Party Hard (2015-16) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

Originally released late last year murder simulator Party Hard has now arrived on consoles. A colleague at my day job was going on about this on a daily basis but I thought he was talking about an actual party game, as soon as I realised he meant this game was now on consoles I rushed home and brought it (£9.99 UK).

You play as a man who is unable to get to sleep due to a loud party next door (I can sympathise), something in him snaps and he decides to don a mask, grab a knife and head to his neighbours to shut up the party goers for good, all the while avoiding being spotted by anyone. This initial slaughter leads him to going on a state wide murder-a-thon, all the while pursued by a rugged detective obsessed with the killer...

Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (2013) - Fantasy Videogame Review (Playstation 3)

Don't ask me how I came to be reviewing all the Batman Arkham games on my blog, occasionally they have horror elements to them I guess. With all the main line games reviewed I find myself left with the downloadable companion game to Batman: Arkham Origins.

Blackgate takes place three months after the end of Origins and starts with Batman encountering Catwoman for the first time, they fight and after capturing her she is sent to Blackgate prison. A few weeks later Batman learns there has been a riot at the prison, all the staff have been taken hostage and three super villains have taken over parts of the complex. Black Mask's turf is the industrial complex, Penguin rules over the prisons, while Joker is in control of the administration block. After arriving at Blackgate, Batman forms an alliance with Catwoman who tells him the staff are being held in the Arkham wing and to get there he is going to have to battle everyone.

I had muted hopes for this game but I still had hopes nonetheless, I loved Origins so hoped this would at least manage to capture some of the magic of that. The game is a Metroidvania 2.5D  explorer with you able to tackle the three areas of the game in any order you choose, though the plot will eventually lead you to all three regardless. As you progress the main story you unlock new abilities that let you get to previously inaccessible areas. One thing the game does right is giving you the freedom to do either of the areas first. The three main bosses can be battled in any order with the ending changing slightly depending who you were last to defeat.

My initial complaint is just how dull Blackgate looks, the levels are grey and dreary and ooze a level of blandness that made everything look all the same. The administration block is the most varied due to Joker's graffiti everywhere but even that is dull as dishwater. There was a similar problem with Castlevania: Mirror of Fate that seemed to think that turning a third person battler into a side on game meant locations should be passable but with no love given to them. This is not helped by the confusing map screen that makes it hard to get your bearings and the fact that the 2.5D perspective means often you view will switch round so a simple walk down a straight path will take you all over the shop.

The combat is ok, your attacks seem to have no weight behind them but other than that they are fun enough with combos you can do and slow motion finishers. Later in the game regular enemies suddenly become invincible with no warning or explanation, it was only after many many trials and errors that I realised they were wearing explosive devices on their backs; a single line of text on the screen to tell me this would have been enough rather than just expecting the player to know from constantly getting killed seemingly at random.

The bosses are all different and all require different ways to take them down but again this led to huge frustration as again regular attacks inexplicably just didn't work. An example is the Penguin boss that requires you to get above him and kind of jump on his head; this method takes off a bunch of his health bar, should you get to him any other way though your attacks just don't register and you get instantly killed; very frustrating when you don't know why, again a single bit of text could have prevented this annoyance.

Your tools and gadgets can be used on the environment to say blow open a hole in a weak wall, or electrify a junction box, all good in practice but first you have to go into detective mode and slowly scan the environment which takes a fair few seconds, once again this is an annoyance when it is blatantly obvious what you need to do but the game forbids you until you jump through its hoops. Talking of level design a lazy way to prolong the games conclusion later on gets you sent on a tedious fetch quest back through all the areas of the game. This was an archaic method that did nothing to improve my enjoyment.

The plot is bare bones and dull with characters acting out of...well character, it all ends badly too with the final boss pretty much being a rehash of the very first boss and no harder at that really. The plot is told via comic book cutscenes which are ok I guess but look a bit amateur though the voice acting isn't bad. There are side missions that involve scanning items that appear as question marks on your map, these result in a few lines of text explaining bits of the games back story. There are also collectable items for you to destroy as well as power ups that increase your health and give you different suits. None of these were interesting enough for me to see to completion.

Overall I was disappointed with Blackgate, I didn't expect it to be mind blowing but I at least hoped it would keep me entertained for at least a moderate chunk of it's six hour run time. Maybe one to avoid as it doesn't really bring anything to the series.

