Bandolero -

Shooters have always had a special place in my heart ever since I’ve started playing the earlier stages of Counterstrike. While not always at the top of my gaming priority list, Shooters in general, may it be first person, third person or even those sidescroller shooters have taken hours from my life whenever I get pulled into one. And that’s one of the things that happened to me with Super Bit Machine’s online F2P shooter, Armajet. Overview Armajet pits your team of three against three other players in real-time arena-based online mobile combat. With your wide array of guns, you need to win by getting the most kills within the time span. Your loadouts are composed of one primary and one secondary weapon. Typical to multiplayer shootouts, you can switch your loadouts only before matches so you have to prepare them pre-match. Unlike some shooters however, Armajet is a little liberal in terms of the starter weapons as you have tons of choices from the get go. And what I liked about the gun options is that they pack enough punch that you won’t have to feel the urge to grind for new weapons like normal shooters. With enough skill, you can hold your own against veteran players and their fancy weapons just fine. Gameplay The game’s classical mode is the above mentioned 3-on-3 team play, but Armajet has much more under the hood to keep things fresh. There’s various game modes that you can take part in. One is the team shield rush mode where your team needs to get as much shield upgrades as possible. Then there’s the deathmatch mode where you enter against five other players and race to score the most points before time ends. Armajet Mobile Review It's not pretty, but Armajet runs surprisingly smooth considering six mobile devices are connecting to one match. Armajet’s gameplay is really a striped down version of online shooters where plot or storyline fluff is minimal so that mayhem is maximized. After getting into a match, you immediately requeue for another battle with the same team you have. You have a small window of prep time to adjust your loadouts, or bail if you want nothing to do with the team you just played with. Submit this page to Reddit - get some karma! Armajet Mobile Review Vincent Haosonby Vincent Haoson@haosonREVIEWOct 17, 2016Critic Score: 4 out of 5 User Rating: (9 votes, average: 3.11 out of 5) Shooters have always had a special place in my heart ever since I’ve started playing the earlier stages of Counterstrike. While not always at the top of my gaming priority list, Shooters in general, may it be first person, third person or even those sidescroller shooters have taken hours from my life whenever I get pulled into one. And that’s one of the things that happened to me with Super Bit Machine’s online F2P shooter, Armajet. Armajet Mobile Review No frills attached here. It's all about the core gameplay being solid. Overview Armajet pits your team of three against three other players in real-time arena-based online mobile combat. With your wide array of guns, you need to win by getting the most kills within the time span. Your loadouts are composed of one primary and one secondary weapon. Typical to multiplayer shootouts, you can switch your loadouts only before matches so you have to prepare them pre-match. Unlike some shooters however, Armajet is a little liberal in terms of the starter weapons as you have tons of choices from the get go. And what I liked about the gun options is that they pack enough punch that you won’t have to feel the urge to grind for new weapons like normal shooters. With enough skill, you can hold your own against veteran players and their fancy weapons just fine. Gameplay The game’s classical mode is the above mentioned 3-on-3 team play, but Armajet has much more under the hood to keep things fresh. There’s various game modes that you can take part in. One is the team shield rush mode where your team needs to get as much shield upgrades as possible. Then there’s the deathmatch mode where you enter against five other players and race to score the most points before time ends. Armajet Mobile Review It's not pretty, but Armajet runs surprisingly smooth considering six mobile devices are connecting to one match. Armajet’s gameplay is really a striped down version of online shooters where plot or storyline fluff is minimal so that mayhem is maximized. After getting into a match, you immediately requeue for another battle with the same team you have. You have a small window of prep time to adjust your loadouts, or bail if you want nothing to do with the team you just played with. There are tons of unlockable features in Armajet, and most of them don’t necessarily require you to spend money on them. The way purchasing and getting new stuff in-game happens is that you have to purchase “boxes” that provide shards of weapons or of aesthetic unlockables in-game. You need to reach a certain number of shards per item before you get them to use them on your account. The game’s player tracking system is also top-notch. After every match, you are given the stats of how you did in-game and overall to allow you the bird’s eye view of how great or how bad your run is. This gives players who are a bit more particular with their game results a proper breakdown of where they need to improve. Other Features Since this is a shooter, it’s kind of expected that awards, medals and trophies are given to multi kills and the like. Armajet just loves to show you how much you earned, or failed to earn. Each double kill, triple kill, bomb kill and any kind of enemy killing variations that you can do in-game is tracked. This ties into the competitive feeling the game has and the streamlined matchmaking. You rarely wait in-game as long as you’ve started matchmaking and this is what makes the game such an enjoyable one. Armajet Mobile Review Stat junkies and competitive players will love the detailed breakdowns. If there’s one thing that the game doesn’t do well, that’d be visuals. Armajet isn’t the prettiest in terms of the looks department and there are undoubtedly prettier shooters in the market today, even on mobile. But at least the game’s visuals stick to the theme that Armajet is gunning for – dark and gritty.

