Little Misfortune is a interactive story game developed and published by “Killmonday Games”. Little Misfortune is said to come out today on consoles, the 29th of May 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and already out on PC. We have seen this game before but was never interested but it’s out now. Let’s take a look.
In the world of Little Misfortune, players control Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez. She is 8 years old (remember that as you play) and described as very imaginative (remember that also). Simply put Misfortune “seeks the prize of eternal happiness” as a gift for her mother. So she heads out to find it. She is joined by ‘Mr Voice’ who is basically the narrator and talks directly to Misfortune. Already we don’t trust this voice. She literally just met this voice.
Now straight from looking at Little Misfortune is suppose to be a cute game with a bit of darkness. Not everything is as nice and innocent as it seems. The decisions players make are said to have real consequences. This means players can mess up. Does this mean you can die in Little Misfortune? Also the official website says that after Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez enters the woods a “little bit of bad luck unfolds”. Not only that we heard there is a monster too. Yep mysterious things are happening here in Little Misfortune.
We checked out some Little Misfortune gameplay and it’s what we expected. There’s even a fox that we just don’t like the look off. Can you blame us? Dora the explorer had problems with a certain fox too after all. It’s a simple colourful story game. Misfortune moves alone, things happen, players make decisions and see what happens immediately and if anything happens later. It’s good to have games like this around. This game does get unpredictable-is at times and a bit dark like accidentally killing a puppy with a party hat. Players need to think carefully about decisions. It’s an adventure but since it’s an imaginative 8 year old girl, call it a story.
Overall Little Misfortune is a nice little game. The game does well to show that we are playing a 8 year old girl. She has a child’s way of talking, an obvious strong accent, doesn’t understand simple things like death, needs to be walked through most things etc. The graphic style is very good and it has lots of unpredictable stuff. We hope this game is really punishing. It’s not our kind of game but almost any type of gamer can get into this and give it a try. The developers ‘Killmonday Games’ has done a good job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will take a peek from time to time to see what it does.
Chorus is a new space combat shooter game developed and published by ‘Deep Silver Fishlabs‘. Chorus is said to be coming out in 2021 on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Google Stadia and Windows PC. From what we are seeing, this is suppose to be a big deal. Let’s take a look.
In the world of Chorus players take control of basically two characters: Nara who is quite a complex character. She is an ace pilot who was Circle’s deadliest fighter. She is now their number 1 target. Circle is a cult, a bad one and the one that created Nara and made her who she is. Nara isn’t alone. She works with her starfighter, Forsaken, which is sentient by the way and has it’s own past and history. That’s like the Master chief from Halo being able to talk and communicate with his signature sniper rifle. Nara and Forsaken are out here trying to bring all resistance groups together to go against Circle and off course their leader… the ‘Great Prophet’.
Chorus is a space game so expect a whole new universe and a dark one at that. Nothing is really straight forward here. Chorus is focusing on having mystery as a strong factor in this story. There’s also tons of conflict.This can only mean one thing… combat. Spaceship combat, dogfights from “epic cosmic vistas to tight crystalline corridors.” So think about it. A whole universe where you traverse by ship and hostile beings makes Chorus a big space exploration game with serious combat. Expect to come across and search out places like space stations, distant planets, enemy fighters and according to the developers strange planes pf existence. We hope they can pull it off well.
Chorus is not just space fighting as Nara will have powers of her own. She can use telekinesis (yes please), mind bending, extra sensory perception and even teleportation. Remember the ship isn’t just a ship. Your ship can drift for that extra mobility and evasion and there are combat upgrades to get and even powerful weapons that will allow you and your ship to face superior forces in terms of size like huge battleships and even armies of enemies. The skill then comes down to knowing all your abilities and upgrades, know when to use each one and the synergy of them for the best results.
We checked out some Chorus content and from what we have seen it definitely looks split into two. A clear difference between the exploration, mystery and the fast paced action. Players will have to master the maneuverability of the ship to dodge debris or structures in space. This will have to be done also during combat too. The environment is looking cool and as strange as this is… space looks cool too. Red is quite a popular colour in Chorus and it can work. The mystery of the so called great prophet is good too but will he be a stereotypical cult leader or something special? We will have to see.
Overall Chorus looks like it’s going to be a big deal. We like the setting, the visuals and even the typical story. Not much is known about this game but it’s obvious that Xbox is proud and excited about this one. The developers ‘Deep Silver Fishlabs’ have done a good job so far. We at X35 Earthwalker want to see a space combat game like this do well. Space games are not hard to get right but many fail at it. We hope Chorus is different. Now Chorus may have mystery, powers, and starfighters but even with those it isn’t as cool as… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Streets of Rage 4 is an arcade beat em up game and off course the fourth game in the Streets of Rage series. Many have been waiting for this game. Many. X35 Earthwalker is one of them but off course the greatest and coolest of them. Things are different this time around in Streets of Rage, in multiple ways and for the better. Many have talked or reviews this game (they did alright) but remember… a game hasn’t been reviewed until X35 Earthwalker has reviewed it. Let’s take a look.
Streets of Rage stories have never been complicated. They are always straight forward and simple. In Streets of Rage 4. There’s crime in the city, an evil syndicate is behind it all and the vigilante heroes go in to stop it… beating the crap out of everyone and everything that gets in their way. Simple. This time though Mr X is not the one behind it. He’s dead. It’s his children… the Y twins! Mr and Ms Y. So this time Axel, blaze, Cherry? and Floyd? with rage in their hearts take on the streets of rage. Yep, we got new characters. Cherry hunter (if you couldn’t tell by the name) is the daughter of Adam Hunter. Floyd Iraia is the apprentice and assistant of Dr Gilbert Zan. So no Adam again?…
The rules are the same in Streets of Rage 4. Keep moving to the right and beat up all the bad guys. Reach the end of the level and face a boss. Get enough points and you earn an extra life. Each of the characters have their own stats which can be viewed in the extras menu but you must unlock it first. They each have special attacks with a few like Blaze having an additional. There’s the defensive and offensive special attack. The defensive is like a ‘get off me’ move which during you’re also invincible. Offensive is normally longer range, travels a little and does straight up damage. Each character also has an ultimate attack. These require stars to activate which don’t come easy. For example, Floyd’s ultimate is him firing huge laser like he’s Cyborg from Injustice. Cherry is the fastest of all the fighters and the only one who can sprint. Floyd is the biggest and strongest but slower than slow itself. Axel is a balanced fighter with a powerful offensive special move. Blaze is also balanced, bit weaker than axel but got an additional special attack.
