Review: Reach for the Sun

The last few years have seen a surge in ‘simulation’ games lately, ranging from dating to driving. Reach for the Sun is no different, but instead focuses on the delicate process of growing a plant. Remember Farmville? It’s basically Farmville without the micro-transactions and mass timed crow growing.

Each plant varies in size, hardiness and cost of growing new parts.

To be fair, it’s not like Farmville at all; in any way whatsoever. Reach for the Sun starts you off with the humble Sunflower, a little sprout in the ground. When part of the plant glows, you can click on it to collect resources. Roots collect water and a small amount of nutrients while leaves do the elaborate process of photosynthesis and convert CO2 into starch by using a little bit of water in the process. You’ll use these three resources to grow your plant, adding more roots or growing your plant taller with stalks and leaves. Eventually, you’ll grow the resource-heavy flowers and you’ll need to get them pollinated. Once pollinated, you can transform the flower into precious seeds which act as an in-game currency, and you’ll do all this before the cold embrace of winter freezes your plant into an icicle.

Sometimes you’ll have insects which you need to scare off or kill by repeatedly clicking them, blight-stricken leaves need to be pulled off by clicking and dragging and leaves frozen by a sudden cold-snap need to be rubbed warm by clicking and rubbing with the mouse. That’s pretty much all you’ll do; clicking, lots of clicking. Growing your plant is a coordinated clicking affair, and you only have about ten minutes to get your plant fruiting before winter.

Other than the initial synopsis, there’s not much more to this Plant Simulator. There are four plants to grow, each with increasing difficulty. There is a small shop where you can spend your excess seeds on the four ‘upgrades’ which are simple things like more regular watering or fertilizer for additional nutrients. I completed the entire game, achievements and all in a mere 72 minutes and for the $10 price tag, despite the good quality I felt significantly disappointed by the quantity.

The design is pretty and it plays ok. I had repeated issues with my clicks not registering on several occasions, especially when the game got busy late-stage. This was a real pain since the earlier you click on a glowing root of leaf the more resources you get from it.

Overall, it’s a new idea and it plays well enough, but the price tag is too high for such a small amount of content. Otherwise I would recommend Reach for the Sun as a fun casual filler, and who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.

When Surviving is Everything

Just like the undead, the zombie genre doesn’t seem to go away. I’m not complaining, but I would like to see more sandbox zombie apocalypse survival games. We’ve had a few come out in the last few months like State of Decay and Seven Days to Die, but this little corker has popped up on Steam Early Access and I've very much taken a liking too it.

Project Zomboid is an isometric zombie survival sandbox, and an unforgiving one at that. You’ll have to scavenge for food, supplies and stock up on water before the water and electricity go out…for good. Zombies aren’t a pushover either. It could take only one scratch before you join the zombie hoards, and a bite is a sure (un)death sentence. The other enemy is you; keeping yourself fed, hydrated, well slept and trying not to get sick is all on the table. Even preventing yourself from boredom, depression and insanity requires a delicate management of time and resources.

Sneak, Loot and Fight to survive.

Despite all this, the game gives you fantastic sandbox to play in. Although I will admit the towns are a bit bare, the game has invested a lot of time in making everything require strategy. You’ll need to plan how you’ll break into buildings beforehand in case a horde is waiting for you inside. Your food won’t last forever and you’ll need fruit and vegetable crops which require you to plant a garden and keep it watered. You can even go as far as to build your own stronghold with material you loot around the town.

Although it’s still in early development, there is a great deal of customisation for your sandbox ranging from in-game day time from one day per hour to real-time to what kind of zombies you want, shamblers or do you prefer the sprinting undead? There is still much content to be added, including NPCs and story modes, but right now you have a very playable survival sandbox.

You’re walking a very fine line of survival; one slip will usually mean certain death, which makes this game that much more desperate and enjoyable. You can find it on Steam or check out their page.

Review: Arkham Origins

He’s Batman. What else do you need to say about him? The billionaire playboy turned Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne, has been sitting in comic stardom for over 70 years. DC’s pop culture icon has featured in television series, movies and games and been referenced in even more. With Arkham Origins promising to follow up with a knockout punch from the acclaimed Arkham City, there is certainly more Batman goodness to come.

