COMPUTER GAME: ROCKET LEAGUE (2015)

Rocket League is a game where you are driving around in a rocket-powered car. This car can perform jumps, barrel roles and other maneuvers inside an arena. The goal of this is to play a game of football, hitting a ball around until it goes in the other teams goal and scores your team of 3 cars a point.

At its core, Rocket League is simply a fun game. You are driving around, boosting and jumping to get the ball in cars that look crazy. There is a variety of different arena's with obstacles arranged differently (pits, columns, etc.) to challenge you as well as some different game modes. There are no paywalls, with only cosmetic items being available for purchase (although you unlock one every couple of levels). And there is a wide variety of cosmetic levels and bodies. If everyone is of the same skill level, it can be a fun experience.

The downside is when matchmaking pits you against people of different skill levels (or even your friends, if you don't advance equally in skill). This can be frustrating as they do trick shots and keep getting the ball in no-win situations for you (or vice-versa). Also, the servers lately have been filled with games where players appear to be running bots just to get experience.

Overall, this game is definitely good. A more beginner friendly atmosphere and better matchmaking would help it allot. But it does what it sets out to do- be a fun car-sports game that is a good time. It is also a shame that the game has microtransactions (even if they are just cosmetic) considering Steam still sells it for $20US.

3 out of 5 Rocket Waffles in League.

PC GAME REVIEW: SERENA

Serena is a narrative-driven game. It is quite short, but it was also free (on Steam). I thought its brevity was one of its greatest assets as it told the story it wanted to tell without overstaying its welcome. It took me only around thirty minutes to beat this game, but I considered that time well spent.

Serena is a point-and-click style adventure game. You wake up in a cabin in the woods wondering where Serena is. You then click around to move or examine different items. You also happen to be afflicted with that most common of videogame character traits-amnesia. As you explore different areas of the cabin you uncover more of your past with Serena as well as details about the protagonist, whose name I cannot remember.

The game tells its story entirely from the perspective of the protagonist and his memory as you slowly uncover the mystery. The voice acting is superb as it slowly alters its tone to match how you remember events occurring. The graphics also do a good job of getting across the tone that the designers were trying to go for. Neither the sound nor the graphics needed to be flashy but they did a good job of matching the tone of Serena.

The tone of the game continues to change as you discover that things are not as straightforward as they first seem. Without spoiling how the game progresses and ends too much, it seemed to foreshadow its plot twists and then deliberately invert them. This keeps the game feeling fresh as it moves towards the story’s conclusion as you regain your memory of what transpired.

Overall, Serena is a very good game. Although it is short, it is also free and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It has a very deliberate message and tone that it conveys really well. I definitely enjoyed this as a fan of story-driven games that have a satisfying conclusion.

4 out of 5 amnesiac-waffles.

GAME REVIEW: TORCHLIGHT 2 (PC)

Do you love colourful hack ‘n slash games? Are you a big fan of the Diablo series? Do you like the idea of having a pet goat that can summon zombies and cast fireballs? If so, then I can guarantee that you will love Torchlight 2. While the game isn’t without it’s flaws, Runic Games have managed to craft a tight hack and slash and loot and repeat game that will keep you coming back for just one more dungeon.

Torchlight 2 is the sequel to Torchlight, a game that I have never played. So in effect, I came into this game fresh with only an abiding love of Diablo and Titan Quest. The basic premise of this game is you click to move and attack monsters, loot the map for more powerful equipment, level up your statistics and a skill of your choosing, and then use your newly upgraded character to go attack more powerful monsters and get more powerful loot and even more experience. This may sound like a simple formula but, like most games, it is in this simplicity that all sorts of fun can be had.

From the four classes you can choose from (with the option to change appearances and, shock horror, gender) being Engineer, Embermage, Beserker or Outlander, I chose the Outlander. (because I liked the idea of a dual-pistol slinging cowboy, who I then made female because I could). I also chose a goat as a pet. I then discovered I can teach my goat spells. So I taught him Fireball and Raise Zombie Archers. The inclusion of a pet is genius as you can kit the pet out with spells and items  to cover one of your weaknesses and also send it back to town to sell your loot so you can keep adventuring and looting.