The facts What: Cashtronauts Type: Indie game Company: Simon Prefontaine Platform: PC, Steam Price: 7,99 euro Release date: 1 september 2016* When I fired it up, I had no idea what the game was about. Of course, I could have read the description on Steam or watched a video beforehand, but I like going in blind. Turns out Cashtronauts has no tutorial whatsoever; you just get thrown in. And that seems to be the main attraction of it: prodding things, see what happens. I guess the following picture sums up the Cashtronaut experience pretty well: The tiny pink vessel on the picture above is your starter ship. Collecting moneeeeeeey. Why? You need it for unlocking risks and new ships, and playing around with them. There are other things, too, like upgrades that you can pickup and install, that I didn't find out about until recently. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to discover. The ultimate goal? Nothing that I've discovered so far. It's a more about the road than the destination kinda thing. The charm of the game lies in the explorative and messing around part - and in the arcade nostalgia vibe. I fondly remember the eureka moment when I found this place that wanted my crystals Navigation Cashtronauts is played in a top-down 2D view, in which you use simple arrow or keyboard keys to move your ship around in space. As the game has no map, compass or any sort of area overview, you'll have to remember your position compared to a select few landmarks in the center and their border in order to orient yourself. At the start nooby Rav kept getting lost in outer space and eventually blown to bits by predator ships as I ran out of fuel! This made me come to the realization that knowing how to get back to the safe "center of space" is a vital ability. After a few play sessions, though, I developed a feeling for direction and distance. Eventually, I came to appreciate the absence of in-game navigation methods as an extra something to keep you on your toes. I'm an asteroid, pretty please. Please do shoot me!

Pine is incredibly ambitious. Successfully funded on Kickstarter roughly two-and-a-half years ago, small Netherlands developer Twirlbound set about working on its big idea. The project promised to combine many genres: the adventuring of a Zelda title, Shadow of Mordor’s intricate AI simulation of NPC friendships and rivalries, a dash of Fable‘s hero’s journey, and a Bloodborne-inspired combat system for good measure. Promising Breath of the Wild on a shoestring budget, Pine very nearly achieves its lofty ambitions, featuring an engaging world, impressively deep simulation, and a wide variety of gameplay systems. However, the clunky controls, poor communication with the player, and a raft of bugs prevent Pine from reaching its full potential. In the tiny island nation of Albamare, evolution played out a little differently. Alongside humans, groups of other creatures also gained sentience, edging humans out of their territories with superior physical attributes. So inferior are the humans to the other species that only a handful remain on the island, a tribal group living upon a crumbling mountaintop. This isolation brought them peace, for a while, but the peace was not to last. The shifting soil they live upon turns into a landslide, killing several people and destroying much of the village. The tribal humans have always been afraid of the outside world, but with half the po[CENSORED]tion wiped out they have little choice but to let Hue, a curious young man, explore beyond their home plateau. As Hue looks for a new home for his people, he discovers a world more complicated than he could have ever imagined. The world outside of Hue’s little village is vibrant and teeming with life. While perhaps a touch small compared to other open world games, the map is dense, containing a wide variety of biomes, hills, lakes, and valleys to explore. Crafting materials are abundantly distributed across the land, regrowing at a steady clip. This bounty of food items, stones, logs, flowers, and gems is quickly put to good use. On his travels, Hue can gain ideas for new crafting recipes, turning sticks and stones into makeshift traps or improving weapons. Food restores health and reenergises him for battle. Any item he does not have an immediate use for can be thrown into a nearby donation bin, which will gain him favour with the nearest tribe. Alliances between the island’s inhabitants are constantly in flux, with Hue’s actions having a marked effect on the world around him. Relations between groups are divided into hostile, neutral, and allies, with the current relationship affecting both how Hue can interact with the creatures, and how they interact with each other. Allies will trade with Hue, offering a friendly wave as he goes past. Neutral creatures are more skittish, keeping their guard up but otherwise going about their business. Hostiles will attack on sight, often ignoring smaller monsters to take on the human threat. Mani[CENSORED]ting these relationships is key to progressing through Hue’s journey, as he will need to interact with each race to uncover the deeper mysteries of the world. Raising friendship is easy in the beginning, a few items in the donation box enough to sway opinion. Each action taken has knock-on effects, however: making a donation to the Krockers, for example, a race of large crocodile-like beings, will anger anyone they are at war with, causing Hue to lose standing with the opposing race. Helping a