Knights & Bikes (Switch)

"What shall we do today?"
"Go and throw rocks over the border into Devon?"
"Sounds good to me!"

I tell you what – if there’s one thing we need more of in games, it’s pasties. Not only pasties, but the history of pasties as well. On that basis Knights and Bikes should get top marks immediately, as it features both pasties AND information about what pasties are – but as an added bonus, there’s a bloody ace game bolted on to the bakery-themed exposition as well. Also: scones! And cantankerous waterfowl!

Set on an island that’s never named as being in Cornwall (but 100% is in Cornwall) in the mid-1980s, Knights and Bikes is a hand-drawn cartoon style RPG-lite about Nessa and Demelza – two young girls fighting ancient monsters while on a quest for long-lost treasure. Or at least that appears to be what’s happening, because like a Friday night after you’ve moved on to drinking hand sanitiser it’s not entirely clear whether some, none or all of the shenanigans going on around you are real or a load of imaginary “mind fudge”. 

The plot, other than looking for said lost treasure, revolves around Demelza’s dad not having enough money to run the family campsite, the recent death of her mum, and an ancient curse being awoken that – among other things – possesses a crazy golf course, and turns the old lady who runs the mobile library into a flamethrowing witch who gatecrashes a terrible low-budget theme park. So as you may gather, it’s a bit of an eclectic mix.

Beef envelope

What it also absolutely is, is another excellent example of an indie game (in this case one funded via Kickstarter) building on the legacy of the old back-bedroom coded games of the past. You could absolutely imagine a 2D Speccy version of something like this harking from the era it’s set in, complete with slightly unhinged and very British storyline and humour.

However, rather than being stuck rendering the aforementioned Cornish beef envelopes via the disappointingly chunky 8-bit pixels of yesteryear, we get to enjoy a frankly gorgeous art style and animation that makes the whole game look like a children’s book. In fact, the whole thing is basically a love letter to childhood adventure – doing skids on your bike, exploring mysterious places, sleepovers with your mates, even your character making ‘Fwoooosh!’ airplane noises when they sprint.

Talking of mates, the entire game is designed for 2 players to tackle together (which is why, even though it was first released on the PC and PS4, the Switch seems like its natural home). Though if you currently find yourself in an isolation ward due to our viral friend, the AI is more than adequate – and even if it does falter, you can also flip between both girls to take manual control at any time too.

All I wanted as a kid was a BMX with pads. Instead, I got a Raleigh Grifter. For you modern kids that's like expecting an iPhone but getting a pager.

2 Girls, 1 Cup (of cider)

The best way to play it is definitely with 2 people in the same room though; as the whole game is built on teamwork, it just feels right. It’s not just 2 people meaning twice the firepower either: each character has their own set of special abilities and literally can’t make it through without the other, such as when Nessa has to douse route-blocking fires with her water bombs, or Demelza has to rip up manhole covers with her toilet plunger in search of delicious fatbergs (OK, in-game currency – but I bet you’d get a few quid for a fatberg too).

I’ll be totally honest and say that it’s unlikely you’ll be overly stretched in the skill department when playing this game – combat is relaxed rather than sweaty, and there aren’t many spots where you’ll struggle for too long. But there’s still enough here to make battles feel like they’re a hurdle rather than a formality, and given the theme and style of the game a punitive grind would kill the fun stone dead anyway.

Puzzles won’t have you tearing your hair out either, and subtle but helpful markings on the ground and strategically-placed scenery will make sure you don’t wander too far astray. It’s admittedly pretty linear, but with just enough freedom and exploring to avoid it feeling like it’s on rails. Plus there are plenty of mini-game interludes to break things up and hold the attention of easily-distracted types – and nicely these are entirely just for fun and, win or lose, present no barrier to progress.

In that regard, this is a great game to play through with younger or less experienced gamers, who’ll get as much enjoyment out of it as seasoned veterans without getting overly frustrated. But at the same time I’m absolutely NOT saying is that this is a ‘kid’s game’, with all the negative connotations of overly watered-down gameplay and a lack of effort that implies. This is just a game that happens to be suitable for kids because it’s really well made, not diluted.

Guest starring Boaty McBoatface.

Smell the crabs

It’d probably come as no surprise to you if I told you that the game was developed by a small team who also worked on Little Big Planet and Tearaway, as the style, charm and attention to detail from those games is clearly present here as well. As well as the sense of childhood adventure, it totally captures the slightly naff vibe of a small, British seaside town in off season – you can practically smell the crabs and stale beer (unless you always smell of crabs and stale beer anyway, in which case this game just reeks of your awful bedsit).

Knights and Bikes is obviously not a huge release, and you won’t see it plastered over the side of buses like Call of Duty: Duty Calls 2: Call Harder (Brown Ops edition). So unless you scour the whole spectrum of the games press daily, sometimes it’s down to luck as to whether you even hear of games like this. But I’m delighted I did, because it’s lovely.

It’s not a mammoth game, coming in around the 10-hour mark, and the challenge might be nudging up to too lightweight for some. But sometimes it’s about the journey and not the accomplishment, and on that basis it’s absolutely worth your time and the time of finding a friend to play it through with too. Things this warm, charming and funny don’t come along every day, so grab it in your clammy mitts like one of Cornwall’s famous pastry semicircles. 

