Stealth

Thank you No Gravity Games for sending us a review code!

God is dead, and someone or something killed Him. That’s one way to start a narrative. Alder’s Blood immediately separates itself from other games with a daring premise. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting but instead of the current state of the world being caused by nuclear warfare or invasion, it is by a “plague” of sorts caused by God’s death. Dark beasts of all manners lurk throughout the wasteland and humanity is barely clinging onto survival. The only thing stopping The Darkness from taking over everything are “hunters”; beings that are not fully human and skip between the edges of both light and darkness.

Alder’s Blood is a turn-based strategy game with stealth elements and mechanics. Unlike many strategy games where you control a group of powerhouses slaying armies with little effort, you’re both outmanned and outmatched from the beginning. The creatures of The Darkness are plentiful and can overpower you very easily. As to them, humans and hunters alike are mere prey to the beasts and are forced to use their wits and a stealthy approach to either eliminate the beasts, sneak past them, or bring them to a knocked down and vulnerable state. Enemies can be instantly killed in this state as the character under your control is enveloped in a shadowy figure and can perform an execution, but using said feature also brings the individual closer to madness.

Battles take place on a grid, all controlled via mouse. Much of the playing field is covered in darkness so one is unable to see any enemies beyond plain sight. Fortunately, there are many hiding spots littered across the field, such as tall grass, to help keep out of sight. Utilizing the tall grass and obstructions to deliver fatal blows is key to victory. For those familiar with the strategy genre, you may notice that a good amount of quality-of-life features as missing, such as an undo button to revert any decisions made. This may have been a purposeful design choice due to the stealth mechanics, but as misclicks can and will happen, a large mistake can mean a mission restart. It is completely fair that being spotted or uncovering more of the map should be a permanent choice but there are other moments where nothing of note happens in the decision and you are still otherwise punished for it as it cannot be reverse.

A stamina bar is one of the main features of Alder’s Blood as every action is determined by it. Every character has a set number of spaces they can move but can expend their stamina to move even further. Stamina is also used to attack, with stamina being replenished after your next turn. Poor usage of stamina can leave the characters in an exhausted state, which makes them unable to take any further action until the following turn. Exhausting your stamina isn’t always a bad thing as it can get you out of range of dangerous foes or be used to kill a threatening enemy, just make sure that you are in a safe spot before doing so.

Outside of battles is where resource management takes place. Your group can set up camp to replenish supplies, heal up after battle, craft new weapons, take on missions, and travel to other areas. This is where you can also conduct a ritual sacrifice to those who fully succumb to the madness. The character is killed off while passing down their knowledge (experience) to the recipient. The resource management isn’t the most in-depth but is just a form of micromanaging to keep in mind, almost giving it an “Oregon Trail” feeling, except much more grim.

The world of Alder’s Blood is a very dreary and dull setting—and rightfully so. The graphics are similar to games such as “Darkest Dungeon” (a 2D roguelike RPG with gritty hand-drawn 2D graphics and gothic aesthetics) and the design of the characters and world are a mixture of dark Victorian and the American frontier. The sky is bathed in a permanent red and the overall world is dry. The music accompanies the setting with sounds that are taken directly from a horror film. The unsettling instrumentals make the hopeless setting feel even more hopeless. On the contrary, the sound effects from the creatures themselves could use some work. The werewolves, in particular, are pretty laughable and can take you out of the feeling of dread as quickly as the atmosphere puts you in.

Blasphemy in Alder’s Blood is done differently than from other games (at least from what I’ve witnessed). Many would take the easy way and simply use God’s name in vain. Alder’s Blood approaches it differently. As stated in the beginning, God is dead, not “a” god, “the” God and the world is left in a very unfortunate state. With Him no longer around to protect and guide humanity, people’s worst fears have become a reality. With people barely clinging on to life while being mercilessly hunted down and slaughtered, this has caused a lot of individuals to lose their faith in God, with many believing that this whole situation is Him punishing humanity, while others simply gave up on Him ever coming back. Not every character is like this as there are a few characters that still hold on to their faith.

Other things to look out for are language, ranging from mild swears like “d*mn” to stronger swears like “bulls**t.” As expected, blood and gore are shown with some animations and stills being rather graphic in nature. One graphic illustration depicts a person's skin melting off of their body and it is as grisly as it sounds. There are also a lot of supernatural creatures ranging from vampires and werewolves to ghouls and other sorts of monsters and beasts. One creature, in particular, resembles a human-shaped female. Although nothing graphic is shown, the creature is depicted as topless.

The mixture of both stealth and turn-based tactics manages to work out well for itself as it presents a unique experience. There are some minor glitches here and there (none of them are game-breaking and are very easily fixed by simply saving and reloading the file) and controls can be a bit finicky in some places. Camera control is a bit too precise as it requires the mouse to be right at the edge of the screen, making it so that not playing in fullscreen is more trouble than it’s worth. As of its current state, Alder’s Blood shows off a lot of promise to the hardcore lovers of these particular genres and even has an “Ironman” mode for those who want it even harder—making it so that every decision is permanent. The nature of Alder’s Blood will probably turn away this general reading audience, but if you’re able to move past it and are a fan of strategy or stealth games, you’ll want to keep an eye out for this one.

