"If there is an app for that"

Fury Unleashed review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

Over the years, video games have primarily focused on granting power fantasies to players by putting them in the shoes of ultra-powerful killing machines. With all of that practice and iteration, games have gotten increasingly refined in their ability to make players feel good about creating various forms of wanton death and destruction. Fury Unleashed is a game practically obsessed with delivering a very straightforward version of shooting action that positively reinforces ripping through enemies as quickly as possible, and it does a really great job at it, especially in adapting its gameplay to touch screens.

Comic book action

Fury Unleashed is a 2D side-scrolling shooter that is built around the aesthetics and design of comic books. You play as the book's protagonist, Fury, and wander between different comic panels, laying waste to skeletons, aliens, nazis, and more. Fury is a super-soldier of sorts who is well versed in all manner of firearms while also having melee weapons, grenades, and super powers at their disposal.

As you make your way through the pages of various comic issues, a light story unfolds, though it's focused more on the fictional creator of these comic books rather than Fury themselves. Rest assured, though, the focus here really is on the moment-to-moment action of unloading bullets in rooms full of enemies, gathering gear along the way, and seeing how far you can make it before you die.

Retro roguelite

The action in Fury Unleashed feels like the gameplay of classic 2D side-scrolling arcade games like Contra and Metal Slug, though with some key differences like independent control of movement and aiming via two virtual joysticks. There's also a gear system in place here that has you discovering and equipping various forms of armor, grenades, power ups, and up two gun options you can swap between on the fly.

This sounds like a lot to handle via a touch screen, but Fury Unleashed's mobile version is surprisingly pretty easy to wrangle (not to mention it also has perfect bluetooth controller support). There aren't a ton of control customization options, but the granular auto-aim settings can really help you fine-tune the degree of compensation you might need when using virtual buttons. If even then things seem too difficult, Fury Unleashed grants you upgrade points after every run that you can use to give yourself bonuses and increased stats on subsequent play sessions, and there's even somewhat of a "checkpointing" system that lets you skip to later levels provided you've cleared the previous ones enough times.

Combo breaker

I can't stress enough how well Fury Unleashed's touch controls work. For the purposes of this review I was able to complete every section of the game on its default "hard" difficulty without touching a controller. Everything from jumping to tossing grenades feels easy to master with perhaps a little bit of practice, and my only consistent hiccups during play mostly came from accidentally opening the the quick-access map, which unfortunately isn't moveable or able to be toggled on/off despite having some customization options for those that play with controllers.

Otherwise, the only thing that might make Fury Unleashed's action feel a little divisive is the game's combo system. Although you can absolutely play this game by cautiously and methodically working your way through levels, it heavily encourages you to string kills together as quickly as possible while avoiding damage. Currencies that help you during runs and generate ability points between them drop more plentifully from enemies the higher your combo meter is. Some ability upgrades are also specifically tied to granting bonuses based on your combo. I don't necessarily mind this gameplay model--especially as it adds some additional challenge to a game that at times can feel a little easy for a roguelite--but it can lead to some frustrating runs where the flow of enemies doesn't quite work your way or a slip of the finger results in dropping a huge combo string that you can't help might have been avoidable playing on a different platform.

The bottom line

Fury Unleashed does a fantastic job of delivering quick, high-octane roguelite action that feels varied, deep, and manageable on a touch screen. It may not be the most original kind of game out there, nor will it necessarily push your skills to their limits, but it is a bloody good time nonetheless.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/fury-unleashed-review/

GrubDash Driver review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

I think we can all agree the gig economy sucks, but GrubDash Driver is a game that goes out of its way to reinforce that point. This management game puts you in the shoes of a delivery driver trying to make ends meet and it is a grueling, soul-crushing experience in both concept and practice. Because the game is so painful to play, though, I'm not sure players might stick with it long enough to glean or appreciate anything about what it has to say beyond its initial (and rather obvious/agreeable) assertion.

Grueling gig

In GrubDash Driver, you play as someone who just lost their job and has to resort to working as a GrubDash driver. GrubDash is this game's fictional food delivery app that more-or-less acts the same way as services like GrubHub and DoorDash operate in real life. Individuals request orders through the app which then go to you, and you have to drive to establishments to pick up said orders and then deliver them to the person that requested them.

It's a job that is repetetive but requires a lot efficiency if you want to score tips or simply not be late with your delivery, and this is reinforced by nearly every single one of GrubDash Driver's mechanics. Every delivery starts with a push notification on your in-game phone, followed by a "getting ready" phase where you make sure you have everything you need before leaving the house. From there, you drive to town where you automatically find parking, but then have to wander through streets to find the correct establishment. After playing a "food pickup" mini game that determines the food's freshness rating, you then have to book it across town in a driving sequence that feels as unresponsive as it possibly can. Once in the neighborhood, you wander between houses reading addresses before dropping the order off at its final location, where you have to make small talk with the recipient before moving on to the next order.

