Overview

Studio Aesthesia revitalizes a niche genre, and adds a new touch to create an exciting twin-stick experience to add to your Steam Library. You play as a small white ship, being bombarded by other simple geometric spacecrafts. Swords, axes, or even spears will be at your disposal to equip and upgrade to achieve the high score. The design is reminiscent of the vector-style arcadelike graphics from the ’80s. For those seeking a new approach to some classic vintage action, in quick bursts Breakpoint will deliver.

Gameplay

When you begin a new run, you’ll find yourself immersed in waves of approaching enemy ships. They will come in full swarms utilizing different projectile patterns and flight movements. You must navigate carefully and take things up-close and personal with melee weapons as your arsenal. My personal favorite is the spear due it’s quick and responsive attack speed. Each upgradable weapon has a primary attack and a slower, yet stronger secondary attack. You also have the option to throw your weapon like a projectile as a special attack. Collecting points left behind from destroyed enemy ships will fill your meter to increase your total amount of weapon throws.

First-time players are immediately pulled into a tutorial, before reaching the main menu. This creates a unique and memorable experience, much like the first time inserting quarters into a new arcade cabinet. It takes less than a minute to be introduced to the controls and game goals. The main trick to learn is to attack with swords and axes, instead of the traditional guns, lasers, and missiles in similar games. It feels strange at first, but the melee gimmick was implemented nicely, creating what Breakpoint is referred to as a “twin-stick slasher.” This is a well executed introduction to what the title has to offer.

Graphics

Visually, Breakpoint looks clean and the bright colors are easy on the eyes with no motion blur. The sprites are a nice minimalist design, but maybe a little uninspired when paired with the more detailed weapons. What really stands out is the juxtaposition of your white ship using medieval weapons to fight off vibrant enemies with futuristic space technology. With the retro gaming revival in full stride, many games today fully embrace the pixelated aesthetic. It’s nice to now see developers draw new inspiration from other consoles such as the Vectrex.

Audio

The neon color palette is accompanied by a simple, electronic music piece that serves it’s purpose as in-game music and nothing more. It’s not bad or anything, but you’ll eventually tune it out due to the increasing demand for your focus as you reach higher and stronger waves of enemies. If you want some audio variety, maybe drop the music volume and find a Vaporwave playlist to jam out to. On the other hand, the sound effects are solid. It genuinely feels good and satisfying to swing a mighty hammer at the enemy and feel the impact of the explosion. Hearing your foes explode in a crunchy, full soundbite is what gives Breakpoint life.

Controls

Although this is a twin-stick game, I had little to-no-issues playing with a keyboard and mouse. It really doesn’t diminish the gaming experience at all. The real fun began, however, once I connected my Bluetooth controller to fully realize the game, as I assume the developers intended. That is of course by utilizing the analog sticks, hence the genre. Just know that the right stick (or mouse depending on your peripheral style) merely aims your ship. Those who are used to having the fire and aim function both assigned to the right analog, in all honesty will not have any issues adapting. The controls are tight and responsive.

The weapons each have their own weight and feel to them. The sword is like a windshield wiper covering the front half of your hitbox at a moderate swing speed. The delayed, yet loud impact of the hammer is brutal. I love holding down the secondary fire and charging up a huge cleave while pursuing waves head-on. When your special meter is full, toss your weapon to get you out of a tight corner and clear gatherings at a distance. Picking up and cycling through the different weapons to freshen up the action is clearly Breakpoint’s biggest strength.

Anything Else?

After several attempts to best your own high score, or even top the leaderboards if you’re an arcade veteran, you’ll quickly see all that Breakpoint has to offer. There’s really not much else to do aside from the main game. Players seeking extra features, such as character customization, level select, or a story mode, may be left with a little to be desired. For those longing for more, I suggest to check out Xeno Crisis. Breakpoint reaches out to those who can enjoy the retro arcade experience without the need for any extra bells and whistles.

