Recent reviews by EMMエム

I had been hyping myself up for Thumper since spring and can safely say it lived up to the hype, it's an outstanding game and even after all my hyping, it still managed to exceed my expectations!

The gameplay is the most unique I've played this year, it's unlike any other rhythm game I have played. I expected something similar to Audiosurf, but that assumption was blown out of the water when I played the first level. One button and one stick sends your chrome-clad space beetle on its way careering down its metal track into the unknown whilst encountering harsh conditions along the way. You get a sense that you will never know what will appear next in the game due to the different rhythms that will batter you, and it will always keep you on your toes.

It goes without saying, but with a tagline of "rhythm-violence", this game is hard. It's going to force you into a sense of rhythm and will make you good at the game, whether that means dying countless times. At the end of each level you'll have a massive head looming over you, throwing beats your way hoping to kill you in the process unless you smash the four glows without error. Getting them all and delivering a supercharged shockwave towards the demonic head gives you the sense that you perfected the level, just like getting all the notes right on an instrument. But knowing once you get good at Thumper, and that you can perfect that one level you had trouble with ages ago with ease, just like perfecting a piece of music, you feel that nothing the game can throw at you will stand in your way.

Visuaully, it's astounding for such a limited-ish game: my little space bettle shining in its full glory down the track (with no video settings at that) adds to the simplicity of the game comprised of a long metal track, a massive circle unforgiving of your mess-ups and the right-angled turns make for a simplistic but nonetheless aesthetically pleasing visual style.

The sound design in this game is quite simply untouched. The soundtrack is extremely unique with higher levels composed of their respective time signatures, so level 5 is 5:4 and level 7 is 7:4. It really does spice up the gameplay making you consider the different rhythms that will come later in the game. With a vast array of elements like audio cues, bassy thumps and the squeaky clank on a perfect turn, it makes for a flawless augmentation onto the science fiction-esque OST.

With the addition of the Play+ mode, it has kept me on edge every single time with the sense of annihalation if you slip up twice. No going back. I managed to complete Level 8+ in one sitting without dying, and it was the most heart pounding moment of this game yet. Knowing that I could die at any given moment after being stripped of my chrome armour, getting especially tense during the appearance of the "Ring of Death" hoping to tear you apart on any miss on multiple lanes. Horror games can boast their jump-scares and scary monsters in the dark, but can't compare to Thumper's bleak, glooming atmosphere and the sense of not knowing what's coming next.

There are only one or two cons I feel I should mention.

Sometimes, the beats that the game throws at you can be extremely unexpected and often land on the off-beat of the music, which can make it difficult to get into a real flow of the game. This mostly happens in levels 5, 6, 7 and 9 where the game speeds up and gives you less time to think about the music and make it more about quick reaction. However, these levels have irregular time signatures so that may be a factor.

It's got a slightly high price (£15.99) , which is pretty uncommon for an indie single-player game. I would have expected a price closer to £11.99 because there are many other games which offer more content at a lower price, but the game is still definitely worth it at £15.99 and has offered me close to and imminently upward of 40 hours with the score-attack replayability of its levels.

Straight recommendation. The best game I've played of 2016.

Points Review - Undertale (2015)

13 points must be achieved to get a recommended.

This review will go through Graphics, Gameplay, Story, Music and other less important details.

Gameplay - 3/5

Undertale uses a combination of a roaming environment and a battle system which involves random encounters with enemies which must either by defeated by force or through other means in a dodge-bullet and deal damage system. An addition to the play-it-your-way kind of games, it involves 3 main storylines with 2 of them having to meet different but obvious criteria. All these routes involve a different kind of gameplay; however, in order to see the rest of the game the player must play through at least 3 times which can take 9 hours (at least for me). A lot of the random encounters can become quite a bore in a mainly story-based game and if you are unfortunate enough to make a mistake and have to backtrack it can take a long time (this can be cut down if the transport between "worlds" is found).
Side note: There is no way or go back to the main menu in the game, so if you want to change the controller settings for example, you will have to restart. I also found that if you remove the controller you were using and re-insert it, it crashes the game.

Graphics - 4/5

Undertale's graphics are a joint between retro cartoony graphics when in the overworld and Sin City-esque black and white when in battle. This is also prominent when you deal the final blow to a certain skeleton, which I personally found to be a nice touch. The overworld graphics are usually quite minimal whilst the battle system has much more detailed characters albeit black and white.
The game's base resolution when in windowed mode is 640x480, and there is no way to change this in windowed. However a keystroke will take you to fullscreen mode with no compromise in the graphics quality.

Story - 5/5

This is where everybody knows what Undertale is about. Often heralded for its highly engrossing story, Undertale's story involves a human child falling down a hole into the underground and must make its way back to the surface and possibly making some new friends (or enemies) along the way. The backstory when you start the game every time gives a fine idea of what happened and how it happened before the game starts.

