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Tiny Metal (PC) Review

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Developer: AREA35 Inc | Publisher: Sony UNTIES || Overall: 7.5/10

Overview:

Tiny Metal is basically an Advance Wars clone. It is a simple, turn-based military strategy game where you see units take turns pummeling each other. The strategy required is not too advanced, but you do have to think about what you are doing otherwise you’ll see yourself retrying a level several times.

Graphics:

The graphics are pretty good, but the character dialogue screens are boring. The weapons have satisfying explosions and stuff.

Sound:

I’m not a big fan of the way the game sounds. The music is pretty repetitive and the sounds are satisfying but can get on your nerves. Unfortunately you sort of need to pay attention to the sound effects because you’ll be able to tell what kind of units are moving around in the fog of war. So don’t expect to be able to listen to Billie Eilish or Rody Ricch while playing your Japanese turn-based military strategy game.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is pretty standard for the genre. Each unit takes its turn but it boggles the mind why it takes like three clicks to keep a unit in the same spot and pass on moving. A unique part of the strategy is that you can actually combine multiple units’ attacks into one large string of attacks. Since every attack is met with a counterattack, you can actually prevent damage from being dealt by the enemy if you can defeat them in one swoop rather than three different individual attacks. You really have to plan ahead; the computer can also do the same to you.

There are 16 types of units to play with and they are all useful for their own purposes. You can also buy new units depending on how many cities and factories you currently occupy. Your enemy will also be rebuilding units, so each match can take upwards of an hour — at worst you have to retry from scratch. As the challenge gets more complex, your strategy will get tested. Personally, I was getting a bit frustrated with the extra clicks it took to take all of the actions I wanted to do. So when the challenge was ramping up, it felt more like I was fighting against the interface at times.

Crappiest Part:

There’s a lot of dialogue to read through. This is not a bad thing here because I like a good story, but for some god awful reason the default way the game barfs out the text is to auto progress the dialogue instead of waiting for a key press. The text progresses so fast I was going to have a fucking aneurysm trying to keep up. I was playing for at least 2 hours before I decided to actually fiddle with the options and figure out how the hell to slow it down. Whatever option allowed me to finally do it wasn’t very obvious so it was a lot of menu hunting to get what I needed done. At least it was there.

The text progression and interface issues during gameplay really makes me wonder if developers care that things like that are a needless pain in the ass.

Conclusion:

While it isn’t perfect, Tiny Metal is fun and the story is interesting. I just wish the user interface was more intuitive.

 

3rd Eye (PC) Review

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Developer: 3rd eye project | Publisher: Sony UNTIES || Overall: 7.5/10

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote a review; don’t think I was being lazy though, folks. I was playing a LOT of games. There’s a few I played that I need to review and honestly I have so many that it is going to be hard to write “full reviews” for each of them. And a lot of them don’t really need it.

So, I’m going to try something new old (pun) and use the format of reviews I used for those old GameMaker games I reviewed 20 years ago. Yes, it’s been that long. It is a little less advanced from a writing perspective, but this is 2020! No one likes to read anymore.

Overview:

3rd Eye is a game about girls doing weird and scary stuff. Most of them are dead, say and do disturbing things, decapitate heads, etc. You use a “3rd Eye” to reveal creepy stuff. When you see creepy stuff, it is stuff like zombies or beheaded girls, or rotting stuff. Think horror and you’ve basically got what’s going on randomly popping up.

Graphics:

The graphics have a hand-drawn/painted look and everything moves around like puppets. There’s not much animation, and dialogue is delivered with strange dialogue and odd cutscenes. I guess the characters are based on the Touhou Project cast, but I hardly know much about it as evidenced by my other Touhou Project reviews. There is a lot of dark humor that I wouldn’t have expected considering the age of the girls being depicted.

Sound:

The sound is mostly creepy music and creepy sound effects. There aren’t any voice overs, and the sound definitely helps in making the horror work, and is probably the least offensive thing in the whole equation.

Gameplay:

So, basically, it’s a point and click hidden object game. The puzzles are kind of annoying and there are multiple endings I guess. I played it for 4 hours before stopping, but there is probably a bit more to the play time than I would have initially thought.