The adventuring and looting are simply fun. The games art-style is semi-cartoony with allot of colorful enemies and locations. Each area has very distinct enemies. From the Netherim (or demons in hell) to the Werewolves that leap out of trees, Torchlight 2 never felt like it was a particularly dark game. It always felt quite bright and colourful while you are zooming around slaying things. One of the definite highlights were the boss battles, as each felt quite epic (even if the difficulty level varied quite a bit). There is nothing quite like running into a teleporter and then fighting a giant beast that takes up half the screen and throws lightning bolts around. I really liked the artistic direction that they took with Torchlight 2 and it helps set it apart from the pack.

Torchlight 2 still had it’s fair share of flaws, however. Among these was quite a varying  difficulty level as you progressed. You could be breezing through an army single-handedly one minute and the next a troll suddenly does 90% damage to you. Even this was somewhat mitigated in that you can just lose a proportion of your gold to instantly respawn. Another frustration was the difficulty in choosing different abilities to use on the fly. This frustration could also be because there were so many abilities that I wanted to us that looked cool but, alas, any more than 2-3 abilities becomes too difficult to use. Mine were Rune Vault, Rapid Fire (with my lovely twin Revolvers, Dante-style), Glaive Throw and Summon Shadowling Brute, which seemed to make allot of the late game bosses quite easy. The difficulty curve on this game definitely felt like it needed a bit more  balance.

These flaws, however, feel like I am just nitpicking. At the end of the day, this is a nice long game that feels like it was crafted with care. The entire game is centred around keeping you engaged and moving, and the mechanics were put there to keep you going through the various beautiful environments. I am sure I haven’t mentioned half the good things in this game (like shared loot, fishing holes for pet upgrades, mods, etc). However, after maybe 16+ hours in the world of Torchlight 2, I am looking forward to diving back in  another 16+ hours with some mods  and a different character. I am thinking Embermage, myself.

4 out of 5 illuminated waffles.

Video Game Review: Desktop Dungeons (PC)

I wake up at 3 a.m., my heart racing. In my mind, I have just thought (or perhaps dreamt of) the solution to a particular puzzle that I had no luck on the previous couple of days. While trying to keep my brain focused on this solution, I boot up my laptop, launch Desktop Dungeons, beat that puzzle and then proceed to play it for another 3 hours because I can (and I am already awake anyway).

Desktop Dungeons is a game that I waited far too long to get, and now it is one of my favourite games. Rogue-like in it's delivery, Desktop Dungeons has 2 parts. Similar to games such as X-Com: Enemy Unknown, there is the base building part where you purchase and upgrade structures, and then there is the dungeon raids. The dungeon raids are played on a square-tiled board (similar to chess) where you move your hero around and kill monsters, gain experience, beat the dungeons boss, and escape with gold.

It is in these dungeon raids where Desktop Dungeons really shines. Each and every dungeon can be thought of as a puzzle. At the beginning, you always start with a level 1 hero of a class and race that you have chosen. Your goal is then to collect loot and gain experience until you are at a high enough level to take on and defeat the boss. There are no pathways to take or orders given, and nothing comes free in a raid. For example, you only regenerate health and mana when exploring new areas, but you want to keep areas unexplored to heal from high level monsters and monsters also heal when you are exploring. It is entirely possible to be at the end of a dungeon in a no-win situation with the boss despite having killed everything else in the dungeon due to poor resource management.

The games art-style is also a winner. Every hero is drawn in an overly cartoony way, and this extends to the villains and monsters as well. The dialogue is written very cleverly and with a very tongue-in-cheek attitude. This gives the game a very light-hearted look (which helps when you are on your fifth attempt at a certain dungeon) which hides the complexity of the game a little bit. Like allot of classic games, Desktop Dungeons is easy to learn but very hard to master.

If you doubt this, try playing it for a few (successful) dungeon raids then watch a friend start playing. As all their little mistakes add up to create an unwinnable situation, I challenge you to keep your mouth closed.

5 out of 5 booby-trapped waffles lying on my desktop.