To many Americans there is a mystical quality to the years of the American Revolution: the men and women who participated in the founding of America shed blood and tears as their lives were torn asunder in the name of something greater than themselves. Their names have become as legend, their beliefs and positions hotly debated by different political factions as the years have progressed, and society changed with that progression.

Into this cauldron Ubisoft Montreal has leapt, and willingly, with its latest Assassin's Creed game, the fifth in as many years. In Assassin's Creed 3, they promised an evolution for the series, necessary since Assassin's Creed: Revelations launched to questionable quality and faltering mechanics. The series as a whole is built on a now-aging framework, and as of Revelations desperately needed an update.

To the point: Assassin's Creed 3 is not the game that provides that update.

There are some frankly brilliant sequences here, and the story takes risks that demonstrate Ubisoft's willingness to play with its characters and audiences. This is not new for the company, nor for this franchise. For a series born from the ashes of a Prince of Persia reboot, it is entirely unsurprising (see the Sands of Time trilogy and the 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia for more on this, but know that those games, for all of their faults, featured masterfully executed plot threads that resonate even today). 

For most of the game, players don the now-trademark Assassin gear as Connor (real name, Ratonhnhaké:ton), a half-British member of the Iroquois Confederation, specifically a tribe of Mohawk. That's part of where Ubisoft takes risks here. The other part is that you don't even play as Connor, let alone meet him, until a good six hours in.

To that end, Assassin's Creed 3 delivers more of the same gameplay throughout. However, because of the setting, things feel different: instead of darting across rooftops (as in previous games), players find themselves taking to the streets. This was never one of the highlights of the series, and serves to illustrate some of the main problems with the franchise as a whole.

The first Assassin's Creed game, released in 2007, used crowds as a form of stealth: the idea was that an assassin could blend into the crowd, kill his mark, and disappear into a group of strangers. I can remember only one or two sequences where this was functionally relevant, and those came from the still-brilliant Assassin's Creed 2. The following games lessened crowds and provided more open terrain to move across, which has always been a point of tedium in this series. The third numbered entry in the series has an expansive map, with towering trees to climb, animals to hunt, and sizeable cities to explore, but the game never feels as revelatory as Assassin's Creed 2, the zenith of the series as a whole, and that is ultimately its undoing.

This isn't for lack of trying. There are some incredibly impressive things at work here, not the least of which is the world in which the game takes place. As Connor, taking part in major moments in history seems designed to captivate the player, and for the most part, this is successful. Whether leading troops at the Battle of Concord, charging across a smoke-clogged battlefield during the Siege of Charleston, or taking part in the Boston Massacre, most of the moments here feel completely natural: you aren't necessarily a centerpiece, or even vital, but Connor feels integrated into the history. But then a moment comes along with Connor leading Paul Revere on his ride, or taking control at the Boston Tea Party, and everything feels somehow off. This isn't a story about the Crusades, something more or less unknown to everyone outside of the most astute of history lovers, nor is it a story about the Renaissance, which seems so far removed. Instead, taking part in something more recent, even if it was over two hundred years ago, even if it is consistently misinterpreted and mythologized by both major sides of America's current sociopolitical divide, ends up feeling pedantic and forced, and destroys any suspension of disbelief that the story attempts to provide.

This is heightened by the lack of characterization in Connor, especially compared to Ezio, the protagonist from Assassin's Creed 2 and its sequels. Ezio was empathetic, strong, stoic; Connor is rash, ambitious, and quick to anger. It tends to feel like the designers took their time with Ezio, knowing that they had two more installments to tell his story, and rushed Connor's development, which is out of step with the tone established at the beginning of the game.

The unevenness exemplified by the story and characterizations persists through the rest of the game, as well. Game-breaking bugs apparently existed alongside Jefferson, Adams, and Washington, and their existence was a blight upon the otherwise fascinating history of the Revolution. The sprawl of New England, as presented by Assassin's Creed 3, circa the late-1700s, is a gorgeous mess, at once impossible to ignore even as the rough edges show themselves so miserably. One chase sequence in particular, towards the end of the game, took me almost two hours to get through. This wasn't because of difficulty. One moment, an unpredictable blast would send Connor careening to the side. Mission failed. The next, a false ledge on an otherwise climbable box would stop all progress, as Connor attempted to jump through the box and landed, yes, on the box on which he was still standing.

For a major title from a major studio, in 2012, this is a problem. This is the end of the lifecycle of the current console generation. PC games are reaching heretofore-unseen heights. I have seen indie games with more stability than this game has. Ubisoft is a big publisher; like Bethesda, they need to start acting like it. Yes, Assassin's Creed 3 is a large game, and yes, large games have their fair share of problems, but Assassin's Creed 3 is rife with them.

Removed from gripes of story and brokenness, combat is still wonderfully frustrating, a bloody dance when things move correctly. As in prior series entries, rhythm is more important than precision; wisely recognizing this, the developers simplified the controls and the contextual prompts as previously displayed. This is where Assassin's Creed 3 flows, where it works beautifully. It isn't what sticks with me about the game, but it's what I remember as really working. Here is the most perfect rendition of the series' much-maligned combat system. It is perhaps more violent and gory than previously, which is as questionable a decision as any made here. Certain sequences made my stomach churn, just because of how grisly they seemed. 