Crappiest Part:

It feels like the program was made in the middle of the 1990s. Its janky as fuck, messes up your monitor’s resolution, other weird shit. The programming is almost as creepy as any other part of this game. It is a pain in the ass to play because it was developed for consoles; there’s hardly any options and you basically have to use a controller since I couldn’t figure out most of the keybinds. Oddly enough it was harder to use a controller at points than a mouse and vice verse. I had to constantly switch between the two to do things.

Conclusion:

In the end, the game is okay, but you’ll probably only want to put up with it if you are really jonesing for a horror game or a showpiece to impress your nerd friends with a niche Touhou Project game.

 

Gensokyo Defenders (PC) Review

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Developer: Neetpia | Publisher: Sony UNTIES || Overall: 7.0/10

What do you get when anime girls with varying breast sizes need to kill fairies for a nonsensical reason? Gensokyo Defenders. What do you get when you’re confused about everything you are seeing on screen and don’t know if you want to furiously masturbate or blow your brains out? Gensokyo Defenders. But most importantly, what do you get when you combine a twin stick shooter with tower defense? Gensokyo Defenders.

Gensokyo Defenders is a tower defense game that relies on the action elements of your character to do most of the work. While you won’t be exactly be placing towers, rather, traps instead, there’s a bit of strategy to be had, but its clearly not the main focus. You’ll be using spells to defeat hordes of fairies coming for your magical circle. There are various fairies and floating spheres/marbles to kill, but most are just making a break for that sweet sweet magic circle. While traps are secondary to the strategy they are still vital.

The most intriguing part about the game is that you use a number of spells to defeat your enemies. Each different character you unlock has three unique spells, but the traps are shared between all characters. Traps are unlocked, so you’ll be able to find a combination that best suits your needs as you progress and change characters. In using your traps and spells, the goal is to live through all of the waves of fairies; when you get to the last wave, a boss will appear and you’ll have to defeat them to win. Typically you will unlock the boss you just killed, as well.

That’s about all that makes sense with this game. I’m not sure if its the localization, but I haven’t got the slightest idea why anything is happening and why there are so many friggin characters talking. It seems like a new character pops up on the screen for each line of dialogue and then they never come back. Is it an excuse to cycle through all of the art they made for this game? What the hell is the point? The first character you are introduced to in the Tutorial level isn’t even your main playable character, instead it is an ice fairy named Cirno and she is being followed by a news reporter for an article she is writing about the “war games” they are having with fairies. The ice fairy girl goes around and challenges people and everyone thinks she’s annoying and begrudgingly fights her. That’s about all I can piece together, and I can’t really explain why the player is meant to care. Also, UFOs sometimes drop from enemies and they upgrade your spells. Don’t know why, they probably just thought it was funny, kind of like a piece of toilet paper that got left in your ass the whole day.

The controls are pretty awful if you are playing without a controller. The interface is obviously made for a controller, but even then it isn’t exactly the most intuitive thing. Placing traps on the floor requires you to use the directional pad or WASD — mouse clicks are almost useless in the entire game. Switching between traps feels a lot more of a chore than it should be, and it should be a lot easier to sell traps that you mistakenly put down. To do anything with traps, you have to cycle through all of the traps you have equipped, and then tap the right trigger button one more time to sell it. That can be up to seven button presses for one trap to be cleared. Playing with mouse and keyboard is hardly better, but ironically it is much more tolerable.

In the end, Gensokyo Defenders is playable and pretty challenging with a lot of content. However it seems like this game is meant for people who enjoy looking at cute anime girls. So, there’s that, I guess. After I wrote this review, I looked up what the characters are based on, and it appears to be in the “Touhou Project” which I had seen before, but never really knew much about. This game definitely just exists for people who are fans of these characters.

 

Midnight Sanctuary, The (PC) Review

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Developer: CAVYHOUSE | Publisher: Sony UNTIES || Overall: 8.5/10

Note: This is a non-spoilery review.