I mean, it’s got a goose called Captain Honkers in it. What more do you want? A cream tea?!?

St. Ives (5) out of Sennen (7)

198X (Switch)

I wish I'd been this cool in the 1980s. I didn't have Walkman - just a crappy pocket radio with a single earphone, so it looked like I had a massive hearing aid.

In the manner of a person attending a job interview and letting off a firework concealed in their mouth in answer to the interviewer’s first question, I’d like to start with a bit of a controversial bang: I don’t quite get how retrogaming has become such a ‘thing’.

I mean, I understand what it literally is of course – playing old games. There are some old games I quite like in fact, and sometimes I even replay the odd one myself. And I’m all for modern HD remakes that mean I can enjoy the experience in the here and now without the chronological shortcomings of blurry pixels, poor control schemes, hardware stutter, and of course having to buy stuff from a disinterested sweaty salesman in Dixons in the first place.

But: here’s the parping retro elephant in the room, whose dung is starting to pile up to worrying levels – both you and I know many old games look, sound and play horrendously, and once re-seen ‘in the flesh’ rather than viewed through your mental nostalgiascope are only 5% as good as we remember them being. Plus the further back you, go the truer this is. 

Yet retrogaming is now big enough to support devices and even whole events entirely dedicated to it. How has this happened? It’s just manky old stuff, guy!

Crusty banger

Take the Evercade, for example. There must be enough demand to make a new handheld games console that plays loads of old titles viable or it wouldn’t even exist, and some of the less dated stuff on it like Earthworm Jim doubtless remain fun to play. But you can also get Atari 2600 games on it. Games that came out almost 40 YEARS AGO, and absolutely look every one of those musty years old. 

Outside of a few minutes of curiosity, I don’t get why anyone would want to endure such crusty old bangers. And, of course, that curiosity could be satisfied with a free emulator running on even the feeblest of PCs or smartphones rather than spending £££s on a new gizmo. So I have to wonder…is it the games, or is it really the hardware that’s the big draw?

The other side of it is retro enthusiast one-upmanship, where fans seem to try to find the most obscure, awful nonsense so they can say “Look! Look what I’ve found!” when stumbling across a game no one has heard of since Milli Vanilli were in the charts, treating it like a revelation on par with unearthing a lost Shakespeare manuscript for “Taming of the Shrew 2: Shrewlectric Boogaloo”.

The reality? It’s probably just another badly coded knock-off that looks like the flashing dots machine they use in Boots to check your peripheral vision when you’re having an eye test, sounds like you’ve developed tinnitus while visiting a buzzer factory, and is as tedious to play as completing a cryptic crossword where all the clues are written in binary. 

You can tell this isn't a real subway on account of there not being some annoying twat playing the guitar and then demanding money for his awful rendition of "Hey Jude".

Brown smears

This, of course, is retrogaming’s problem: there are only so many times you can talk about, play, and find new and interesting info on the REAL classics, and genuine forgotten gems are incredibly rare. But to fill this content gap it increasingly means any old dreadful tat is now sought out and often elevated on merit of its age alone to a status it doesn’t deserve, just to give people something ‘new’ (old) to chase down, look at and play.

And that’s the bit I don’t get. There are so many great and interesting games out now, why seek out and laud things from decades ago that died on their arse even when they were contemporary? After all, games aren’t whisky: they don’t get better with age. Just mouldier.

Sure, sometimes fossil hunters find T-Rexes, but a hell of a lot more often all they turn up are vague brown smears on a rock from a boring old bit of seaweed – and would Jurassic Park have been as exciting if the camera had panned back from Hammond’s jeep, to the strains of John Williams’ epic score, only to reveal a landscape strewn with stinking piles of pre-Cambrian bladderwrack? 

Obviously, no. And that’s the unspoken truth of it: most old games = ‘damp fronds’, not ‘exciting fangs’.

However: playing new games that have a retro style, while doing things that the limitations of ancient hardware would have rendered impossible and telling new stories at the same time? Yeah, that I can easily understand and buy into. And indeed I did, having paid actual money for new-to-the-Switch retro love-in, 198X.

Puffy-jacketed skank

Set in a non-specified year of that decade, 198X tells the story of a young teen growing up on the edge of a big city, feeling like an awkward misfit until they discover the neon lights and kooky characters of an old-school arcade. Except of course it’s only ‘old school’ to us: old school back then would have been a load of farthing-powered bagatelle machines or something. A videogame arcade would have just been ‘school’. Though not an actual school, obviously. (Look, let’s just pretend I didn’t even start this mess and move on.)

The story in 198X unfurls via you playing through homages to a number of games of the era like OutRun and R-Type. These are all original titles however, and you only play through a handful of levels of each (although I’d love full games for some, they’re so well done). You can immediately see where their inspiration lies though, and the essence of the games they hail from has been captured impeccably. They’re like little fun-size mars bars of gaming! 

Despite being teeny they’re nevertheless remarkably well rounded, with power-ups, checkpoints and even bosses. And, in proper 80s style, there’s a fairly unforgiving level of challenge – the Shinobi clone in particular will have you relying on twitch gaming skills that would do any puffy-jacketed skank who lurked round arcades in the 1980s proud. 