Assassin's Creed 3 is predictably gorgeous, and the sound design is lovely. Former series composer Jesper Kyd, however, is missed; nothing equaling the score from the first three games is present here, and to be sure, no one necessarily expected that to be the case given Kyd's limited involvement in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Voice acting, on the other hand, is a noted high mark, with only the writing as opposed to the delivery giving pause. This isn't saying much after the consistently strong writing present in the Assassin's Creed 2 games, but there's a problem when you can pinpoint a character's grating presence as more a result of the script than anything else.

And what of the world, packed with things to do before and after the main story is complete? The amount of content on display here rivals Rockstars' Grand Theft Auto games, or Volition's Saints Row series, simply in diversity, even if most of it isn't uniformly excellent. The naval combat is a highlight: I found myself running through all the sailing missions, just to experience them. Somehow, through some strange meeting of the minds, Ubisoft Montreal managed to create a game that evokes equal parts Master & Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean. Dodging cannon fire over a surging sea is enthralling, as are raiding cliffside fortifications and hunting rogue vessels through a mist-covered, rock-filled shallows.

As mentioned above, there is a lot of bloody combat in Assassin's Creed 3, including sequences of war (at least one of which features a dismemberment), and naval combat. This has come to be the most dominant feature of the Assassin's Creed series, as the violence has grown more brutal, and more excessive, as time has gone on. Elements of Native spiritualism come into play in certain areas of the game, but these tend to be nothing more than a framing device for the series' established, crazy interpretation of religion and belief. Profanity comes into play, both in French and in English, but isn't especially prevalent during the proceedings. In addition, there's some sexual dialogue sprinkled throughout, though if you're not paying attention, it likely won't be noticeable.

Ultimately, for all of the good that Assassin's Creed 3 has in it, for all of the work that went into its world, it is never the game it had the potential to be. There are moments that stand out: a bloodied fight in the rain; stunning assassination set pieces, requiring not so much gameplay but attention; cannonfire raining down on Charleston as buildings crumble; stumbling through a smoke-clogged battleground, attempting to flank the frontlines. Those moments never translate into the defining game that Assassin's Creed 3 could have been.

Linear games have been done right before, and one only need look to Naughty Dog's recent Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception to see that in action. Assassin's Creed 3 is an open-world game that desperately wants to be linear, and a linear game aching to expand beyond the strict constraints its development team and its game engine have imposed upon it. Sadly, none of this is to be. What's left is Assassin's Creed 3, an underwhelming game grasping for something much better, something that never materializes. This is far from the worst game of the year, and it deserves time and attention, for it has things to say and it does so with some style. But it is also a game to learn from, a game which ably demonstrates exactly what can go wrong when a development team reaches too high, or stretches too far, and isn't given the time to fulfill their vision.

Thanks to Ouch Giver Games for sending us a review key!

I never finished Shadowrun on the SNES. Running about the streets of fantasy cyberpunk Seattle just wasn’t as compelling to my younger self when straight up action games such as Smash TV were available. It wasn’t that I lacked patience; over the years, I’ve realised it was more a matter of presentation. Shadowrun had all the trappings of an action-oriented game, but underneath the surface it was an Action RPG. The sales pitch for the 2019 release, Beast Agenda 2030, sounded promising enough, quietly whispering sweet little promises that it would scratch my itch for an Action RPG in the same vein, with Stealth gameplay thrown in, if only I would give it a try.

Beast Agenda 2030 starts with a short info dump. A few years ago, the squidlike Neospoid appeared with advanced technology, and promising peace under the banner of a world government. All were welcome to join – so long as they accepted the embedding of a microchip in their body. The story follows the outcasts who refused the chip and were exiled to the city of Fleece. These aliens, who look like something out of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, are now engaging in a systematic purging of the outcasts. You play as Arnis, a hacker recruited to help a group of survivors build a submarine and escape the purge. There’s nothing particularly special about the setting or storyline, but I did appreciate that it keeps things grounded and focused.

To call this game an Action RPG is a bit misleading, much like my teenage experience with Shadowrun. The core gameplay loop is spent running around the city, breaking into abandoned buildings and scavenging what supplies you can; it feels more natural I think to describe it as a survival game. Supplies are traded in for perks, and as you complete missions you’ll earn skill points to upgrade your capabilities. Eventually you’ll be searching for and rescuing survivors, expanding the population in your home base. Each additional survivor also unlocks a new set of skills to level up.

Most of the tools you can scavenge are explosives of some sort, but they’re often put to better use blowing open various doors than blowing up enemies because of how awkward they are to use offensively. The most potent and flexible tool is your Hack3000, which can be used to search enemy brains for door codes, hypnotise enemies into walking bombs, hack into computers, or to use a car’s cruise control to create an improvised cruise missile. There is a pistol, but its ammunition is limited and specialised; like the explosives, its primary use is for opening doors. This lack of proper weaponry does the job of discouraging direct confrontation, and the game is better for it.

