6180 the Moon (Xbox One) - Review

6180 the Moon is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £3.19.

6180 the Moon is a really simplistic platformer. That's not to say it isn't challenging. In fact this game gets really difficult, or it did for me anyway. It reminds me a lot of the The Impossible Game on XBLIG, a game I lost many, many hours too. I got literally one jump from the end and have never been back since for fear of launching my controller across the room. Luckily 6180 the Moon isn't that frustrating, you will get stuck on the same bit of a level over and over again but the levels are much shorter than The Impossible game and they have generous checkpoints, so it doesn't feel as bad.

So you plays as a moon who is searching the Solar System for the sun that has gone missing. It is very minimalistic graphically, but I always find that this style works well with this kind of game. I feel that it just distracts less from the simplistic elements of the gameplay if the graphics are in the same vein. Maybe I'm weird, but I just don't buy into the whole 'the game has to be the prettiest thing I've ever seen, otherwise I won't enjoy it' thing. I have friends like that and I just find it odd, how can they not see the beauty in even the most simple pixel art?!

Anyway, I digress. Each level sees you jumping over spikes to reach the end (see why it reminds me of The Impossible Game?) but in 6180 the Moon the top and bottom of the screen loops, so when you fall off the bottom of the screen you'll re-enter at the top and vice versa. Your moon speeds up as you go along too, making it a little bit more difficult to precisely time your movements. This little mechanic also served to make me feel quite sick. I couldn't play this game for an extended time without coming away a little nauseous.

6180 the Moon is a neat little game with a charming narrative. It is WELL worth the minuscule price tag if you like a challenging platformer. But it has been out for awhile now, so I doubt you have to wait long for a sale that will make it that bit cheaper. 

6/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Prif Playsonic 3 Headset - Review

This review has also been posted at honestgamesreviews.com, head over there to see the full score. (http://honestgamesreviews.com/reviews/prif-playsonic-3-headset-review/).

 I was one of the silly saps who bought the official Microsoft Xbox One Stereo Headset, before they discontinued them because apparently nobody else in the world likes them. In all fairness I quite like mine, but it's damn uncomfy to wear for any extended game-time and considering I do most of my gaming after my kids are in bed, being able to wear the headset for more than an hour without crushing my skull is quite important to me. So the awesome guys here at HGR sent me this shiny new Playsonic 3 to review.

First up let's talk about how it looks coming out of the box. This thing is pretty, with some really nice metallic red detail around the cups and some red material on the band. The cups aren't static, in the slightest bit, which at first I was happy about because my previous headset is just SO rigid. But I soon got annoyed with how much these cups swivel - they can swivel around so they're facing AWAY from your ear...could someone please tell me why?! Once on this obviously isn't a problem, but if you find yourself having to take them off every five minutes to check that one of your kids isn't crying it gets a bit annoying (and tangle-y).

This headset is damn comfortable though. I put this on after already playing for an hour using my MS one so my head was feeling kinda sore. This felt like a big cuddle for the dent on the top of my head. It HAS to be the most cushioned headset out there (i don't know for sure, but honestly this has like 2 inches of cuddle!). The mic can go pretty much anywhere you desire as it is on a completely bendy wire. But that's enough of all this, you wanna hear how it sounds, right?

This headset is damn comfortable though. I put this on after already playing for an hour using my MS one so my head was feeling kinda sore. This felt like a big cuddle for the dent on the top of my head. It HAS to be the most cushioned headset out there (i don't know for sure, but honestly this has like 2 inches of cuddle!). The mic can go pretty much anywhere you desire as it is on a completely bendy wire. But that's enough of all this, you wanna hear how it sounds, right?

I'm gonna start with the mic first, as this is where I encountered the most issues. The first night I played Ark with the HGR boys they all moaned at me for the hissy sound I was apparently making. At first I thought it was the headset, but a couple of days later it transpired that my 3rd party controller I was using had a broken headset port. Again. So I plugged it into my proper XB1 pad and the hissy sound disappeared - for the most part. There was still a little hiss evident, but not enough that everyone wanted to mute me anymore. The next day I played with some friends who told me I was far too quiet and they had levelled out their volume as much as they could - if they put the game volume any lower there wouldn't actually be any. I had to move the mic closer, so close in fact it was basically in my mouth - not ideal - but usually when you have a mic too close there's some horrible noises attributed to it and with the Playsonic 3 there were none. Everyone could hear me clear as day and we played for a good few hours with no more complaints. At one point I moved the headset so that one ear was out of the cups. These cups are seriously so thick you can hear nothing from the outside world. I felt like I was talking underwater so in a bid to counteract that I lifted one cup able my ear. This led to my friends all complaining that they could now hear themselves repeating, so I had to go back to not being able to hear myself properly and hoping I wasn't shouting too loud (we have very sensitive neighbours).

This last point really doesn't need many words. The sound from this headset is amazing, crystal clear and deep. You can plug it into any of the devices you may have lying around your home as any cable you need comes with it. If you don't have the newer XB1 pads you will need a headset adapter, but I had one of these already so was good to go. I used it mostly for gaming and to listen to Spotify whilst working on my computer and it sounded brilliant for each task. To be honest this headset seems ridiculously cheap for what you're getting, so I did expect to encounter many more problems than I did, but for less than £40 I have no qualms recommending this headset.

Rocket League (Xbox One) - Review

Rocket League is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £15.99.

The release of Rocket League on the Xbox One has been fairly divisive. When the game launched on PS4 last year, it launched as a free PS+ game, which lead many to believe that it was only fair for the same to happen when it came to Xbox One this week. The failure to launch it as a GwG saw many a gamer throwing their toys out of the pram and refuse to buy it (on my Twitter feed anyway). So is Rocket League worth the £15.99 price tag?

In short YES. My family and I have had a huge amount of fun with this game.

Now unless you've lived under a rock this past year, you'll at least have heard of Rocket League. It's football (or soccer) played with cars instead of people - which when I first heard of it made me think of the Top Gear episode where they had two teams of Volkswagen Fox's playing football. Rocket League is NOT that realistic - and it's all the better for it. Your cars can jump, boost an drive up the mesh walls in this absolutely batshit crazy game.

The mechanics behind this game are amazing. It is the epitome of the "easy to pick up but difficult to master" game. My son and I dived straight into a 1v1 against each other the minute the download was finished and we had great fun. He thought he was brilliant at it...then we ventured online. It was an education to say the least, and has since seen my son watching videos on YouTube so that he can get better "and beat everyone".

The single player mode is a little dull in comparison to the fast and frenetic online (or even couch co-op) mode. The AI doesn't really seem to increase in difficulty much as you work your way through Season mode, but its an ok way to while away sometime and get more accustomed to the controls, or try out any new techniques. But the best thing for me was that it has 4 player split-screen. We're a family that likes to game together, so any game that gives us the opportunity to all sit down together and play is golden with us.

Now obviously I'm not gonna recommend you buy this if you have it already on another platform (unless you're friends play on Xbox) but for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of playing Rocket League yet, I definitely recommend you pick it up!

9/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Human Resource Machine (Wii U) - Review

Human Resource Machine is available now on the Wii U.

I didn't expect this game to be as tough as it is. I think I jumped to this conclusion because it's on the Wii U and I primarily see that as a machine for kids (don't shoot me, I still love it). Oh how wrong I was. 

In Human Resource Machine you play as a cute little dude/dudette who goes to work for a big corporation. Your supervisor will set you tasks which you then must complete to finish the level. These tasks start off simple enough - you just move stuff from one side of the room to the other. But they soon become much more complex, with you needing to only take certain things to the other side and leaving the others behind. 

Now this sounds simple, doesn't it? What's so hard about just sorting through some mail or whatever? Well yeah, doing this manually would be much simpler, but in Human Resource Machine you don't sort things manually. Instead you basically write a line of code for your little employee to follow. Now, I'm not a coder nor have I ever dabbled in any form of coding, so I found this really quite difficult. I found it really hard to wrap my head around the code required to hit some of the goals for each level. I was fine when it was just move that from here to there, but the minute it started asking me to leave zeros behind I started getting lost pretty fast. 

And that's where Human Resource Machine really falls down. It's cutesy art-style leads you to believe that this is going to be a much simpler game than it is. I found myself getting incredibly frustrated with it, fairly early on which is incredibly disappointing. My partner however is an analyst and he whizzed through it with ease, laughing at how hard i made it look. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this game feels too tough for the casual puzzler it appears to be - it should have been more serious looking in my opinion. The graphics definitely attract a younger audience, but I fear my son would break the Wii U pad in frustration with this game. 

The touch screen works really well for this game (which is also available on Steam) so much so that I wonder whether it may be ported to iOS or Android. I think it'd be a good game to while away the commute with, but maybe not if you struggle as much as I did. I don't really know who to recommend this game for, definitely not kids or the more casual puzzle players. But at the same time saying people who code will love it seems silly too - if you code for your job do you really wanna come home and play a game that basically sees you writing code to complete menial tasks?!

5/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Cosplay Maker (Steam) - Review

Cosplay Maker is available now on Steam and is priced at £10.99, though it currently has 25% off.

Cosplay Maker is basically a time management game that revolves around the cosplaying world. I haven't ever really cosplayed in my life - I mean, I've done fancy dress but I've never gotten involved in the cosplay scene past going to Comic Con with the family (although next year I TOTALLY want us to go as The Incredibles). I just think that cosplaying requires a lot of time, money and patience - none of which I possess much of.

So in Cosplay Maker you play as a newcomer to the scene. You must research outfits, make them and work to earn the money for them, all whilst navigating your way through the social circles (and even dating some of them). The art style is cute and the story is alright. But goddamn the music is annoying, I turned it off after half an hour as I couldn't face any more repetition. The game itself is repetitive enough to deal with...

I'm a big fan of management games and have been known to spend hours and hours on them. But Cosplay Maker bored me within the first fifteen minutes. Let me explain...All the gameplay basically takes place in a diary. You have a very basic diary screen that has three blanks to fill in; Mon-Fri (daytime), Mon-Fri (nights) and Weekends. You have a few different options you can place into these time slots, including the options to work on your outfit, work your job, relax, research, or socialise with friends. The problem is that you have to put these in for the whole slot, you can only do three of these things per week. So you could say work your job every day Monday to Friday, and work on your outfit every night but you're soon gonna get burnt out doing that and the next week you;d have to make up for it. It just seems like a really sloppy way to put a management mechanic into a game. In my opinion if you;re going to base an entire game around the idea of making cosplays then you should be able to manage your time in hourly slots, not entire weeks. It was also a problem if you finished your outfit in the middle of the week as you would "continue" to work on it until the end of the week.

I found myself setting a week going and then pottering off to do things around the house whilst the in game week passed - not really what I sit down to game for. Maybe I'm just not the target audience of this game, but I just don't see how this game could constitute anyones idea of fun.

2/10 SKIP IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Level 22 (Xbox One) - Review

Level 22 is available now on Xbox One and is priced at £5.59.

Level 22 is a simple stealth game that sees you play as Gary, an office worker who has to sneak to his desk because if he's caught coming in late one more time he will be fired. And so you find yourself navigating the various floors of the office building to get Gary to his desk without being seen.

Now I'm a big fan of stealth games, I'm just not all that good at them. They often require a level of patience I simply do not possess. Saying that, I guess I'm talking about the more serious stealth games we've had recently, you know the type which see you spend half an hour navigating a level just to be caught at the last minute and have to start the whole thing again. Luckily Level 22 doesn't punish you too badly if you get caught, the checkpoints come thick and fast in this game. On the flip side of this though, it kinda takes away the stealth side of the game and makes it more about simple trial-and-error - because you never have to replay more than thirty seconds of the level, you'll take risks you wouldn't normally take when playing a stealth game. At times this game definitely feels like more of a simple puzzler than a stealth game.

That isn't to say it is bad though, not at all. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Level 22. The art style and writing is fun and the game can be quite challenging. There's just the right amount of collectables too, and there's even a reason for them!! Something quite rare in games these days, with some asking you to pick up 700 snotty tissues for nothing more than a 5G achievement. Level 22 instead asks you to collet your friends collectable figures for him, now that he is unable to enter the building.

Level 22 is a fun little game that certainly won't break the bank, in fact it is one of the cheapest offerings on the Xbox One Marketplace at the minute. It provides a lot more fun than a lot of the more expensive games out there too. If you're looking for a simplistic little game to kill some time with Level 22 is definitely worth picking up!

7/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.

Factotum 90 (Xbox One) - Review

Factotum 90 is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £4.79/$5.99. It currently has an additional 20% off its launch price for Gold Members (making it less that £4!).

Factotum 90 is the first Xbox One game to come from one-man development team TACS Games. Originally it was released on the Wii U as Factotum, but it has now made the jump to Xbox One, with higher res, more colours and some shiny new special effects.

Now don't get me wrong Factotum 90 isn't going to win any beauty awards anytime soon. It is quite simplistic graphically, with textures etc. leaving a lot to be desired. But we're all willing to overlook some slightly dodgy graphics for a good game, aren't we?

Well good, because that's what you get with Factotum 90. Yeah it's not as pretty as other puzzle game son the Xbox One, but it's a damn good puzzle game that is ridiculously cheap. The biggest praise I can give this game though, is that the levels progress really well. You know how in some puzzle games you suddenly peak at like the tenth level and it takes you forever to get past, because they're suddenly throwing everything ever at you? Factotum 90 doesn't do this, instead opting to slightly increase the difficulty, length and complexity of the puzzle just slightly in each level. I find that this is a hard balance to reach in puzzle games - some are far too easy all the way through, whilst some have an insanely steep learning curve - but Factotum 90 (for me at least) gets it just right...rare in a puzzle game these days.

You control two little robots that activate separately and each have their own portion of the screen. When they activate four little legs pop out from underneath and the boxy robots scutter about like spiders (which I have to admit, creeped me out a little). You use these robots to navigate your way around the ship, solving puzzles along the way. It's an interesting mechanic, and one that clearly shoes you which console this game was born on, with the duals screen capabilities of the Wii U pad lending itself so obviously to this type of gameplay. I was at first a little worried how this game would translate to the Xbox One but it does so very well, with the screen just cutting in half so you have a screen for each robot.

Controls are simple and effective too, the only thing that really got on my nerves was upon pausing the game. Actions still continue in the background, so if you;re on a moving floor it will continue to move whilst paused. And I seem to have gotten used to using B to back out of the pause menu, something which this game does;t allow for. But these are really just minor niggles.

£4 is nothing in terms of price for a game on the current gen and you could do much worse than picking up Factotum 90. I for one am interested to see what else this developer could do for Xbox One, so why not pick this up and support this one man team. I can guarantee you've all spent more on games that will have offered much less enjoyment.

7/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.