Streets of Rage 4 isn’t a hard game but a fair challenge, unlike Streets of Rage 3. The difficulties are: Easy. normal, hard, hardest and Mania. Mania is as the descriptions says… unfair but it’s only for the masters of Streets of Rage 4. Familliar enemies like Galsia, donavon, yellow signal are all here and ready to fight. Matter of fact, enemies from different Streets of Rage games are all here. They come back as mini bosses, actual end of level boss or just strong enemies. Big Ben, the fat guy in red introduced in Streets of Rage 2, is back and he charges you spiting fire (somehow) just like the good ol days. Barbon who was a boss in streets of Rage 2 is back and also a boss. He still kicks hard. Garnet, the women who jump and kick you from Streets of Rage 3 are here too. The Muay Thai fighters are back too and they are worse in our opinion. There are new enemies too like Honey who we hate the most. Stupid enemies indeed. When there’s multiple of them, expect a rough time. Police officers including one with a futuristic shield called Murphy (robocop anyone?). Goro who really slows down how you play and is dangerous when more than one is present. There’s more.
The old techniques are there in Streets of Rage 4, like landing on your feet when launched or thrown. You can break grabs as well and even juggle enemies with multiple simple hits to lead up with a strong finisher. Let’s dive in a bit more concerning some enemies. Yes enemies have variations of them just like the older Streets of Rage games. Galsia is normally blue and the weakest but then you will come across a green, red and white version who have more health and more aggressive. Donavan has a green and red pants versions of them. We believe the green one is called altet, something like that. Anyways, the red ones can throw weapons at you and even catch weapons throw at them. The last version of them is called ‘z’ and they at times can have armour. Big Ben has variations. There’s Gourmand and Anry. Gourmand will always try to belly flop drop on you while Anry will roll for an attack like Sonic the hedgehog but only vertically. Watch out for these guys. These guys and others aren’t much of a problem really but it becomes a huge problem when you play in hardest difficulty. The character designs are excellent. Amazing. Majority of these characters were designed right. Their design says quite a lot about them. Our favourite enemy design is Diva, hands down. Her design from her clothes, to heels, to hair style all have character. Her movement animations is also excellent. Combine it all together and she’s tough, a boss, dangerous, sexy and got attitude. You need to beat her up first before she complies.
Our second favourite enemy design is Mr Y. This guy has evil crime lord written all over him, from the trendy stylish coat, to his hair and fighting style. He doesn’t back down, regardless and knows he’s powerful. He was meant to be a bad guy. What’s that? He wanted to be a chef, well too bad, crime is his life. He looks good for sure. Our favourite hero design probably has to be Blaze. We feel like this is the best look for her possible. She’s got her jacket back which is a good thing. They went for a beautiful, sexy design but also she would kick your butt in many ways if you even try it on her once. Now some have a problem with her design but we think those people just need to grow up. Yes her skirt is real short but for what she does it’s actually practical. Look at her fighting style over the Streets of Rage games. She kicks… a lot. She does flips and jumping kicks. Jumping was her best stat in the very first game. How are you going to jump kick effective in a long skirt, you can’t unless it has a slit going all the way up to your hip. She can kick high if she needs to and flip. Her shirt makes it possible. It rides up when she does which is very realistic. We get it, some of you dads out there thinking, “young lady, go back upstairs and change. You ain’t fighting crime dressed like that!” We understand but her outfit is good, realistic and practical. This is coming from a martial artists with over 12 years experience. We don’t like Axel’s design. He looks kind of chubby now, like his six pack formed on top of the fat. He was a martial artist so why would he let himself go. Being a wanderer and searching for direction or whatever he’s doing doesn’t mean you stop caring. Wish he was in shape like Adam. Adam looks great but we can think of better designs for him.
Next let’s talk about the music. Streets of Rage games have always been known for their music. The boss music in Streets of Rage 1 is the best. You can bop and jam to it while facing the bosses. Streets of Rage 2 had two levels that we really enjoyed the music off. Also Streets of Rage 2 also has the best character select screen music, hands down. Streets of Rage 3 was the least of all the games in our opinion. Streets of Rage 4 has real nice menu music for chilling. You can get the Streets of Rage 2 character select screen music in the settings. In Streets of Rage 4 the best stage music of them all hands down is part 1 of level 2 the Precinct. Easy. If you say no, we will give you a location, meet us there and we will fight you. We aren’t responsible for all wounds you WILL get. Back to topic. Level 1, 2, 3, 4 and part 2 of level 9 had good to very good music. The others music was alright or not impressive to us sadly. Music in Streets of Rage 4 has build up music as in the music starts with a simple or unimpressive beta but as you go through the level the music builds up and extra beats are added and then it becomes something real good. We like that style. Level three hasn’t got good music at the start but then becomes something you can jam too but if you switch retro music for that level, it’s the boat music level from Streets of Rage 2 which was excellent. Sadly the retro music is better than the modern. We wish the developers did more concerning the music. The variety is definitely there even giving a more oriental music for the china town level.