The only slightly odd choice (and the one I can’t pin down to any particular ‘muse’ game) is the RPG stage – not because it’s not of this era, as such games certainly existed then. More because it doesn’t really quite fit the arcade theme and is closer to the sort of thing you’d have played on a home console. It’s still fun though and not too jarring, so we’ll let it slide.

It's slightly unfortunate that the sprite effect tunnel does kind of make it look like you're driving through a vortex of rancid popcorn.

Don’t you forget about me

Interspersed between games are cutscenes rendered in 16-bit pixel art style, and a soundtrack that 100% nails the synth-heavy music of the era. In fact, for anyone like me who grew up around the time, this whole game captures the atmosphere of an angsty 80s teen coming of age movie so well it was almost a surprise to get to the end and not see John Hughes’ name come up in the credits.

The whole thing will only take you a few hours to get through, depending on how tricky you find some of the harder bits, and one annoyance is that the ending is a bit disappointing as it’s entirely set up for a sequel rather than offering any real resolution. But for gamers of a certain age it’ll bring back all the feels in the right places. The OutRun level in particular gets it just right, as you cruise through a neon city with a pure 80s soundtrack. 

It’s obviously been made with a lot of love for the games and media of the time, and if the alluded-to follow-up happens I hope they’ll give some of the minigames a bit more room to breathe and throw in a few more genres an as well. There’s a whole decade of source material, after all – Contra, Operation Wolf, or Donkey Kong ‘tributes’ would dovetail nicely.

Nostalgia rash

I know I’m probably at odds with a lot of Digi readers on this, but I’ve played the likes of OutRun and R-Type: I finished them at the time they were new, and I’ve played them again since to reminisce. Now, I’d rather play something like this (or, say, retro-themed platformer Horace) that knows where it’s come from and respects it, but takes that legacy and style and offers something fresh with it.

To me, that’s infinitely more interesting than dredging up some also ran from days gone by to scratch an itchy retro rash. Or worse still, playing an old game you loved over and over so often that it loses any nostalgic appeal and ends up as dated as a shell suit and espadrilles.

To paraphrase Kylo Ren, “Let the past go, Grandad – it’s full of wasps and syphilis!”.

Besides, a new game done in an old style – and done well like 198X is – is always going to be far better at evoking the sensation of what it felt like playing the games of the time it takes inspiration from than you’d get replaying those actual games again now. Which I admit sounds weird, but bear with me!

This level is *seriously* hardcore. I was so focused playing it, at one point my contact lens dried out and fell off my eye.

Vaseline

What I mean is this: I remember how cool it was sitting in an OutRun machine as a kid, music blaring and racing along. What I don’t clearly recall is that the graphics were grainy, the speakers tinny, and it was a real sod to do well because the dodgy arcade owner had inevitably set the difficulty dipswitch to ‘utter bastard’. But I know those things are true – not least because I still remember my mum telling me off for spending 10 quid on continues.

Yet in my mind’s eye, everything is much smoother, the sound less beepy-boopy and the experience more fun because memory is imperfect. You remember the good stuff, not the rough edges and the nitpicks, or indeed the fag-stained ceiling and manky carpet that was the style du jour of most arcades at the time.

198X isn’t the best game I’ve played, and it certainly isn’t the longest, but it absolutely had an effect on me because it brought back all the memories without the drag of the rubbish bit – the disappointment of a game now not being nearly as good as I remember from then. Essentially, the modern hardware and game design is the ‘vaseline on the lens’ to give you the soft focus you usually get from dodgy mental recall of the 8/16-bit era.

If you weren’t there first time round, so the appeal of retro to you is that it’s all ‘new’, your mileage may vary. But take it from me: sometimes it’s better to just be reminded of something than go back directly to the source, as the past isn’t always brilliant*. 198X does just that – it’s a fun, albeit brief, aide memoire. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk on retrogaming thinly disguised as a review (I won’t be taking questions at this time).

*Apart from stovepipe hats of course, which remain unassailably excellent.

Now That’s What I Call Music 7 out of Now That’s What I Call Music 10

CES 2020 highlights!

CES: Where we render your cool stuff obsolete!

Well it’s a new month, a new year and a new decade. And you know what that means? Yes, that’s right: nothing, given our calendar system starts at an arbitrary point in time with no specific meaning. But as this has been going on for 2000-odd years now it’s probably simpler to just go along with it, yeah?

However: the turning of the year also heralds the shambling return of CES – the big annual electronics expo where companies spaff out a load of new rubbish you don’t need, right after you bought last year’s bloody model for Xmas. To show we’ve got our finger if not on the pulse, then at least hovering menacingly near your trembling wrist, here’s our rundown of this year’s most desirable ‘wares’. They’re so hot, they’ll scald your glabella!

You can practically feel the power. Either that, or I'm having a stroke.

Folding computers

Laptops, eh? First they were big, but terrible. Then they got smaller. Then they got big again, because the small ones were somehow even more terrible. But now, the chonk…oh man, she just too chonky! The solution? Make ‘em small again, only this time in a whole new way that makes them impractical and unusable anywhere other than plugged in and flat on a desk.

Yes, if there’s one complaint we’ve pretty much never had about laptops, it’s that we haven’t been able to have one with a tiny, creased plastic display so it looks like a 1980s portable telly covered in clingfilm, coupled with the beguiling input choice of either a tiny Bluetooth keyboard we’ll lose down the side of the sofa after a week, or an onscreen one we can wear our fingers to nubs on. 