While you do start the game quite weak, it doesn’t last forever. Once you level up your hacking and carrying capacity, the game breaks down a bit as you’re now able to turn all your enemies into walking bombs or just blow them up with your many explosives. Direct combat is still suicidal, but you’ll spend the late game playing the game as a series of hit-and-run attacks rather than skulking in the shadows. It’s a natural shift in the power dynamic, and keeps the game feeling fresh as you hit that power spike.

The pixel graphics look like something out of an early 1990s era game, but there’s quite a bit of detail and environmental storytelling going on. Corpses are scattered around the streets, a testament to the brutality of the Neospoid government. Windows are shattered, doors are battered, and the occasional garbage fire lights up the night. Just don’t ask why there’s still electricity, lest your suspension of disbelief be shattered. The music is also quite Spartan, with only three tracks and fitting sound effects to punctuate the silence, but at least the title theme has a distinctive and catchy melody.

There are a few bugs with Beast Agenda 2030. Various minor spelling and grammar mistakes dot the text. The fullscreen mode resets itself between gameplay sessions. Reeling yourself in with the grapple hook can cause you to get stuck in an infinite loop if the path to your anchor point is obstructed; don’t try to reel in through a wall, just walk away until the grapple comes loose. Sabine’s mission to improve medkits didn’t register me picking up apples while my Needs stockpile was at the 500 maximum; I had to abandon that mission, spend some Needs, and then retry. There were a few occasions where hacking an enemy crashed the game. Ouch Giver Games would probably be happy to patch all these bugs, but it turns out the developer lost the code to the game in a fire some time ago, dashing any hopes of bugfixes.

There are zero issues with foul language and nudity. With the use of explosives, this game naturally involves the killing of squidlike aliens, their green blood pooling out where they are slain. You won’t be killing any humans though – the Neospoid have already seen to that, and as mentioned, human corpses are scattered throughout the randomly generated map. You will be flouting authority as a matter of course, but I won’t deduct points on Authority as the government is outright inhumane, and is implied to be the Antichrist.

Yes, that's right. There are various references to the Bible, in particular the account of Revelation. It is very much implied that what happens in the story is the Apocalypse come to pass – and that’s probably where the “Beast” in the game title comes from. In this imagining, the demons and devils of the Bible are replaced by the cosmic horror squid entities of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Diary fragments found throughout the game indicate that these Cthonic demons engage in witchcraft, and I also encountered a one-off crowd of aliens surrounding a human on some sort of altar in what appears to be a sacrificial ritual of some sort.

Beast Agenda 2030 will fill up around 15 hours of your time, and you’ll feel like an insurgent rebel as you play. There’s a Free Play and a New Game Plus mode, but there’s really not much reason to replay the game. If you’re hankering to play as a stealthy scavenging survivor, this game will scratch that itch. I’d recommend waiting for a sale though.

Thank you Piece of Cake Studios for sending us your game to review!

Intrigue is probably the most common word associated to spies. I’d also add on stealthy, sharp, fast, and resourceful. I’ve got great respect for the real deals. You know you’ve done something really right when no one is supposed to know how you do what you do and in truth nobody really does know how you do what you do. For real, we know near zilch on how our shadowed protectors and adversaries work in the modern day. Thus, we fall back on long passed historical accounts and our own imaginations. But one thing I’m sure anyone can agree on is that spywork is rarely a one man show. Spies need partners. The developers of their game Hacktag knew this and saw a major multiplayer opportunity to be snatched.

Everyone is an anthropomorphic animal in the world of Hacktag. That just means human-like animals do normal people things like wear clothes, walk on two legs, drive cars, break into corporations, hack computers. . . Oh wait. The last two aren’t normal. Well, in this game, that’s what you’re gonna be doing. You play as a freelance spy or hacker who receives jobs from business owners seeking a leg-up on their rivals. At least, that’s your usual clientele. Occasionally there may be a friend seeking a favor or a just a curious person with deep pockets. Either way, if they got the dough, your agency will go.

Every mission requires stealth, timing, and a duo. Regardless if you play with a friend or by yourself, there needs to be a stealth agent on the field and a hacker in the system. Each role is codependent on the other. The stealth agent will need to stay out of sight. They must hide behind desks and potted plants in order to get close to firewall boxes, computers, and scanners. It’s pretty classic spy stuff nixing the laser lipstick. You won’t need it anyway. You’ve got a hacker. It’s their job to avoid system detection to unlock doors, shutdown cameras, and distract guards with fake phone calls. Your usual team assignment is get in, get the goods, watch your partner’s backs, and don’t get caught. If one of you is spotted, the other can bail you out. If both of you are incarcerated though, you both will be doing time. From my perspective, this design was indeed well thought out. I know this isn’t the first espionage game out there, but I don’t think I’ve heard of another game that plays exactly like this. Most spy games focus on the field agent. Very little is paid to the hacker character, who is often an AI. Hacktag, however, puts the importance level for both roles on a pretty even keel. It’s refreshingly one-of-a-kind. My main criticism is its singleplayer. Now clearly, this game’s design had multiplayer in mind. There’s no denying it. Unfortunately, when there’s no one to play with (which was my sad case), you’ve only got singleplayer to do anything with, and Hacktag’s singleplayer felt like an afterthought feature. This fact will become more clear as I explain. In short, there were several missions where the required teamwork proved way too tight for any single person to handle.