In pursuit of perfection

GrubDash Driver is essentially designed to make you in a constant rush to try in an attempt to beat the clock. Delivery time windows are small, and no pickup or drop-off locations have consistent geography to allow you to rely on player knowledge to take shortcuts. When you first start out, you may consider yourself lucky to get food delivered at all, even though arriving early, maintaining freshness, getting client names correct, etc. can score you the coveted tips you need to really start earning any significant amount of funds.

These funds you then turn around and use on upgrades to make you marginally better at carrying out deliveries. There are also options to spend funds on paying down debt or upgrading your house, but those ends aren't tied to any gameplay systems and are almost treated as vanity expenses. As a result, there is heavy incentive placed on buying new cars that drive better or paying for upgrades that let your character read better, walk faster, etc.

Maddening messaging

I definitely appreciate the way that GrubDash Driver presents the idea of the gig economy as a driver. It is miserable even when you are finding success and it's outlandish to think anyone can simply optimize their way through it to create upward mobility. All that said, GrubDash Driver goes too far to make experience of playing it miserable while also allowing for optimization to occur that it seems to mix up the messaging it appears to be going for.

By making the process of delivering food absurdly difficult (and in some ways that don't make real sense) but offering the ability to purchase upgrades that ease that difficulty, GrubDash Driver seems to suggest that the gig economy is--in fact--something that can be gamed, even when designed to work against you at every turn. There's definitely enough written text in the game to communicate very clearly that the takeaway from this shouldn't be that you can succeed in the gig economy if you try hard enough, even though GrubDash Driver is precisely structured to reinforce that (misguided) belief.

The bottom line

GrubDash Driver is a maddening critique of the gig economy because it gives players goofy and terrible-feeling mechanics to illustrate the difficulty of the work while still granting rewards that you can freely reinvest into making the work easier to perform, netting you more profits. It's a strange way to try and communicate the struggle of the gig worker since it ultimately does allow for you to make meaningful career and life advancement so long as you put up with it for long enough.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/grubdash-driver-review/

Kingdom Catastrophes review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

Kingdom Catastrophes is an rpg storybook about saving a fantasy world from destruction. The only problem is that you have just six days to do it and you don't know where to start. With a little experimentation and luck, you may just save the kingdom, though this game seems more intent on hiding satisfying conclusions and outcomes to its short story than it is on just about anything else.

RPG reader

Although Kingdom Catastrophes has you pick a character, choose a class, and level stats, it truly is more like a "choose-your-own-adventure" book than it is a traditional role-playing game. Each day, you pick where you want your character to go, which sets off what is usually a strange vignette where you get a choice or two as to how to respond before being rewarded (or punished) with stat modifiers or a gain/loss of funds.

Your ultimate goal is to find a progression of these experiences that adequately prepares you for the coming disaster. In theory, this means having strong stats that you've been able to push even further through purchased upgrades on the eve before the event. In practice, it's a bit of a crapshoot because you don't really have a good way of knowing which disaster you'll get on any given playthrough.

Humor is hard

The events in Kingdom Catastrophes are impossible to predict. Even if you go to the same places with the same character on the same days, the events are not guaranteed to be the same. Based on the pitch materials for the game, this seems to be part of how the game wants to create humor.

Unfortunately, that's about as far as this game's sense of comedy goes. Every action you choose certainly results in something you didn't expect, but the way they are written or presented is nothing more than absurd or brow-raising at best. You can play Kingdom Catastrophes with multiple players which I imagine could create some laughs upon seeing how your companions fare or fail at specific tasks, but the game itself doesn't come off as the barrel of laughs it advertises itself as.

Random retries

Without much humor or consistency, Kingdom Catastrophes can frustrate quickly. The game boasts over 100 different endings, but finding any of them relies on a lot of luck (and your own resolve to keep looking). All too often, though, you'll find yourself at the default "dead end" conclusion where the fantasy town you're supposed to save gets destroyed and you are essentially exiled and forgotten.

For a game that wants to serve up so much variety, it strikes as odd that so much of it gets hidden behind layers of randomness that get increasingly maddening to navigate. As a result, it's likely (as it was for me) that you'll be ready to put the game down before you unlock a single special ending.

The bottom line

Game books can be entertaining and fun to explore over and over again, but not if they actively try to keep you from figuring them out. Kingdom Catastrophes has some solid ideas on how to layer light systems on top of a storybook adventure, but those give you no actual sense of control over how to jump through the right random hoops to progress through its supposedly wide variety of endings.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/kingdom-catastrophes-review/

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

It can be tough to make a runner that stands out these days, but that is the least of Aerial_Knight's Never Yield's concerns. With a distinct visual style and energetic original soundtrack, this game constantly works to grab your attention, but it only manages to do so in fits and starts. So many of this independently developed project's many pieces just don't quite gel the way you expect them to, making it hard to fully appreciate all of its cool ideas.