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Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (2014) - Fantasy Action Videogame Review (Playstation 4)

When I heard there was to be a sequel to the 2010 isometric action game Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light I was very excited, I had so much fun with that game; a near perfect co-op experience. This time around the game can be played with up to four players and is on current gen consoles.

Lara and her rival Carter Bell are both on a mission to find the ancient relic known as the Staff of Osiris, they have tracked it down to an Egyptian pyramid but upon claiming it the God Set appears and marks the duo for death, for the staff had kept imprisoned the Gods Horus and Isis who were the last ones to fight against evil Set. They tell Lara and Carter that if they help them gather up the body parts of their father Osiris then they will be able to remove the curse that threatens them.

Now maybe I am misremembering the first game but the dungeons of this one seem a lot smaller and simpler than before. I believe the first had a straight progression from start to end where here you get a large hub area which gives you some slight control in what order you battle the levels. Paradoxically despite a larger amount of levels (however reduced in size they may be) the variation is instead a lot less than before, for the most part you are just working your way through pretty much identical looking dungeons.

I feel like designing the game for four players has dumbed down the complexity of the puzzles, there were a few that really stumped me and my co-op partner for a while but the majority were really quite simple. Despite now featuring four characters there are only two different types of abilities spread over the group. Lara and Carter have pretty much the same move set as Lara in Guardian of Light. She has her twin pistols, she has a grappling hook that can be used to create a tight rope, or to climb up sheer walls, and she has the ability to light torches. Isis and Horus have a slightly different and not as good move set than Totec had (the other character in Guardian of Light). Both are able to create a force field that acts much like Totec's shield, and can use their staff to move certain glowing objects. Rather than have spears they are armed with lasers that are required in a number of puzzles where you have to bounce the laser beams off of mirrors. The problem is that this laser is far less fun than Totec's spears as that involved the other player (they could use thrown spears as makeshift platforms) while shooting a laser doesn't involve the other players at all.

There seems to be a lot more action this time around, regularly you will find the screen flooded with large scarabs, skeletons and crocodile men, and with a variety of weapons unlocked as you progress these can be fun to defeat even if it is entirely possible to loose your character in the heat of battle. The bosses are fun enough to fight, most of them being Egyptian Gods such as the huge crocodile beast Sobek who also appears to chase the group in several of the games fun chase sequences.

Thankfully despite all this retreading of old ground Temple of Osiris is still a lot of fun to play in co-op, there are still lots of ways to grief your friends such as using your force field as Isis or Horus to push them off a cliff, stepping off essential switches at the worst moments, and laying down bombs to blow them into the air as they pass by, all fun despite the many real world punches I got for griefing! Another way to grief is to greedily steal away all the gems dotted around the levels. Gems are used to unlock the hundreds of treasure chests in the game but unfortunately the usual reward for opening a chest is some sort of lame power up you can equip, none of these seemed worth the effort of having so I soon tired of even bothering to open up any chests.

Being a downloadable next generation game (well current gen now) it does look prettier than before with some nice particle effects used and a crisp clear look to the game, but this can't hide what is really more of the same, there is no real innovation here, and instead the smaller and more thematically similar levels show up how much better Guardian of Light was designed. The plot as before is not memorable at all though that was no surprise, and again I heavily suspect single player would be quite bland. Still as a fun co-op game it cannot be faulted, I had a heck of a lot of fun playing it regardless of it's many issues.

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Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (2015) - Zombie Horror Videogame Review (PS4)

After hearing just how good Resident Evil: Revelations 2 was I hurriedly finished my play through of the 3DS original game in the Revelations series. This sequel was released in four parts initially, each part containing two different chapters making up a total of ten (including two bonus chapters that were rewarded for buying all four chapters).

Set between the events of Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 Claire Redfield and Moira Burton are at a party for Terra Save; the group they work for. The party gets crashed by armed soldiers who kidnap Claire and Moira as well as injecting them with some strange concoction. The two women wake up in cells at an unknown location where they are soon on a quest to find a way off the island they have found themselves trapped on. Six months later and Moira's father Barry Burton arrives on a search and rescue mission, he soon meets a strange little girl called Natalia who decides to join him.