group to upgrade their village will see the idea spread like wildfire across the map, with better buildings and weapons at every turn. Relationships will continue to shift even when Hue is not involved, warring and trading as the leaders desire. This deep level of simulation is the core of Pine‘s appeal: a living, breathing ecosystem that is constantly changing. It is also, however, the source of much of the bugginess of Pine. Most of the story quests need a group to be in a certain state to progress, hostile, neutral, or allied, but the unpredictable nature of their behaviour means they can switch between states at the most inopportune time. This results in odd behaviours, such as people attacking when they are supposed to be neutral, animal monarchs refusing to interact with the player, or quests being brought to a standstill since poisoning their king was apparently not upsetting enough to break the alliance. Once one gets used to the volatile nature of the simulation, if something strange occurs the player will know the best choice is to step away and try the quest again later. In the early stages of the Pine, however, stuck quests are quite frustrating, as alternatives are lacking. This is compounded by extremely barebones quest text, which will not help the player determine why their current approach is not working. While the whole world is open to explore from the start, only a single quest is available at the beginning: to explore one of three vaults. Once a vault has been chosen, all other options are blocked off, but the quest text does not reflect this, leading to confusion. Things improve considerably after the first vault is completed, with a large number of quests becoming available, giving the game the flexibility it desperately needs. Some more side quests earlier on would help the game considerably, as the gameplay experience is best when the player has a lot of options. Hue’s adventure involves a lot of combat, both from monsters in the overworld and the sentient races. Each group has a unique approach to fighting: Krockers and the moose-like Carablin favour hard-hitting melee moves, slow but powerful. The fox-like Fexel are potion masters, throwing smoke bombs and healing constantly. The large flightless birds of Gobbledew are the all-rounders of the animal kingdom, using both melee and ranged attacks. Hue’s movements are slow and deliberate, requiring the player to carefully watch enemy movements to find a moment to strike. Enemies hit hard, but their attacks are clearly telegraphed, similar to the Dark Souls style of combat. For the most part, combat works well, but the lack of a proper dodge button is frustrating. When locked on to an enemy, the wimpy side-step does little for evading blows. An approach to get around this limitation is to not lock on to the enemy at all, and run back and forth to evade attacks. Thankfully, for those who do not enjoy this style of combat, the game autosaves often, meaning little progress is lost after death. Most encounters can also be avoided entirely by either running away, or maintaining a decent reputation with all the groups. Less impressive are Pine‘s platforming challenges, located both as optional extras in the overworld, and annoying obstacles in the dungeon-like vaults. Hue’s jump is extremely sluggish, requiring the button to be pressed well before the edge of a platform. No concessions are included to help with correcting a dodgy jump, like the ability to grab onto a ledge or allowing the player to leap just after they have stepped off the platform, known as ‘coyote time’. Compounding this frustration is the design of the vaults, where a missed jump often requires a long climb back up to the previous position. While the vaults have some nice puzzles, lots of flicking switches and checking ancient markings, the platforming aspect taints the whole experience. Completing a vault simply evokes a feeling of relief, not accomplishment. A lot of thought and care has clearly gone into the visual design of Pine. The environment is lush and beautiful, an explosion of colour that shifts depending on the time of day. Each of the races has a unique design, reflective of their different cultures. However, this personality could be better reflected in the writing; talking to a non-storyline NPC will draw from the same small pool of generic comments, evidenced by a Krocker remarking ‘I was scared when a Krocker came to our village’. Main characters fare a little better, but with such a fascinating world on display, not delving deeper into the lore feels like a missed opportunity. The main issue holding Pine back is poor communication. Tutorials are close to non-existent, a brief display of button prompts before pushing the player out to explore the world. This is particularly notable with the combat. If one is unfamiliar with the Dark Souls style of fighting, the two minutes spent explaining the concept is woefully insufficient. No options exist for sorting or storing inventory items, a big omission in a game focused on crafting. The map is hard to read, white icons upon a pale background with no key for the icons. Quest text is basic and, at times, confusing. With item-based quests, half the time the player will be given the item and the other half only the crafting recipe, with no clear distinction between the two. A significant patch dropped during the review process, which corrected some of the glitches and writing issues, so hopefully more of the same is on the way.