Bottom Line

Drawing inspiration from the likes of Robotron: 2084 and Smash T.V., Breakpoint is another solid entry to the twin-stick action library with a fresh coat of paint. Best played in short bursts, this is a satisfying title to return to here and there.

Fatal Fury is a part of SNK’s fighting game franchise, which dates way back into the late 20th century where arcade cabinets were still the go to medium to play fighting games on. Although not as popular as fighting game giants such as Street Fighter and Tekken in today’s day and age, Fatal Fury has been slowly regaining its popularity with its iconic characters popping up in other big games; with Geese Howard appearing in Tekken 7 and Terry Bogard making his appearance in Smash. Much like other 2D fighters, the goal of the game is to deplete your opponent’s HP bar before they can deplete yours. Sad to say, the game is a little mundane compared to newly released 2D fighters with more complex game mechanics and much better graphic quality.

Fatal Fury: First Contact was released for the Neo Geo Pocket Colour more than 20 years ago in 1999. The game was ported over to the switch just last month in hopes of creating a sense of nostalgia amongst its loyal fanbase. In terms of gameplay, however, the game does not really bring anything new to the table.

When booting up the game, the screen shows a Neo Geo Pocket Colour device, and you play on the small screen in the middle (Yes, a screen within a screen). I do not really get why they did this, as it makes it much harder to actually play the actual game. There is an option to zoom in, so it becomes much easier on the eyes, but it does not fit the entire screen of the switch, which is kind of annoying in my opinion.

The game only offers 2 modes: a single-player mode where you battle in an arcade mode fashion, beating AI and AI until you beat the final boss character; and a 2-player mode in which you can play in a versus match against a friend. The 2-player mode is really neat as the screen shifts into a horizontal mode so that both players can face each other on a single switch system. This is probably considered to be revolutionary for the game as in the past you would need to have 2 systems and a link cable that joins both devices in order to fight your friends. Other than these 2 modes, there is not much to do. The game even lacks a training mode, which is crucial for a fighting game nowadays.

The game does come with a manual that teaches you how its mechanics work and how to perform each character’s special moves. The manual is really helpful in learning how the game works and learning how to perform cool and deadly attacks that can give you an edge over your opponent. One flaw about it though is that every time I wanted to refer to the manual in the middle of a match, it automatically returned me to its starting page. I had to keep flipping through the manual countless times when I wanted to refer to a specific character’s move list. It got really annoying after a while, and I decided to just button mash till I got bored.

Overall, I feel like the developers of this game just tried to make a quick buck by porting over their old game without adding any new constructive updates. With bigger, better, and more entertaining fighting games in the market today, Fatal Fury: First Contact does not have any features that would keep me playing for long hours. I wouldn’t recommend it to any fighting game enthusiast to get the game unless it’s for nostalgia’s sake. Casual players might find it fun for a while but probably wouldn’t spend hours on end on the game.

The best Skeldefense is a good Skelattack.

Skelattack is a brutal, unforgiving and exacting test of your reflexes, patience and fine motor control which is thinly disguised as a cutesy indie action platformer. So much so that I went looking for a difficultly setting. ‘A game this cute shouldn’t be this hard’ I thought, naively.

You play as Skully the skeleton and, with the help of you bat friend, Imber, you have been quested to save your afterlife home from the deadliest of enemies – humanity. On the day of your ‘skeletons-get-their-memories-back-from-when-they-were-alive’ ceremony, a group of humans attack Aftervale and it’s up to you to platform your way through a series of distinctive worlds to save the day, all while trying to piece together your memories from your time in the mortal world.

The first thing you’ll notice when you boot up the game is the absolutely gorgeous art style. It’s a hand-drawn, gothic affair, with vibrant, colourful and detailed characters and environments that you could stare at for hours, think Cuphead meets Pixar’s Coco. It’s what makes the game so endearing. You want to get through this bit of punishingly difficult platforming so you can see what visual delights are waiting for you in the next room. This is especially true during boss fights which push you to pull together everything you’ve learned up to that point and are the most challenging part of the game. But you’ll keep coming back, attempt after soul-crushing attempt so that you can pass on to the next level and see what Skelattack’s art style has done with the concept of a woodland world or a lava kingdom.

On the topic of environments, each one gives a different gameplay experience with new enemies to face and platforming elements to master. The first level is a dark and claustrophobic sewer, strewn with mousetraps and humans to fight. It’s occupied by some friendly rats who’ll help you on your quest if you can hunt down their stolen food supply.

As a contrast, the second level is in the Greenery, which is open and bright, with lots of plant life, including the sentient mushrooms whose home you’re trying to save. This environment gives you (hopefully non-sentient) mushrooms to jump on for a height boost and new wildlife enemies, like beetles, mosquitoes and giant venus-flytraps to face. Disappointingly, the combat isn’t anything particularly special and the different enemy types don’t lead to a different combat experience. You just need to get close and mash the attack button, there’s no strategy to it.

I won’t spoil any of the surprises for the later levels but it’s worth persevering to the last level which plays like a final exam for the game. It mashes together every enemy and platforming element you’ve faced so far to present you with a twisted climbing frame of death. Once you’ve made your way through that and faced the final boss, you feel like a true master of the underworld.

The basis for that feeling of mastery is the difficulty of the game. It is so hard. So hard. You’ll need to do some pixel-precise platforming over blocks that will insta-kill you and some boss fights that dish out damage from every direction, making The Orphan of Kos from Bloodborne look like an old lady with a rolled-up newspaper. Sometimes that difficulty is hair-pullingly frustrating and, to be completely honest, I had to put the game down and go away for a bit to let the rage simmer down before going back and trying again. Fortunately, the game has a generous checkpoint system and loads up after a death almost immediately, which limits the potential for frustration. Overall, the high difficulty level leads to a great sense of achievement when you eventually manage to get past the spikes, lava and flame monsters by nailing that wall jump on the 82nd attempt.

Part of the difficultly when you first pick up the game is caused by the platforming controls. You only have access to a jump, double jump and wall jump throughout the game so it’s important that you can nail those controls exactly when you need them. To initiate a wall jump, rather than pressing the jump button when you land against a wall, which I’m personally used to, you instead push the stick away from the wall. So, when you need to navigate up a pair of parallel walls like some kind of reverse Father Christmas, you need to carefully time pushing the stick from side to side and avoid the urge to press the jump button. Those controls were the cause of many of my early deaths but once I got used to them I found I was dying from platforming less. Like 10% less. It’s still a punishingly difficult game.

Skelattack is a beautiful and endearing indie game with a soul borrowed from a FromSoftware game. It’s gorgeous, challenging and so compelling. When you put it down, it won’t be long until you pick it back up for another go. It is let down by some awkward controls and uninspired combat but on balance, I came away with some really positive feelings for Skelattack.

Fairy Tail is based on manga/anime of the same name. It promises to be a faithful adaptation of its source material and is promoted with a tag of Magic x Guilds x RPG. I am not very familiar with the license but after looking it up the game felt fairly similar. It also does have the feeling of that type of TV Show with a straightforward plot and quirky, endearing characters, that are always trying their best and are fighting for the sake of others. The game definitely manages to deliver on its promises of magic and guild experience however it struggles with the RPG part. There is little opportunity to be a character living in that setting, since all events are scripted and linear. However it has a robust character/party management system and tactical combat where each character needs to fulfil a role. Which are emblematic of the JRPG genre.

The game opens with the main characters, members of the titular Fairy Tail guild, facing off with a great villain at the end of their last adventure. The battle ends with heroes victorious but with an appearance of a greater threat that they can’t beat. Using the power of their bonds, they manage to cast a magic spell that protects them but at the cost of putting them in stasis for 7 years. When they awaken and return home they find that their guild fell upon bad times while they were absent.