The first episode was roughly an hour and twenty minutes in length, after being spoilt with the length of The Evil Within's DLC I at first worried that there would not be value for money here, yet at £20 I got over eight hours of story and that doesn't even include the Raid Mode which is a series of missions that can be played with a variety of characters who can level up. The Raid Mode levels are mostly taken from areas of Revelations 2 but also include some revisits to places from Resident Evil 6. This game looks great, the graphics are solid and after the letter boxing of The Evil Within it was great to see full screen with large enemies and characters.

As usual for modern Resident Evil games you spend the vast majority of the game with an A.I partner tagging along, this is designed for two players but if you are alone you can switch between the two at will. Claire and Barry are traditional in that they can arm themselves with a variety of weapons, but Moira and Natalia are more support based characters. Moira has a torch which can be used to blind enemies as well as find hidden items in the levels, she also has a crowbar that can open locked boxes and doors. Natalia can detect the presence of nearby enemies as well as point out hidden items and open treasure chests, while her small size means she can climb through narrow holes. For the most part the A.I does it's job quite well though on occasion they did get stuck on scenery which was mildly irritating.

I was pleased to see that many of the enemies you fight were zombies, or at least humanoid in appearance. The undead are split into a few different types, more human looking ones use weapons and can chase you down, while more decayed ones look like the undead from Italian zombie films of the 1980's which is not a bad thing at all. There were a fair few enemy types that had glowing weak spots that had to be destroyed but the best ones were large invisible bugs that could only be seen by Natalia, shooting into empty space based on her desperate shouts was something quite original that I had not seen in a game before. The monsters are fun to fight, this is helped by the weight your weapons seem to have, gunshots feel like gunshots, and while there is nothing too graphic you can do to the ghouls head shots will still incapacitate. There are a whole range of bosses to fight here, many do later show up as regular enemies but the final boss in particular is a joy to fight and feels suitably epic.

There are quite a variety of locations used but for the first two episodes Barry's levels took him over old ground, I was worried that this is all he would be doing for the game but towards the end of episode three and for all of episode four he gets entirely new locations. The game takes place on a small island but there are many different areas including old favourites such as sewers, mines and villages that called to mind Resident Evil 4 while some of the more interesting places included a slaughterhouse, a creepy cave full of dismembered children's dolls and an underground mansion that was a huge burst of nostalgia. There are in fact many nods and winks to previous games with characters even mentioning things from the very first Resident Evil game. Being a sequel to Revelations there are a few mentions of that but nothing so drastic that it would ruin your enjoyment. Where that was a convoluted mess this one is a far more straight forward story and is all the better for it., there are plenty of revelations and half the game being set six months in the future was an interesting plot device to play around with.

Mostly this is survival horror and feels classic in tone even if it does stray into straight action on a few occasions, usually where you have to survive waves of enemies while waiting for a lift or an event to happen. There are a few simple puzzles throughout, these usually just involve finding a crate to use as a platform though. Some of the locations almost feel Silent Hill in tone which was something that actually worked well, the second bonus chapter; stealth based Little Miss went as far as to have the whole chapter shrouded in thick mist with the only enemy types being the most Silent Hill looking ones. The other bonus chapter The Struggle was full of story but was mission based and not too interesting.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 works well as a chapter based game, far better than the first one did, it is a fun time, looks the part and moves along at a fair old pace. It would have been better if half of Barry's levels didn't take place in the same locations, and as always files you find dotted around the levels could have been more interesting to read. This never gets stale though and I was hooked throughout, set pieces such as an exploding factory and crumbling tower kept things interesting and for me personally hearing so much swearing in a Resident Evil game was a novelty. Raid Mode was a bit boring but it is an extra anyway and certainly increases the value for money. If your after a decent modern day survival horror then this is the place to be, just don't expect to find anything scary here.

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The House of the Dead 4 (2012) - Zombie Horror Videogame Review (PS3)

Originally released in Arcades in 2005 The House of the Dead 4 was then ported to Playstation 3 in 2012. I did actually play this once in the wild, the gimmick for this game was that you had a machine gun as your weapon. While this is able to be played with the Move controller I don't actually own one so had to play with a controller which is hardly ideal.

