Game Review: Love you to Bits

Seb's latest obsession is Nova the robot.  We love her to bits.  And the crazy thing is, she's not even in the game much, because at the start of it she's BLOWN INTO TINY PIECES BY THE EVIL DR EROS!!  Yes, we've just finished Love you to Bits (PEGI-7).  What a wonderful little game!  Well worth the £3.79 it currently costs on Google Play, plus it goes into your family library so that you can all play it.  And it looks totally amazing on our new Samsung Tab S2.  (In fact, I'd recommend you play it on a tablet if possible, it's a bit small on a phone to spot all the details.)

LOL I just realised I sound like I'm doing a lot of product placement.  I'm not getting paid for this.  Honest.  ;-)

The game's a point and click puzzle adventure.  Generally you can solve the puzzles by wandering backwards and forwards picking up everything and checking to see if you can then use the things you've just picked up.  Sometimes, though, you have to do things in a certain order to progress.  And some of the levels definitely had us stumped for quite a while.  And we did not find all the extra collectables.  Boo hoo.

The premise is that Dr Eros (evil dinosaur scientist), who created Nova, attacks at the beginning of the game and blows her apart.  You (as her boyfriend) then have to find all the pieces and reassemble her.  Also, you can collect objects that contain her memories, and feed them back into her.  All her memories can be accessed via the computer she's hooked up to, and can be watched over and over.  They're cute little animated stories.  Some are very funny, and some tug at the ol' heartstrings.  

Reassembling Nova and giving her her memories back

So, in each level you're on a different planet; you have one part of Nova you have to find, and a couple of memories.  When you obtain the piece of Nova you can teleport back to your ship and see your progress, and watch any memories you've found.  Gradually you get more and more invested in both Nova and Kosmo.  We really wanted to get them back together, despite the sticky issues surrounding robot/human relationships.  (We aren't going into that with Seb.  But hey.  Blade Runner.  That's all I have to say about that.)

It's hard to say what my favourite level was.  'Matter of Perspective' was clever, with lots of platforms you had to rotate around to get to different sections of the level.  It took a lot of thought.  And 'A Dungeon in Panels' was fun since you wandered from comic book panel to comic book panel, becoming larger and smaller as you did so.  That said, there are a few moments I found a bit questionable.  For instance you do kill some people.  'Trapped in the Lab' is a sort of evil lab where they're doing some sort of crazy monster construction, but is it right to kill people who work there so that you can put your girlfriend back together?  I really don't know.  But perhaps I'm overthinking things...

I should also mention the music.  When we first played the game, Seb said the music at the start was the saddest he'd ever heard.  Great compositions - they add such a lot to the atmosphere of the game.  Despite its cartoony graphics it has a lot of depth to it.  

Totally recommended!  Great fun to play together as a family.  It took all our brains to complete it.  :-D

Video - Crypt of the Necrodancer REAL VOICE!

We discovered Nicolas Daoust tonight and it was the funniest (and best) thing we've seen in ages!  Seb's been crazy obsessed about Crypt of the Necrodancer (PEGI-12) lately. Our house is covered in A3 paintings of all the monsters in Stage 1. And it turns out that this crazy Canadian has been doing REAL VOICE versions of the songs in the game! Perhaps this isn't as funny to most people as it was to us.  But hey.  It made us smile.  :-)

I love that the internet means people who like to do these mad things can be discovered and applauded.  Kudos, man!

January 2019 PS Plus Goodies!

With not long left now until PS Plus stops supplying us with PS3/Vita games (which tend to be more kid friendly), this month's offerings are actually pretty family friendly!  I speak particularly of Portal Knights and Amplitude...

The complete line-up is:

Steep (PS4) (PEGI-12)
Portal Knights (PS4) (PEGI-7)
Zone of the Enders (PS3) (PEGI-12)
Amplitude (PS3) (PEGI-3)
Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion (PS Vita & PS4) (PEGI-12)
Super Mutant Alien Assault (PS Vita) (PEGI-16)

Not that interested in Steep (some snowboarding game or something), or most of the others, to be honest, but Portal Knights (PEGI-7), aargh, this is sucking my life away..!!!  It is a little reminiscent of Minecraft, in that you mine blocks and can build houses etc from them, or nerd pole, but it's much more of a traditional RPG.  A catastrophe split the world into 48 floating islands, which you travel between using portals.  You have to roam around, killing monsters and completing quests.  There are three classes to choose from (warrior, ranger or mage).  As you go through the game you put points into your basic traits (the usual strength, dexterity, etc), so you can make yourself a sort of paladin if you put some points into intelligence as well as strength (to give yourself more mana).  Every five levels you get to choose a special ability.  It's a game with a great sense of humour (the pirates are pretty hilarious), and a good introduction to the genre for younger players who are probably already familiar with Minecraft.  I've certainly been enjoying it.  You can also play online with your friends, if you want to, and there's a two-player split screen co-op mode.  Definitely one to download if you've got younger kids.  Hooray!

