Afterparty

Have you ever had one of those nights where maybe you drank a little too much? Don’t remember anything the next day, you feel like crap, oh and you’re in hell. No? Never happened to you? Well, you’re doing better than the protagonists of Afterparty.

Disney's Bolt

I know they’re almost always bad and I know they’re shoddily done, but deep down in my jaded heart I have a soft spot for movie tie-in games. I’ve previously talked about Disney’s Brave and Tron and remember enjoying them to a degree. Obviously the bad part about a movie tie-in game is that they’re usually rushed out to capitalise on the movie they’re aping and most of the time are given to fairly low key studios to produce, probably to cut down on costs. I’m not having a go at the low key studios, the gaming world needs them to keep our indie rivers flowing, but I digress. 

Thimbleweed Park

Point and click adventure games are a thing of the past for a reason. There something about the camera angles and axis differentiation that doesn’t gel with today’s modernisation of gaming - shuffling conveyorbelt-like through a level going from one piece of obvious cover to another like you’re taking part in an episode of the generation game as hosted by Marcus Fenix. Back in the day they seemed fine when we weren’t much more than confused naive children taken in by plinky plunky music and bright colours, but nowadays gaming has become more refined - or maybe accurately more linear - and the cod playing Neanderthals of today can’t piece together the batshit logic of the adventure game designer of the moment.

Overwatch and Rainbow 6 Siege/Hero Shooters

 

Valve are a fantastic company. They’ve produced some fantastic games in the form of the Half-life, Left 4 Dead and Portal series, all with some brilliant game play and storytelling, almost boarding on perfection sometimes. They even brought us Steam - a platform for almost any game allowing all games out there to co-exist in harmony.

Inside

I can just feel writing this article that the term “inside” with all of its uses is going to become very
confusing. With that being said, let’s dive right in and take a look at what’s going on inside Inside.

Inside

I can just feel writing this article that the term “inside” with all of its uses is going to become very
confusing. With that being said, let’s dive right in and take a look at what’s going on inside Inside.

Gone Home

 

Who likes walking?
Well you’re in for a treat today (I’m going to assume you said yes). Today we’re going to take a look at Gone Home, brought to us by Midnight City if you played the console version and The Fullbright Company if you had the VR version. You may have worked out from that opening sentence that Gone Home is a walking simulator. If you haven’t had much experience with walking simulators before let me explain: you walk around...

Oxenfree

Being a high school kid can be hard sometimes. You got to deal with a lot of changes: problems and drama in those early years, most of which doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things and you won’t remember in a few years time. There’s usually some name calling and peer pressure, most kids have stressful exam periods, and remember the time you and your friends stumbled across that specter ridden mystery island? I know I do, but it all just builds character right?

Rocket League

 

By now you've all heard of Rocket League, the rocket powered juggernaut it is. For those of you that it may have slipped by, somehow, Rocket League is football with cars.
 

It's as simple as that, and you know what? It's fantastic!

I love FIFA and I'm ok with driving games so the mesh would make sense right? Except the controls you have; trigger to go, A to jump and B to boost, again as simple as they are, are very different to both of those types of games. Don't be put off by what it looks like, it plays like chaos theory in motion which is just what you want sometimes.

That's not to at there isn't some skill to it, it's just that the skill involved is mainly timing based and it's very easy to fling yourself halfway across the pitch in a minutely misjudged boost jump to catch a midair ball. You do regain boost from driving over little glowing pads on the pitch which is very useful for getting to a far away ball or demolishing an opposing, or sometimes friendly, car

There are a smattering of online game types including your normal "get the all in the goal" and Hoops, instead of get the ball in the goal, you get the ball in the hoop, turning it more into a basketball variant. There is also a game mode that replaces the all with a puck decreasing the "where will the ball drop and hope for the best" scenarios. All game modes can be played one on one ranging through to four on four which, using the scientific term, is a clusterfuck.
There is a Season game mode which runs you through a league with bots as your team mates, giving you a chance to hone your skills with appropriately leveled opponents.
Whichever game mode you choose though, it's always going to be blue vs orange.

All changes to the cars are purely cosmetic, toppers than sit on top of your car or antennas, so it doesn't feel unbalance due to special abilities obtained at certain levels. There is minor difference In the pitches, mainly the shape, which could change the direction the call ricochets back into play but they all function the same and vary in locations such as Utopia, a utopian environment obviously, Underwater, rocket cars flying about while a shark watches on, and wasteland, a dystopian backdrop to your RC mayhem.

It is pretty insubstantial but Rocket League is such an additive game and, with each match only lasting five minutes, it makes it so easy to lose track of time by doing the old "just one more" trick. I think most gamers would be drawn in by this snappy, intuitive game and will get a lot of game time out of it like I have and will continue to do. With game modes for all and easy to learn hard to master game-play, Rocket League is a slam dunk and great to pull out when you have friends around, what I'm saying is, go and buy it! Now, seriously.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this look into Rocket League, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.