Set in 2003 three years after the events of The House of the Dead 2 (an old badly written review that links to!) this is actually a prequel to the third game. AMS agent James Taylor was at the AMS European HQ as he believed the events of the second game (in which a nameless European city came under zombie attack) were not over. Disaster strikes and he ends up getting trapped underground along with Kate Green (another agent). Three days pass and eventually they free themselves only to find another zombie invasion has begun. Having an idea of just who is responsible James with Kate tagging along head out into the zombie infested streets to search for answers.

As always this is an on rails light gun game that sees you shooting your way past lots of undead. The machine gun weapon means the amount of zombies has been ramped up to high levels, most can be killed just by spray and praying, they seem to be far weaker to account for this increased amount. Zombies of various types are the main enemy though other creatures such as giant leeches, bat creatures and midgets also appear. I am never too sure of the lore but I suspect the zombies in this universe are all machine made rather than being what were once humans which explains away a lot of the repeated enemy types.

The bosses were the real highlight of The House of the Dead 2 for me but here they are nothing special at all seeming to be made up of various boss types already seen before. A lot of the bosses are just huge lumbering monsters with the weak spot usually being in roughly the same place each time. One giant fat boss was sort of fun as he was impervious to your attacks and your bullets sort of bounced off his flabby belly, and the final boss (like a technicolour fly-man giant) was well designed.

There are 6 stages in the main game that take in a series of dull locations such as a shopping district, subway, sewers and offices but also take you down memory lane by having you visit a couple of key locations from the second game. There are some alternate routes to take which provides some replay value. Completing the game opens up a new mode that is set after the events of the main game but only features two additional stages.

Previous games in the series have been quite gory (as gory as you can get with green blood anyway) with holes being shot through enemies and limbs shot off. This game though seems to dial back on the violence, enemies unsatisfyingly seem to kind of melt when shot and while the blood is now red it is so watery and hard to see that it may as well not be there. Everything in general seems more cartoon like. Another complaint with the graphic style is that reoccurring characters such as James and G look absolutely nothing like they did in the other games.

Being a Sega House of the Dead game the story is bananas and patchy at best. There is always a strange disconnect between the serious story and the jovial characters who make jokes and odd comments despite it looking like the end of the world. The voice acting as always is truly terrible and the plot just an excuse to get you fighting in various locations.

This is about as good as the third game which isn't really a compliment, nothing whatsoever to rival the brilliance of two. If you have a Move controller then add on an extra zombie head to my score, even then you will not be in for a thrill ride.

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Alien Breed 3: Descent (2010) - Horror Video Game Review (X-Box 360)

I have not done a blog post in a week, stupid insomnia and work really draining me. Still not great as am writing this review while slowly succumbing to the effects of some trusty Zopiclone, such is life! Alien Breed 3 is the third and final part in the revamped series and again is an isometric shooter. While the plot is hardly Shakespeare there will be some spoilers ahead as a warning.

Conrad is still on the ancient space hulk that the ship he was travelling on (the Leopold) got embedded in. With his friendly computer A.I taken over by the evil A.I of the alien infested ship at the end of the second game, and with both ships on a collision course with an icy planet things don't start off on a great note. More pressing then the impending crash though is that this evil A.I has dreams of bringing the horror of the alien menace to the entire universe via Conrad's ship, the Leopold, so he must find and destroy the A.I core before it can download itself into that ship and make good its escape.

I don't know if it was due to the time that had elapsed since I played the last two games in the series but I found myself really enjoying Descent even if yes, technically it is more of the same. The evil A.I is a great character and the voice actor is fantastic coming across as a smarmy British guy, plus the logs that reveal backstory are actually interesting this time around and really give him some depth, with his story as a twisted scientist creating the alien creatures as part of a secret project before releasing them on his fellow ship mates, and becoming immortal by downloading his consciousness into a computer program.

The A.I's interactions with Conrad is constant throughout the six hour play time (again set over five levels) and forever enjoyable, threatening, shouting, taunting and offering Conrad the power to join up with him. Sadly it is all one way as Conrad's thoughts are displayed via lines of text that are totally out of eye view so I often missed them. The levels much like before are created as a series of almost maze like structures with switches and computer terminals needed to be accessed to bypass destroyed structures and blocked doorways. You are constantly attacked by the alien hordes who are here in much greater numbers than before, especially the last few levels were you are rarely given time to breathe as you come under constant assault from all sides. There are a lot more bosses in this third instalment, and while kind of formulaic are actually quite a lot of fun to fight. These bosses include a huge alien (obviously based on the Queen alien from those films) that keeps popping up as a recurring threat.

