Geekly Review #261

15 days till Christmas, woo! We’ve been playing plenty of games to pass the time, Here’s a roundup of the week.

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

I made a start to Mutant Year Zero on Friday. I’ve been following the game for a while and have been looking forward to getting my hands on it. I didn’t get as much time on it this weekend as I would have liked, but the time spent of it so far has been very enjoyable.

Control wise (playing PS4 version) it’s pretty simple to pick up and the options for selecting your load out and improving weapons is all again simple enough and explained well.

I’ve just investigated Hammons cabin and am now moving onto the crash site, I’ve also got a 3rd recruit join the team now Selma. Having an extra person with some fire power has been greatly appreciated as the battles with ghouls on route seem to be coming more frequently now.

Enjoyable experience from what I’ve played so far, on we continue to rescue Hammon and reach Eden.

Big Crown: Showdown

A game that’s not out till the 15th, but review embargo lifted this morning so I’m free to talk about it. There will be a review and video review out very shortly.

This game is hilarious, there will be more detail in the review, but Big Crown: Showdown is a multiplayer party / battle game in which you aim to reach 20 points to become the bearer of the crown. You attain these 20 points by battling your friends on an ever moving map and aim to bash them off the map. Each player has 5 lives and once the lives are lost they’re out of that level. You can reach the end of the level, and if you do, any lives you have remaining go towards your tally as you try to reach 20 points.

We played this game in local multiplayer for hours, and we all had a great laugh playing. Be sure to check out the reviews that’ll be out later today.

Fun on the Switch

After our session with Big Crown, we moved onto the Nintendo Switch and played some more local multiplayer on some games I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing lately.

I introduced my friends to Nidhogg 2. While I was battling one friend the other looked on puzzled and didn’t seem entirely keen. I passed the joycon over to him so he could battle it out and his opinion of the game changed dramatically. There was a lot of laughing and noise from us as we continued to play many rounds of this game, switching players after rounds so we’d all have a chance to play. I’ve said in the review that this game is truly about multiplayer, and we had some great fun playing it.

We then moved onto Rockets Rockets Rockets. While we expected the pace to slow down a bit now, we were wrong and the noise continued to be as loud as previous games as we played 3 player battles. The pumping sound track also helped to keep us in the mood too. Another game that impressed after being played. You can read our thoughts on Rockets Rockets Rockets here.

The Game Awards

And in the early hours of Friday morning I stayed up and watched The Game Awards with great anticipation. The show had built up a tremendous amount of hype, and justifiably so, the show as a success in my opinion with some great new game reveals and some very deserving awards being handed out. Some highlights for me were SonicFox winning best Esports player and God of War winning game of the year. The pop for it was surreal as by this point Red Dead 2 seemed to be winning every award that it and God of War were nominated for.

As for the reveals, we didn’t get that Metroid Prime 4 or Metroid Trilogy for Switch, but we got a surprising reveal for Smash Bros and the incredibly anticipated Crash Team Racing reveal.

It looks like the Epic Game Store paid some good money for promotion here too, as sadly some great game reveals were to be launching first on Epic Game Store, and a highly anticipated Play Anywhere Xbox Game Pass game Ashen was removed from Play Anywhere and shoe horned to the Epic Game Store and Xbox only. Slightly disappointing as I had been discussing with Will about picking up game pass during its £1 promotion to play Ashen on my PC.

Never mind, still some great reveals you can see here, and if interested in the full list of winners, you can find them here.

 – Murr

Ashen

One of my most anticipated games of this year has finally released! 

Ashen is a 3rd person skilled based action RPG, a lot of people are calling it a ‘Souls Like’ and it’s easy to see why. It’s got stamina based combat, a similar death system to Dark Souls and has some tough combat that will take time to master. I’ve managed to spend a little bit of time playing and put together a video on my YouTube channel of the opening few minutes. So far I’m really impressed with it. 

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

I too have been playing Mutant Year Zero and I too have been following it for quite some time. Normally I’m not in to these turn based tactical games like X-COM etc… But there is just something about the style of MYZ that I really liked and that was enough to make me want to play it. 

I’m in a similar situation as Murr, I’ve only played for around an hour – partly due to my PC breaking over the weekend. But so far I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played. 

The setting seems really interesting, and the general world lore is cool. I’ve only met two of our protagonists so far but I already really like them and their dynamic with each other. The Duck kind of reminds me of Rocket Raccoon in that he’s a bit of a loose cannon and just wants to kill stuff. They both seem like interesting characters and have really helped me get in to the game in the early stages. 

As I said, normally I’m not in to these tactical combat games, but I’ve found that so far the combat has been pretty good fun. You can single out targets that are wondering around and take them down quietly without alerting others, it’s a good way to thin the numbers and turn the tide of a fight in your favour. A few times this hasn’t worked out for me, but so far I’ve managed to prevail in all of my gun fights, albeit only just in a few cases.

I’m really looking forward to playing more and if you want to read my full thoughts then keep an eye out for the review. I need to get my PC fixed first though….

-Will