Beastopia

Beastopia is a turn-based RPG powered by beasts. That's how its creator describes it to me, at least.

These beasts include Vincent-Van-Goat, Doctor Hoo, Fat-Boar Slim, Jane Doe, Megunn Fox, and Stephen Hawk. While these names are jokes the game itself is not, I am told.

Beastopia was created in the last month by a small team at Mobility Games after they were given a month off their main project to "do [their] own thing."

It plays like a board game and therefore has you moving mini-figure versions of the beasts around on a grid. You battle other beasts and unlock treasure chests to win.

Before that, though, you have to assemble a team of four (out of six) beasts. Each beast has its own special skill to take into consideration during this process.

 These skills include lockpicking, chest smashing, trap disarming, increased view range, and healing. (You can guess as to which beast has which skill.)

There will be three maps available in Beastopia when it launches tomorrow but no tutorial (one of the disadvantages of rapid game creation). However, it will be free to download so if you can't pick it up you'll have lost nothing.

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Plants vs. Zombies 2's latest update until August 13th

The game's Summer Nights update tells us this much as it adds hot backyard parties to the mix until August 13th.


This includes seven new zombies dressed for the climate including the Hot Dog Imp. Five new costumes have been thrown in for you to collect as well.

There are also explosive firework pinatas now and a special-edition plant called the Strawburst that allows for "jamming for a limited time."

Plus, you can try out the summertime Vasebreaker mode, which gives you "sparklers with every smash."

Finally, there are new repeatable quests for Wild West, Far Future, and Dark Ages. Got all that? Good.

You can download Plants vs. Zombies 2 with this new update for free on the App Store and Google Play.

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Final Fantasy Type-0 HD Review

It is fitting that a game about war--its passionate triumphs, its bloody defeats, its tragic consequences--would focus so heavily on combat. In Final Fantasy Type-0, you guide a group of gifted teenagers through numerous campaigns to capture opposing cities and kill the powerful beings aiding enemy nations. This group, Class Zero, is made up of 14 characters enhanced with magical and physical abilities, making them living machines of war. Japanese PSP owners have waged that war since 2011, but this high-definition rendition is the first time the battles have spilled into the West. And what a fortuitous arrival Final Fantasy Type-0 is, expressing the travails of war through breakneck battles and demanding boss encounters that test your will.
All of Class Zero's members interact in enjoyable ways, but most of their stories are overshadowed by the torrid romance budding between classmates Rem and Machina, and their struggle to fight their own demons as well as the war. Their tale is more heartfelt and more engaging than Class Zero's squabbling, which often relates to the war raging across the world of Orience. The narrative throws in too many names and locations with little explanation, leaning heavily on terms like "l'Cie" and "Phantoma," which are briefly discussed but never fully fleshed out, although you frequently encounter the entities these terms refer to as the story progresses. You're introduced to a dozen characters, only to see them once or twice before they wind up being killed suddenly or dropped from the plot altogether. Outside of Class Zero, the supporting cast falls short and makes for some confusing moments when the narrative depends on you to remember faces you've only briefly glimpsed. However, the love story between Class Zero's two ordinary members, and the strong reactions non-playable characters have towards Class Zero's accomplishments, gives the war narrative palpable weight.
This doesn't look like it will end well.Machina and Rem, Class Zero's outliers.
The military plot gets complicated quickly, but events within Class Zero are fairly easy to follow until the game hits its first dramatic climax halfway through. It's here that too many major story points are introduced quickly, and all at once. The members of Class Zero are the "children" of a mad sorceress-doctor who is, as you can guess, not all that she seems. The kids get along decently with one another, but not at all with outsiders; Class Zero's members were accepted to the academy without entrance exams at the insistence of their "mother," so talking with NPCs as any member of Class Zero often yields deriding comments and snark about how the children don't fit in with the rest of Akademia, a university breeding children for war.
At any time while wandering the world, you control one member of Class Zero as he or she talks to NPCs, either to receive a fetch quest, or simply to chat. Conversations may have different outcomes depending on which character you are currently controlling. For example, if you talk to Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia as Rem or Machina--the two new members of Class Zero who don't fall under her affection--she greets you with disdain. Approach her as Ace or Cater, however, and she warmly engages with you. Elsewhere, some side quests require that you talk to certain people or complete tasks as Rem, who is a favorite among her peers. These subtle nuances make all 14 characters matter. Each has his or her own distinct personality, and while some Class Zero members are less bearable than others, they have great conversations when interacting as a group. Watching the airheaded Cinque try and reason with the know-it-all Trey, all while snarky Sice tells them both to shut up, is always entertaining, as is seeing opposing personalities like Cater and Queen--one sassy, and one cold and rational--pair up to solve problems.
There's always something horrible to gawk at.Three is company [in battle].
Type-0's combat is marvelous. Your 14 playable characters have four moves each available to them: a powerful physical attack, a defensive spell like Cure or Protect, and two abilities that can be customized with magic spells and attacks unique to that character. At any given time, three party members take to the battlefield, but you only directly control one at a time. You can, however, switch between them on the fly. Classmates and their enemies attack rapidly in real time, leaving little room to breathe, and forcing you to constantly swing the camera around to keep your enemies in sight, which can be a bit of a headache, but ensures you don't spend too much time hammering on one individual combatant. Battles are electric, filling the screen with light and color, and keeping you on your toes as you glance around the arena and speed towards the enemies in most need of extermination.
The ability to swap between characters on a moment's notice is a powerful one. One moment, you fling around Sice's scythe, and the next, you instantly swap in Trey to shoot down flying enemies with his bow and arrows. Battles give rise to an elegant and satisfying rhythm as you switch between ranged and melee characters as needed. You may only control one character at a time, but the AI that commands the other two party members is always on point. You never feel like you're taking down opponents on your own, and if you do a good job of leveling up each Class Zero member, then you take well-trained combatants into the field with you. I got into the habit of taking my two lowest-level characters into new missions, along with one of my higher-level ones, and I was delighted to find my higher-level fighter actively pursuing enemies and dealing the same amount of damage he would if I were controlling him. The AI doesn't slow down or deal lighter hits, so you aren't doing the heavy lifting all on your own.