Let’s now go over what we didn’t like. We don’t like that you had to beat level 4 before you can play as Adam. Adam was missing from both Streets of Rage 2 and 3 in terms of being playable. Then now in Streets of Rage 4 we got to play a bit to get him. Speaking of characters we don’t like that you can’t play as modern Shiva. If you look at the title screen you see Estel, Diva and Shiva on the front screen like they are a part of the cast. They have good looking character designs with their own moves but not unlockable. Maybe they plan to bring them in as DLC but if they at the front then either they are significant or playable. Simple. You might say they are there because they are bosses. Good point but Barbon, Nora, commissioner, DJ K Washi etc aren’t on the front. So yeah it’s not consistent. What we don’t like is hw the biker girls like Honey and the Muay Thai fighters have almost instant reflex hitting moves that can even joggle making certain sections practically unfair. The biker girls slide attack still hits you diagonally and forces you to save yourself by using special moves which drain your health and leave you in a bad state. What’s also disappointing is that besides the first thing levels like 1,2,3,4 the rest of the music isn’t great and the retro audio options aren’t good either. We was expecting the greatest Streets of Rage music of all time. Didn’t happen. The striking window or time for enemies to hit you remains the same regardless of difficulty.
The trick to handling Barbon isn’t clear like the other bosses. When he does his repeated roundhouse 360 kicks you are suppose to jump but it doesn’t look like that’s possible so you don’t try that. Especially someone like mFloyd who can’t jump high at all (sucker has 10cm vertical leap) the kick visually goes through his body but doesn’t hit. Also having the biker girls come out to join Barbon because you smash the bikes isn’t good either as you want the items but when you smash the bikes they come out. If you aren’t careful you will end up fighting Barbon and 6 biker girls at the same time. Adam had practically no relevance in the story besides his reveal which again is just bad. For some reasons Streets of Rage 4 on Xbox One has a shorter combo window than others. We watched some people including CoryxKenshin play Streets of Rage 4 (video below, watch when he hits the car) and we noticed that when they finished fighting someone their combo number in the top left hand corner stays for much longer, flashes and then shrinks showing it’s going to reset soon. That doesn’t happen on our Xbox One version. It resets so fast. Also when you hit the car in stage 1 that counts as hits and raises your combo counter. It doesn’t do that for us. Also if you hit cones, bins, water machines, whatever destructible which normally hide food or whatever under it, it also counts as a hit and even eating the food prevents the combo from ending. This allows you too easily get crazy combos. Very unfair. Where’s the section that allows us to play music from the game? They should have had that.
Let’s finish with more good stuff. What’s cool is that the levels and dialogue make it clear that the Y twins respected their dad. Family love. We like how each characters special attacks are so different from each other. Floyd being technology and pure force, Axel having fire as usual, Cherry having abilities linked to her guitar and music, Blaze having what looks like energy and off course Adam looking like green flames with dragon shapes at least for the offensive special move. The effects look excellent. We like the additional information and stuff you unlock in the extras menu. Those are actually interesting stuff. The ultimates look fantastic and make you want to use them a lot but sadly you get punished for using them by getting a lower score as you get 500 points for each star you hold on to at the end of the level.The fact that you can play as one of the characters from the previous Streets of Rage games is a big brain move. You can literally go through the whole game a streets of rage 1 Axel. That’s big. Players off course loved that they did this. The story is simple and easy to go with including cinematic scenes. It makes sense and you just roll with it. We also truly enjoyed that there are hidden levels where you face old bosses from past Streets of Rage games like Jack and even Mr X. It’s like a blast from the past. See clip below for an example alone with X35 Earthwalker getting an out of this world combo.
Overall Streets of Rage 4 is an excellent game. It’s awesome. We are having so much fun playing it. We have beaten the game multiple times. Gotten the perfect and out of this world combo achievements. We still have quite a bit more stuff to do. Even mania difficulty can’t stop us. If you are a fan of Streets of Rage or new to the series you will most likely enjoy this game. We haven’t tried the multiplayer but it’s clear. Either play online and go through levels with others or battle against over players online in battle mode to see who has more rage in their heart. The developers have done an excellent job but there is room for more. We suggest you get Streets of Rage 4 besides it’s not even expensive like £21. Off course we don’t go over everything but the main stuff. Now Streets of Rage 4 may have great designs, music and animations but those would have been much better if they done… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Those who remain is a new adventure horror game developed by ‘Camel 101‘ and published ‘Wired productions‘ and ‘WhisperGames‘. Those who remain is said to be coming out May 28th 2020 on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. We heard it’s also coming to Nintendo Switch in 2020 but no exact date. We got more developers trying to make a actually scary horror game. We hope they do good. Let’s take a look.
Those who remain has a simple story but off course should get deeper. Basically you control a man named Edward who is taking life for granted. It’s said his life is very good with a nice wife and daughter. Yet he still does stupid things like have an affair and over drinking. He’s heading through the town of Dormant to end the affair he’s having, to fix his mistakes. He reached the golden oak motel and that’s where everything takes a hard turn.
Those who remain wouldn’t be a horror game if it’s just a conversation and things were sorted and you went home. Nope! Turns out that this town Dormant isn’t a simple normal American town. This town has been infected with darkness. Reality has been warped here, it’s a combination of what the citizens have done and the darkness. This town has been cursed by a demon. The people of the town can’t escape. What you have to do is survive this night. Remember it’s a journey though.
There’s two dimensions that are interconnected. Players will have to work through a strange alternate reality and Dormont. This is needed to solve puzzles and off course to reveal what’s really happening around here. Like with these psychological horror games you know there’s going to be decisions and moral conflict. You get the choice to reprieve or condemn the lost souls of Dormont. Edwards fate is in the players hands. There are moral choices to make. How much does it effect the story? We do’t know. Mechanics suggest that there is more than one ending.
We checked out Those who remain gameplay and it’s what we expected. Those who remain hasn’t made the same mistake that other horror games made. They actually have some enemies. There are some creatures/monsters moving about in the darkness. They will kill anyone that comes near. Your best weapon and friend is the light. Stay in it. Now in some ways it does remind us of Outlast in terms of walking around, exploring buildings and stealth elements too. You have to hide from some enemies. The enemies don’t look scary so far though. There’s one that has a spotlight for a face practically and it will expose you, so stay out of it’s sight.