Steel Mantis Games is comprised of the tag-teaming talents of Andrew Gilmour (art and animation) and Thomas Jenns (programming and design). The duo saw a rocky start to their development careers with the release of Slain! back in 2016. Slain! was a critical flop, prompting a re-release a few months later as Slain: Back from Hell to much more success. Still, despite its excellent soundtrack and visuals, Back from Hell had plenty of flaws. Three years later, Steel Mantis has returned to right the ship with their newest heavy metal-infused platformer: Valfaris. Can Valfaris live up to its own epic soundtrack, and can it top the precedent set by Slain!? Either way, get ready to rip the galaxy a new wormhole. Daddy Issues Valfaris introduces the player to Therion and his AI assistant Hekate. Therion is a skull-rocking, head-banging, long-haired, bonafide badass who’s hell-bent on saving his home planet of Valfaris. The player soon discovers that Valfaris is ruled by Vroll, a tightfisted dictator whose reign has devolved the planet into civil war. Turns out Therion is Vroll’s son (understandable), and Therion must return to his home to uncover the truth of its doomed fate and challenge the arcane evil at its very heart. Oh yeah, and to kill his dad. Ultimately, despite the occasional off-handed comment from Therion, the narrative of Valfaris is nothing to write home about. In fact, I’m leaving the game with way more questions than I had coming in. We never really find out what happens to Vroll, or what he did to make Therion hate him. In fact, even upon the game’s completion, we’re met with little more than a bad cliffhanger. But then again, the story was never really meant to be the main draw of Valfaris. Like the 16-bit era that it takes influence from, Valfaris doesn’t need a gripping narrative to provide the player with motivation to explore. That motivation is instead guided by its kick-ass heavy metal soundtrack, hand-animated characters, and 16-bit vaporwave aesthetic. Valfaris does an excellent job of paying homage to games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Blackthorne, and Contra, all while feeling distinctly modern. Meeting a frame rate of 60fps even on my laptop, Valfaris is consistently smooth, responsive, and beautiful – regardless of what machine you play it on.

“Hear ye hear ye! Welcome to the city of Alluris traveler! I hope you’re prepared for an adventure unlike any you’ve ever seen! Baron Dread is amassing an army and no one here can be bothered to do anything about it! Good news for you I suppose. You get to take all the glory for yourself! I mean, you may die, but that would HARDLY be MY fault would it? Well, I take your silence as agreement. Now, there are many trials before you and no singular pathway to overcome this evil. But you will figure it out. I mean, if you don’t we’ll just send the next traveler who looks dumb enough to err uhmm, I mean, good luck traveler! We’re all counting on you!” Gameplay: You begin your journey on the roads outside the City of Alluris. Your goal is to travel the world, level up, and collect items, followers, and abilities until you can overcome Baron Dread and save Alluris. The game is played with the simple input of dragging cards left or right. However, the decisions you need to make can sometimes be everything but simple. Your options for dealing with a situation are dependent on your backstory, race, gender, or a prior decision you’ve made in the run. Unlock New Playstyles! As you explore the world, you’re bound to wander into something interesting. If you’re clever, you might achieve something great, and earn a new race or background to start as on your next run. These mutators can radically change how a play-through goes. They could make you awful at combat, but constantly showered with gold. Maybe you’ll start with access to places that would take entire runs to reach.