The result of the cunning AI? Your skirmishers feel like a cohesive team, rather than a single hero accompanied by unnecessary deadweight. That's even the case when you put the game's support personnel (SP) system to the test, which sends random NPCs into battle to support you, instead of other Class Zero members. SP characters are smart, and typically come in at a level that matches, or is higher than, the character you are controlling. If support characters die in battle, you can't revive them, but you can call in reserve members of Class Zero to take their places.
Most bad guys are bigger than you.
Typically, you take on dozens of giant mechs and angry soldiers in story missions, but when crossing the overworld--the giant map on which you walk over Orience--random encounters crop up. These usually entail quickly mowing down a group of enemies for experience points. If there are other enemies nearby, they detect your presence, and the game gives you the option to immediately fight them or retreat. If you accept the fight, you could feasibly clash with four or five groups of similar enemy types in a row without having to run around the map. This is an excellent way to amass quick experience points and materials, as Type-0's main missions become significantly difficult with each passing success, so you need to do some grinding. The repetition is rarely tedious, however: Small but fundamental touches like the combat's whirlwind speed, and the option to repeatedly fight the same random counter several times without traveling, mean you don't have to run in circles, wasting time hoping for more foes to appear.

Story missions in Type-0 are straightforward, but not without their rewards. You usually run through a maze of connecting rooms, destroying the opposing soldiers as well as the beasts that serve them. Mercifully, Type-0 adds a handful of checkpoints to each level, allowing you to save frequently, and never did the game fail to offer me a checkpoint right before a major battle or complicated mission. Some battles require you to think tactically, throwing in air strike support, and forcing you to carefully find cover while you summon and position bombs from above. Others feature bosses with a half-dozen health bars that only take damage from well-timed critical hits. In these instances, you must act strategically, waiting out enemy attacks while getting as close as you can to strike. Missions constantly change up their layout and goals, giving rise to a vast number of combat situations and strategies.
Harder than it looks.

The mission variety is beautifully complemented by the diversity of combat techniques at your disposal. Right off the bat, Type-0 asks that you level up each class member as evenly as possible, as each uses unique weaponry: swords, guns, a sword-whip, a deck of cards, or even a magic flute. Certain enemies are most susceptible to certain kinds of magic, while others go down only when you unleash brutal melee attacks. Others still fly around and can only be reached by ranged weapons like guns, or Ace's cards. Having so many possibilities lurking underneath your fingertips makes it enjoyable to spend equal amounts of time with each Class Zero member.

An opening for a critical hit.
Characters earn ability points as they level up, and you use them to unlock more powerful abilities. Those two ability slots can be any combination of physical and magic attacks, though it's best to stick at least one magic attack in there if the character doesn't use ranged weapons. In this same way, you customize the abilities of your summons: powerful beings like Shiva and Ifrit that are called to the battlefield by sacrificing a team member for the remainder of battle. These summons deal significant damage, making them ideal for boss battles, and the more frequently you use them, the more powerful they get.
Magic spells can also be customized with Phantoma, a mysterious resource you collect from slain enemies. Different colors of Phantoma ascribe different properties to spells, and can be used to lower the spell's cost or casting time, or to ramp up its power. Exceedingly powerful weapons eventually become available, although they cannot be customized. But between curating each member of Class Zero's individual attack lineup and the potency of their spells, you take ownership of your characters' progression--and as you internalize how powerful Class Zero is becoming, the story in turn gives context to their growth. Type-0 gives you fine control of every party member's advancement, and in doing so, encourages you to tackle bigger challenges so that you may continue to guide them upwards and onwards.
Some areas of Orience are too far for walking.Oh boy.
All told, Type-0 does combat and customization better than many of its fellow RPGs. It's immensely satisfying to land hits in rapid succession, and then to instantly switch to another character, whaling on an enemy to cinch a five-second victory. This one-two punch of role-playing richness gives rise to a "just one more battle" mentality, though you should note that not every encounter is a seconds-long fireworks display. The HD version of Type-0 includes an Easy mode in which battle is more manageable, but Normal mode is wildly difficult and requires a modicum of grinding to bring yourself up to speed. Mercifully, the game lets you change the difficulty at any checkpoint, so if a certain boss is giving you grief, you can adjust the difficulty level to make it through. This is a nice touch if you come to Type-0 for Final Fantasy's familiar brand of storytelling, and not so much for its nail-biting enemy encounters, though it's worth mentioning again that combat is the game's primary draw.
There are a bunch of optional missions in addition to main storyline tasks, but you can safely get through Type-0 without completing any of them, should you wish. These include skirmish missions, in which you run across the map supporting troops as they invade enemy cities, and side quests that require you to fetch specific items for NPCs. The former reward you with experience points and extra checkpoints across the map, while the latter give you much-needed support items like Mega-Ethers and Elixirs. These tasks are simple, so you can accomplish a few of them before heading into storyline missions without breaking into a sweat. My primary gripe with Type-0's campaign structure lies with its boss battles, which rely all too heavily on the Hopeless Boss Fight cliche, ushering you into scripted encounters you aren't meant to win. The final boss sequence is the greater disappointment, however. Final Fantasy games are known for the grand battles that cap their stories, but the wan final fight subverts tradition in a particularly unsatisfying manner.