While controlling various members of Fairy Tail the player follows a storyline involving  restoring the guild to the strength and reputation it once had. The progress of the guild’s restoration is represented by its place in a ranking of magic guilds. The guild’s rank increases when the player completes various side quests. Reaching certain rank milestones unlocks quests in the main storyline. In turn completing main story quests unlocks more opportunities to upgrade the guild and the characters. This creates a nice loop of options for the player to progress the main story and experience the world of the game.

The plot of the game is pretty standard and there are moments in which I got invested and empathized with the characters. However it is not presented in an engaging way, most of the time it ends up getting in the way or dragging. There are several scripted story sequences that are poorly paced or interrupt gameplay without a good reason. A cutscene often leads into gameplay requiring the player to run a few meters in order to play another cutscene. At times story sequences contradict the gameplay for example requiring you to win a battle only to show that you lost it. There are also several cases worth mentioning where a character model and sometimes their voice were not in the game resulting in the character in question being off camera while still interacting with other characters.

Easily the most satisfying part of the game was doing various quests to level up the characters and the guild headquarters in order to take on more difficult quests. This classic gameplay loop is simple but fun. It allows you to quickly get into combat to try out different tactics and abilities while letting you get to know the characters by occasionally showing bite sized cutscenes and dialogue sequences.

The combat consists of the player picking a party of up to five characters. The game has a good roster of characters that grows over time via quest, each of them is relatively unique in what they can do. While the combat is mostly standard for the genre it is a little faster paced and has some extremely nice interactions between how your roster interacts with each other, adding a lot of room for players to experiment. It is also a good reason to switch up your party beyond the requirements of quests.

As character’s level up their stats increase and new abilities are unlocked. Some of the side quests are specific to characters allowing for unlocking of their passive abilities. Side quests requiring the use of a specific team increase those character’s bonds and make them work better together. Upgrading the guild headquarters further improves stats and passive abilities for all characters.  Considering all this progression I never felt like  I had to stop and grind in order to progress. The difficulty curve is quite smooth and the game remained challenging throughout.

Visually the game is mostly in line with other games using similar art style. The characters, environments and visual effects look very much like their anime counterparts when compared. Sometimes took me a moment to notice when what the game showed me was 2D artwork instead of in game graphics. The game shines the most during combat with all abilities having different, dynamic character animations and visual effects on top of great camera work. The game becomes a visual spectacle during those moments and is a joy to look at, especially when immersed in an especially difficult battle.

However in other aspects the visuals fall short. When out of combat, character animations are quite stiff and make the characters feel like dolls rather than living beings. Some of the comical expressions they use makes that even more noticeable since the expressions look like they were glued onto the character’s face. Character animations also lack fluid transitions with feet noticeably sliding into idle position when a character stops walking. Finally the game lacks some variety in terms of environments and enemy types outside of the main storyline, mostly consisting of the same assets.

Sound design in this game is consistent with the visuals. It is mostly good, enhancing all the exciting animations during combat with appropriate sound effects. The music too matches the action with several fast paced music tracks which sound like a mix of Rock and British Folk music. The more intense events during the main story are accompanied by more epic music tracks that feel like they are cheering the player on.

In terms of technical difficulties I found that there was a lot of shimmering on my screen and my screen appeared to be cut off at the edges, perhaps some issue with resolutions or scaling either way I wasn’t able to fix it. The frame rate also tends to drop when there are several objects/vfx on the screen. Surprising for a game without a lot of small visual details Other than those issues I didn’t find anything in visuals or otherwise.

To summarise, I mostly enjoyed Fairy Tail however some of the issues were impossible to ignore and often took me out of the game. The best thing I can say is that it is a competent and at times exciting JRPG. I would recommend it to someone who loves the anime and wants to get into this genre. You might want to wait for a sale though as the game is quite expensive.

Back in Time

I had no idea I missed the train when Pixel Ripped 1989 was released. I can honestly can say I regret not getting the ticket. Pixel Ripped 1995 is one of the best representations of my childhood that I’ve ever come across. PR95 is whats best described as a game within a game. Honestly, the best way to explain it, is to play through the intro level. I slip on the PSVR headset and like a dream, I find myself sitting in the living room floor. I’m wearing a full suit of cotton pajamas and the floor is covered with gaming magazines and junk food. In the background is the overbearing parent, who ironically enough is named Karen, pacing around the room berating you for constantly being glued to the TV. The moment the lecture stops the phone rings and Karen is relaying your incoherent behavior to your grandmother.

