playing was a doozy and disrupted my flow through the experience considerably. I'll also say that Cat Museum could have done a little more work at the end to connect the dots and spell out its ending a bit more. I'm all for stories that want to leave things up for interpretation, but not when the conclusion being suggested is so vague that you don't have much to interpret.

The bottom line

All told, I'm very taken with Cat Museum's dedication to bizarre art design and swift pacing in the adventure game format. I would have loved to see a little more refinement on the puzzle design or perhaps some convenience features to prevent any downtime and perhaps a but more substance to the narrative payoff, but the tone and presentation of Cat Museum's bizarre adventure is still plenty satisfying as it is.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/cat-museum-review/