Type-0 looks good, but it's an uneven visual experience due to the inconsistency of its high-definition paint job. Backgrounds are gorgeously detailed, and each area is stuffed with NPCs that invite you into conversation, making Orience come alive with personality. The main characters move beautifully, and their expressive faces convey a wide range of emotions. However, characters who are not part of Class Zero, or are not important to its members, don't benefit from the same care and attention. Many of them look much as they did on PSP--just a little smoother. It's awkward to see conversations between Machina and Cadetmaster, as one character looks great and the other hasn't been touched up to match.
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is about the fluid and frantic action, which propels you towards the next battle, and then the next, and then the next. The overarching story is tough to chew on, but the heartfelt personal stories vividly address the ugly side of war--the blood, the gore, and the sadness that lingers even when the memories of why you were fighting fade away. Yet it's the battles themselves that make the most forcible argument for spending 25-plus hours with Final Fantasy Type-0, for it's in the combat arenas that Orience truly comes to life.

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Mario Party 10 Review

Ah, Mario Party, the game that, on paper at least, should be a rollicking good time filled with joyful minigames and all your favourite Nintendo characters. It's hard not be suckered in by that classic Nintendo charm, the bright colours, the jangly music, Mario yelling "it's-a-me!" If games were fun based on nostalgia value alone, then Mario Party 10 would be a wonderful creation. But they're not, and once you're over the sight of Mario and friends riding along in a Boo-inspired ghost train, the game's mildly amusing take on a family board game wears thin.
That's not to say there isn't some fun to be had, particularly if you've got some good friends to play with--it's just that Mario Party 10 isn't the kind of game you'll want to dig out more than a couple of times a year. Part of the problem is that, like Mario Party 9, Mario Party 10 is essentially the same board game-inspired experience as it's always been. Granted, the move to the Wii U has opened up a few new ways to play via the wonder of the gamepad or a selected group of Amiibo, but these things are mere window dressing over Mario Party's otherwise unchanged core.

Let's start with the biggest change: the Amiibo integration. On the surface, getting some use out of Nintendo's cute plastic figures of joy is no bad thing, particularly as, up to this point, they've played a largely passive role in the games they've been compatible with. They play a much bigger role in Mario Party 10, but there are some limitations. For starters, only a very specific set of Amiibo do anything significant, with the rest relegated to a read-only capacity to earn Mario Party points that can be spent on items in the game.
Those Amiibo with full functionality can only be used in the specific Amiibo mode, which harks back to Mario Party games of old. Instead of a large board where all four players travel around in a vehicle together like in Mario Marty 9, the Amiibo mode makes use of a much smaller circular board, with each player fighting it out to collect the most stars across 10 rounds. Virtual dice rolls dictate how far you move around the board, while the squares that you land on dish out coins, bonuses, and minigames, or take away coins and set you back a few places. Depending on what Amiibo you use, the board takes on a different theme. Scan in Mario, and you get a board full of goombas and Mushroom powerups; scan in Donkey Kong, and the game brings up various jungle-based fripperies.

Each board has its own different ways of distributing powerups like slow dice and 4-5-6 dice to players. I particularly like the Mario board, which featured a set of ?-boxes, where finding the mushroom would grow your character and have it storm around the board stealing coins from other players. Amiibos are also able to carry around a special token with them that you find during your travels around the board. These do things like add more stars to the board, randomly dole out coins, or switch a section of the board out for another themed version from the likes of Peach and Yoshi.

This looks pretty neat, particularly if you manage to deck out each quarter of the board in a different theme. But it is mostly just looks. There's little strategic value to swapping out the boards, each merely serving as a slightly different way to dish out the same set of powerups. What does change things up is how you collect stars. Instead of being given stars as you work your way around the board, you have to collect coins by landing on certain squares. 20 coins net you one star, but you can only trade those coins in when you find a square on the board with a star floating above it. If you land on the square and you don't have 20 coins, you're out of luck.
With the stars moving randomly around the board after each round, items like warp pipes or special dice that can move you backwards become incredibly valuable. Indeed, this system is one of the few things in Mario Party that gives you some sort of strategic option to best the opposition, rather than simply relying on a roll of the dice. Amiibo mode is fun, and the quicker rounds make it a good option for those who'd rather not go through a full half-hour game. Still, it's hard to ignore that the Amiibo mode is essentially just a smaller version of a full-blown Mario Party. You might be travelling on your lonesome rather than together in a vehicle, but the end result is the same: roll the dice, move around the board, and collect as many stars as possible.

Naturally, there are some fun minigames to break up the action. They're played after each round in Amiibo mode, or when you land on a certain square Mario Party mode, which brings back the group vehicle travelling of Mario Party 9. For the most part, these games are easy to pick up, and instil the sort of aggressive, expletive-filled competition that one might not expect from such a family orientated game. Most of the minigames are a free-for-all (where every player competes against each other), and consist of a mixture of action-based platforming challenges and frantic motion-controlled games, and slower-paced memory games and pattern-recognition tests.
These include climbing up ladders and bouncing off the head of a giant goomba to score points, smashing as many leaping fish out of the air as possible, and (my personal favourite), having to pose in front of the camera while also slapping the other players out of the shot. There are some neat 2v2 challenges to play through too, including a Monkeyball-like soccer game played by tilting the Wii Remote. Ah, but "what about the Gamepad" I hear you cry! Yes, the gamepad plays a starring role in the new Bowser Party mode, or in Amiibo mode if you have a Bowser Amiibo to use.

Either way, one player takes on the role of Bowser, using the gamepad to play minigames against the other four players. While these minigames don't exactly make the game-changer Nintendo might have hoped for, they're actually pretty fun. Some of my favourites included a game where you tilt the gamepad to move fiery bars around while the other players have to jump around and avoid them, another that has you chasing players up a wall while they madly smash buttons Track and Field-style to escape, and another that's an evil version of roulette played with bombs and traps.
In Bowser Party, there are also sections where Bowser can attempt to deceive the other players by drawing doodles or placing stamps over different paths on the map or on mystery crates that may contain prizes or dangers. Weirdly, during these moments the game tells you to trick the other players via the main screen, which sort of defeats the object of the whole thing. But I suppose this way you're left questioning whether those doodles are a double bluff, or even a triple bluff. Despite all these additions, though, playing as Bowser is much less entertaining than playing at the other characters, mostly because there's far more waiting around, trying to catch up with the other players who get a head start.
It's only when you catch up with them that the minigames kick into action, and it's those that make up the bulk of Mario Party 10's entertainment value. There are at least quite a few of them on offer, and it's rare to see the same two minigames during a single round. However, like previous games in the series, Mario Party 10 is often more about luck than any skill you might have shown along the way. The game has an annoying habit of stealing stars away from whoever is in the lead, making any effort you've put into the minigames largely a moot point. Playing against friends is one thing, because you'll at least have someone to vent at, but against the AI, the game becomes very frustrating.
Despite the Amiibo additions and gamepad Bowser games, as well as a delightfully bright and colourful aesthetic, it's hard to ignore just how similar this game is to its predecessors. But even if you could overlook it, the fact remains that even with some fun minigames in tow and a good group of friends to enjoy it with, Mario Party 10 just doesn't have the depth or the challenge to hold your attention for long.

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White Night Review

A striking aesthetic can grab your attention, but a game needs more than looks if it's going to keep it. The noir-inspired White Night gets caught in a loop of offering more before taking it away, making for a horror experience that is sometimes wonderful, often lackluster, and frequently frustrating.

White Night is a horror story told in black and white. Set in the 1930s during the Great Depression, it's a noir tale that's part serial killer mystery, part supernatural ghost story. You break into a nearby house to look for help after being hobbled in a car crash. The game could be compared to Resident Evil largely due to its fixed camera angles, but you won't be shooting any monsters. Instead, you spend the majority of your time exploring the house and the mysteries it holds, all while intoning your thoughts in typically stilted and melodramatic noir fashion.

Just because you turned on the lights doesn't mean you can expect them to remain on.

It is more adventure game than survival horror, though one element of White Night that stays true to the survival horror genre is item management; specifically, you collect matchsticks, which are your only source of light for most of the game. Matchbooks can be found littered liberally throughout the house, but you can only hold a handful of them at a time. They burn out quickly, making your stock of them something you always want to keep an eye on. If you're caught in the dark for too long, you're dead.

Matchstick management is one of several examples of good ideas in White Night that often go wrong. Matchsticks are perfect for mood lighting, and using your supply provides good tension, but their implementation can be frustrating. For one thing, many actions in the game (including saving, which is done manually by sitting in a well-lit armchair) require you to put your match out. Just lit your next-to-last match? Sorry: you've got to extinguish it if you want to open a chest to get the items inside.

On random occasions, your matches also fail when you try to light them. Sure, there's some realism to this, and there's something horror movie-esque about desperately trying to strike a match that won't light, but when you're forced to replay sections of the game because two of your four remaining matches ran out and you got stuck in a dark room, this isn't moody--it's annoying.

How do you think she maintains that nice white hair? Asking for a friend.

White Night's fixed camera angles are similarly hit-and-miss. While they provide a more cinematic look, they don't play well with the two-tone look of the game. There isn't much detail to the game's black and white environments--your character notices a statue's hand protruding from the ground, but you could never yourself tell based on the smudge of black and white that depicts it--and thus, it can sometimes be hard to get a great sense of your surroundings when the camera switches from one angle to another. What begins as a striking look becomes a tedious visual obstacle.

This is most evident--and most upsetting--when you're running away from danger. There's no combat in White Night, but there is an antagonist: a woman who manifests herself as several ghosts that can kill you if you touch them. A ghost can only be harmed by electric light (which is why they break the house's lights at every opportunity), so you spend most of your time trying to avoid them. At times, this system functions well enough. Other times, it's frustrating. You often have to weave your way through several ghosts to reach your destination, and you may find yourself running the wrong way after the camera changes on you--that is, if you're not already caught in the geometry of the environment.