Once you find your bearings, you reach down and grab the oversized game cartridge and slam it into the console. The clicking into place is just as satisfying as it was 25 years ago. The game powers up, with your mother still pacing back and forth, and you start to play. Nostalgia hits extraordinarily hard here as the game sounds start to ring a bell (Sonic the Hedgehog and Metroid are heavily referenced) and the vivid colors remind me of platformers like Tomba.

Within a few moments, Karen’s voice fades into the background, becoming eerily reminiscent of my own childhood. A moment later when you glance back over, she is slowly encroaching on your position. A dart gun has magically appeared in your hand and you begin panning around the room to cause a distraction. If you miss, Karen shuts of the game and you lose several moments of gameplay.

Throw into the Mixer

Just when you start to get comfortable with the game play loop of distracting Karen, the game starts throwing 2D and 3D/VR into the mixer and spitting out some incredibly fun and hilarious game play that I haven’t seen before. The stereotypical evil wizard magically breaks the game cartridge allowing the game world to spill out onto the floor in front of you. Cue the boss battle that consists of your pajama wearing self providing covering fire to your 2D hero as the fight keeps you busy on two fronts.

I Love the Smell of Nostalgia in the Morning

If any of the above brings back memories, then this game is for you. It clearly has a target audience and it absolutely caters to it. From the Super NES style console to the generic mall video game store (complete with game display demos that you can play), this game oozes the mid 90s gaming culture. All pop culture references revolve around the first half of the 90s and watching the 2D era give way to the 3D.

Controlling the Past

I’ve always found that in 90% of VR games, the one common issue is the control scheme. One of the most, and honestly only, frustrating parts of PR95 was this exact issue. When you’re moving your hands around and interacting in the VR portion, the motion controllers are clearly the way to go. However, for any other moment in the game your basic game controller is far superior. In my case this was the Dual Shock 4. In most cases, the best option was to revert back and forth between the two types. The major downside to this was that half of the time I had to either shut the game off to switch types, or just embrace the suck and use one or the other.

Sticking with the Dual Shock 4 worked better for me, but it’s still a long way from convenient. Using the DS4 to interact with anything outside of the 2D portion required me to readjust my position in front of the camera several times. Even after adjusting, your onscreen arms wound up looking like a half eaten bowl of ramen.

A Grand View

Luckily, one area that doesn’t cause issues is the in game motion. The only character motion, aside from moving your hands, is in the 2D sections. This is extremely helpful in two ways. The first being, that you don’t have to contend with awkward controls and awkward motion at the same time. The second being that if you’re prone to motion sickness, you don’t have to worry about that here. In any VR game, I usually wind up with a small amount of motion sickness at least once or twice. Especially in games with fast directional motion, such as Doom VFR. Luckily in this case, we never have to worry about that here. Throughout my four and a half hour playtime I never encountered any motion sickness whatsoever.

Overall this game is a blast, especially if you enjoy the memory of the games from your childhood. It’s well worth the $15 asking price compared to many of the other options out there. There’s not a lot of replayability here and I could see the game play loop getting repetitive after a while. However, thanks to the short run time and changing back and forth between viewpoints and objectives, this title stayed fresh for my entire run through.

Getting into a new turn-based strategy game such as XCOM or the Civilisation series can be a bit daunting, with a lot of unique mechanics to learn and tactics to consider. How, then, to make this genre of games appealing to younger players? Transformers Battlegrounds is how, and the game very much delivers on this promise.

I’ll say right at the start that if you’re a seasoned, adult gamer who has spent a lot of time playing these sorts of games, you’re likely to find Transformers Battlegrounds as a fairly dull experience. This game is firmly aimed at newer gamers or young fans of Transformers and both the gameplay and the storyline have been greatly simplified down to match that target audience. If you’re hoping for a challenge with a lot of new and exciting mechanics to explore, this is not the title for you.