Overall Those who remain so far for us is just another horror game. Doing things slightly different but we need more. Horror games like these all try and they should, it’s just we have high expectations. The environment does look great though. We like the motel, the messed up reality and that there’s actually enemies now. The developers have done an good job from what we have seen so far. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see what else Those who remain has to offer. Now Those who remain may have curses, demons and darkness but none of these things can do anything against… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Maneater is a new action role playing game developed and published by ‘Tripwire Interactive’. Maneater is said to be coming out the 22nd of May 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and pc. Sharks are dangerous but this is taking things too far. Humans beware. Let’s take a look.
There is a story in Maneater. The story campaign has been described as ‘full narrative’. It’s narrated by Chris Parnell, the guy who did Saturday night live, 30 rock and even that annoying Rick and Morty. The story is set against the backdrop of a reality TV show. We don’t have the details… or maybe we do but don’t want to share… either way you’ll have to wait fro learn for yourself.
Maneater has a very simple concept. A shark can eat a human so they made a whole game around that with some twists. That’s the whole game of Maneater. Players are a shark and you go around primarily eating humans but you can fight other creatures too like alligators. So basically eat what comes in your way or what you come to. Eat or be eaten basically is the rule here.
That’s the objective… to eat. You grow and get stronger the more you eat and there’s a lot on the menu as Maneater is also open world. You can go through the whole ocean, finding all kinds of creatures and stuff to eat. Not only that, you can evolve to. Yep Maneater is on it’s Evolve today. There’s multiple evolving paths you can take with your shark. There’s a armoured shark where it has like hardened bone structure on it’s body and face for additional protection and toughness. There’s another where you look like a 3/4 shark and 1/4 glow squid deep sea thing. It’s actually cool looking. They come with new abilities and more chaos.
Don’t get ahead of yourself though. Like with Feeding Frenzy, you don’t start off as the big bad shark that everyone fears. Nope! You start as a small little shark. You then have to eat and survive to grow up, get bigger and stronger, being able to face stronger, bigger and more dangerous foes. Both animal and human. Eventually you will be big and strong enough to take on the humans. You can face the local drunks who are unorganised while the coast guard are a real problem. Like seriously they have guns and proper equipment.
We checked out some Maneater gameplay and it’s not exactly what we thought. There’s way more agility and unrealistic shark movement and abilities going on and we like that. You have to find loot to evolve your shark. There’s a number of different areas like beaches, the ocean, gulf coast and even industrial docks. We like that eventually you get cool abilities like smashing through boats completely, leaping out of the water to snatch humans off boats. It’s different from other games and definitely stands out.
Overall Maneater looks like a real cool game. We definitely like the simple concept of it. Jaws, but this shark is smarter, more blood hungry, more powerful and far more dangerous because of it. Sharks eating humans can work. The developers ‘Tripwire Interactive’ have a done a great job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to keep an eye on our sonar for any Maneater activity. Now Maneater may have a evolving hungry shark but that shark is a little goldfish when compared to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Fury Unleashed is a new rough lite action platform game developed and published by ‘Awesome Games Studio‘. Fury Unleashed is said to be coming out the 8th of May 2020 on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC. We never heard about this game but we know there’s a whole lot of shooting and battling to be done here. Let’s take a look.
What’s the story? We don’t know. What we do know is that there’s a number of things going on in the game mechanics. This is what their official site said, “each kill you score increases your combo. Hit certain thresholds and your damage resistance and healing powers will kick in!” Fury Unleashed promotes destroying your enemies fast and using your rage. It’s all action, action and action.
Since they strongly encourage you to beat the game in one go, you can expect permadeath. Yes, Fury Unleashed has permadeath and the random generated levels means you will have your typical rouge lite game. So don’t die. The positive is that you get natural replayability. Whenever we think of permadeath and random generated levels, Spelunky comes into our heads.
Fury Unleashed has differently difficulties. Hard mode is said to truly put the players to the test. Easy mode gives players the options to adjust things like the difficulty parameters to their liking. We always say it but giving gamers options and variety are good things.
Now there’s quite a lot to the customisation. There are design options in Fury Unleashed. Wear weird armour, funky helmets, change face, change hair and even “replace their face graphic with your own.” Not many games allow stuff like that but this allows payers to truly make their character their own. You can even set your characters skills. Like with set-able skills and abilities in all games, best to go for what suits your style first.
Even though it is random generated, some levels are hand designed. This means there’s something significant about those levels so be on the lookout and pay attention to details in the levels themselves. There are some permanent upgrades you can unlock. These upgrades stay with you even after you die. So there is a form of progression to increase your odds overtime.
The developers said this, “Fury Unleashed was created by combining inspiration from modern roguelite platformers, like Dead Cells and Rogue Legacy, with nostalgic memories of old-school platformer shooters, like Contra and Metal Slug. We have spent five years polishing our creation to make sure that your experience with the game will be as memorable as the aforementioned titles and we wholeheartedly believe that you won’t be disappointed.”
We checked out some Fury Unleashed gameplay and it’s what we expected bu the action is higher though. You are definitely fighting through a comic book which is a cool style. Each level comic book has their own enemies and environment design. Distinction is important and the level are distinct from each other. We’ve got jungles, buildings, bases etc. Worse of all is that there are 40 bosses! They are big and are definitely distinct from each other. Spelunky had one boss. We’ve seen a giant attack helicopter, organic plant monster, a viper warrior beast and more. They look cool… most of them.
Overall Fury Unleashed looks like a good game. Lots of time and work has gone into it’s development and you will understand when you research the development history of Fury Unleashed. We definitely love that there’s co-op. Playing with friends or family always makes a difference. We like the variety in the bosses and that they clearly stand out for this style. The developers ‘Awesome Games Studio’ have done a good job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see what happens with Fury Unleashed. Now Fury Unleashed may have serious action but it’s all baby stuff compared to the adventures off… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Book of Demons is a hack and slash deck building game developed and published by ‘Thing Trunk‘. Book of Demons is said to come out the 30th of April on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PS4. It’s already out on PC. Games like this tend to gain the attention of less gamers. So it’s already tough for them. Let’s take a look.