Your ability to save only in select corners of select rooms (with a few, story-determined exceptions) leads to tedious scenarios in which you know exactly where you need to go and what you need to do, but you have to retry the same sections over and over again because you keep getting caught heading from one save point to another. On the upside, the ghosts are appropriately creepy--they are unsettling images that don't rely on cheap tricks, like loud noises, to induce jump scares. But your fear of the ghosts evaporates the more times they catch you, because the death sequence isn't horrifying; it's just a path to your most recent save.

A lack of lighting is no excuse for a messy room.

Despite its faults, the methodical exploration of the house is typically satisfying. When you're given room to breathe and you can simply poke around, White Night is an intriguing adventure game. Most of the puzzles are simple to solve and aren't annoyingly convoluted. When you do find yourself stuck, useful hints can be found in the in-game newspaper (which is really more of a journal), and the main character himself will ponder possible solutions if you wander aimlessly for too long. The game's story is something of a saving grace, most of the time. Told mostly through collectible diaries, letters, and newspaper articles scattered throughout the house, the tale of White Night's main characters comes together well. Unfortunately, the game comes to a predictable conclusion, and the dialogue occasionally drifts into tangents that try to convey a deeper meaning than they can actually accomplish.

White Night has other minor issues, such as its lack of a useful map, but these flaws stand out primarily because of the possibilities the game never realizes. But there are frightful joys to uncover, nonetheless. There were numerous moments when I was exploring the environment, reading the back story, and solving the puzzles, that I enjoyed myself. I wanted to find the next journal entry and see how the story ended, and at times (particularly early on), I was genuinely creeped out by the atmosphere. The pieces that make up White Night could have added up to a great interactive horror story. Sadly, the good game you can imagine is stuck lurking in the shadows of the game it became.

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Cities: Skylines Review

Now this is more like it. Even though my real-world occupation as the mayor of a Canadian town means that I try to escape such things as budget meetings and zoning hearings when I play games, Cities: Skylines still managed to hook me due to its authenticity. Unlike the latest SimCity, which was far too fantastical to let me build cities that resembled those in the real world (size limitations and not being able to establish proper zoning districts drove me crazy), this Colossal Order production nails just enough of what is fun about running a municipality in the real world. Proper zoning, room to grow, and the addition of policies and districts that let you plan out sensible city development make for a (mostly) bona fide experience in the virtual mayor's chair.

Making comparisons between games is not always helpful, but in this case, it's difficult to ignore the tight relationship between Cities: Skylines and its SimCity inspiration. Colossal Order delves deep into what Maxis and EA once made so popular with a traditional city-building approach. Few surprises or even significant innovations can be found here: There is just a standard single-player mode of play in which you choose from a handful of maps representing territory types ranging from flat plains to tropical beaches. You may also play the game with standard conditions, dial up the difficulty, and/or turn on sandbox and unlimited-money mods. No tutorial is included, either, which makes for a learning curve at the beginning. At least tips are provided on a continual basis during regular play.

Is it too geeky to be excited about the use of zoning rules and policies in a city-building game?

Multiplayer is totally absent, as are frilly options like disasters and giant monster attacks. There are no multiple-city games, either. You have one city to deal with, along with a mostly invisible outside world that allows you to buy and sell goods on a common market. The game has been developed with modding in mind, however, and it ships with a full editor. Therefore, you can expect a lot of user-made add-ons to hit the net shortly. Nonetheless, at the present time, this "just the facts" focus makes for an initially bland experience. The plainness is exacerbated by stark menu screens and dated visuals that are attractive enough to get by, while at the same time cutting corners by cloning buildings and signs, as well as lacking amenities like a day-night cycle and weather patterns.

If you have been jonesing to be a virtual mayor, though, Cities: Skylines gets nearly everything else just right. First off is zoning. You have full control over zoning neighborhoods as low or high (medium is absent, although I didn't miss it) residential, commercial, and industrial. These basic mechanics provide thorough control over laying out cities, which gives you a real sense of being in charge. Second up is map size, which allows for a lot of stretching out. The initial size is restrictive at 2km by 2km, but you can access more plots of land to eventually expand to a metropolis spanning a whopping 36 square km. That allows for expansive burgs, and an incredible sense of freedom. You always have room to correct mistakes and grow out of early problems, making you feel more like the super-mayor that you should feel like, and not the goofball constantly demolishing whole neighborhoods to fix problems you couldn't have foreseen three hours ago.

Smart use of districts and policies allows for the creation of cities that closely resemble their real-life counterparts.

Two other great features involve establishing districts and policies. This allows for the creation of boroughs with separate identities (policies can be set to take in entire cities, as well) by drawing them out with the Paint District tool. If you want your very own Brooklyn hipsters or a hardhat neighborhood for factory Joes, you can paint out city blocks and then tweak localized settings. This allows you to offer free public transit, boost education, give away smoke detectors, get into high-tech homes, ban high rises, and even alter tax rates for different zones. You can also set up specific industrial areas to focus efforts there. So if you want a green city, allow only farming use in industrial zones. If you want to go in the other direction with the sort of hardcore factories that killed grandpa, you can set up oil or ore districts and watch the smokestacks pump out poison.

Policies are on the fanciful side, and establishing wildly different rules on social activities and even tax rates between neighborhoods in the same city will not go over well on election day. But I still love the ability to fine-tune cities without delving too deeply into micromanagement. The district and policy features combine to let me sketch out what I want in each part of my city--yes, this will be my gentrified borough for snotty white-collar professionals, complete with a smoking ban, no pets, no high rises, recycling, allowance for the use of certain controlled recreational substances, high-tech homes, and, of course, stupid high taxes--and then sit back and watch neighborhoods evolve.