So, in this era of climate change and austerity, it’s great that tech companies have spent billions to address our non-concern! And did we mention gaming? No, no we didn’t, because you can’t play games on one of these. They’re clearly horrendously underpowered, as otherwise the battery wouldn’t last more than 8 minutes.

But hang on, love. We’re not satisfied with scoops on this year’s tech – we’ve got an exclusive shot of what’s coming next year! Take a look at this beauty: a whole new form factor with a BUILT-IN keyboard, a ‘disc drive’ so you can load up cool new apps even when the 5G signal at your hot yoga retreat goes down, and are you fed up with fingerprints on your screen? No problem with that here, as it’s a whole new ‘non-touch’ touchscreen that just IGNORES your incessant prodding.

Also, say hello to lots more privacy with a zero-megapixel webcam and the ‘ultimate firewall’ – a complete lack of connection to the filth-riddled internet. Thank Elon Musk that tech companies are here to save us all from ourselves!

Doorbells would be a lot less popular if they were called "Finger ringers".

Smart doorbells

Bing-bong! When a delivery man or bailiff visits your home, are you still opening the door to see who’s calling like some sort of peasant? OK, boomer, it’s time to get with the 21st century!

Smart doorbells are, of course, all the rage amongst always-on skinny latte jean-wearing trendy types, who are happy to share vast amounts of personal data to anonymous corporations in exchange for an almost imperceptible sliver of added convenience.

However, it’s not all techno-rainbows: the one area where these devices have fallen down is that they can’t actively repel people you’d rather not see, such as charity collectors, ‘Christ touchers’, or that angry man down the road whose garden is strewn with your cat’s dirty tods.

To address this, one of the big stories at CES this year was the brand new “Ring lord 3000”. It looks like any ordinary doorbell, but when depressed instead of a charming bell-like refrain it emits the infamous ‘brown noise’. This low, vibrating frequency immediately causes anyone within 50 m to evacuate their bowels, and all for the low price of $1!

Granted, if you happen to also be within 50 m of your own front door you’ll be similarly affected, but all you need to cover that is an expensive pair of easily lost noise-cancelling earbuds. In fact, probably 2 pairs so one can charge while you’ve got the others in.

You can’t put a price on the peace of mind of knowing who is at your door, of course, but it turns out you can put a price on peace of sphincter.

"Hello! I'm Elon Musk, the genius! That's right - I've uploaded myself into a new body that's even more rad and cool than my old human onezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz +++BATTERY ERROR+++PERMANENT SHUTDOWN INITIATED+++"

AI avatars

Here’s one that will be of particular interest to the 4 or so people who still plan to run a business in the UK after Brexit. Given we won’t be able to get desperate foreign types to come and do dull jobs with feeble wages anymore, what’s the answer? Well it certainly isn’t paying more money, you hippy! Except of course to tech companies. That’s fine.

Yes, to combat the dearth of potential employees, 2020 saw the debut of AI avatars – pretend people who can fill the gap in roles such as receptionists, reception workers, and people who work in reception-type areas. Programmed to be able to inaccurately answer at least 4 of your questions (assuming they’re questions about ox-bow lakes, which is of course the no. 1 search term worldwide), they’re virtually indistinguishable from the real thing!

In fact, YOU might be an avatar RIGHT NOW! And even if you’re not, at least it’s a decent cover story for why you keep shoving USB cables down your trousers to ‘interface’ with your ‘charging port’.

It corners like a dream. Assuming you're dreaming about an overloaded barge in a canal full of congealed marmite.

Sony’s electric car

After stunning everyone with the reveal of the PlayStation 5 logo, which – and hold on to your hats here, because it’s a real humdinger – turned out to be EXACTLY the same as the PS4 logo only with a 5, Sony then proceeded to ensure post hat-loss we were nude at either end by blowing our socks off with their unexpected unveiling of no less than an electric car!

Of course, the model on display was just a concept: the maker of design classics like the Sport Walkman (it’s bigger and yellow, and just as non-waterproof!), the second-most popular video format Betamax, and of course the MiniDisc – the format that took the most annoying elements of cassette tapes and CDs and mashed them into one anaemically-supported chimera – was bound to refine it before launch.

But today, we can show you some EXCLUSIVE shots of the final, road-ready car – and what a car it is! With seats for anywhere up to 1 person, or 2 people if they are missing their right and left arms respectively and sit in the correct order, the car also features easy access for any passenger (assuming they’re an experienced hurdler or professional contortionist).

We’ve also heard from a fascinating press release that the Sony car can hit speeds, and the battery lasts for a period of time – if not longer!  We can’t wait to whizz down Sony-approved A and B roads (available as reasonably-priced DLC; motorways pack sold separately) while listening to top Sony-approved artists such as Nickleback, Rednex, and Scatman John, before stopping off for a quick 2-hour mandatory system update in a layby.

It’s the future of yesterday, today!



(This review originally appeared on Digitiser 2000 in January 2020)

Observation (PS4)

"I swear, Dave - one more 'shiny helmet' gag and you're going straight out the bloody airlock."