Book of Demons is a strange world but understandable. It takes place in, Paperverse, a world that exists entirely inside a pop-up book. So if we destroy the book, does that world permanently die?
It’s your popular good vs evil. About saving the world from the “ultimate devilry”. Book of Demons wants to stand out completely and you can tel with this game mechanic. Players can decide how long they want their quest to be. It’s called a flexiscope. This basically allows players to “divide the game into sessions of any size”. It goes further though as they claim “It even learns your pace of gaming and predicts the time to complete the next session.” Now that’s something different for sure.
Book of Demons is a hack and slash game so expect to move around and attack the enemies that come across your path or stand in your way. Instead pf regular weapons players must use magic cards to attack and do actions. This is where the deck building part comes into play. There are many cards and you need to make sure you have the right ones at your disposal. There are cards which are straight up attacks and some will strength your character and others have effects that help out. So in Book of Demons players will need: good understanding of the cards and what cards is in your deck, timing and execution for combos.
There are three classes: Warrior, Rouge and Mage. The typical line up if you ask us, which you did. The warrior is all about using his sword, strength and charging in. The rouge is all about the set up, poison and many arrows. The mage is clearly about magic, long range attacks and summoning. Wow, we wonder who sounds the best? Each class obviously has their own fighting style and own cards. Matter of fact they each have signature cards. For example the Warrior has stink bomb and shadow sword. The Rouge has Viper cloak and epic arrows. The Mage has Glory Golem and hourglass. What they do is… actually find out for yourself.
We checked out some gameplay and it’s not exactly what we thought it would be. This clearly based on our gaming taste but we don’t like how the characters move. We know it fits the theme of story characters in a pop up book, so they hop and shuffle like pieces of a board game. Not our thing though. The gameplay is straightforward and players should get use to it real fast. The levels are randomly generated so don’t expect the same journey twice. What’s good is variety and Book of Demons has over 70 different enemies like: goatmen, scorpions, succubi, snakes, skeletons and much much more. It’s a game that looks small and simple but there’s quite a bit going on around here. Sort of deep and a good number of in game mechanics. We also like the combo potential with the cards.
Overall Book of Demons seems like an alright game with some good stand put points. It’s clear work has gone into this one. The developers ‘Thing Trunk’ have done an alright job here. We at X35 Earthwalker aren’t interested in Book of Demons at all but some gamers will be and that counts. Now Book of Demons may have a whole world that needs saving but it would have been saved already if it did… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Digimon World is a role playing adventure game developed and published by ‘Bandai Namco‘. It came out 1999 on the PlayStation 1. If you mention this game, a good number of people would know this game. Digimon World is a serious game that clearly wasn’t developed for children even though it said 3 and over on the game case. Why? It’s definitely one of the most difficult and cryptic games. Let’s take a look.
Let’s start of by saying we really like this game and spent many hours back in the day playing it. It’s fun and brings back memories. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s cryptic and difficult. The story of Digimon World is… well they don’t really tell you much. Let’s be honest, who was playing this game when they were a child and knew what was going on? What you do get told is that the island is in danger, Digimon have lost their memory and that you have been pulled into the Digimon world by Jijimon to help. So you must go around and bring Digimon back to the city, File city. That’s it. Get to it. We don’t know who the villain is and you won’t find out more information until way, way later in the game. So even the story is sort of cryptic.
You start off with either a Argumon or Gabumon depending on whether you selected day or night as a preference. You have an empty backpack and your one Digimon. What we will say is that Digimon World was ahead of it’s time. It basically was open world. You can literally go almost any in the game from the start of the game. You could reach the dino region, grand canyon area, the beach and more bit once you get over a special bring in the canyon you can truly access almost everywhere. What you do end up doing is going to the gym next door. This gym is the place you’ll spend most of your time really and is the most essential place as it’s here where you can train your Digimon. Your Digimon like enemy Digimon have stats: HP, MP, offense, defense, speed, brain. It’s quite obvious what these stats do, except for defense. Does defense determine how likely your digimon will block attacks or reduce damage from enemy attacks? That was never explained. Each time you do a training your Digimon’s respective stat will go up by a set amount and will cost you 1 hour of in-game time. We remember spending all day in the gym just boosting our stats to get a strong Digimon. Eventually when enough time passes your rookie digimon will digivolve into a champion. Yes there are five classes: baby, in training, rookie, champion and ultimate. sSo simply, train, digivolve be strong enough to explore the island, find digimon to bring back to the city and win your battles. Now let’s get to the complex stuff.
The most complex thing is the digivolution and the mechanics surrounding it. You get a few clues but ultimately you don’t know what to do. Numerous gamers have admitted that they didn’t know what to do either. In the official booklet you get some information on how to get argument to merman, monochromon and greymon but that information doesn’t feel accurate at all as we tried but never got a greymon. You always get a champion digmon but not always an ultimate digimon. Ee remember seeing our champion digimon die and fade away so many times and not know why. They were healthy, no virus, good stats and little to no care mistakes. Turns out the other factors are number of battles and your digimon’s weight. How are kids suppose to know and get strategic with all this information. For example to get let’s say Megadramon, you firstly need all your stats to be high, battle many times we think 15 times minimum (again not sure) weight must be around 50-55. Some digmon is said to require care mistakes. This doesn’t make sense since the whole game trains you to avoid making care mistakes but you’re suppose to know to have a few for certain digimon. Not fair. Even when you met the criteria for an ultimate (well you think you do) at times your digimon still just fades away. You don’t even get to know why. Just try again and hit the gym. Now that X35 Earthwalker is older he has gotten ultimates far more consistently like 3/5 times but that’s because of additional information and what we learnt online which wasn’t really a thing back then.