Cultists - they're always up to no good...

The other game I'm excited about, despite it being a few years old, is Amplitude (PEGI-3).  I have now totally confused myself, since I wondered why it was only the PS3 version, searched for the PS4 version and it was showing as free, so I clicked to get it, and it seems to have cost me nothing, but now it's showing as £15.99.  I have no idea what has happened.  Hmm.  Anyway, it's a Harmonix rhythm game and I haven't played it before, so I'm excited.  I spent many happy hours of my life playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and Seb's keen on games where music plays a big part, so we'll certainly be playing this.  At its most basic level, it's a game where you fly a ship along a lane and shoot cells, but like its relatives, it's a reaction game where you play it without knowing what your brain is really doing.  It's pure reaction, getting lost in the music.  I love Harmonix...  You can play against friends or there's a team vs. mode - it supports 1-4 players.  Woot!

Christmas Presents!

Christmas is pretty much over, then - nearly 6th Jan.  I'm sure, like us, plenty of you got some new games for Christmas.  Or if not for Christmas, you probably bought some stuff in the ubiquitous 'sales'.

Our big real world/video game crossover present was the Pokemon trading card set that Seb bought Dad, though we did end up buying another deck and some boosters in the excellent Argosy toyshop in Southend.  I ordered the Alolan Sandshrew and Alolan Ninetales Sun & Moon trainer kit.  You get two mini decks of 30 cards and a game to play through (with the cards in a particular order).  Great way to learn the game.  Then I downloaded the TCG onto the PC (PEGI-7) and gave that a go.  Definitely be playing a bit more of this, and it was fun to play in real life as well.  We don't play enough games together.  ;-)

Seb also got a bunch of Pokemon plushies, some sort of Pokemon in a pokeball, and a Pokemon encyclopaedia.  Our favourite plushie is Litten because he has FACE HANDS!!!

He has FACE HANDS!!!!!

Seb bought me Unravel 2 (PEGI-7) on the PS4.  This is (obviously) the sequel to the excellent game Unravel, which I enjoyed very much.  The big difference is that the game is now a two-player co-op game!  Hooray!  It does take some serious co-operation if you play with a friend, though.  Otherwise you can press triangle to switch between your two yarnies.  The art in this is breathtaking, the music is haunting, the puzzles are tricky but it's possible to work them out in the end.  I haven't finished it yet but what I've played so far is, though perhaps not AS good as the first game, still perfectly capable of sucking you in.  I'm not sure what the story behind it is, yet, but there are some eerie memories going on in the background...

We also ended up with a few new games on the Switch.  First of all there's Crypt of the Necrodancer (PEGI-12).  This was out a few years ago on PC, but only arrived on the Switch in 2018.  It's the only game I've ever played like this - it's hilarious!  But also quite hard...  The music is an integral part of the game.  You have to move on the beat of the music, and if you do you get a multiplier.  When the song ends you move to the next level.  When you get to the shopkeeper he sings along with the music.  It's pixel arty, toe-tapping fun.  And what's more it's two-player co-op again.  Hooray!

Necrodancing!

Second new Switch game is Dead Cells (PEGI-16).  I'm not going to say much about this since as a 16 certificate it's heading outside what I want to talk about here.  Also, I haven't played it yet!  But Dad has played it a fair bit over Christmas and he says it's good.  (I've also heard it's good from numerous other 'top indie game lists', so it must be, right?)

Thirdly Dad bought Into the Breach (PEGI-12), which he says it just like playing Pacific Rim.  If you like little mechs, this game might be for you...

He also bought himself at least one game on Steam - Enter the Gungeon (PEGI-7).  This is a dungeon crawler, and another one of those games that's been on the 'top indie game lists' for 2018.  It's a bullet hell, rogue like, boss-filled game.  More pixel art.  Good stuff.  :-)

I don't know why Dad bought the last one on the PC when he'd been going Switch crazy.  Though he did get a £10 Steam voucher for Christmas, so maybe he was spending that.

Oddly, Seb's favourite present on the day was a Hollow Knight keyring!  He also spend some of his Christmas money on the two Hollow Knight soundtracks, which he made me burn onto CDs.  He's still old school.

Hope you all had a good Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR!