Rock Boshers DX: Switch Review
Developed and Published by Tikipod
With the Switch becoming ever more popular day by day its no surprise indie developers are starting to re-release a lot of their work onto the system. Developer Tikipod released Aqua Kitty UDX to Switch earlier this year, a game well suited to Nintendo’s hybrid handheld. Now it’s time for Rock Boshers DX to gets turn in the Switch spotlight. Both myself and Fred reviewed Rock Boshers for PS4 and PS vita and after reading the reviews again I feel everything is still relevant to how I feel about the game today. That review can be found here.
Aqua Kitty minigame
Rock Boshers DX is a love letter to the micro computer days of video games. A time where several video games were developed – some in bedrooms apparently – it was a time where you would see all sorts of crazy game ideas but as the years progressed and consoles became more popular video games became more focused and everyone decided Zelda was the best game ever, the end. Okay, that’s not exactly what happened, but Rock Boshers DX also likes to play with history. You play as Young Victoria in a steam punk future set in 1880. Victoria finds a nice hat that disguises her then decides to head to Mars. After being forced to work in the mines and “bosh” some rocks, your goal is to escape and find a way home and possibly bump into Charles Darwin a few times as you do. The story is just brilliant and your curiosity to what will happen next will carry you through the games 24 stages. Once you’ve finished with the story you also have four arcade style games to enjoy which are unlocked by collecting tea, scone and cheese collectibles in the main game. Not sure I know any other game that uses this as a collectible.
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom Review
Developer: Game Atelier Publisher: FDG Entertainment
Monster Boy is the spiritual sequel to the Wonder Boy franchise, a series Sega has left dormant since 1994. These games were hugely important to me growing up and hold a very special place in my heart. I probably love the Wonder Boy series how people love the Zelda series except without dressing up as one of the characters (real chain mail is expensive). For me it has been a very long wait for a sequel spiritual or otherwise. We have since seen a few re-releases of the previous games on multiple digital platforms. In 2017 developer Lizardcube gave us a beautiful remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap. Originally we were going to see Monster Boy release that same year but developer Game Atelier decided to halt for a final year to polish up the gameplay and completely redo the graphics. Its been almost five years of development for the team, was the wait worth it?
On booting up the game you’re greeted with an impressive anime style cutscene which gives you a preview of the enemies you will be fighting and the animals you will be playing as. The song playing is also awfully addictive and it hasn’t left my brain since I heard it at E3 this year. You play as Jin, a young chap with blue hair whose uncle appears to be up to no good changing the people of Monster World into animals as well as having a potential drinking problem. It’s not long into the story when your Uncle turns you into pig dressed in pirate gear (a nod to my favourite NPC in The Dragons Trap). You soon learn that to lift the curse you need to collect five magical orbs scattered across various dark corners of Monster World. The story comes with a few twists and turns and inevitably ends up as a typical save the world type tale. What makes this story stand out however, is its sense of humour. All the characters speak with text boxes including Jin himself and won’t shy away from making a witty joke about the current situation. Right up to the games darkest turns it was hard not to laugh at some of the games witty attempts at humour. The story is straight forward to follow and doesn’t really get in the way of your adventuring. Should you need to repeat sections of the story the game does allow you to skip them.
GHX Ep 37: Lung Cookie
This week Fred is under the weather, but that doesn’t stop him and Trees from talking Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and a bunch of talk about Raiden V along with the entire Raiden franchise.
GHX Ep. 36: Couple Sega Fanboys
This week Fred and Trees open with a discussion about The Quiet Man before moving on to online retro gaming hunts and the joys of recapturing your childhood.
GHX Ep. 35: Auction Sites on Halloween
Fred and Trees are joined by guest Chase from the Scarcasm podcast to talk about the spookiest, best day of the year. What starts off as a round robin of horror games ends up in a lengthy discussion about the just released Call of Cthulhu game. Eventually Trees gets to chime in and down the rabbit hole everyone plunges as the discussion of high demand retro games is had.
Call of Cthulhu (2018) Review
The works of H.P. Lovecraft are a great source for horror with the cold American East Coast being a predominant backdrop for the mysteries of the sea, secret cults, ancient gods, and of course the fragility of the human condition. I’ve always felt these works lend themselves to the written word much better than other media due to the way Lovecraft tends to portray things with suggestions of the indescribable and the subjective way a person’s perspective can twist reality. This is also why in gaming form I find the pen and paper RPG Call of Cthulhu captures the essence of these works because the entire game is much like its source material: interactive works of written (or scripted) fiction. The challenge faced with video games the challenge of taking the themes of Lovecraft and turning them into a form of gameplay that is both realistic and enjoyable. While a few attempts at Call of Cthulhu – a name that is used more for its notoriety and less for an actual connection to the short story – have been made, no studio has really been able to nail the gameplay part. No matter how much I respect the old Infogrames adventure games or Dark Corners of the Earth, all of the Call of Cthulhu titles require caveats when recommending them. As much as I had hoped developer Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu game, based on Chaosium’s aforementioned pen and paper RPG, would break the mold it fails to overcome the gameplay challenge yet again. Fortunately it oozes the dark and twisted world that is so unmistakably Lovecraft that you may excuse the gaming faults for overall experience.
