Review - Shovel Knight - PC

• Retro Platformer
• Pogo Simulator
• £10.99/£14.99 with the glorious soundtrack  

- FOR SHOVELRY -

*Disclosure - These screenshots are from the press kit on Yacht Clubs website because mine got corrupted in a HDD issue*

What is it?

Released back in June 2014, Shovel Knight is an 8-bit 2D platformer in the vein of old Castlevania games for PC, 3DS and the WiiU from Yacht Club Games. It began life as a Kickstarter campaign and is one of the few things we can safely call a success when it comes to Kickstarter.

Story

One day whilst out adventuring with your favourite gal pal Shield Knight you stumble upon the ominously named Tower of Fate where you both fall prey to a cursed amulet, when you wake up Shield Knight is gone and you're left feeling quite upset by the whole thing and sack adventuring in favour of early retirement. Big mistake really. During your extended vacation a formidable team of nasty chaps make an appearance and begin terrorising the realm, including the all powerful enchantress and as you might guess she's not too friendly. When news reaches you about all the bad things that have happened since you've been gone the decision is made, time to once again pick up shovel and put a stop to it all.

Gameplay

When you hear the words "8-bit 2D platformer" you know what you're getting and admittedly that isn't always a good thing since this is a genre filled with quite a lot of shitty games. Shovel Knight stays true to the genre and it's levels are laden with holes to fall down, spikes to fall on and secrets to be found, oh and enemies that will go out of their way to get you killed. You even get a Ducktales style pogo jump when you jam your mighty shovel into the moist brains of enemies.

When you do die, and you will a lot, you lose a portion of your money which you have a chance at reclaiming by getting to the spot you died and collecting the bags ala Dark Souls. The controls are incredibly responsive and whilst I prefer to play with an Xbox 360 pad (despite it having one of the worst D-pads in the world) using a keyboard will not be a hindrance on you.

It's worth mentioning that if you're playing on PC check your V-sync settings because I went through over half the game before I realised turning it off made the game run much better and made me run much MUCH quicker, or rather run at the speed I'm supposed to.

Graphics

Again, you know what you're getting when it comes to 8-bit. Yacht Club have gone above and beyond when it comes to the stylistic feel of Shovel Knight, even using a colour palette nearly identical to the original NES and their effort shows because the game is simply stunning to look at. The character design is incredible and each environment is varied and conveys the theme of each level so well. The 8-bit style isn't for everyone and it isn't always done right but you would have a hard time looking at this game and not thinking it looks beautiful.

Audio

Before I gush about how good the music is I want to touch on the sound design because it's really good and has a lot of satisfying bit-crush throughout, okay music time. Oh it's so good, seriously it's just so damn good! Jake Kaufman did outstanding work on this game, truly inspiring. I love chiptune music and this is no exception, it's so well written and an absolutely perfect match for the game, it even has 2 tracks written by Manami Matsumi who wrote music for Mega Man! How amazing is that! Go to Jakes Bandcamp page and listen to it, just, do it. Now.

Yay or Nay?

There's a reason I like this game a lot that I've yet to touch on and that's the character of Shield Knight, she's not the usual woman that needs saving, she isn't a love interest she's your partner and the two of you are a well oiled machine together. Much better than whining about being in a castle or some other plot device. The games biggest failing is its length, I got a lot of enjoyment out of my first playthrough (which would've gone faster without the V-sync issues) and while you have the option for a new game plus it feels artificial since all it does really is make things a bit harder. That having been said I really do like this game and find it hard not to recommend it to anyone and everyone because it's just a really enjoyable experience and who doesn't love that?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/250760/
http://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight/
http://virt.bandcamp.com/album/shovel-knight-original-soundtrack

Review - Tomodachi Life - 3DS

• Fun
• Stupid
• Fan-fic generator
• Pricey

What is it?

The Island as it starts

Tomodachi Life is a very strange crossbreed of The Sims and Animal Crossing wherein you are god and have to deal with an island full of Mii's who have problems that need solving and their free will

can only do so much.

The whole gang..so far

Story

Basically there isn't a story...or nothing that I would say actually counts as narrative. You start the game, create yourself in your image and then forever forward you are know as "blahs" look-a-like. You exist to solve these Mii's problems and solve them you will and as you solve them and tick off different requirements your island will grow and expand with new buildings and such.

Gameplay

The first thing you'll want to do is take advantage of the QR scanning feature and head over to the internet to find a huge list of QR codes for characters you know and love, as you scan a character in you'll want to make sure that each character at least has a date of birth set, I'll elaborate on that soon.

Princess Zelda doing the news

Depending on the type of QR code you scan you may have to fill out some more options with the Mii such as personality, voice, first name, last name, nickname and a few other stats. Personality is done through a series of extreme sliders for example you are either incredibly normal or incredibly mental, obviously you can be anywhere on the scale but the extremes are somewhat hilarious. Voice is also done through sliders and hearing the speech feedback can be terrifying, especially when your Mii says your name for the first time, it's haunting.

As I mentioned you exist to solve these Mii's problems and you'll do that by checking in on them in their room in the big island council flat where they all reside. Mii's will have different types of thought bubbles on their rooms depending on the type of problem they have, maybe they want food, want to meet somebody or are in love with another islander or maybe they want to play a game which when clicked they will ask you in a very scary 8-bit style voice "come play with me"...again, haunting. There are a variety of mini games which you'll end up doing including Sumo Wrestling, Catch, Match 2 and more, nothing really too taxing but some of them can just be a pain in the arse like Identify Mii where you are shown a silhouette of a Mii on your island and given a choice of 3 names to choose from which given the limited amount of hair styles in the Nintendo character creator can be as I said, a pain in the arse.

Mii Apartments

Problems and requests

It's not all entertaining Mii's though, you also need to feed them by buying whatever food is on sale in the shop that day which they may or may not like. Buy them new clothes with whatever is available in the shop that day or buy them a whole new room design. None of that is actually important though because since this is a Nintendo game you can't die from starvation or anything but it's always nice to keep your subjects Mii's happy. With enough interaction between your Mii's they will eventually develop friendships and distaste for each other  which can lead to arguments or better yet, marriage and tiny little babies. This is why having date of birth set for each character is important because without it they could be a child and that would be...bad. So make sure everything is above board and okay first. When two Mii's have a baby it will eventually grow up and you'll be given two options, either he or she can live on the island with the other slaves Mii's or you can send them off to another island via street-pass (which I haven't managed to do because I don't get any street-pass hits here..).

Just...fantastic

YEA!...right?

Awww

Graphics

I don't know what anybody is expecting to find here, it looks like anything that involves Mii's really which means it can look anywhere between Okay and OH GOD NO. At the end of the day you're not buying this to look at the sweet 3DS graphics are you.

Eren mytriggeristitans Jaeger

Professor Oak coping with his problems

Audio

So in order to make your Mii feel more like you when you create your Mii you are given a very odd set of sliders to manipulate your voice, you can choose from a few presets (Old man, old woman, man, woman, boy, girl) but then everyone sounds the same. Trying to replicate your own voice is difficult to say the least, it's really only 1 or 2 steps above Microsoft Sam..For all kinds of fun you should hit that randomize button because some of those randomized voices are most definitely speaking in tongues. Also the music is as bland and forgettable as Animal Crossing.

Yay or Nay?

This game is pretty fantastic. Having the ability to put all your favourite videogame and TV characters together in one space and see who hates who and who loves who is pretty great, it's basically a fan-fiction generator..if you're into that. There was some rather big and frankly unnecessary hoo-hah about the removal of a bug or glitch that allowed same sex couples to have children and get married and such, Nintendo pulled it and people were furious, saying it was homophobic and unfair and blah blah blah. This is just a fun silly game that's mainly for kids, definitely not something that was worth all the drama it got.

I opened by saying this game was like Animal Crossing and it is but it's different in one key way, there's no time restriction placed on character interaction. In Animal Crossing you were pretty screwed if you wanted to play at 2am or even if you just did too much early in the day. In Tomodachi there is pretty much always something to do, the game doesn't shut down at 10am, it's great. It's a fun, stupid, silly experiment of a game and I'm still not bored of it.

That's how you do it Tifa

Bye bye

http://tomodachi.nintendo.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/tomodachilife/