That being said, if you are a fan of the long-standing Transformers franchise or you’ve been thinking about getting into turn-based strategy games for a while and didn’t know where to start, then this game is a perfect choice.

A lot of Transformers Battlegrounds’ success lies in its visuals. The game is filled with bright, vibrant colours and a cast of characters that are all clearly distinct, but the true victory is the HUD display, which may seem daunting at first, but very quickly becomes indispensable. Fringe elements reveal what tools the player has at their disposal, while the map overlay makes it very clear what each action will do and how it will affect any of the Transformers involved. As random chance elements – such as a character missing a ranged shot – don’t appear in the game, the result is that player can weigh up their options quickly and easily and start to strategize on a broader scale.

And strategy is important in this game. While most levels are relatively short and straight forward in their objectives, completing them can require a surprising amount of forethought. One mechanic in particular that encourages such forward planning is the ability to trade a character’s actions, of which they are given three each turn, for Energon, a resource that builds up over time and is used to power Ultimate Abilities, extra powerful moves that are unique to each character. For challenging missions, players will need to weigh up the risk of giving up their action points for the sake of a payoff that may come much later in the round.

Furthering this need for strategizing is the inclusion of friendly fire, which means players will have to be aware of all their characters at all times, or else risk putting them in harm’s way when you want to set off a large AOE attack. This, like many other features in the game is cleverly demonstrated to the player in an early mission when you are spawned out of a cutscene with a new ability that you are obviously meant to use on the enemies around you. However, when you go to do so, you’ll notice that your ally is also in the path of your attack and if you trigger it, they will lose a substantial chunk of their health. While many new mechanics are explained in clearly defined tutorials where one or more of the characters explains directly to the player, several more are introduced in this understated way. As a result, you can learn a lot about the game without having to sit through continuous, slow tutorials.

Gameplay itself is satisfyingly punchy, with an impressive array of thumping and clanging sound effects to add weight to the Transformers’ movement. Each attack has its own animation and characters visibly react when hit, making it feel as though each shot really is connecting. Similarly, the Ultimate Abilities typically have impressive animations that make them worth the wait – watching a house-sized mechanical dinosaur charge into a cluster of enemies and breathe fire over them is going to be exciting no matter how old you are.

The gameplay can feel a little slow at times, particularly when you have a lot of characters in play, but it’s more a result of the genre itself than a failing of the game.

One factor that some players might find disappointing is that the storyline of the main game is relatively short. Where Transformers Battlegrounds makes up for this, however, is in its Arcade, a series of individual VS. matches that can be completed solo or in local multiplayer and which pad out the replayability of the game considerably. None of these minigames are particularly innovative in terms of their structure and they’re fairly easy to win, but with six different game modes, each with multiple levels to unlock, there’s plenty of content to keep you going.

The one flaw I did find genuinely frustrating during my time with the game was another of those simplifications designed to lower the skill floor: the inability to determine a character’s path. When you wish to move a character, you select the square you would like them to go to and they’ll walk, drive, or fly to it depending on the character in question and the distance you’re asking them to travel. The issue, however, is that you have no control over the path it takes to get there. While this is generally a good thing as you don’t have to get bogged down in route mapping, it means that there are occasions where the automatic pathfinding leads characters into zones where they will take damage, when they should be able to go around the danger without a problem. The only real solution is to use multiple moves in a turn to carefully lead them where you want them to go, which not only slows the game down to a crawl, it can result in an entirely wasted turn. While it isn’t a game breaking issue, it is frustrating and could easily be fixed by some basic improvements to the pathfinding system.

Overall though, these complaints are minor. Transformers Battlegrounds is a brilliant little game for younger players and Transformers fans, and is well worth a look if you’re thinking of investing some time into turn-based strategy. And since we’re all staying home anyway, what better time could there be to get in some local multiplayer with your family?