The Midnight Santuary from CAVYHOUSE and Sony Music Entertainment’s game publishing arm, UNTIES, is not unlike a very long anime movie.  At the beginning I sort of thought “why isn’t this a movie?”  By the end of it, I discovered the subject matter tends to be a bit “mature,” the story muddled at times, and the art style quirky; this is really the only format that suits it.  It is obvious that the way the story is presented and experienced, it wouldn’t really “work” as a movie.  What The Midnight Sanctuary ends up feeling like is if you took a Japanese RPG and sucked all of the “game” parts out of it.

While the storytelling is linear, there are portions that are non-linear.  You experience a major plot point, then the story splinters into multiple points, allowing you to “explore” Daiusu Village as you see fit, and then finally culminating in another major story point.  Rinse and repeat and you have the flow of the visual novel.  There are no puzzles, quizzes, or anything of the sort.  You’re really just experiencing the story at your pace and having a little “freedom” to experience what you will.  In this sense, it can hold your attention, as it gives a little interactivity in discovering the mystery that lies beneath the “happy” atmosphere of Daiusu Village.

The general story is in regards to the village itself inviting the main character Hamomuru Tachibana, a pastor from a larger city, to document the history of the village.  The village is unique in that it was built by Christians, but their form of Christianity splintered, observing the “Crane Wife” as a Saint who will one day return to rapture them, not unlike a female version of Jesus Christ.  While the story isn’t really about actual religion, there are references to scripture and events in the Bible.  Mix in some good ol’ Japanese “anime stuff” and you’ve got an interesting story that will clock in at about 2.5 hours or so.

The most readily apparent thing about the visual novel is its art style.  Much of it is very simplistic and stylized to look like something that didn’t get out of an early phase of development.  Most noticeable is that many elements of characters or items are transparent.  Behind the scenes at all times is a complex mural of the Crane Wife and some other textures, that changes filters and colors depending on when and where the story takes you.  The mural is very complex and it is hard to focus and see what you’re looking at; I often just gave up, but generally assumed it was a person or something utilizing those transparency effects.  The symbolism of using this effect to begin with was lost on me if there was any particular reason for this choice.  Many of the generic villagers shared the same model, but had a different bandana to signify who they were.  There are several “non-transparent” people who look like a “normal” anime 3D character, though most expressions are vapid and they move around like puppets.  A couple of characters look a bit alien with their lanky arms and huge hands.  The girl Eku also had one of her eyes half closed like she hadn’t slept for a couple days, which accentuated the weirdness.  Additionally, whenever she turned around she would almost pirouette; this is just one example of the odd animation that is seen in this title.

The voice acting is exclusively Japanese, but there are subtitles.  The voice acting is very good from what I could tell, but since I couldn’t understand it, I would just read ahead in the story really quickly and skip a lot of the talking.  Understanding the emotion of the story is more likely if you listened to lines the whole way through, so its definitely an important factor of enjoyment if you’re going to stick with it.

The story was a lot longer than I thought it would last, but I suppose that is part of the value in this title.  It didn’t feel like there was much that needed to be cut out, but the major plot points could maybe have been skipped to in order to leave out the filler.  While the story gets a bit gruesome at times, it doesn’t get gory nor really crazy, though it seems like it easily could have.  Most of the locations in the town are visited several times, so there’s no lack of re-use of assets.  The story takes a few “interesting,” if not shocking, turns.  Another curious aspect is that you are actually given a character who is referenced as “The Watcher,” but outside of a few scenes you are entirely attached to the hip of Hamomuru.  There’s also not much of a conclusion for The Watcher, though they explain the character a bit at some point.

My foray into the “visual novel” genre is very cursory, but it seems like something I could get behind if it were on my iPhone.  There’s very low effort involved in controls and it seems like it would be a nice thing to pick up for a few minutes to kill.  However, on a PC it feels like a bit of a waste of time since I have to be sitting in the chair at the keyboard controlling it.  As of now, it is only available on PS4, Switch and Steam.  A VR version is coming out later on Steam, and is already out on PS4.  While I wouldn’t suggest this title for children, teens/young adults will probably get a bit spooked out with it.