Another complicated thing is why does your champion sometimes digivolve into Numemon. Now yes we know you can get him with care mistakes but we remember times when we didn’t get care mistakes but still got him. Maybe we are mistaken since that was years ago. Numemon is disgusting, weak, gains less from training and everyone hates it and doesn’t want it. It serves no purpose… or does it? We know there’s a suit that if you bring Numemon to, he and only he can slip into it, instantly becoming an ultimate digimon with some serious power and you need that digimon to enter the toy mansion. So even trash has it’s use and this trash digimon has a completing game essential use but what kid would know to do that? You avoid getting numemon. Numemon can become Sukamon who is also trash poop digimon and even shaped like poop. It’s also weak but get this. Sukamon can become etemon only if it has high stats like 400 offense and speed. It also must have a weight within 10-20 and battled more than 40 times. Remember that sukamon is naturally very weak and has a lame starting move, so naturally players avoided fighting with him as he struggles badly. How is a kid suppose to figure the out and know to battle with it 40 TIMES! In defence of the two trash digimon, if you get their stats high and give it certain filth techniques like quick poop throw and the giant poop technique, they can actually be quite tough and fast enough to interrupt the attacks of stronger digimon. Remember that. They are trash but aren’t complete trash.
Next is the techniques. You start off with either ‘spit fire’ for Argumon or ‘sonic jab’ for gabumon. Both honestly good moves. The game does tell you that you can learn new moves through training the brain and battling but that’s it. When raising the Digimon brain stat, you have a small chance of learning a move when you pass 50. For example when you raise your brain to pass 150, 250, 350, 450, 550 etc, there is a SMALL chance you’ll learn a random move that your digimon can perform. It’s basically random, you may not learn anything at all from 0-950. The easier way to learn is to battle. This also isn’t explained. We don’t exactly know what determines if you learn the move or not. It’s random really. Do you learn the move when you get hit by the attack, block the attack or they just do it, do it a certain number of times it’s not clear nor explained. We have had matches were we successfully block a move three times or more and still not get a move. Twice we learnt a move from the enemy even though that enemy never got to do the move. They just about started the process or animation for the smallest fraction of second but got hit. Literally, Tyrannomon learnt red inferno and Leomon learnt war cry first time even though the enemy never got to do the move. We didn’t even know they did the move during the match we just saw “red inferno learnt” at the end and was like “wait what? How? Oh well we’ll take it”. We once with Leomon first and then carried over with Andromon faced the ice ogremon in freehand near the top where there’s three of them many many times in a row to learn the move buster dive. We faced them individually over 20 times! We got hit by buster dive countless times, blocked it many times and still didn’t learn it. We eventually did but took forever. So look at this, it took us over 20 battles and getting hit numerous times to learn buster dive but learnt red inferno and war cry instantly, first try even though the enemy didn’t get to do the move once.
Next is how you get certain digimon to join the city. This is probably the most cryptic for sure. Don’t listen to those who lie online saying they beat Digimon World when they were 8 or 9 etc. They are being stupid and lying. Some of these digmon are cryptic. You have some like Pixiemon, mamemon and metalmamemon who only show up in specific rooms and no one tells you where they are. So just look around and explore right? Not that simple as they only have a 3-5% (We think 5) to spawn in that room when you enter it. This means if you never knew they were there in the first place you will walk past an area that already has digimon in it thinking nothing of that area. It’s literally based on chance. Hows a kid suppose to know that you have to go to this specific place and keep entering and leaving until they show up. When you first play the game you don’t even know they exist. X35 Earthwalker remembers the first time encountering Pixiemon. He was intrigued and surprised as he never saw it before. Talked to it and said it’s an ultimate digimon. He knew it must be strong but wanted to give it a try with his champion digimon and recovery items. Pixiemon destroyed his digimon easily. It wasn’t even a fight… it was abuse. He did get revenge on pixiemon though. Another cryptic digimon is fridgimon which will only show up if your digimon is sick and in a certain room in freezeland. Not only that but your digimon needs to either be a baby, in training or specific fire type digimon like greymon, tyrannomon, argumon etc. How are you suppose to figure that out? First of all Digimon World teaches you to never let your digimon get sick and if it does, you cure it straight away with the medicine item or head back to file city quick with autopilot to go to centarumon. If your digimon stays sick for too long, it will literally die and lose a life. If anyone says found it by chance… we don’t believe you. That means you are saying you happen to have a baby or in training digimon in freezeland which if dull of powerful and dangerous digimon who would destroy you so there’s no reason to bring them. Or you had a digimon, went to freezeland just happened to get sick in the right room and that digimon happens to be a fire type and the right specific fire type? Nope don’t believe you. Digimon don’t get sick naturally really, unless they consume an item that warns you that it could cause sickness , so normal players avoid those items. Second when sick you cure them immediately or auto pilot back to file city so you wouldn’t be there for a while to trigger the event. We skeptical today. There are many digimon to get that are cryptic.
Lastly let’s talk about difficulty. Digimon World is a very hard game. The first digimon you encounter in native forest aren’t strong at all and you can beat most of them comfortably with your first digimon. When you get to the jungle, dino region and mount panorama they get tough and require a strong digimon to beta. When you get to freezeland, misty trees and especially factorial town the digimon there are extremely strong and should be avoided. There was a platinum sukamon (or silver) which had over 4000 HP! Wow! There are many digimon with over 3000HP with some brutal attacks. You need an ultimate digimon at some point to really make it far or a very strong champion with good moves and lots of healing items. Some battles are to get digimon back to the city are brutal. Facing ultimate digimon like Pixiemon, mamemon and metalmamemon are terribly hard fights as they have over 5000 HP and even moves that can do over 1000 damage. Then you have didigmon like Greymon, Airdramon and etemon who surprise attack you without warning and either catch you off guard with a few items or a baby digimon or deal unpreventable damage upon ambush. You have no warning that they are coming. Some digimon like ogremon forces you to fight three on one. Gururamon fights you twice. It ain’t easy out here. Your best bet is to have an ultimate digimon. We’ll too bad to those who played this game back in the day as kids because we couldn’t get ultimates unless by pure chance. We use to try avoiding every digimon we came across to prevent using recovery items. There also wasn’t a well known way of making money in Digimon world. You got money from battle or selling items. Now there are good strategies. You can bring your digimushroom to the trading moyjamon in freezeland to get medium recoveries which you can trade with another to get s def discs which can be sold for 2000 each. So 15 mushrooms = 15 medium recoveries which = 15 s def discs which when sold = 30000. Or you could sell your cards to that giant frog creature in the gecko swamps and use your points to get super recovery for 20 points which sells for 1250 each.