Water is the big innovation here and is used a hell of a lot in the rapidly sinking ship (spoiler zone: the ship crashes into an ocean on an ice planet). With this water comes a new type of electricity based enemy, as well as having the option to run taken away whenever you're in it (slowing you down as it does). I found the flooded areas quite fun as it was something different. Also something that seemed new were fixed angle sequences which were more cinematic than what I remembered previous. One in particular that saw you traversing the ships roof with magnetic boots and a space helmet really stood out. Unfortunately as much as I loved these new types of things I had really hoped I would get to leave the space hulk and explore the planets surface. Two whole games all set on the same ship was a bit too much really even if it was enjoyable. A couple of new guns are introduced but the assault rifle is still king.

This is certainly the hardest game in the trilogy but is the best crafted one and has the most new ideas. Some things still irritate such as the gun turret stations that technically you can use to easily fight the aliens, but the turrets themselves seem almost non existent in supply. With a great antagonist though this could actually be my favourite in the trilogy. Gone are the unsure baby steps of Evolution (though that had a great sense of place), thankfully ditched are the terrible babysitting parts of Assault. With less exploration and far more action it really is a close call. Basically if you have the other games and are unsure of whether to finish off the trilogy then I say yes, do that.

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Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone (2011) - Zombie Horror Videogame Review (X-Box Live Arcade)

If there is one message to be taken from Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone it is this; be careful what you wish for. Back in 2009 a single screen twin stick shooter called Zombie Apocalypse was released and reviewed by me (here). In my review I lamented the fact that there was no semblance of plot, that it was confined to a single screen, and that the 4 characters to choose from were all identical to use. All these have been fixed for the sequel (I believe in name only as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with that games world).

Never Die Alone takes place on an island where zombie apocalypse has broken out. Four different survivors wind up together and they unite to locate a boat that one of the group owns, so that they can escape the nightmare. These four include Jeremy - an ultra annoying man child who only speaks in videogame speak (constantly calling everyone Noobs), Money - A black rapper from Britain who speaks all cockney, a moody girl who is a weapons expert, and a hippy priest who speaks really, really mildly. These four unite to make irritation into an art form.

While it is good to see levels are now designed as actual levels and not just single screens, coming after the excellent Playstation Network shooter Dead Nation it all feels a bit flat. That game had fantastic level design, places felt realistic, here not so much. Trailer parks, power stations, docks and gas stations just don't have any real character to them. The environmental kills from the first game make a return (electrified pools of water, meat grinders, even a bucking bronco) but their inclusion here is less well done, many not really being in the path you would take, going out your way to use them seemed a bit pointless.

Each of the four characters has their own weapons. Jeremy has a machine gun, explosive teddy bear and a special move of double strength and speed. The priest has a shot gun, Molotov cocktails and a special move that heals everyone. The girl is armed with a rifle and can also throw a gas canister, her special move has her constructing a gun turret. Lastly Money the rapper is armed with duel pistols, has a ghetto blaster that makes the zombies dance and his special arms him with a cricket bat for powerful melee attacks. All the characters are different shades of unbearable. Again going back to Jeremy - he just never shuts up, the voice acting is atrocious and to have these four unlikeable characters constantly bleating on is just too much of a distraction not to call it into question.

For the most part you fight zombies of various types but who all look the same, the isometric view makes the zombies a bit hard to define, there are red ones who seem to move faster, and there are giant zombies who usually initially turn up as bosses but other than that not really much identity (not bad as zombies are supposed to be in masses). Killed zombies drop cash that can be used to buy upgrades for the characters, as well as tools that quicken up your special power charge.

The games world looks dark and grim, the zombies are not shown as cartoon like and there is a heck of a lot of blood yet for some reason the game makes attempts to be humorous, case in question the end boss has comedy sound effects when it dies, along with applause. The comedy tone just does not sit well with me, the first game was not like this, and here the 'fun' feels so shoe horned in. I just do not know who the developer Backbone  Entertainment thought this would appeal to.

While this can be fun in multiplayer overall it just does not really fit in anywhere. The super annoying characters and ridiculous attempts at humour makes what could have been a halfway decent game into something that I just could not wait to finish.

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Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (2012) - Horror Videogame Review (XBLA)

Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is a game published by Sega, full of bright colours, and solid cartoon graphics. At it's core it is a mild platformer punctuated by many boss fights.

Ash the Dead Rabbit has recently inherited his fathers role as the Ruler of Hell, however not long after this happens some revealing pictures of Ash in his bath playing with a rubber duck get leaked onto Hell's version of the internet. Before he is able to get the pictures removed 100 inhabitants of Hell have managed to view the pictures. Not wanting his evil image to be ruined he sets out to find and kill everyone who has seen him with his duck.

Hell Yeah! is a bizarre game in that you are placed in huge open levels, yet there is not a lot of enemies in them at all, the game is more a series of boss battles, hunting through the levels to locate the demons marked on your map. When I was a child I designed in a notepad a platform game that was just boss battles, so am glad a game such as one I thought of has finally been made! Most the game you are riding a strange contraption that consists of a motorised spiked wheel armed with various weapons such as rocket launchers, lasers, and miniguns. This vehicle can be used to grill through rock in the levels and upgraded to return to earlier areas to drill through rock that used to be impenetrable in a mild Metroidvania way. Certain sections have you heading off on foot which make you defenceless and so must change your tactics to kill your foes (eg: pushing a block to crush a target, or luring one to stand under a switch activated acid shower.

There are quite a few areas of Hell to go through, all have fantastic music. The traditional Hell appears as a lava filled level, but space, night club, museum, post apocalyptic and others all appear, full of bright colours and looking great. The best would either be the psychedelic level, or the super cute one in which a super irritating upbeat song is sung in the background.

With a hundred bosses I expected to be bored quickly but each is wonderfully brought to life, not only in the game world, but also appearing in a bestiary with a short description when they are defeated. It is really quite interesting with a lot of variety given, even if you do get the occasional block of identical looking characters (3 different astronauts in a row spring to mind). The bosses are relative to the areas they appear in, so the factory level has lots of robot demons, while the night club area has party themed demons for instance. Towards the games end you find from one description that the demons appearances are based on the last thoughts and images they saw before they died on Earth which made me look at them all in a different light..

The actual battles are for the most part very brief, none of them have large energy bars, all are defeated via an over the top finisher that is usually very gory, albeit in a cartoon way. These finishers include a horde of rats that appear to eat the victim, a huge buzz saw slicing up the victim, even being booted across the world into a football goal and then sliced up when hitting the back of the net. While these finishers are a lot of fun and require some simple QTE presses they do on occasion repeat which was a slight shame. There are also a few larger fights that feel like more traditional boss fights, these usually end with a slice of story.

The plot is quite bare bones, I was excited to get to the end to find out just who was behind the photos but when I found out I was very disappointed, not a good reveal at all and made me end on a bit of a downer. Also Hell Yeah! is a very easy game, this did not bother me though as it mostly such a joy to go through.

Really my main complaint is just how poorly the whole thing finished, and that maybe the main boss battles could have been more inventive and tougher. There are plenty of hats to buy in the shops you encounter, challenges to complete, as well as a bizarre mini game in which you set the killed demons to work on your resort island which provides some excuses to revisit but overall there is not too much reason to be dragged back. A fun game while it lasted with a great style.

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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (2013) - Horror Videogame Review (3DS)

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate is set after the events of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and before the events of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. This has recently been HD'd up and released on Playstation 3 and X-Box 360, but it is the 3DS version I played and so will mention the 3D. Some mild plot spoilers to follow.

The game is split into four sections, each section with a different character and set in a different part of the timeline. The prologue sees you as Gabriel Belmont and is set before the events of the first game, on a quest to defeat a demon. The meat of the game is the remaining three characters. First you are Simon Belmont who has arrived at Dracula's castle to get revenge for the murder of his mother and father by the dark lord. The middle section has you playing as Alucard; half vampire who awakens in the castle with no memory of who he once was and sets out to confront Dracula, aiding Simon as he goes. The final section has you playing as Trevor Belmont (Simon's dad) who heads to the castle when Simon is a child. He hopes the powers of light and darkness will aid him in his mission to finally defeat Dracula.

While the reboot of the Castlevania franchise reinvented it as a God of War style game, Mirror of Fates returns the series to its side scrolling 2D roots. It seems like the Metroidvania games of old; giant levels that let you backtrack to open new areas when you gain new abilities. It certainly looks great, the castle setting giving great depth to the 3D, yet Mirrors of Fate suffers a lot though unexciting level design.

You gain XP and level up yet this does not really benefit you much other than new moves. It is true you can backtrack to open new areas but these are universally boring, boring being something this game really excels at. The castle has many hidden items, or they would be hidden if a giant question mark didn't appear on the map to let you know where they are. Scrolls give you information in your bestiary. The bestiary is not very exciting as it is pretty much just descriptions of the attacks enemies do. Fallen soldiers of the order are all over the game, these have magical scrolls that give you insight into their last thoughts. Many of these are just used to give you hints on how to proceed, the ones which are not are just dull as dishwater to read for the most part. The final hidden items are chests that increase your ammo count, magic and health. Backtracking in previous games was fun, here it is just not interesting.

Fights against enemies are far more infrequent. The game only ever throws two or three monsters at you at once at best and all take a while to kill, usually you will get trapped in a room until the enemies are all dead. QTE events pop up in annoying places. The 3DS has stupidly mapped buttons and so I nearly always pressed the wrong command during the QTE events and had to retry sections initially exciting many times making them a chore. Bosses in theory are fun to fight but monster design is not particularly inspiring and they take too long to battle.

I love the Castlevania series yet Mirrors of Fate took me many months to complete as my boredom kept preventing me from playing. The plot should be interesting, it isn't. Cutscenes while pretty have nothing happen in them, knowing Dracula is the main character of Lords of Shadow 2 meant that I knew he would not be defeated here, so that felt off. The one good thing was the fact the game takes place at different times, though confusing that the last section takes place before the first two, I actually struggle to remember what happened at the end of the game chronologically. The music is not the greatness of old, but Lords of Shadow; all orchestral and epic and sounds great for a 3DS game, but not interesting either.

There is a lot of inventiveness to the game, so it is frustrating how bland it all feels, could have been so much better. Springing to mind; an ambush by possessed mannequins at a theatre, a descent through a clock tower as you attempt to outrun a falling giant bell, a running battle against a giant worm. All sound exciting on paper but in theory just feel off.

Castlevania: Mirrors of Fate should have been so much better, but this is just a poor copy of the Metroidvania format, everything is ticked off; monster types, locations, RPG elements, and iconic characters, but is all designed so work man like that it just seems to have no soul to it, in total despite it's attractive design of the castle location this is just distinctly average.

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Sacred Citadel (2013) - Fantasy Videogame Review (XBLA)

Sacred Citadel is a scrolling beat em up set in a fantasy land. You play as either a barbarian, archer, shaman, or mage fighting your way through 4 stages made up of around 6 levels each. What I didn't know until researching this is that Sacred Citadel is actually a prequel to Sacred 3, the Sacred series being RPG's.

The plot is standard fare, basically an evil being known as the Gatebreaker (something like that) requires two talismans to be able to get the power to attack a sacred Citadel were the protectors of good reside. It starts with the town your hero is drinking in coming under attack by a goblin army who have been hired to locate the talismans. During the adventure your character is tricked into locating the talismans him/herself and then betrayed leading you on a quest of revenge.

The best thing Sacred Citadel does is the variety it brings into it's levels. Each level has at least one kind of unique environmental device to it to spice things up and avoid too much repetition that can come from scrolling brawlers. So there are traps that can be triggered to take out enemies, pools of acid, vehicle sections where you can control a giant monster, or an armoured truck, and plenty of simple but fun jumps to do. Levels are based on fantasy tropes so you get castles, lava, ruins, goblin camps etc. Boss encounters are frequent but not all levels have them, and they are placed well, not always just plonked at the end of a level. Some quite epic ones, such as a large dragon on top of a giant tower but a lot of the time they are either larger versions of normal enemies, or once defeated then start appearing as normal enemies in subsequent stages.

There are a lot of enemy types that is good to see, each of the four acts have many different monsters to fight, a lot specific just to the levels you are in. Wolf type creatures in the forest, zombie ghost pirates by the lakes, and various other types. While some appear later reskinned and made tougher, for the most part new monsters keep getting introduced which I really appreciated. I also like how the game never runs out of ideas for how to introduce these. During a temple sequence cult members about to make a human sacrifice in the background leap into the game to fight you for example, while coming across a load of dead enemies I was surprised when a necromancer appeared and resurrected them for you to battle.

