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OPUS: The Day We Found Earth (Switch): COMPLETED!

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This is a game with a nice little story wrapped up with a “find the right dot in a load of dots” mechanic. You’re a robot, and your creator has tasked you with finding Earth, which involves a lot of looking at the galaxy through a telescope and zooming in on specific star systems.

To find these systems you’re sometimes given coordinates, or a direction to look in, or a particular region of space. Later on, the location descriptions become even more vague. Find the system specified, and you’re told how close to a match for Earth the planets there are, and then you move on. It felt a bit like a cut down No Man’s Sky in point-and-click adventure form.

It’s a basic premise, and very short. That’s probably for the best, though, as it’d become boring rather quickly otherwise. Thankfully, the scanning is punctuated with story exposition and really that’s what the purpose of the game’s existence is – explaining why they’re looking for Earth and finding out what happened to, well, I won’t ruin it.

OPUS: The Day We Found Earth is unusual, short, very easy and somewhat charming. Not an essential purchase at all, but it’s cheap (under £5, although I paid about £2.70 from the Japanese eShop) and certainly worth a play through.

The post OPUS: The Day We Found Earth (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

OPUS: The Day We Found Earth (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

This is a game with a nice little story wrapped up with a “find the right dot in a load of dots” mechanic. You’re a robot, and your creator has tasked you with finding Earth, which involves a lot of looking at the galaxy through a telescope and zooming in on specific star systems.

To find these systems you’re sometimes given coordinates, or a direction to look in, or a particular region of space. Later on, the location descriptions become even more vague. Find the system specified, and you’re told how close to a match for Earth the planets there are, and then you move on. It felt a bit like a cut down No Man’s Sky in point-and-click adventure form.

It’s a basic premise, and very short. That’s probably for the best, though, as it’d become boring rather quickly otherwise. Thankfully, the scanning is punctuated with story exposition and really that’s what the purpose of the game’s existence is – explaining why they’re looking for Earth and finding out what happened to, well, I won’t ruin it.

OPUS: The Day We Found Earth is unusual, short, very easy and somewhat charming. Not an essential purchase at all, but it’s cheap (under £5, although I paid about £2.70 from the Japanese eShop) and certainly worth a play through.

The post OPUS: The Day We Found Earth (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Scribblenauts Showdown (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I’d heard that this was a party game based diversion from the main Scribblenauts series, so wasn’t going to get it. But it was £10 and I thought, how bad can it be? Luckily, not as bad as I was expecting.

The party game mode is the main purpose it exists (and is actually pretty good, considering), but there’s also a “Sandbox” mode which is a simplistic approximation of the previous Scribblenauts games. A number of levels with ten tasks in each to do – make a helicopter fly, give the Buddha an offering, put the right animals in the zoo exhibits, etc. It’s this mode that I completed.

So it’s not as good as the earlier titles, but it’s OK. I suspect 5th Cell, the original developers, had very little to do with this and it shows. Shame.

The post Scribblenauts Showdown (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Scribblenauts Showdown (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

I’d heard that this was a party game based diversion from the main Scribblenauts series, so wasn’t going to get it. But it was £10 and I thought, how bad can it be? Luckily, not as bad as I was expecting.

The party game mode is the main purpose it exists (and is actually pretty good, considering), but there’s also a “Sandbox” mode which is a simplistic approximation of the previous Scribblenauts games. A number of levels with ten tasks in each to do – make a helicopter fly, give the Buddha an offering, put the right animals in the zoo exhibits, etc. It’s this mode that I completed.

So it’s not as good as the earlier titles, but it’s OK. I suspect 5th Cell, the original developers, had very little to do with this and it shows. Shame.

The post Scribblenauts Showdown (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Metropolis: Lux Obscura (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s the age old story: Man released from prison, man tries to find the reason he was framed, man gets caught up with the mafia, man visits strippers, man fights everyone and everything via the medium of a Match 3 puzzle game. We’ve seen it so many times before.

And that’s exactly what this is. There’s a branching story, with four endings (three of which I’ve seen so far), a lot of violence and somewhat graphic sex. Also, swearing. So much swearing. This is a game on a Nintendo console, lest ye forget.

The art style and animation is great, sort of like Sin City in the way it’s low on colour and high on gritty comicbook bleakness. The story is bobbins, however, and the game is incredibly short so even though you meet many characters your interactions are minimal and after maybe six or seven “fights”, it’s the end.

After each fight you can choose one from a random selection of stat boosts (more health, more damage dealt, better healing, etc.) but since you’ll come to the end of the game before any of them are really necessary what you choose is pretty pointless.

It’s a shame. Similar games, like HuniePop, Puzzle & Dragons and Puzzle Quest are all much, much longer even though their stories need not be. Here, after three hours I’ve seen all bar one ending and the plot could really have done with more meat. Make it three times as long, and Metropolis Lux Obscura could be a 4/5 title, but sadly it’s so lacking content it sorely needs (and feels like it should have done but the devs cut it short) it’s a 2/5 at most. The gameplay is there. The style is there. The game just isn’t.

The post Metropolis: Lux Obscura (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.