Before accepting your first mission, you get to create your avatar. You can make up to six characters. After naming them and choosing their species, gender, color, and attire, you then select an assignment. Missions are color coded to indicate their difficulty. Easy missions offer unlimited continues for failure while harder levels range from limited continues to none at all. Symbols stamped overtop these missions also indicate their type. It could mean you need to hack all computers or only specific computers in a particular order. However, I felt there really wasn’t a big enough variance there to warrant a full explanation. I’ll can leave that to Hacktag’s tutorial mission should you buy it. Afterall, it did do a pretty good job . . . except for the major details it left out. I was sneaking around minding my own nosy business when an alarm system went off. I did not know this mechanic even existed nor how to respond. It apparently is deactivated by a mini-game (that I wasn’t taught either) that required both players to deactivate at the same time. I didn’t know how other special mini-games worked either. Nor did I know about the random laser traps. And here I thought spies were supposed to be well informed!

Okay, something else you need to know before embarking are the controls. Pay attention. I’m only reading this laundry list once. As the stealth agent, you’ll move around with the ‘A’, ‘D’, ‘W’, and ‘S’ keys. The hacker can also move the same way but can also move with the arrow keys. (Don’t ask why the Hacker has two movement options. I don’t know.) The act of hacking is also performed via arrow keys. Most other common actions are done with the ‘E’ key no matter if its hacking or deactivating stuff. The ‘Q’, ‘R’, and ‘F’ keys are used on occasion for various purposes. Keep those in mind. The 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys are used in multiplayer for snappy communication. In singleplayer they offer limited control of the opposite character. The stealth agent can noisily run by holding the ‘Shift’ key. Lastly, in singleplayer mode, the ‘Tab’ key and Space Bar swaps you between characters. You got all that? I’ve heard of complicated PC game controls before, but I think some considerable consolidation would have helped a lot here. Now, that’s not to say the controls are horrible. Some buttons fit pretty nicely. The familiar arrow keys are very satisfying to use while hacking. It’s the ‘E’, ‘R’, ‘F’, and ‘Q’ keys I had issues. It’s too complicated. With all the traps and guards and timed events, these missions require sharp precision. You can consider this problem doubled in singleplayer. You’re literally thinking for two. Unfortunately, accidents involving me hitting wrong buttons caused 60% of my captures. It also doesn’t help that swapping between characters takes half a second. That might not sound bad, but it’s an eternity when you’ve got guards and anti-viruses hot on your furry tail. I would much prefer controlling hacker and agent simultaneously. Yeah, I mentioned the numbered keys were meant to do that, but they’re abysmal. All they do is pull the other character toward you like a magnet regardless of who or what’s there. Want to get spotted in the laziest way possible? Push the numbered buttons. Hacktag’s controls are just a bag of good gadgetry in need of a tune-up.

For presentation, Hacktag’s is commendable. The CGI characters look so smooth and plushy. I can’t help but want to squeeze them like stress balls. The artists did a great job conceiving the fox, cat, raccoon, hyena, and deer designs too. The bunny design, though, looked weird in the face to me. It wasn’t terribly disturbing, but I wouldn’t pick it anytime soon. The stylish clothing options also added plenty of variety once unlocked. As for settings, there are three office buildings you’ll visit on your missions, and each have their own decor. These areas are rendered nicely. There was a single case of disappearing security guard on the hacker cam, but it didn’t reoccur. I guess my major complaint is how the color coding for the agent and hacker wass handled. The stealth agent’s name is portrayed in blue, yet his environment is mostly yellow. For the hacker its vice versa. As a result, I was often unsure which prompt colors each character should follow when duo hacking by myself. It cost me multiple times. Goes to show why color consistency matters. As for music, Hacktag has some pleasant jazzy tunes. However, I laud the SFX most. I’ve never loved the clicking of computer keys more than when I hacked devices. Something about the sound of it coinciding with my fingers felt exciting - like I was a real hacker. The rest of the SFX were well employed too, but I found it odd there were no SFX when you crack open reward loot safes. Now, I may not work with TNT, but I’m sure a kaboom is expected. Oh well. That’s a minor complaint compared to the rest of Hacktag’s competent presentation.

Hacktag keeps itself pretty morally clean. Clothes are in good taste. Violence only amounts to slamming doors to temporarily knock out guards. Your character can cop a snarky attitude in your dialogue choices, but only if you choose to. A** and God’s name is misused a couple times but not too often. The main thing we need to address though is the content. Let’s be real here. Playing spy is fun. The thrill of the chase, slipping under the radar, making off with the badguy’s goods, it’s admittedly appealing. Unfortunately, we seldom consider its moral complications. Boiled down to its core, espionage is in most cases deceitfulness, thievery, and sabotage. Call me a cynic, but I don’t recall the Bible endorsing such behavior. Now, I’ll grant you that there were Biblical cases of espionage. You had the two spies that infiltrated Jericho for example. We as a nation also have our own federal spy network. This includes our men and women in uniform who sometimes risk their lives assuming false identities or undercover operations. However, there’s a difference between protecting law-abiding citizens and undermining another’s business for monetary gain. In Hacktag you’re basically breaking the law to help greedy people. It’s as illegal as it is malicious if you think about it. Now, it’s up to you whether it trivializes thievery too much or desensitizes your judgment. I personally don’t count Hacktag as a big threat, but I would recommend a spiritual security check . . . just in case.