Combat is simple but fun enough, you have access to normal and powerful attacks while special moves can be used when your bar has filled up. Enemies drop lots of gold, and occasionally new weapons and armour to equip. XP levels you up that lets you put skill points into attack power, defence, special abilities, or critical hits. A lot of the time I did find it just a case of bunching the enemies up into a corner and then just pounding on them all until they died.

The music has a Golden Axe vibe to it but is just not varied enough, it seemed to me by the games end that pretty much the same tune had been used for the entire thing, it did get a bit repetitive, and the dub step on the title screen was funny but totally out of place in a fantasy game! Each stage has it's own town to visit to shop in, but these places are pretty boring to go through. I imagine in multiplayer this would be fun, but I had no trouble at all finishing this on my own, never died once thanks to food downed monsters drop, as well as a plentiful supply of health potions. The plot is also pretty dull, some nice voice work but still not interesting to watch.

I had fun playing this, the cartoon art style was pleasing and made things look different. Not bad but not ground breaking, still I could see myself playing this again one day, maybe next time will do it with a friend.

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Hotline Miami (2012) - Horror Videogame Review (PC)

I had heard from many sources that Hotline Miami was a great game, but I never felt like it would really be for me. It is a top down shooter in which both you and the enemies you face can be killed with just one attack making for a strangely tactical puzzle like experience.

You play as a killer who each morning receives a phone call instructing him on where to go to carry out some assassinations. To do the job the killer dons an animal mask. That is pretty much it for story to begin with, but needless to say before the games end you get more reason for doing the murders.

The visual style and soundtrack combine to create a game that is pure heaven to play. The graphics are simple overhead 2D sprites but have a uniform feel to them that just works. The colours used are all garish 80's themed that work so well with the 80's style synth music. Each level has you after an intro sequence arriving at the location for your hit, these are all interior locations and range from offices, to restaurants, hotels and more. Despite a varied amount of locations they all look kind of similar due to the simplistic graphics. Enemies also all look pretty much identical, for the most part fighting goons in white suits. Large brightly coloured scores pop up for everything you do giving a strong arcade feel.

Despite the simple gameplay Hotline Miami never gets boring, it is hyper addictive. Death comes often but you always instantaneously respawn at the last checkpoint you got to so it is never a chore to die. Each level is like it's own little puzzle, goons will attack you on sight but a well placed punch can knock their weapons out their hands. All weapons kill with one hit on most enemy types, while throwing weapons and opening doors on bad guys stuns them. Guns are powerful and can be used from great distances, but the flip side of that is many times you will suddenly be killed from someone off screen. When your in the grove and systematically taking out foes left, right and centre it can be a real adrenaline rush. Once a mission is done (that usually just involves everyone in the place your at) it is your job to leave the location. Bodies stay where they fell so it can be oddly grim making your way back to your car with the droning song that plays and dark visuals combining to really get you to question just what you have done as you walk past tonnes of corpses (kinda reminds me of Travis Bickle at the end of Taxi Driver).

To spice things up you get a variety of different animal masks that give you various perks such as the pig mask that gives you more ammo in your guns, or the giraffe mask that lets you see further ahead in the stages. Also some stages are made more with plot in mind than fighting, including one stealth stage that was not the greatest. Before and after each stage you get an interactive story element  that added a lot to what would otherwise just be a ton of shooting.

Hotline Miami is a very violent game, blood is everywhere, and your character finishes off enemies in the most brutal ways, such as stamping on their faces till they explode, or gauging the eyes out of one boss. My favourite weapon was the katana sword as it literally ripped the targets apart. Again music must be mentioned as I have never seen such a fantastic marriage between visuals and sound. Each tune seems tailor made for the killing fields and to be honest had me bobbing my head about in appreciation for the dance beats!

At around 20 missions (that includes a bunch of levels after the end credits) and with a fairly engaging, bizarre plot that reminded me a lot of Killer7 and a definite dirty feeling that you are not remotely a good person, this is something really worth playing and feels so utterly fresh. So brutally violent, so fun to play and such a thumping soundtrack. Not the longest game in the world (around 4 hours to play through) but is a cheap price so essential.

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