As the famous tag line from the film Alien says, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Which is true, but then it’s also true that no one could hear you play a kazoo, alarm an ombudsman with a powerful erotic dance involving maracas, or emit a ‘bronx cheer’ either.

Obviously, the wording chosen is supposed to evoke a very specific sensation that space is scary, deadly and full of real weird stuff (so essentially, like the middle aisle in Lidl but with fewer discount patio sets) rather than just lacking the requirements to transmit sound. But is space really that scary? It’s basically just full of nothing, and even the titular alien itself is no worse than things you get in Australia – a continent so heaving with lethal fauna it’s a wonder the koala doesn’t have a handgun for an anus. Yet people still happily go there on holiday!

I think the real worry it’s trying to impart is this: fear of being alone.

What with its lack of air, heat, a floor, and branches of Costa, space is a bit rubbish to live in and so very, very few people do – and those that do have to exist sealed up in space stations: essentially giant orbiting caravans where you have to eat baby food, Velcro yourself into bed and poo into a special hoover (mercifully, not simultaneously). 

Should things go awry, having no one around to turn to for help while you float about trapped in a tin box surrounded by literally buggerall is obviously a bit rubbish and scary, and that’s the premise behind Observation; a creepy puzzle solver spewed out by the excellent folks at Devolver.

Malibu

In somewhat of a twist, you play not as the main character of the game – astronaut Emma Fisher, marooned on a damaged space station with a mysteriously absent crew – but as the space station’s AI computer system, SAM. Only you’re not quite yourself and periodically black out and behave oddly, like someone on a hen do activity day who’s been drinking knock-off Malibu since 10am and is now trying to convince a sceptical staff member at a go-karting track that she’s safe to drive despite only being able to see out of one eye.

It’s your job in the periods between being possessed by whatever thing is making you go wonky to help Emma repair the station and find out what the ruddy heck is going on. This is done initially by hopping about the station modules via CCTV cameras, accessing computers and solving logic puzzles. Later, you get a free-roaming drone to control and even have to engage in spacewalks and the like, pooting yourself about on little thrusters.

Being in space, and this being a ‘proper’ space station and not some fancy Star Trek type gaff with artificial gravity that looks more like a dentist’s waiting room than a spaceship, you can move, rotate and float about in all directions freely on any axis. Suffice to say, if this were a VR game it’d probably make you horrendously sick.

As it is, it might take you a while to get used to the fact that what’s ‘up’ when you go into a new area isn’t necessarily ‘up’ for that particular room – disorientation being something real astronauts (and, to be fair, non-space dwelling would-be go-karters who reek of discount coconut liqueur) often struggle with. That can lead to some confusion with puzzles and navigation at first, but once you get your eye in you’ll start thinking much more 3D-ish.

"Oh christ, I'm busting. If this one isn't the toilet I'm going to have to go in my suit. Again."

Violent cousin

It’s all very classic sci-fi in feel, and the stark, claustrophobic, and remarkably realistic space station is a genuinely unsettling place to explore. The game plays out very much like an interactive film – indeed, it only starts proper after you complete a few early tasks and then get a full-blown (and entirely splendid) movie-style title sequence. 

This cinematic feel continues throughout with the use of cut scenes, jump cuts, camera effects and the like, often at unexpected moments that help throw you off balance. It’s a game that’s as watchable as it is playable, and has that rarest of things – a real sense of originality to it. Although there are quite a few explore-o-puzzlers these days, I can’t remember playing anything quite like this. 

In fact, it reminded me most of the old Freescape 3D titles (Driller, Dark Side), or something like the even older Mercenary – exploring a spartan environment with very little immediate threat for the most part, but a definite sense of unease mixed in with the claustrophobia and agoraphobia.

I’m also relieved to say that this doesn’t just collapse into another ‘Jaws in space’ type thing either. Observation thankfully goes in for psychological spookings and high-concept sci-fi rather than outright horror, and there’s no slobbering, violent cousin of ET waiting to pop out of a space cupboard at the end to gnaw on your hapless astronaut’s legs. (That said, now I’ve thought of it Jaws in space would clearly be excellent – get to work, ‘Hollywood’.)

Unfortunate clog

If there are any frustrations to be had, it’s that sometimes the puzzle solutions are a bit too obscure and you can find yourself stuck in an area with no hint of what you’re missing. For example, in one module I was searching for ages for a file containing some information, and it turned out it was on a laptop that I thought I had already checked; there were in reality two different laptops, but the layout of the room was such that this was a really hard spot from the camera angles available.

Similarly, earlier on during a spacewalk I couldn’t find the area to check that the game was obviously asking me to look for, and the identikit sections of the station made working out where I’d looked and where I hadn’t that much trickier to suss out. 

These unfortunate clogs in otherwise pristine puzzle pipes aren’t game killers by a long way, but a patient approach is going to be a necessity in some parts. Again, while there are faster-paced points, on the whole it’s a more slow-burn movie-like mentality. 

But I’d argue that’s no bad thing now and again – after all, what sort of a mindless, vulgarian clot would routinely sit and fast forward through films just to get to action sequences and miss out on all the plot? (Answer: D. Trump does this. I rest my case.)

Even in space, Zoom conferences are compulsory.