Hacktag’s take on spy shenanigans is admirable. I loved how well it incorporates the two roles together, even if (in my personal opinion) it’s a tad easier to play as the hacker. The tutorial really should be expanded though. I don’t appreciate being ill-informed. Nor do I enjoy seemingly unwinnable singleplayer missions. The developers didn’t put much thought into that. That’s for sure. Still, from what I can tell, this game is at its best with your personal companion. Just remember Hacktag kind of glorifies illegal behavior. The game’s wrongful motives for your spy-work might be a no sell for you. However, if you’re okay with it and crave an inventive multiplayer experience, grab a friend and grab a mission. It takes two for undercover fun. Otherwise, you’ll be facing quite a few literal mission impossibles.

Thank you tinyBuild for sending us this game to review.

Everyone has had that one neighbor who creeped them out. That one person who you’re not really sure who they are or what they do, and whenever you see them outside, they commit strange and ambiguous acts. The developers at Dynamic Pixels play around with the idea with Hello Neighbor: a first-person puzzle-stealth survival horror game.

Hello Neighbor starts with our unnamed child protagonist (who we will refer to as The Kid), playing ball by himself. He sees down the street his neighbor doing something fairly suspicious, so he decides to get a closer look. He stumbles upon our unnamed antagonist (who we will refer to as The Neighbor) stowing something or someone in the basement, accompanied by screams of anguish. The Neighbor spots The Kid and chases him away. But those screams just can’t get out of his head, so The Kid investigates further to see what the heck is going on.

Dynamic Pixels takes an interesting spin on the survival horror genre where instead of some kind of monster or beast hunting you, its simply a middle-aged man. After all, humans are the real monsters. Most of Hello Neighbor takes place inside or around The Neighbor’s house, where you must navigate around to either escape or enter into another section of the house. All while this is happening, The Neighbor is patrolling the area trying to kick you out. The attractive feature of Hello Neighbor is its dynamic AI, where it is stated that The Neighbor learns from your moves. If you like to enter through doors a lot, he will set up buckets that will obscure your vision. If you like to enter through windows, he will set up bear traps to hinder your movement. The AI does exhibit these traits, but only sometimes. There is a setting to set The Neighbor to be a “friendly neighbor” where he isn’t as aggressive and doesn’t set traps, but it didn’t seem to work as he still set up traps, and could still see me from an insane distance.

The controls are fairly simple, but also strange: mouse to look around, WASD for movement, and E to interact or pick up items. Right click can also be used to place or throw held items. The game doesn’t explain this to you one bit unless you go into the control settings, which is honestly a pretty bad feature. It doesn’t help that the controls feel pretty clunky, as to interact or grab items takes precision, which cannot always happen, especially if The Kid is getting chased around. A tutorial to understand what is going on would have been greatly appreciated, as you’re immediately thrust into the situation with no clear direction as to what to even do. The options are also weird because even though the arrow keys are not used in gameplay at all, they are the means to navigate through the menus. I’ve never experienced something like that for any game that I played, and it can be rather annoying.

The Neighbor is definitely a creepy looking individual. He has these beady eyes, wonky proportions, and a barbershop mustache to complement the whole package. Unfortunately, the graphics do not complement the setting and feel of the game. Hello Neighbor is supposed to be a horror game, but the cartoon-like style clashes with it very often, and generally scary moments in the game aren’t taken very seriously. I think a slightly more realistic style would have been a better artistic choice. Fortunately, the music does the creep factor some justice in that aspect. As The Neighbor gets closer and closer, ominous music gets louder and louder, to signal that he is near. This is honestly a great approach, as it made some moments generally scary.

Going back to the AI, The Neighbor can have some pretty frustrating moments. As you get into later acts, his “smart AI” doesn’t really seem to become more dynamic as it just gets a bigger detection radius. I’ve had moments where he detected me when he wasn’t even in the same area and started chasing me down. The Neighbor’s AI can be easily abused as I set up numerous moments in my play through where he would simply loop his actions and fail to catch me.

Later in the game, Hello Neighbor seems to ditch the stealth mechanics in favor of puzzles, and most don’t even make sense. Some items can interact with each other, but hints are never given so finding out how they function is based on trial and error. This is also apparent in that there really is no punishment for getting caught except for starting at the “beginning”, but you keep all the items in the inventory, layouts are kept in the same spot, and all doors and locks stay unlocked. If they wanted to make a puzzle game, I feel they should have simply made one instead of making a stealth game that eventually ignores the stealth mechanics. The physics engine is also wonky as objects don’t act the way they do all the time, and it’s very easy to get stuck on geometry. In a way, how the game turns out, it feels like false advertising as the stealth aspect can simply be ignored and brute force will eventually prevail instead of clever initiation and situational awareness.

With a game such as this, the only moral issues I’ve come across is The Neighbor himself. It’s pretty apparent that he kidnaps people, and in one of the later acts, The Kid actually gets kidnapped himself and has to find a way out. It’s not exactly a violent game as if you get caught, the screen simply fades to black, and the only way to potentially defend yourself is to throw items at him, which slows him down.