The neutral route (which is the only one that can be done first time) rather emotionally sets up characters that will be used later in other run-throughs (mainly the Pacifist route). This can definitely been seen when all the characters round up before the "final fight" in the neutral runthrough and then a certain someone comes out of nowhere. Every single main character has a great personality and shows a sense of humanity (no pun intended) which can bring out real feelings and add to the emotion of the story.
Personally, I found the genocide route to be amazing because of the radical difference. It seemed like a completely different game and almost every single character reacted differently to you which was a great touch.

Side note: The game is short. This can please or annoy you depending on who you are but it being short will help if you wish to do mutliple runthroughs.

Music - 3/5

There are a lot of pieces of music in Undertale's soundtrack and there seems to be some effort put into it and made with love. However, although a lot of them are related in some way, the same melodies and songs get extremely tiresome by the end of the game. The soundtrack involves a lot of music genres, including retro-inspired battle music, rock, chiptune and even Touhou-inspired melodies and instruments. This can add a lot of variety in the game if you are like me and enjoy many different genres. Some of the music is amazing and I love, but some just simply don't hit for me and I detest hearing.

Other details:

- The game is far too easy. A basic runthrough is shockingly easy to beat without dying once. However, on the subsequent runthroughs there will be changes that will challenge you more. Controllers generally give the game a challenge because they really aren't good for this game.

- The game's size when downloading is around 115 MB, which is easy to shove on to a PC if you're bored.

- Changing the music files for your pleasing is incredibly bizarre. The speeds of some of the songs have to be adjusted so specifcally it seems trivial (for example, for the track "Undertale" the speed has to be increased by 17.5% and the Barrier SFX is 25% faster). Not really a changing factor, just very strange. They can all be found here if you wish to do it yourself http://pastebin.com/7eFz2Wjj

- Fanbase generally doesn't keep it to themselves. Many young players who have been watching too much YouTube have been stapling it everywhere they go (mainly YouTube and Steam), which is another annoying factor but not determining.


Final Score : 15/20

It's not a perfect game by any means, but it's a great way to find a new or interesting story and to kill some time (9-10 hours to speedrun the whole game with all routes). Recommending with caution because of the less-than-reserved fanbase. On an individual basis, try it for yourself and see what you think, it's a game with a divided viewpoint so your mileage may vary.

There's so much about this game that's perfect. The graphics are some of the best from an indie, the gameplay has that uniqueness where you can't hate it (I hate playing football and FIFA games), the community PR at Psyonix is the best I have seen and I have clocked near-300 hours and regretted none of it because of the sheer replayability and fun of it.

After playing at least 100 hours and getting the maximum number of studs (4 billion) when I was 9 back when the game was first released on WIi, I just thought of getting the game on PC. I had the original Lego Star Wars on PC (needed to GET a graphics card back in 2005). This game is still as good as I remember it was on the Wii.
It's great to take a step back from all the violence and gore and to have a bit of fun with LEGO. Can't wait for the Force Awakens game.

+ Optimization
+ Graphics
+ Voice acting
+ Nemesis system

± Story is iffy
± Counter combat, but spiced up a bit in SOM

- In a few cases Orcs outnumber you way too much (15 to 1 sometimes), and captains can come out the blue come

it's an alright game for £0.80/£0.10

has fun music, challenging gameplay and has plenty of levels, although the learning curve is pretty damn big. get it if you want a cheap but hard game

Don't really know much about the game, but after playing it for a bit it was quite fun.

Brilliant game, even if it has a few bugs.

+ Great gameplay
+ Gruesome fatalities
+ Re-work of brutalities is a good concept
+ Graphics are nice

- 30 fps intros and fatalities
- Pretty buggy

One of the only good MMO free-to-plays right now.

A great bit of fun to play if you're a fan of the series. Full of stuff from the show, as well as being bloody funny. It's short, so get it on sale.

+ Fun
The whole game is very fun to play, including exploring the town and meeting the characters you love.

+ South Park
Very faithful to the show, everything from characters to running gags

+ Extremely fitting and great soundtrack
The soundtrack is very good and sounds like something you would expect out of games involving magic, elves etc.

+ Full controller support
Tried with Xbox 360 Controller, works fluently

+ Brilliant control
Keyboard controls for this game are great, but switching between magic and abilities can get a bit of a pain

+ No Uplay
No other crappy DRMs

+ Long gameplay-wise
It will take you a while to get every achievement, Chinpokomon and friend in the game, so it keeps you going.

- Short story-wise
The game took me about 6 hours to complete the story, but will take longer to complete everything

- Combat can get tedious
The combat is usually always the same, apart from the occasional boss fight.

One of the best games based off a TV show.