Camp robots

While the game is ultimately fairly linear (there’s extra exposition to uncover, but no real branches off of the main story), and won’t take you much longer than 2 or 3 evenings to get through, I’d say it’s well worth your investment. It’s clever, different, and unsettling, and does exactly what it sets out to do exceptionally well. Plus it leaves you thinking without turning into a Kojima-style impenetrable bewilderment fest along the way.

It’s also refreshing to see someone try a sci-fi idea that isn’t a Star Wars knock-off, or a straight ‘kill all non-human life forms’ thing. I suspect I’ve sold a lot of you already on the idea of a more thoughtful, less zappy interstellar experience, but if you’re wavering I’d say this: if you think stories in space begin and end with camp robots, pointy-eared grumps or dudes in saucers with rectal probes, this is well worth a punt to broaden your (event) horizons.

2001 out of 2010

(This review originally appeared on Digitiser 2000 in October 2019)

The Outer Worlds (PC version tested)

"Hello! They call me big chopper. Not because of this knife, but because I ride about on a very large 1970s kids bike! That, and I have crippling elephantiasis of the genitals."

Saying Bethesda are struggling a bit of late (at least quality-wise – financially they’re still lolling about nude in filthy great piles of cash) is an understatement on par with saying questionable perspiration-phobe and unlikely Italian chain restaurant fan Prince Andrew has had ‘a recent dip in popularity’.

Their last few games have been, frankly, dire (Bethesda, that is; A. Windsor might be knocking out homebrew indie bangers on Steam on a weekly basis for all I know), and – as shown by the awful ploy to add an outrageously chonky monthly subscription to the already struggling Fallout 76 – even when they do have a userbase, they’re happy to cram them into the contempt-o-tron and set it to ‘rinse the suckers’.

Essentially, Bethesda are real big poltroons. And The Outer Worlds, made by former collaborators Obsidian (who helmed the splendid Fallout: New Vegas) just underlines quite how far they’ve slid face-first into the slops bin. Mainly by it being ruddy fab, and reminding you what it is you liked about the pre-crap act Bethesda of old in the first place.

Incontinent racist

Set in a future where everything is largely terrible, massively expensive and run by vast, unfeeling companies (“it’s just like today!” etc.), The Outer Worlds sees you as a space colonist waking from an unexpectedly extended cryosleep and shoved into the role of potential revolutionary.

Or: not. Because, as this is a Fallout-style RPG, you can choose the way your character plays and have them be a schmoozing corporate git or Che Guevara in space. Or indeed somewhere in between. You know: like an intergalactic Liberal Democrat.

Your choices affect how the story plays out as you’d expect, and also whether the folk you meet along the way greet you like a long-lost and much-loved family pet unexpectedly returned, or an unwanted extended visit from their accordion-playing Uncle Drunky (who, along with his rampant alcoholism, also happens to be a lewd, incontinent racist, and terrible at the accordion).

Regardless of which route you choose conscience-wise, what then transpires are 1950’s Flash Gordon retro-style space shenanigans across a handful of planets that sees you doing missions, quests, and shooting loads of alien wildlife and enemies with pew-pew ray guns.

Which, let’s be honest, makes The Outer Worlds sound as boilerplate and generic a spacey open-world sci-fi experience as a game can be, and I admit I did have a few worries pre-launch that it’d just be going through the motions. Or, worse still, despite appearances just be a sterile ‘thing’ like the aimless wander/collect gameplay loop of No Man’s Sky at launch. 

But thankfully, while there’s not much new ground being broken here it’s no game design by autopilot either, and this is all down to the execution.

"Don't shoot! Or at least don't shoot me - I have a cool space jacket! She's only got a boring grey jumper. Shoot her!"

Tupperware centaur

The game looks absolutely lovely and runs really well – and by that I mean not only that the shooting and movement are unusually fluid for a more RPG-like experience (it’s still no CoD, but a cut above normal for sure), but also the usual Bethesda/Obsidian bugs that litter the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are almost entirely absent here.

In fact, because it’s been par for the course for so long it’s almost disappointing to not have your character’s leg suddenly telescope off Inspector Gadget-like into the distance, or to inexplicably find yourself glitched half into a crate to form some sort of monstrous tupperware centaur. But joking aside it does show the extra polish that’s gone on: Obsidian clearly wanted to nail this, and nail it they have.

The biggest strength though is the writing; the dialogue, plotlines and characters are all well written, witty, engaging and memorable. This is essential to the experience, as games like these are always about busywork – take A to B and do C, clear out a weevil infestation from the town farm and so on. What makes the difference is whether it feels like a chore to just get a meaningless exp. point, or whether you’re happy to do menial tasks as you want to help a character and advance their story because you actually care about it/them.

Hitler vs. Gandhi

It also helps that the choices you make are rarely ‘Hitler vs. Gandhi’ scenarios where one is blatantly villainous and the other achingly virtuous: you’ll really have to think about who you want to assist or hinder, why, and what any repercussions might be.

This real-world aping moral uncertainty helps ground things despite the alien setting, as does the fact you can ‘be yourself’, and approach most in-game challenges and your character development in whatever way tickles your sweetbreads.

As you might expect, it’s simple enough to spec for a tough all-rounder who can go in all guns blazing, but like a 1980s action hero’s script your innate stupidity will limit your dialogue options as a consequence. Similarly, you can set yourself up as a slick-tongued stealthist quite quickly, but may struggle with getting shot up the face when caught in gunfights. 