Origins takes us back to the early years of Bruce’s caped crusades, in fact, it’s only been two years since he started roaming Gotham’s streets at night. Before Catwoman, before Robin, even before Gordon became Police Commissioner. It’s Christmas Eve and with a 50 million dollar bounty put on his head by crime lord Black Mask, eight of the world’s deadliest assassins are on the hunt for the Dark Knight. Add the newly emerging Joker, Anarky and Riddler combined with the long-time entrepreneur Cobblepot and the rotten Gotham Central Police Department, Batman is in for one heck of a long night.

You wouldn't want to go up against either of these two, but I still have my doubts that Batman would always trump Slade, aka Deathstroke

With Rocksteady Studios, creator of Arkham City, moving away from the Batman franchise, it was picked up by Warner Bros. Games Montréal. To be brutally honest, this was probably one of the worst ideas. The studio had little prior experience, and it really shows in their half-hearted attempt at a sequel.

Thankfully, it has some fantastic writing, with much of the dialogue being hard-hitting and gritty, reflecting the Dark Knight’s initial isolation and distrust of just about everyone. While I’m definitely not the expert on Batman lore, the portrayal in the Arkham series continues to show how Bruce has evolved as both himself and as the Dark Knight. Torn between his ideals and the harsh reality, Origins amazingly portrays the struggle that Bruce has with himself and the connections he has with new-found enemies, especially the Joker.

It’s also great to see some fantastic faces in the series. Black Mask, Deadshot, Deathstroke and Bane just to name a few, while also featuring some unique, but lesser known characters. Unfortunately, this is where most of the praise ends.

Combat is slightly more refined, but it's still difficult to use gadgets in combat and achieve that perfect score.

Arkham Origins is heavily based off Arkham City; in fact I’d go as far to say it is the same game with a different skin. There are precious few additions to the toolkit, and as a prequel, has the age-old of issue of better gear in the past. The Ice Grenade from City is the Glue Grenade in Origins and serves as the exact same item. There is the new Line Gun which I personally found a little overpowered, taking out enemies in predator encounters with ease. The addition of the Shock Gloves in combat was one of the most unique items, which serves as a game-changer with its unblockable attacks and instant knockdown on most enemies.

The combat is mostly unchanged, but some encounters have a better mix of enemies types for more challenge, but sometimes just a sheer increase in enemy numbers. In one particular combat, I was fighting over twenty assailants with a whole mix of weapons. I still had a great deal of problems using gadgets in combat, sometimes they didn’t respond, but most of the time I accidentally put explosive gel on the floor and then had no idea how to set it off.

You now have much more territory to roam, with a large portion of Gotham City open and not surrounded by water or fortress-style walls. The area is split into two sides, connected by a large bridge, which is both slow and boring to try and cross, especially when the game repeatedly directs you from one side to the other for missions. There are fast-travel points you can use via the bat-jet, but as an advocate against fast-travel in games, even I was inclined to use them just to break the monotony of crossing that bridge. That aside, although a storm warning supposedly has all the civilians inside, the city still feels very empty, with only hardened criminals and corrupt cops roaming the streets. The indoor locations were nicely detailed, and it was good to have a roam around the bat-cave, but many areas suffered from over-cluttering and confusing design. On several occasions I would wander around in detective vision to try and figure out where I needed to go. Many grapple or hanging points were just lost in the mass of objects within a room.

Much of Gotham City is recognizable from Arkham City, but there is a good deal more to explore, despite its emptiness.

I was playing Arkham Origins on PS3, and I encountered several glitches and bugs during the course of the game. While traversing the city, there were several occasions where I experienced a significant frame drop for a short period. These were irregular and inconsistent, so the exact cause I couldn’t say, but it is a very unusual occurrence on a console to experience such a severe drop such as these. I also experienced some game-breaking bugs that required me to manually restart from a checkpoint. These ranged from being unable to grapple to points after a cutscene to doors failing to open after a fight. I even managed to kill an enemy during a predator encounter, but he still managed to survive and then continued to look for me although the encounter was over. Fortunately, the game registered him dead and I couldn’t interact with him anyway, so it let me proceed. One of the most frustrating bugs I had was while searching for the Enigma transmitters and data packs. After finding a transmitter or data pack, then letting it save and quitting the game, upon my return I discovered that the game had not saved that I had done that item, but had still removed it from the map. By this point, I had finished everything else in the game and did not have the willpower to attempt to look for them one by one myself or with a guide.

If you enjoyed Arkham City, then you’ll enjoy this too, because it’s the same game. This isn’t so much a step forward for the series as it is a slight shuffle sideways, but there is some entertainment to have, and considering its cheaper retail price it’s still worth picking up, but maybe from the bargain bin or pre-owned instead.