It’s easy, as a gamer, to get swept up in the hype of all the major releases, and let a lot of the fantastic releases that would normally garner great praise but are overshadowed and dwarfed by the gargantuan AAA games gather dust. Having fallen victim to this myself, whilst still spending all my money on games, regardless if they get played or not, I decided I’d give a couple of brilliant recent releases I’d discovered the spotlight treatment and the recognition they deserve.
Binary Domain
A friend of mine was determined to talk me out of buying this game when it came out, claiming it was as B-grade as my high-school years, and did not warrant a full-priced purchase. I tended to agree with him, knowing little about the game, and refrained from buying it, despite the little SEGA logo on the case that begged to be given just one more chance. When the price dropped exponentially (presumably due to lack of sales), I caved and thrillingly found myself absolutely gripped. It’s your typical third-person-shooter, with cover mechanics, and squad commands, all tied together in a beautiful, futuristic setting complete with killer robots. What more could you ask for really! You play as Dan Marshall, robot-hater and destroyer by trade, hired to take out rogue robots in Japan, along with your multi-cultural teammates, all armed to the teeth. It all sounds like a fairly generic affair so far; however, the constant surprises within the well-paced story, the seamless storytelling and gameplay integration, characters that genuinely grow on you despite their often cliché and stereotypical nature, smooth and satisfying gunplay, and a splash of Japanese quirkiness all come together to form a game that will keep the majority of gamers hooked for its duration.
If you go into this game with expecting a masterful Metal-Gear-esque robot epic, you may be a bit disappointed; however, if you go into Binary Domain with the goal of simply having a great time, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.
Catherine
I had the pleasure of finding out about this game long before it was released in my area and took the initiative of ordering it online. I was incredibly glad I did as this dating sim/puzzle-platformer hybrid was a huge breath of fresh air amongst the plethora of lacklustre titles I had been playing at the time. You play as Vincent, a programmer in his mid-20s, who’s struggling with his love life. The main premise of the game involves making decisions whilst in a bar, chatting with your friends, messaging your girlfriend(s) on your phone and drinking. Such is life, right? Well, yes, that is, until you fall asleep and enter a horrific nightmare realm, where everyone else looks like sheep, you’re only in your underwear, and you’re trying to survive and get to the top of a huge stack of blocks so you can stay alive another night, because, of course, if you die in the nightmare world, you die in real life. The platforming here is incredibly addictive, quite challenging and very satisfying to conquer, leaving you with the feeling of really having accomplished something. The story is mysterious, genuinely scary at times, and compelling and will be your number one motivating factor in completing each puzzle (night). The puzzles themselves can be very unforgiving, especially with the difficulty turned up, which really reinforces the intensity of each moment in the story, as well as the genuinely horrific nature of the story and overall mood of the game. Even if you’re not a fan of dating sims (I use this term loosely) or platforming games, if you can stand the very Japanese style and design of Catherine, the story alone is compelling enough to keep you going. If you’re like me and love all of the above, then you’re going to enjoy the hell out of this game.
Kid Icarus: Uprising
It has been a great number of years since Pit of Kid Icarus starred in his own game, having only featured in Smash Bros. as of late. I was never a huge fan of the original Kid Icarus, having never actually owned a copy. When the 3DS came out, however, and I was struggling to find any games on release that really held my attention, I turned to Kid Icarus: Uprising and was pleasantly surprised. You play as Pit, our cute little kid-turned-angel protagonist, guided by the Goddess Palutena, with the goal of stopping a terrible underworld uprising. You’ll face off against a large variety of minions of Medusa and other strange, strange creatures, some of which will genuinely have you question what the hell they’re even supposed to be. The game plays similar to Star Fox and other rail shooters during the first five minutes of each level before switching to ground combat, with almost identical controls but with a much larger sense of freedom of movement, as well as much more choices in the ways in which you deal with enemies. The control scheme itself is hard to master but easy to get the general hang of. This is made easier with the free 3DS stand that comes with the game.
What really caught my attention was the amount of customisation and rewards available in Kid Icarus. Weapons can be found throughout levels or bought in exchange for hearts, which are earned for each enemy defeated. Weapons can then be sold back for hearts, or fused together to create more powerful weapons. There are a large variety of weapons, each with their pros and cons and special attributes.
Another great factor of freedom within the game is the ability to adjust the difficulty of each level and bet hearts corresponding to the level of difficulty, providing a great risk/reward scenario, rewarding players who have skill and have crafted good weaponry for themselves to be able to handle the harder monsters.
All of this depth hides under a very cute Nintendo aesthetic and presentation approach, which may deter a lot of more serious gamers, but actually goes a long way in making the game feel unique, with a lot of attention to detail being given to each item, enemy and level.
The single-player has more than enough content to keep me occupied, so I have not even ventured into the plethora of online game modes and extras the game provides, although there seems to be a lot of depth there also, complementing the single player experience and being more than enough to satisfy the competitive gamer urge.
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