Overall we enjoyed Digimon World. It’s a game from the childhood days. Even before having a memory card for the PS1, seeing how far we could get in a Saturday. Learning the techniques to see what’s out there. This was difficult and unfair in a number of ways but was a to of fun too with lots to do. This game was RPG, open world, adventure and very deep and detailed and it was released back in 1999. It was ahead of it’s time. We have seen some people do a whole play through but clearly are using online guides and all always go to start of with greymon to get metal greymon to get skullgreymon which is boring and not relatable. Too much copying. We have the most fun playing it ourselves. This game is available still and we suggest you give it a try. Just know that training in the gym is a grind but there are ways to speed up training like hawk radish, training manual and certain digimon you invite to the city. No two playthroughs are the same so try it and have fun. Now Digimon World may have bee fun and ahead of it’s time but even it is nothing special when compared to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Stranded Deep is a new open world survival crafting game developed and published by ‘Beam Team Games‘. Stranded Deep is said to have came out the 21st of April 2020 on consoles. It came out on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It’s also out on PC. The really question is “how deep are we stranded here?” That’s what matters. Let’s take a look.
The story in Stranded Deep is your typical standard stranded story. You control a man who was on a plane. Something goes wrong and you end up stranded somewhere in the vast pacific ocean. You are alone. Yes, you are the lone survivor. Like the movie ‘Cast Away’. You start right from there. You get to a nearby emergency raft. The game then gives you control after some time has clearly passed due to it now being day. Then you can either raft away (if you think that’s wise) or head to the nearby island. Then the real game begins. Time to survive.
Yes, players have some options. You can set your difficulty, gender so male or female, whether to use the existing world of generate a new one, whether to have permadeath or not and even decide whether your world has sharks and snakes or just make them passive (which is for babies and gaming wusses). Like why would you not have the enemies in the game. This isn’t Minecraft. Or is it? It’s good that you got options and can make some changes to the game. Options is always good.
This game literally reminds us of Raft. If you think about it like that, then you know what to expect and what to do. You run around, explore the place, find supplies, gather resources, fend off against threats and off course crafting and building. At this point you know what to expect. Not much to say. Gather your wood build a hammer, build the foundation for your base of operations.
There are threats in this game though and so they should be. Players, if they aren’t complete wusses and babies, will have sharks and snakes in their game. These two are threats and can end your life. Sharks have aways been a famous enemies concerning island and water survival games. If you fall in the water or didn’t see a shark but went into the water then you will get a nasty surprise. Survival games like this need an actual threat. What numerous island and other survival games fail at is not creating fear. When you are stranded with no help, surrounded by danger and all alone, the average person would be scared. Pikmin created fear and did it well for it’s colourful friendly style. Players made sure to get all their pikmin back to the onions or stay close before it turns night. These survival games don’t have that feeling. You see something you easily know how to handle it and then you quickly reach a point where nothing can stand up to you and there’s nothing to be afraid of. We believe that Stranded Deep will have the same issue.
We checked out some Stranded Deep gameplay and it’s what we thought it would be. It’s a like Raft but more graphically realistic, deeper and has more going on. There’s krakens or giant squid creature in the sea which is cool. We need more threats like that. You can build machines that can fly, collect trophies like in Terraria. We feel like there’s more emphasis on survival in Stranded deep though. It definitely has more detail too. Raft is still a fun game but Stranded Deep wants to be the biggest most serious island, water survival game. We like that you have to go underwater to explore and even search sunken ships and find goods. There’s a day and night cycle. You can hunt animals for food and even use spears or a spear gun.
Overall Stranded Deep looks like a very good game. We just really hope the threat level is turned up. It needs to feel like a survival game. The water has to be scary. It should make you never want to go in. The crafting looks cool with what you can eventually make. It looks good too. Like Sea of Thieves, the water looks amazing. The developers ‘Beam Team Games’ have done a great job with this game from what we can see so far. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see more of what Stranded Deep has got. Now Stranded Deep may have creatures in the water but even those things know to obey… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Bless Unleashed is an Xbox exclusive MMORPG developed by ‘NEOWIZ Round 8 Studios‘ and published by ‘Bandai Namco‘. We have played Bless Unleashed for a good while now and it’s definitely a good game and even has something that other games failed to do; however we have encountered some designs and features that have ruined things for us. Let’s take a look.
The first thing layers will notice about Bless Unleashed is the combat. It’s slow, sort of unresponsive and stiff. For example you swing at the enemy after knocking them down and sometimes you go over them or through them slightly. All you have to do is readjust but it can cost you a free strike on the downed enemy as the crusader class. Also you can’t use your shield fast enough after attacking, there’s such a delay that you have to wait a whole 2 second or slightly less until you can raise your shield. So you about to finish your combo, see the enemy about to hit you, you try to raise your shield as soon as the combo finishes (well in time) then get no shield, smacked across the head… and then your shield comes up which is too late. Also the Crusader class it punished as the full combo can never be finished before the boss attacks you. aYou aren’t really allowed to use your power, especially when fighting the dungeon enemies. You have to rely on others to do the damage while you hold block forever which isn’t fun. A delay with the shield isn’t fun either. Combat needs to be improved, smoother, faster reaction slowed also.
Now let’s mention some good stuff about Bless Unleashed. Bless Unleashed has shown that the developers really thought some elements out. For example we like that there are two in game currencies in the game that are very easy to get your hands on. You can even convert regular gold into star seeds. With both gold and star seeds players can use the fast travel teleporters. Not only that, you can activate those teleporters even when you aren’t physically at one of them which is good design. Another great thing is that you get lots of upgrade and fortification stones. They are real easy to get and even some defeated enemies drop them. You need these stones to upgrade your weapons and equipment. So you don’t have a problem getting the chance to upgrade. Now this is a negative also but a bigger positive in some ways. Other players are always present in your world except for strict moments concerning the story where it has to be you alone. Now this is annoying as other players can kill the enemies you are hunting but the major benefit is that you get all the help you normally get all the help you need with powerful bosses found in the open world. For example you almost always find players waiting for a big boss to spawn so when he finally spawn there’s like 17 players all attacking it. So you will get help.