There are times when I look at Los Santos and think 'why would you even think to build that?' This is, appropriately, a thought that I often have about Los Angeles. In GTA 5's case, the tone is different: baffled wonderment as opposed to baffled, y'know, despair. Rockstar have created one of the most extraordinary game environments you will ever visit. I look at it and I wonder at the vast expense of effort required to render every trash bag in every back alley just so. I marvel at the care evident in San Andreas' gorgeous sunsets, in the way that sunglasses subtly alter the colour balance of the world, in the artfully-chosen selection of licensed music designed to accompany your experience. Everything about Los Santos demonstrates the extraordinary amount of thought and love poured into it by hundreds of developers over many years. The abiding irony of Grand Theft Auto 5 is that everybody who actually lives in Los Santos hates it there. This is the most beautiful, expansive and generous GTA game and also, by some distance, the nastiest and most nihilistic. Rockstar went through a phase, in Bully, Grand Theft Auto IV and the sadly console-bound Red Dead Redemption, of framing their protagonists as anti-heroes. GTA 4's Niko Bellic did some terrible things, but he had a downtrodden charm that helped you like him as you piloted him through the underworld. He was surrounded by people who were larger-than-life but ultimately, beneath the surface, people. Among those people were some of Rockstar's better female characters—Kate McReary, Mallorie Bardas, The Lost and Damned's Ash Butler. Grand Theft Auto 5 does away with all of that, deliberately but to its detriment. Its trio of protagonists occupy a city full of vapid, two-dimensional caricatures, and they flirt with that boundary themselves. Michael is a middle-aged former bankrobber, unhappily married and on the edge of a breakdown. Franklin is a young hood, purportedly principled but willing to do almost anything for money. Trevor is a desert-dwelling, meth-dealing psychopath with a homebrew morality that sits uneasily alongside his capacity for violent cruelty and sexual aggression. The campaign explores their relationship through a series of heists and misadventures as they clash with every L.A. stereotype you might imagine—the bored Beverly Hills housewife, the corrupt fed, the bottom-rung fraudster, the smug technology exec, and so on. Against this backdrop, it's only Michael, Franklin and Trevor that appear to have any kind of internal life. I get the impression that this is deliberate, part of the game's relentless skewering of southern California and indicative of Rockstar's waning interest in romantic anti-heroes. Trevor's introduction, in particular, amounts to a particularly explicit '[CENSORED] you' to the characters and themes of Grand Theft Auto IV. GTA 5 is heartless in that way, and as a result I found the narrative difficult to care about. It is ambitious, well-performed, and the production values are extraordinary—but it is also derivative and brutishly adolescent, set in a world where the line between criminality and the rule of law is blurry but where it is always hilarious that somebody might be gay. It's an R-rated episode of The A-Team where the 'A' stands for 'asshole'. The campaign's best moments come when your cigar-chomping master strategist, insane former military pilot and talented driver come together, and when you're given the power to choose how to use each of them. These heists are set-piece missions where you pick an approach and perform set-up tasks in the open world before setting out on the job itself. In the best of them, which occur later in the campaign, it really does evoke the satisfaction of having a plan come together. Perhaps you position Trevor on the high-ground with a rocket launcher, Michael on foot with a stealth approach, and Franklin in an armoured ram-raider. With a button press you can flick between the three, dynamically orchestrating a crime caper on your own terms. It is also in these moments that Rockstar's most ambitious storytelling takes place. Your choice of character, crew, and even certain in-game actions have subtle effects on the dialogue. In an early heist, a crewmember dropped part of the score but, as Franklin, I was able to retrieve it—a side-objective that I'd set for myself but that was subsequently reflected in a later conversation between him and Michael. This is another example of Rockstar's extraordinary attention to detail, and if the rest of the campaign respected your agency in this way it might overcome its weaker moments.