Hello Neighbor? More like goodbye, neighbor! A wealth of interesting ideas and a unique premise that manages to miss most of the marks they have set out to make. $30 is too much of an asking price for such wasted potential. Lots of frustrating and boring moments, weird AI, and a very confusing narrative that is all over the place, it seems like Dynamic Pixels lost their vision halfway through development. I’ve heard around the community that the final product is very different from the beta held years back. The product is generally safe to play, but young kids might find the game a bit too scary; that is if the obnoxious puzzles don’t get to them first. In the end, this neighbor is not worth visiting.

Thank you, Paranoid Productions, for sending us a review code!

Throughout history, groups of people have left their country of origin and attempted to create a place that they can call their own. The United States of America being one of the most well-known examples of that. It is a topic that is rarely touched upon in media, but developer Paranoid Productions and publisher Fellow Traveller enter into the subject matter with The Church in the Darkness, an action-stealth hybrid with a top-down perspective and a dynamic narrative that changes with each playthrough.

The main plot is always the same: in the 1970s a group of people, dissatisfied with how the US is treating their citizens, country, and how the government is running things decide to flee the country and make an establishment they can call their own. The cult named the Collective Justice Mission takes refuge in the jungles of South America and this establishment they name Freedom Town. Freedom Town is run by Preacher Issac Walker and Rebecca Walker who swear that they will not make the same mistakes that America did.

Of course, since a rather large group of people leave the country all at once, relatives of these missing people and the US government are going to be curious as to what’s happening behind all the trees—especially Stella. Stella is Alex’s mother and Vic’s (the player character) sister. Alex is one of the people that joined the Collective Justice Mission and like any mother is worried as to what is happening or what might have happened to Alex. Due to Vic’s connections and experience as an ex-law enforcement officer, Stella asks of Vic to infiltrate Freedom Town to simply find out what Alex is doing.

The main objective is to find Alex, inquire about his status, and then leave with or without him. This part is when the dynamic narrative starts to take place, right from where your spawn location is (as its different every time). Depending on the note from Stella that you start with, you’ll get an insight into the preacher’s personality for that specific gameplay loop, as well as what important NPC to speak to. The NPC that spawns is random and can range from a selection of six. When spoken to, they can give more insight into how Issac and Rebecca operate, and a general location to where Alex is located. Depending on actions taken before meeting these people, they may not be so willing to give out information.

On the intercoms throughout Freedom Town, you’ll hear Issac and Rebecca speak to the townsfolk. Paying attention to their dialogue gives off hints on how Issac and Rebecca are as people. In some paths, Issac and Rebecca are generally good-natured people. They do still have their negative views on America as a country, but many of their speeches take verses and quotes from the Bible such as Matthew 5:14, while also talking about God’s love for mankind. Other paths make Issac and Rebecca into hypocrites, with the selected NPC and even Alex talking about how they are just as guilty of all the actions that they lambaste America for. And in the last set of paths, Issac and Rebecca are against each other, with one of them being good and one of them being corrupt.

Issac’s voice is excellent, with John Patrick Lowrie (best known as The Sniper from Team Fortress 2) being his voice actor. Lowrie gives off a sincere and powerful performance as Issac, being soft-spoken when needed while also showing off just how angry Issac can get when talking about America. Rebecca is voiced by Ellen McLain (best known as GlaDOS from the Portal series), and she does just as good of a job as Lowrie does. Rebecca sounds very authoritative while being comforting and inspiring all the same. Even Alex (voiced by Arif S. Kinchen) has a good voice. Although not as good as Issac and Rebecca simply due to not having nearly as many lines as the former two, he does sound like a confused kid as to being unsure of what he wants. Each ending is accompanied by a country song that more or less sums up the plot and feel of the ending that you’ve obtained.

Freedom Town takes place in an unknown area of South America. They nailed the isolated feel of the town as it feels secluded from the rest of the modern world. The basic graphics and textures are carried by the art portraits of the characters (which look like a pleasant watercolor painting) and the town aesthetics. Trees, rivers, and little shacks made out of metal and wood are sprawled out everywhere.

I would recommend a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse as the game was not designed with them in mind (even though you can rebind them). They are rather uncomfortable no matter where you put them on the keyboard because you’ll have to be pressing the “sneak” key and the “sprint” key constantly (it started giving me cramps at one point). From my knowledge, keys cannot rebound to any mouse buttons on the side which would work a lot better for sneaking and sprinting. Although controller buttons cannot rebind to other buttons, they are much more comfortable. There's also a strange phenomenon that happens that if you do decide to play with keyboard controls while having a controller plugged in, some button prompts will be overridden by the controller controls and not the KB+mouse.

Now going around Freedom Town requires mostly stealth, as Vic is an unwanted visitor to the area. He will sneak around places, looting closets and chests to find items ranging from weapons, chloroform, disguises, food to replenish health, and sometimes papers or pins that delve deeper into the lore of Freedom Town. Freedom Town has a distinct population and the easiest way of finding what type of citizen is which is through View Mode. Every time you sneak around (Ctrl key or B/Circle), every character has a cone of vision. The regular townsfolk have a pink cone. They are non-threatening but will usually run for the alarm if Vic is spotted. A light brown cone indicates security. They walk around with pistols and will typically shoot if you are spotted after following Vic for a bit. Red cones are more aggressive townsfolk armed with shotguns—acting similar to the security. The most dangerous ones are the guards dressed in green. They are armed with rifles and can mostly be found around where Issac or Rebecca are located. They shoot on sight. Difficulty increases or decreases the amount of these people, with the higher difficulties outright disabling these cones.