Detroit dystopia

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield has you play as Wally, a man on the run from a facility where he was seemingly cloned. This kicks off what is essentially an extended chase sequence that takes you into the heart of a futuristic version of Detroit, complete with drone armies, robot legs, and a genetically modifed arch rival who can shoot swords via telekinesis.

As Wally runs along, there are all kinds of things that get in his way, but you can tap on the screen in different places to have Wally sprint, jump, vault, or slide to avoid injury and keep moving forward. The further you get into the city, you learn slightly more about Wally, though only through wordless cutscenes that don't truly spell anything out.

Awkward acrobatics

The most standout quality of Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is definitely its audio/visual style. With a low-poly--almost cel-shaded--look and a soundtrack of propulsive beats, the game evokes iconic experiences like Jet Grind Radio while never feeling like it's cribbing material from them.

Unfortuntely, Never Yield almost never quite feels as good to play as it looks. This starts with the game's controls, which awkwardly (and invisibly) divide your device screen into four buttons (though you can opt to play via swipes). Neither of these schemes feels quite right, though, particularly because Never Yield also has a slow motion mechanic designed to help you read and react to obstacles more easily but sometimes activates so early ahead of a hazard that you end up vaulting right into a low table or slide just ahead of a tunnel instead of smoothy traversing them as expected.

Concocted cohesion

Never Yield isn't a terribly long game, but that's honestly probably a good thing. By the time you're about halfway through it, obstacles start looking more than familiar. Once you dial in how to time maneuvers around the slow motion windows, you can easily sail through levels without having to retry at all.

It's in this state of familiarity and flow that Aerial_Knight's Never Yield's starts to shine. Stringing together long combos of parkour while buildings explode around you and a jazzy hip-hop beat plays in the background can be pretty satisfying. That said, it's just not that easy to find this state of being in the game, primarily because of the controls. If you hit an obstacle and have to restart, Never Yield does quickly pop you back to a checkpoint, but as those get further and further apart between tons of obstacles, dying because you reacted to a cue that was too early gets more and more frustrating.

The bottom line

I wish more of Aerial_Knight's Never Yield came together to feel a little tighter and well composed. Almost everything going on in it is fine, good, and even cool on paper, but they just don't seem fully realized and stitched together seamlessly here. As a result, Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is certainly a memorable experience, but not necessarily one I can fully recommend.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/aerialknights-never-yield-review/

M.Duck review

May 25, 2022 by RSS Feed

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The pitch for M.Duck is tantalizingly succinct. Billed as a roguelite about a duck that knows magic, this game has a surprisingly firm sense of what it is and what it offers, and it does a great job of backing up its claims with creative design wrapped around its small, endearing scope.

Duck dungeon

M.Duck is a dungeon-crawler where the protagonist is a duck with a magic wand. You control the duck using virtual buttons to move it left or right across the bottom of the screen and fire off magic bullets at enemies that appear in what is basically a shooting gallery arena.

The goal is simply to defeat every enemy in each wave without dying. If you do, you may be granted a selection of upgrades to your abilities that will help you with the tougher enemies ahead. If you don't, you can try again from the beginning of the game.

Smart simplicity

If this all sounds really straightforward and simple, it's kind of because it is. M.Duck really only complicates itself in one way: The controls are intentionally designed to make it so you cannot shoot your wand and move at the same time. The ramifications of this one change are pretty massive, though, as nearly all of M.Duck's enemy designs and challenge hinge on this single design choice.

The upgrades you earn as you progress through a run can certainly help you compensate for this limitation. For example, there are unlocks that let you move faster or fire more shots, but none of them sidestep the core restraint, and every level in the game is primarily concerned with forcing you to juggle and choose between dodging and attacking at all times.

Charming canard

M.Duck smartly presents a ton of different upgrade options, enemy types, and even randomized bosses to ensure that playing and replaying the game doesn't grow old too quickly. It also has a couple of different difficulty options and a boatload of achievements for you to unlock so you have a good chunk of goals to work toward, even after you've already completed the game.

That said, the game can get a little deflating if and when deep runs get cut short. Luckily, M. Duck isn't a terribly long game, and its skill ceiling is such that you don't need to rely on specific powers to do well. If you stick with it and its colorful dungeons long enough, challenges that once seemed incredibly hard start to feel more achieveable.

The bottom line

M.Duck's confidence and charm makes for a pretty compelling package. It has a great sense of challenge that doesn't overcomplicate things, while also never feeling like it's something that got watered down to feel manageable on a phone. It's just a really great dungeon-crawler that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/m-duck-review/