Next thing that makes Bless Unleashed not fun is the amount of bag space you have. To be fair, there is a way to upgrade the amount of bag space. You have to collect 4 bag pieces and take them to the bag specialist guy who increases bag space by 1. Yes, it’s that small. You always run out of space. Maybe they need to increase the stack numbers for the fortification and upgrade stones and the ingredients like leather, thin branches etc. That would certainly help. Increase the bag that you start with and increase the stack size. It’s absolutely annoying when you want to open up a chest award or get new items but you have to decide what to get rid of since every single item counts as a space except for stacks which off course count as one. Not fun at all.
Another thing that’s not fun about Bless Unleashed is the upgrade of weapons and equipment. We will focus on weapons as that’s our experience with this issue. So firstly you need the right amount of in game currency which is fine. You need enough fortification and upgrade stones which is fine. Now when you upgrade a weapon when it’s a rare there is a chance that your weapon upgrade can fail. This for starters is stupid. If we have the goods, and the materials then give us the upgrade. This isn’t Raid: shadow legend where you can fail the upgrade. Not only can you fail but your weapon can break too. When your weapon breaks during a fail, you can’t upgrade that weapon again until you repair it which requires a repair kit item which isn’t cheap by the way or easy to obtain. Not only that when your weapon breaks it goes down one level. So your level 4 sword you tried to upgrade, breaks and is now back to being a level 3! THAT’S STUPID! You can be severely punished for attempting to upgrade. So let’s give a very accurate example. You have a level 3 rare sword and you got the right amount of stuff to attempt an upgrade. It fails. You sword is broken and it’s now. level 2 and you need a repair kit to repair which you get at the limited time store. Now that it’s repaired you have to repair again just to get back to your original level of level 3 just so you can attempt again which you could also fail again. That’s NOT fun at all. Also bad like Raid: Shadow legends you don’t get told your odds of success. You don’t know the risk when you want to upgrade. So it’s unfair.
Now the one thing Bless Unleashed did that others didn’t do is the more realistic female model designs for NPCs. We have mentioned this before but in the first area in the festival. There was some women who had on high heels which off course effects the figure. We noticed that the calf muscles and Gastrocnemius looked exactly like how a real life women’s lower leg would look. This is a big deal to us because other games don’t do that. They all have very similar model designs. Some developers have lazy moments. We wish more games have diversity in their character designs, especially for NPCs.
Now another problem that Bless Unleashed have is the attack combos for the Crusaders. You have round about 4 actual combos but the problem is you will only really be using 1. The main one where you tap RB, RB, RB, RB, B does the most damage. So why would you use the other combos? Well you can use the RB, RB, RT, B combo which has an area effect so it’s good for a group but there’s no reason to use the others as it’s less damage. The shield one that knocks the enemy in the air isn’t needed as your strongest combo has big knock back so you get the distance anyway. So there’s no point in having them. They are pointless. If there’s a hidden actual purpose for those other combos then it’s not clear and we don’t know. Give the player combos that actually matter. Why can’t one have a poison effect maybe, while another combo may lower defence or boost your attack damage or whatever. See? We are better at game design than all these designers.
The last and biggest failure of Bless Unleashed and the single main reason why we don’t even feel like playing the game anymore… the levelling up. Simple put, it takes forever. There’s only two ways to really progress in this game. Level up, which grants more health and strength, and upgrading your weapon for more damage. We already discussed that many are too scared to upgrade and the fails prevent you from doing that, so all you are left with is levelling up. Never has levelling up felt so slow in a game. We have done all the side quests that we can find. We have fought and killed many enemies and that doesn’t even take you halfway to levelling up. We aren’t joking. Rewatch the clip above. We got 1659 experience points which is 0.134%. This is from an enemy which is 4 levees higher than us by the way. This would mean in order to get 100% so we can level up, we have kill that goat 746 times!!!!!! Nope! Sorry! Not doing that! It gets worse. The next story mission we need to complete to progress is to defeat a dungeon boss. We can’t fight it because you have to be level 19 to enter the dungeon. We just turned level 18 by finishing the last mission and as you can see in the clip above, we are nowhere near being level 19. We did all the side quests we could find. No we aren’t going to ride around the whole big map in order to try and find more. They should be available from the map or whatever. We learnt that fighting stronger monsters only grant pathetic amounts of experience like 0.134% worth. We are stuck. No! We aren’t going to sit there and slay a goat 746 times! We have lives to live, we got a business to run, friends to socialise with, family to spend time with, online church services and more. WE’VE GOT A LIFE! We heard some player go back to find the global Map bosses that spawn into the world. One, those bosses spawn like every 20mins. They literally take forever to spawn in. Two, they don’t give as much exp as you would expect. This is the biggest killer for us concerning Bless Unleashed. So no, we aren’t playing it. We rather go back to playing Tera and Skyforge.
We didn’t want to completely bash the game in as it’s a good game truly and well made. That’s why we threw in some positives about the game in this blog post. It’s just there are some stuff that makes the game not fun at all. Players shouldn’t be afraid to upgrade their weapons. Players always want upgrades. We have a purple epic upgrade stone but we don’t want to rick using it, then grind back the resources needed to upgrade again because your last upgrade failed. It is completely stupid to lock the story behind compulsory level u missions. Side quests, fine but not the main story. We literally can’t progress until we are level 19 which takes forever to get there. The whole point of videos games is entertainment. You are suppose to have fun. Since we aren’t having fun, we can conclude that Bless Unleashed failed to complete its purpose. We will wait to see if there are any changes but until then, we will be playing other games. Bless Unleashed may be a good game but without the fun it’s not good enough for… the ‘Earth Walk!’