Basic mechanics provide thorough control over laying out cities.

The challenge is not pronounced, especially if you have city-building experience. You needn't worry about random sparks somehow taking down whole blocks, or other acts of God obliterating all of your hard work. This gives Cities: Skylines a relaxed character, instead of coming across like a rigorous game loaded with set objectives and problems to be solved. It's an old approach, but a great one, as it allows you to concentrate on the abstractions of building, instead of mindlessly racing around meeting random goals related to citizen happiness or residency numbers.

The only aspect of the game that becomes annoying to handle is transit. Given the same developer's Cities in Motion series, you might expect roads, buses, and the like to take on a vital role. Ultimately, however, transportation systems are overly Byzantine and convoluted, particularly when it comes to bus routes. It's difficult to tell if transportation woes are your own wrongdoing, or if there are problems with vehicle pathfinding in the game itself. You can muddle through, although you never exert the same level of control with transit as with everything else.

I wish I had shares in Go Nuts Doughnuts.

Nevertheless, Cities: Skylines is the best city-builder on the market right now. The game's presentation is stodgy, but it is all but guaranteed to provide you many hours of carefully crafting cities, laying out zoning, and establishing districts for specifics residential and industrial uses…all free from real-world mayoral headaches like 6 a.m. phone calls griping about snowplowing. Right now, there is no better way to take a peek at life as a mayor without filing your papers to run for office in the real world.

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There Came An Echo Review

When I play There Came An Echo, I feel like an idiot. I'm sitting in a room, alone, and talking to my PC. "Miranda, move to alpha three," I say to my squad member in a snippy tone one would use to tell a dog to 'drop it'--in fact, it's the same tone I use to frustratingly say "Xbox, on" before just reaching for its power button. Sometimes, my PC listens, and Miranda chirps an affirmative confirmation before moving into position. At other times, nothing happens, and I have to wait a moment before trying the vocal command again--this time, slightly louder; this time, it's more of a demand. "Miranda. Move. To. Alpha. Three."

"You're a little too loud," the in-game character says, as she fails to react to my command once again. This only amplifies my frustration, making it harder to deliver my next order in a "quiet and collected manner" as the loading screen tips suggest. In There Came An Echo's real-time tactical battles, simply getting characters to move to appropriate spots on the top-down map can be an ordeal. That's because the game can be played almost entirely through voice control--aside from using the mouse or the arrow keys to pan the camera, every order can be spoken into a microphone. You can tell your units to move into position, focus on targets, switch weapons, and even queue up actions by following any command with "On my mark...".

When it all works, the game offers the kind of battlefield commander fantasy that is lost when just pointing and clicking to issue orders with the mouse. In order for it to work, there are so many factors that need to be just right. You need to issue the command at the right volume. You must clearly enunciate every syllable. Your microphone needs to be the correct distance from your mouth. There can't be too much background noise. On top of those, you'll need to spend a few missions calibrating the voice recognition system using the in-game options. Unfortunately, even with all these factors taken into account, the failure rate for voice commands being recognised is high enough to shatter that commander fantasy multiple times each mission.

There Came An Echo feels like it has been designed to allow for a degree of non-responsiveness. Characters exchange fire with futuristic energy weapons, whilst coming equipped with shields that absorb a significant amount of hits before you need to start worrying about their safety. Combat isn't fast and brutal; instead, you'll be whittling down health bars at a slow pace that plays nicely into the time it takes to issue vocal orders.

Your actual tactical freedom, however, is limited. You do not have direct control over your small squad; they can only be ordered to move to pre-determined waypoints on the map. Those waypoints are placed in obvious locations, and serve to dictate the way in which each encounter will play out. You occasionally have the opportunity to flank units and whittle their health down faster, or switch between slightly different weapon types, but by the time you're able to get the voice recognition system to work, the encounter is usually over--the enemies are dead, or all your squad members are down.

The failure rate for voice commands being recognised is high enough to shatter that commander fantasy

Though the voice commands are There Came An Echo's primary method of control, the same orders can also be issued with the mouse. You have no greater direct control over your units, however. Instead, you simply select text versions of the same voice commands from a radial menu. It's evident that there is no deeper quality to the game's tactical engagements when the problematic voice control system is removed. Once the novelty of having your voice recognised by the game wears off, there is little here to propel you through each mission.

The cutscenes that bookend each encounter don't fill that void, either. Though the voice acting is above average, the writing has characters constantly bickering and arguing over nothing, regularly cutting each other off and telling each other to "shut up" both in and out of missions. It feels like a woeful imitation of Archer's screwball character comedy antics. This dialogue also jars with the otherwise dark and serious nature of the convoluted plot, which deals with issues of over-surveillance and paranoia through excessive techno-babble.

Though the plot is poorly delivered, it provides an appropriate context for the role you assume as the omniscient commander. There is an eerie sensation when you realise your PC is actually listening to you. Unfortunately, far too often, it simply isn't.

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Trash TV Review

Trash TV? When you first hear the title, you might expect a game that sends you off to battle the forces of network evil with the likes of Snooki and Kim Kardashian, but this 2D sidescroller and puzzler takes its title far more literally than that. You are, after all, a TV, and you're in the trash. You follow the tubular guy as he bounds from platform to platform in a grim recycling plant in search of his remote, all while using everything from uzis to shotguns to battle his way to destiny. Like so much trashy TV, the game is not particularly memorable, but neither is it entirely without appeal.