At least, this is the case early on – later, you’ll have exp. points to spare and can easily fill out weaker stats, and it’s this factor that’s probably my main gripe (if you can even call “you get too many abilities” a gripe).

As you stumble towards the endgame (in fact, probably midgame) you’ll find that you’ve levelled up enough to not really be limited much by your earlier choices, and while it’s nice to have a game that doesn’t think a Dark Souls-type grind is ‘the shizz’, I’d recommend at least trying to play it one notch up on difficulty than you normally would. Coasting through is nice in that you know you’ll finish it, but by being a bit too soft and yielding you lose some of the appeal of working to get your character and loadout the way you want them.

Or to put it another way, if you can kill everything with a spoon, unlock doors with a finger, and negotiate your way out of complex scenarios all while only wearing your pants, there’s not really much incentive to root around for guns and armour and invest in specific skills. Or, indeed, even new pants.

Space: where even the rainbows are brown!

Twiddly bits

I think the choice in The Outer Worlds to go in for plot, character and companion depth, and allow for so much variation based on your interactions with the other occupants of the world(s), is absolutely the right one. Rather than some wobbling behemoth like Witcher 3, the value here doesn’t come from sheer size but from replayability – a new run with a differently specced-out character behaving in a different way will feel genuinely fresh.

The Outer Worlds is the strangest thing – it feels like a game we’ve been waiting on for aaaaages, with multiple pretenders to the throne cropping up along the way. And yet it also feels incredibly familiar at the same time, like it has been around as a series for yonks. It just goes to show that doing it right is far more important than doing it online, or bigger, or with more different twiddly bits for the sake of having different twiddly bits.

(Why yes, I do hate tedious, fiddly base building and maintenance – how did you guess?)

Mainly though, it’s great that someone else has taken up the baton that Bethesda has repeatedly dropped down the toilet while drunk, then liberally beaten them about the head with it while shouting “THIS IS HOW YOU DO SINGLE-PLAYER RPGs! DO YOU SEE?”. After all, why still settle for an irradiated wasteland where you can’t even rely on your legs to remain the same length, when now you can reach for the stars instead?

Vault 101 out of Vault 111

(This review originally appeared on Digitiser 2000 in November 2019)

Horace (Steam)

"I hope you're ready to run, as I've forgotten my wallet and can't pay. Also, I've blocked the toilet."

One of the first games I can still clearly remember playing from when I was young wasn’t one of the all-time early arcade classics like Space Invaders or Donkey Kong. It wasn’t even a clunky home version of these, like Pac-Man on the Atari 2600, even though I actually had an Atari 2600 and apparently also had the infamously duff 2600 port of Pac-Man as a photo exists of me playing it one Christmas (its shonky awfulness perhaps being the reason why I’ve blotted it out of my memory).

No, this was an obscure game on the 48k Speccy called Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom, one of four games on an allegedly now rare (according to some dude on ebay trying to flog a copy) compilation tape called ‘ASSEMBLAGE’. Because, of course, nothing says ‘great new game’ like bundling it on a tape with 3 other unrelated efforts and then giving it an uninspiring collective title that basically means ‘pile of stuff’.

Extra buttock

It was also never clear why Monty was a mutant. Onscreen, he just looked like a normal bloke; well, as normal as you can make anyone look in monochrome 8-bit graphics about 1 cm high. Maybe he had a crippled spleen, or an extra buttock?

Anyway, despite it being mainly remarkable for simultaneously ripping off Monty Mole, Indiana Jones AND (for the game itself) Manic Miner, it lodged itself in my cerebellum for one specific reason – it was the first proper platformer I ever played. It was also memorable to me as it was very, very hard, in that uniquely retro approach to longevity sense of ‘well we can’t make a long game, so we’ll make an unfairly tough one that takes ages to finish instead’.

Playing Horace reminded me of Mutant Monty in a number of ways. Some good. Some…less so.

Sodden

Not so much steeped in nostalgia as absolutely sodden with it to the point it’s standing in a puddle of its own nostalgia and has yet more nostalgia running down its legs, Horace is an old-school pixel art platformer that will be utterly bewildering for anyone from outside of the UK and/or people who were born after about the year 2000, unless they’ve got a serious fetish for old British telly and games.

Observe: it even opens with the old ‘reflection’ Thames TV intro!

Playing as Horace, a robot butler, it’s your job to jump about platforms collecting rubbish. One million bits of rubbish to be precise. This might sound like an awful premise for a game, but wait! It’s also a game about family and belonging, dealing with bereavement, the horrors of war and learning the value of life. All this…in a darkly humorous retro-themed platform game about a brass bin man? Yes, really.

If this looks hard, you're in for a surprise: it is! Also, there's no surprise.

Nude shower scene

You see, like football Horace is a game of 2 halves – the actual ‘playing the game’ bit, which I’ll come onto in a minute, and the glorious, glorious cutscenes. (Also like football, it’s compulsory afterwards to have an awkward, nude group shower with 10 other people who’ve played the game!)

Horace’s story is imparted like a 2D computer-animated film, albeit if they’d animated it on a Mega Drive, all narrated by his slightly melancholy-sounding robotic voice. There are a lot of these exposition interludes interleaved through the game – so many in fact, it’s touch and go whether the game is really the interlude to the story segments. But they’re all beautifully written, and slowly reveal the larger plot through Horace’s somewhat naïve robotic eyes.

I won’t spoil these for you as they make up such a substantial part of the game’s appeal, but they’re by turns funny, sad, heartwarming, and always, always a reminder of days gone (that’s actual days gone, not the recent mediocre PS4 zomb-em-up).

Whether it’s from the games that get mentioned in passing, the pop culture references, or the spoofs and pastiches, you’re never far from a reminder of the developer’s clear love for the 80s era (give or take a few years either way).

Meat gimmick

This isn’t just a gimmick, either – you couldn’t pen a story like this without a genuine affection for the period, and that writing strength comes through in memorable characters you’ll develop a real affection for, and a strong desire to get to the next cutscene to see how the plot develops.

But to do that, you have to play the game. And at this point, I’ll give you a clue as to where this is going with three words: Super, Meat, Boy. Or, in case that means nothing to you, three more words: you, die, alot (yes, I know – shut up).

That’s right, Horace is hardcore. Seriously hardcore. Do you miss the pixel-perfect, start-the-level-again-bang-your-head-on-the-table-from-frustration style of early platformers? Well it’s here tonight, Matthew! All wrapped up in 2019 sheen with fancier abilities such as gravity-shifting boots and SNES mode 7-a-like rotating levels.

Don’t get me wrong – I like a challenge. But it’s fair to say the sort of twitch-reaction platformer where you have to be spot on *all* the time is a niche genre these days rather than the norm, and though Horace isn’t as brutal as some (you do get infinite lives, the odd shield, and the occasional mid-room restart point), it leans a lot more the way of being deliberately punishing for the sake of it than, say, the tough but fair latter levels of a Super Mario outing.

Yes, but have you seen Love Island?

Shiny Willy

Style-wise, the levels also ooze nostalgia. Which is a polite way of saying if they remade a shiny new Jet Set Willy for the 21st century, it’d look like this. Almost EXACTLY like this, in fact. It even has ‘In The Hall Of The Mountain King’ as background music for some areas, and similar baddies in the form of possessed machetes and power drills (albeit with a plot-fitting explanation as to why they’ve sprung to homicidal life).

Really, the whole game – with its uniquely British setting and callbacks, its unusual combination of seriousness and weirdly dark humour, and its rampant eccentricity – is as close to what you’d get if you gave a 1980s bedroom coder like Matt Smith (the Miner Willy guy, not the 11th Doctor Who – not least because in the 1980s he’d have been a toddler) access to modern hardware to make a game, then left it in a cranny for nearly 40 years. 

You will absolutely get a huge sense of satisfaction in beating Horace’s jumping challenges. But as levels get harder, you’ll also have a growing sense of annoyance and frustration; how much you’ll get out of the game will thus depend on where the tipping point is for you. And whether it’s because I’m approaching middle age and my reactions aren’t what they used to be, or I’m now just too used to the flabby, casual-oriented world of modern gaming to cut it, for me that tipping point came earlier than I would have liked.

I vant to bite your finger

I really, really wanted to like Horace more than I did – and to be fair, I did like it a lot. The voicework, writing, gallows humour and the obvious real love for the 8- and 16-bit era are all great. But oh, those painful jumps and repeat-o-starts just sucked the lifeblood out of it for me like a big, pixelated Dracula.

In choosing to go ‘full retro’ with a hardcore platformer replete with difficulty spikes, even with a few 21st century luxuries, the developers have made what could be a fun romp into something that only a particular type of modern gamer will see through. And I really wanted to see it through – I just couldn’t face death after death because of a jump being 1 pixel off.

In the end, I watched later levels on YouTube videos because I wanted to see what happened (which is a testament to the strength of the story, because you wouldn’t catch me bothering to do that with some limp second stringer like Spyro the Dragon). But I’d absolutely rather have played it myself like 1985 me who always finished games would have done – I’m just afraid to say 2019 me couldn’t be arsed.

Is...is that Postman Pat?

Dirty feels

If you like that sort of challenge AND you also have the dirty feels for times gone by, you’ll adore this. Genuinely adore it. I’d have been delighted to say I adored it too, but like Dark Souls, you can only do the gaming equivalent of punching yourself in the face so many times before having to consider whether being a punchbag is your cup of tea, or whether you’d rather just actually have a cup of tea.

It’s good to remember the past and where we’ve come from, but…things move on for a reason too, and down the line your mind can play tricks on you: like how enjoyable an experience slogging through the sturdy games of yesteryear really was. Or how, for years, I thought the game I remembered playing as a kid was ‘Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom’. But – M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN PLOT TWIST – when I looked it up when writing this review, it’s not the game I thought it was at all. It’s not even a bloody platformer! 

To wit, I have no idea what the game is I was *actually* thinking of, which just goes to show you how confusing and rubbish getting older is. And why I’d have loved a ‘enjoy the story’ mode in Horace to help my decrepit reflexes see it through, so I could enjoy the reminiscing without having to worry about my blood pressure quite so much.

An absolute love letter of a game, but you have to be prepared to pay the hefty postage to read it.

48k out of C64

(This review originally appeared on Digitiser 2000 in August 2019)