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Donut County (PS5) – Review

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Sometimes a simple idea can make an enjoyable game, in Donut County you control a hole across many stages swallowing everything you come across. The more you swallow the larger the hole grows until everything is gone.

Mira works in the local donut shop with her friend BK who is engrossed in a mobile app trying to gain enough points to unlock a drone. The story is intially told via flashbacks, all of the town residents are sat round a campfire deep underground having a conversation about what happened and why?

You will get to meet the various residents from a Chef whose restaraunt is infected with Bugs to Salt and Pepper, siblings who constantly fight. Each level will introduce a new gameplay element for you to figure out. There is nothing too complicated in the game but you will need to use the hole for different purposes from filling it with water to putting it on fire.

Accompanying the gameplay is a lovely soundtrack that will have you humming along with some great tracks, I especailly enjoyed the Gecko Park level & would reccommend listening to the soundtrack on Spotify.

I am sure like myself you will enjoy this short indie game in one sitting, coming in at just over an hour, there are some small challenges you can complete during the game but you may want to try these after completing the game and using the level select. Enjoy and have a garbage day!


 

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5 Review

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I only got back into playing Fortnite because my daughter wanted someone to play Duo's with her, 4 weeks later and I have completed the 100 level battle pass!

Everyone knows the Battle Royale formula and Epic have perfected it to a fine constant loop, keeping you playing for that next target. Be that a level upgrade, quest completion or daily task. If the dice rolls in your favour and you have luck or skill on your side, you can go all the way and get the fabled Victory Royale.

The enjoyment for me has come mainly in playing with my daughter, nephew & niece. I am constantly in awe at their skills to either single handily take out a squad or build a Burj Khalifa skyscraper in 4.6 seconds. The unlocks from the battle pass reward you mainly with cosmetic items but occasionally you will unlock a new Skin or Emote that you will enjoy.

For me, this season just starting with The Mandalorian and upgrading his beskar armour was enough but at level 100 you are also rewarded with Baby Yoda. There is also an enjoyable Predator quest line which will unlock the skin for you to play.

The many years of playing multi-player FPS games like Quake, Unreal, Halo & Call of Duty has taught me to just go for the kill which works until I come up against a wall built of wood, stone, or metal. I hate builder players; they will build a box around them in seconds or a tall skyscraper before you can reload your gun. Hopefully in my inventory I carry fireflies or grenades and just destroy or cook these builds in seconds but on most occasions, I have neither and then end up dying whilst trying to figure out where the opponent is in their build. 

With advice from my daughter even with my poor building skills I managed to get 13 Solo Victory Royales this season, I especially enjoyed the win where I destroyed the last remaining two opponent’s skyscraper builds and they fell to their deaths.

Getting to level 100 is not that difficult of a task because you are rewarded with xp for even the smallest action, collect an apple 25 xp or open an ammo box 100 xp. With the daily quests and weekly quests you can very easily run through the levels to complete the battle pass. I also have to thank the rllmuk members on the Fortnite thread who have given me advice and helped me complete the battlepass.

The current season ends on the 16th March, what will happen to Zero Point & what will the new season bring in terms of rewards. I will be there next season screaming "Yes Fam" when we get our first win.

Slay the Spire – Uncompleted Review

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Just one more try, before you look up it will be 1am and you have work in the morning. Slay the Spire should come with a warning. The monsters in the game will chomp away at your health but this game will devour your time.

You start the game with The Ironclad character and play strikes & block cards to defeat monsters. Along the way you will unlock new cards, open treasure chests to receive a relic, gain a boon, receive a curse & even visit a merchant to spend your hard earned gold. At some point eventually you will die usually at the hands of the end of act boss fight or an elite monster. Thus begins the one more try loop, let’s go again and see how far we get this time. 

After a while you will unlock two more characters in The Silent a huntress who uses daggers and poison and The Defect a machine who uses elemental orbs to attack. There is also a fourth character called The Watcher but you need to complete a run before she is unlocked. I prefer to play with The Silent and if I get some poison cards I can get a decent run together.

I usually play games that have a story and an ending because the time I can spend on video games is limited. Therefore I avoid rogue like games or as I like to call them timesinks like Spelunky, Binding of Isaac and FTL Faster Than Light because of the amount of hours you have to play to either upgrade or get lucky to complete a run. Although at some point I am looking forward to playing Hades.

Slay the Spire is no exception to this formula, after 30 hours playing I finally made it to Act 3! & promptly died at the first fight. I read a post on Reddit recently where someone mentioned they had played for 300 hours and had still not completed the game, that made me stop and think about the time commitment this game needs and whilst I won’t quit just yet it is time to move on. I will continue to slowly chip away at Slay the Spire and if I’m lucky I may just complete a run before the PlayStation 6 is released.

I’m going to start playing The Pathless an open world action game developed by Giant Squid who also made Abzu. Just let me have one more try on Slay the Spire.

Gorogoa (PS5) – Completed Review

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Gorogoa is a short puzzle game where you have four frames that you can move tiles around. You can click in certain areas in a tile to progress the puzzle & you can also stack tiles on top of each other to trigger an action. 

There is no guide in the game to help but a hint feature will highlight which areas you can interact with on a tile, some of the puzzles will need quick movement with the tiles so you can carry on the motion of an action. You may get stuck on a few puzzles I certainly did on a shelf puzzle that took me a while to figure out.

Overall Gorogoa is a nice game to tax the brain muscles that you will complete in about an hour & if you fancy an extra challenge there is a trophy for completing it under thirty minutes!

Next for me is Slay the Spire a roguelike card deck building game and I've also gotten back into playing Fortnite with my daughter (JerryBean) & nephew (Mr T).

Lost Sphear (PS5) – Completed Review

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Lost Sphear by Tokyo RPG factory is a love letter to the SNES/PS1 era with a beautiful art style, no spoken dialogue but a ton of written probably more than the entire Harry Potter books and a familiar turn-based combat. Be warned there is no fast travel which can be annoying because certain dungeons do not have shortcuts and you won’t get the airship until much later in the game.

You play as Kanata a swordsman from the village Elgarthe who develops an ability to restore lost structures from memories. You are very quickly joined by Lumina a melee combat fighter and Locke a long range archer. The game slowly introduces other characters who will join your adventure along the way to a maximum of eight but you can only select four in your battle team.

The game introduces two new features, the first is Spritnite where you have to equip a skill to use in combat but you can then link a momentum effect to each skill like recover HP every time you use that skill in a battle. In combat each skill will have a cool down timer which will reset after a number of a turns. The second is Artefacts, there are various locations on the open world where you can build a structure to give you a boost. For example the Mystic Eye artefact will give you a world mini-map showing you to see locations of dungeons you have visited.

There is no random encounters in the game, all combat is within dungeons. During combat you build up a momentum meter by performing attacks, moving you character or using skills. Once you have built up a momentum charge you can use it in combat and it will usually rewards you a critical or double hit. With certain characters it can be an advantage to ensure they move around the battle area so you can line up a multiple hit attack. Equally you need to be careful to ensure your characters are not too close together so the enemies can’t get in an area attack. Make sure you especially pay attention to your movements during boss fights which are slightly more challenging.

I won’t spoil it in this review but later the game introduces a new combat mechanic which I did enjoy using quite a bit but I had to have constant supplies to recharge or regularly rest at inns. Overall Lost Sphear is a nostalgic trip back to the 90s JRPG formula but remember the game is not finished once the credits roll. I had no issues at all playing this game on the PS5, next for me is a small indie puzzler Gorogoa.