Horror Obscura 2018: Dark Castle (Mega Drive/Genesis)
In the past Horror Oscura I have explored games which are focused around horror and the use of horror in games you would not class as a horror title. This year I wanted to go back to my childhood and re-visit one of my biggest horrors: Dark Castle on the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in North America).
Back in my childhood I was scanning the cheapest of the used Mega Drive titles in the retailer “GAME” on the South Coast of England when I came a came across Dark Castle. This was back in the 90s, I saved up my cash long and hard to treat myself to a video game. At a young age I was drawn to dark themes and games that just weren’t well known so Dark Castle, matched that category. Looking at the box now though one may question what I was thinking. The front of the box has a gargoyle on it stuck like old Clip Art on a background of a castle entrance. Not particularly appealing. The back of the box quotes, “climb the ramparts of the Dark Castle and dethrone the Black Knight.” An interesting quote but not a lot to go on. Keep in mind in the UK the back of the box often had a very short description of the game in multiple European languages. The instruction manual also included translation for 6 European languages. Flipping the back of the box over I guess it was the screen shots that appealed. Pictures of a eyeball creatures with hands, zombies looking monsters. Back then the game cost me £12.99 (the price sticker is still on my copy to this day), some may consider that a horror to itself.
So what is this game about? Dark Castle is a 2D adventure platformer. The game is presented as single screen levels most of which you just need to reach the end to survive. Some will require you to solve some head scratching puzzles. As young Duncan your objective is pretty simple: defeat the Dark Knight. However, to do this you need to complete three quests as outlined in the instruction manual titled “Trouble,” “Fireball,” and “Shield.” Completing the latter two will give you a item that will help you in your quest, more on these later. When you begin the game you are literally presented with four doors. Two doors have a “?” the other two “BK” with a shield. BK of course stands for Black Knight. If you are brave enough you could just attempt to take on the Black Knight and finish the game super fast, this goes against what the instructions advises but it can be done. Not so easy if you choose the Hard difficulty setting though. If you go in blind in the game you just have a choose a door and hope for the best.
GHX Ep 34: Stupid Fun and Horrible Clothes
This week Fred and Trees are talking a lot of racing games, including Forza Horizon 4. Sprinkled in are other recent releases such as Dragon Quest XI and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
The Council Episode 4: Burning Bridges Review
If you have not read our review containing the previous episodes, it’s highly recommended as it’s not only referenced, but we may not discuss many of the mechanics present in previous episodes. This was to prevent redundant comments and move directly into the changes in the current episode. Eventually the link above will serve as the location for all episode reviews. This review contains no spoilers.
Going into episode 4 of The Council I had absolutely no expectations. The story was stagnant, the character development was marred by writing away plot holes with twins and the supernatural, and the gameplay was almost flat out boring. I had grown tired of Louis and this fun alternative take on history because it seemed like the development team was out of ideas. What started as an experiment in alt history along with a modern take on the adventure genre had become a series of fetch quests surrounding a main, but rock solid, puzzle with all plot points stressing answers to “a mystery.” I didn’t think there was anything developer Big Bad Wolf could put in as an explanation that would live up to this fabled mystery. In that regard, I will admit I was wrong, because Episode 4 throws you a massive curve ball and begins to answer questions left and right. Events transpire at a lightening pace compared to what we’ve seen previously and some major events are given out like candy. It also was apparently a good time to introduce a whole new mechanic that seems to heavily null some of the old mechanics, and the confrontation system has become a minefield for your usable resources. The whole game was dialed up to 11 and it all seemed rushed out, which I’m betting it was. While I have to admit I enjoyed playing through Episode 4, it’s frantic attempt to get things back on track came at the expense of it’s largest asset: the previous episodes no longer matter.
GHX Episode 33: Done with Summer
This week there’s plenty of discussion about Fall, which leads to Halloween, which always leads to horror movies when Fred’s involved. Once jumping to video games things shift to the Extra Life 2018 fundraiser, then Trees’ casino nights and video games, and finally a discussion on the Playstation Classic.
Gaming History 101 