Its heart is certainly in the right place. The artistry that characterizes games from the current 2D revival shows up in the very first seconds, as you guide a single pixel to merge with others in order to bring life to the dead box. Personality oozes from the presentation, particularly in the way that the display defaults to a curved 4:3 aspect ratio that recalls old Magnavoxes and Zeniths, or in the way the IBA-style cue dots march across the upper right of the screen as you near the end of a level. At some points, the screen crackles and fuzzes up and vaguely Pip-Boy-esque cartoons pop up to display hints. When you die, it cuts to the colored rectangular bars familiar from the days when networks actually went offline.

Cutesy animations introduce most new concepts.

The 2D, slightly pixelated style perfectly fits the subject matter. It's a style that belongs to the era of its antenna-capped protagonist, and not so much to today's world of curved Samsungs and 4K resolutions. It's a style that promises the magic some of us experienced on the NES on similar screens in the 1980s, and the general fluidity of the controls as the TV flits across molten steel and lasers suggests that developer Lawrence Russell has the chops to pull it off. I found it especially fun with an Xbox 360 controller.

Too bad the end experience comes off as merely passable. Part of the reason why Trash TV shares the same running time as late-night network movies is that it rarely presents a challenge, so thoroughly does it cling to the most basic conventions of the current crop of platforms. Our TV bounds from platform to platform, sometimes while lava fills gaps behind him or massive platforms threaten to crush him, but Trash TV never achieves a tenth of the tension of games like Super Meat Boy. Even death is forgivable, essentially resulting in a quick respawn to the point at which you fouled up. Much of the progression centers on placing crates on the right buttons at the right time (and, pleasingly, some of the crates affectionately recall Portal's Companion Cube), but never once did I find myself stumped for more than ten seconds. Get into the rhythm, and the whole thing flies by in a blur, which eventually caused me to slip into same type of slack-jawed hypnotis m I might experience while watching My Strange Addiction or Bulkwild.

Much of the challenge is about perfectly tossed throws, not nail-biting action.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy my time with Trash TV; far from it. It's just that, as with so much trashy TV, getting the most out of it usually involves forgetting that I could be doing something better. And to its credit, Trash TV does a good job of keeping the experience from slipping into a repetitive slog. Indeed, my chief enjoyment from the game sprang not from the actual platforming but rather from each weapon that TV Guy finds inexplicably strewn around the facility, whether it's a simple handgun or shotgun or, later, twin uzis and C4 explosives that he uses to blast crates and vindictive vending machines. The timing is great--new weapons usually appear just as the previous one is wearing out its welcome. (Alas, that's also a problem, as it's almost never necessary to use a particular weapon again once you've moved past its specialized zone.)

And so it goes for two hours, to the tune of a catchy but similarly passable soundtrack. The entire experience would have been better if Russell had managed to work some boss battles into the mix, but all that usually heralds the end of the stage are the cue dots mentioned above. On at least one occasion, I failed to even notice I'd completed a level. At times, the hint of something better presents itself, such as when you have to to fend off a swarm of other appliances while you wait for an elevator to descend, but then the end comes (along with the promise of a new "season") and you realize that was as good as it gets.

Crates are a big part of Trash TV, and it's always good to experiment with tossing them around.

It shouldn't have been. The potential for greatness broadcasts from every corner of Trash TV, but it comes off as guilty-pleasure television programming that was rushed out by studio executives intent on meeting a deadline. And perhaps there's some truth to that. Trash TV seems to have started life as a co-op game, and even now, that legacy shows up in the hand-drawn artwork that's used to promote the game, in which two CRT television sets face off against a clothes dryer and a slot machine atop a garbage heap. Russell's blog claims it could still make an experience as a "post-launch free update," but that was almost a year ago.

Even so, I had fun. Trash TV's puzzles and platforming might bear the heavy stamp of other games that came before it, but its endearing use of the conventions of CRT television paired with weapon-toting boob tubes does much to make up for such misgivings. As with a decent trashy TV show, I probably won't experience it again, but I can't say I didn't enjoy my brief time with it.

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Code Name S.T.E.A.M Review

Smoke rises across the London skyline. On the deck of the United States Airship Lady Liberty, Tom Sawyer, the Not-so-Cowardly Lion, Tiger Lily (from Peter Pan), and John Henry ("the steel-driving man") watch as a giant robot modeled after (and piloted by) Abraham Lincoln stomps through the streets, clenching its metallic fists. It squares off against a massive creature, all tentacles and pustules and eyes. This diverse group--white, black, male, female, human, animal--have beaten back the alien menace in the streets, and now it is up to Lincoln to deliver a knockout blow.

I should love this. Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. is a tactical game that teams up folkloric heroes and public domain favorites and sets them against Lovecraftian invaders in a series of turn-based skirmishes. Really, I should love this. But I can't because Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. squanders all that potential. A combination of design flaws, technical limitations, and narrative missteps renders what should've been a memorable game into something utterly forgettable. A world that should be brimming with character and charm is instead dry and flat. Battles that should feel exciting and dangerous are monotonous at best and frustrating at worst.

A world that should be brimming with character and charm is instead dry and flat.

These battles make up the majority of Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.'s 20 or so hours. You fly from fight to fight, watch a cutscene, and then direct a squad of four characters through cities, secret facilities, and other locales. Taking a page from games like Valkyria Chronicles, S.T.E.A.M. gives you real-time, third-person control of your characters, one at a time. You are allotted an amount of "steam" (read: action points) based on the character's equipment loadout. You spend this steam to move from tile to tile and to attack enemies. Like some other recent tactics games, smart play means setting up chokepoints and utilizing a defensive "overwatch" mode to blast aliens once they move into view. You can also use character-specific special abilities (that come with their own unique animations). The whole thing is great on paper, but developer Intelligent Systems fumbles too much of the execution.

One example: Though the maps are tiled, you can shuffle characters around inside these tiles without spending any additional steam, so if you park Queequeg (yes, from Moby Dick) behind a giant crate with his final steam point, you can still slide him around inside that tile to line up a sneaky shot (on an alien's glowing weak point, you hope). The problem is that, while you're manually lining up these attacks, your targets bounce up and down in an idle animation, drifting in and out of your reticle. And since the game only checks to see whether your attack was lined up at the second you pulled the trigger, sometimes you're left watching your bullets literally pass through an alien, no damage done.

There are other problems, too. Occasionally, an area-of-effect attack or heal might fail to land on one of the targets clearly within its zone of effect. There's no way to tell whether an enemy is in overwatch mode (this is especially frustrating with a late-game enemy type that is itself immune to overwatch attacks). Then, after spending all that time trying to mitigate these risks, you have to wait for what feels like an eternity for the enemy side to take its turn. Because the view stays locked on your characters, you're stuck staring at John Henry standing in a corner for 30 to 40 seconds while you vaguely hear aliens moving in the distance. When it's your turn again, you're left to swing the camera around wildly, hoping to divine what the hell happened halfway across the map. You have to do this because unlike the aforementioned Valkyria Chronciles, Code Name S.T.E.A.M. never gives you a clear, top-down map view of what's happening on the field.

While you're manually lining up these attacks, your targets bounce up and down in an idle animation, drifting in and out of your reticle.

All of this encourages slow, careful play, not because the tactical challenges are tough and need a lot of thought but because an unpredictable and glitchy result can throw your whole plan into disarray at any moment. It doesn't help that there is very little encouragement to speed through levels or to take interesting risks. With rare exceptions, there is no urgency in Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., just a slow, dreary march forward.

It isn't just the combat design that's disappointing. The music is a grating mashup of industrial percussion, thrash guitars, dubstep breaks, and the occasional (and truly out-of-place) flute melody. The maps are boxy and claustrophobic--they all feel like warehouses, even those styled to look like city parks and desert canyons. While your team members are bold, comic-book interpretations of classic characters, the aliens just feel like indistinct blue splotches. Despite their visual flair, even your pulpy heroes begin to wear thin after a dozen hours of hearing the same four or five lines repeated in combat.

At the end of the day, all of this could be forgivable if Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. offered something else special. The best games in the tactics genre do this in a variety of ways. XCOM: Enemy Unknown couples the strong combat missions with a smart strategic layer, but S.T.E.A.M. just ushers you from fight to fight. Valkyria Chronicles has interesting progression mechanics for upgrading your troops and vehicles, but in S.T.E.A.M., your characters never level up or change, and though you can unlock new secondary weapons and "steam boilers" by finding collectibles in the levels, 90% of these are totally inessential. Fire Emblem: Awakening--also available on the 3DS--offers hours and hours of fun interactions with a huge roster of characters. S.T.E.A.M.'s story, on the other hand, is a utilitarian structure: the pre- and post-fight cutscenes are beautifully rendered but give little space for the characters to breathe or interact.

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. offers the most frustrating kind of steampunk: It brushes up against potent themes, but then turns its back on them in favor of pure aestheticization.

That may be the biggest disappointment of all. Intelligent Systems pulled together an interesting set of figures to star in Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. (including some that were totally new to me, like Califia, the black warrior queen of the mythical island of California). But these aren't characters, really: They're just sketches. They're C-tier Saturday morning cartoon characters. They have great visual design, signature attacks, and a little personality, but that's it.

While it's incredible to see such a diverse range of characters on screen at the same time, the game is also filled with cringe-worthy stereotypes: the Native American who heals with the power of nature; the Pacific Islander who speaks in broken English; the exotic and mysterious Latina. (And before you say that they're just staying true to the original depictions of these characters, know that one of them is a gender-swapped Zorro. So no, sorry, they aren't.) More than anything, though, I wish that these characters had been fleshed out more. If you're going to put John Henry, Tom Sawyer, and Abe Lincoln on an airship together, please do something interesting with them.

Every now and then, there is a glimmer of something really cool: a throw-away line hints at tension between John Henry and the non-human members of S.T.E.A.M.; a newspaper clipping notes worker revolts springing up around fears of automation; an evocative reference is made to Lincoln's "fateful day in the theater"--and his survival of those events. These little hints of flavor kept me interested for a while. I was waiting for some big thematic shift or an interesting twist. Unfortunately, it never came. This is just a story of American do-gooders out to save the world with their near-magical technology.

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. offers the most frustrating kind of steampunk: It brushes up against potent themes, but then turns its back on them in favor of pure aestheticization. When used well, steampunk can be great: Games like 80 Days and Dishonored use steampunk to examine the complexity of emerging technology and massive social change. But in S.T.E.A.M., all we have is American exceptionalism, technological fetishism, and the tiniest dash of diversity training. Yet there is one upside in all this: because all of these characters exist in the public domain, one day, someone will return to this idea. I only hope that they'll spend a little more time fleshing out the world and its inhabitants. And making a targeting system that works.

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