The townsfolk can either be skipped entirely, distracted by sounds with the use of throwing rocks or setting alarms, or you can sneak behind them and either knock them out with a chokehold, chloroform, or a syringe or kill them with the snap of a neck. Knocking them out takes longer than killing but people who spot a dead citizen will immediately run for the alarm and set it off, instead of simply shaking them awake. If you want a knocked out person to stay out of the fight permanently, Vic has to put them in a box or closet. With enough scavenging and preparation, Vic can also go guns blazing. Shooting itself doesn’t feel very good as even though it is similar to twin-stick shooting, a lot of it is auto-aim based and you just have to make sure the target locks on to the person.

The AI is frankly, rather stupid. Sometimes the AI will lose its pathfinding and will run into other NPCs, making them lose their pathfinding as well. Sometimes the AI does not reset to their default position when distracted by rocks or sound items which can make getting past them even more annoying. The AI will also stop chasing you the moment you even walk around the corner of a building. And even though many NPCs react to sound, you can incapacitate or even kill an NPC right next to each other and they’ll be none the wiser to it if the body doesn’t fall into their line of sight. It’s rather inconsistent due to how the AI either reacts (or doesn’t) and the “randomness” of whether mechanics will even work as intended does make the experience different for each playthrough—just not in the way the developers had in mind.

A big indication of how endings will play out are how Issac’s, Rebecca’s, and Alex’s personalities are portrayed, and what you decide to do with them, whether you spare, kill, or even abduct Issac and/or Rebecca. Some endings even lead to you killing Alex. There are about nineteen endings in total. Even with the sheer amount of endings available, unfortunately, you’ll see everything that the game has to offer by the fourth of fifth ending. There are items and even NPCs that are unlocked with endings obtained, but the general gameplay loop doesn’t change enough, so it tends to get repetitive fairly quickly.

There are bound to be many moral warnings with a title such as The Church in the Darkness. It isn’t all black-and-white, however. There is violence abound and blood is shown when shooting enemies, and some endings rely on Vic being a complete monster and slaughtering as many of the townsfolk he can—whether it is rightfully deserved or unjustified. There is language on par with many R-rated films, such as the words “f*ck” and “sh*t” mostly coming from Alex or Issac depending on their personalities. Drugs are present as well either through snippets of lore or even the use of it from Vic, with one of the endings utilizing cyanide. The Church in the Darkness can get rather dark in many routes. It can also show off wholesome messages. One ending can even show that family does not have to be blood-related, and when Issac and/or Rebecca are portrayed as good people, they do try to pass on the teachings of God and Jesus Christ to their followers.

Many qualities of The Church in the Darkness I do enjoy a lot. The setting is rarely seen in video games, the voice acting is strong, and the dynamic narrative needs to be shown off in more games. There is a lot of replayability with nineteen different endings and four difficulty settings that aren’t simply increasing numbers. Even if you fail, they do give you the option to replay the same scenario so obtaining endings isn't frustrating. But what is the purpose of lots of replayability when the gameplay loop is boring? The extra items obtained do not add or expand on the system unlike many other games that use random procedural generation and the poor AI combined with the unresponsive mechanics do sour an experience that could have been sweet. At its worse morally, it’s a mass-murdering simulator with corruption all around that more or less drops its Christian roots. At its best, its a wonderful journey about people finding a place they can call their own while having a strong faith in God.

I do not want to see Paranoid Productions give up on gaming after this one, as there is a lot that can be taken from this experience and be refined to make a standout product. I did not enjoy my time with The Church in the Darkness overall, even if I do appreciate many aspects of it. It digs into the flawed system of America such as the focus on consumerism and capitalism and well as pointing out its ugly history through the treatment of minorities and the general public that many pieces of media shy away from. (The internet, however, is quick to jump on that aspect but that is another discussion for another day.) Whenever Paranoid Productions decides to take on another task, I’ll look forward to it, as long as the gameplay is a bit more polished.

Thank you Urnique Studio for sending us a review code!

I didn’t know what to expect with Timelie. With many games that I end up reviewing, I look up very little on it before I complete it or feel like I’ve played enough to give it a fair and honest review. Sometimes you can end up with a surprise or with a disappointment. With Timelie, fortunately, it is the former.

Featuring a 2.5D top-down view, your screen shows the entire layout of the level, as well as the character's position in it. The player controls an unnamed girl who is traveling through this fragmented world in search of something or someone. Developed by Urnique Studio, Timelie is a 3D game that has puzzle and stealth elements. The goal is to reach the end of the level without being spotted and within the given time limit. Timelie does something different from other puzzles, however. The player character has precognitive abilities and each level is played out in her mind before she takes action. From a gameplay perspective, this means you can stop time, fast forward, and rewind your actions to make sure you are making the most optimal decisions. The only controls available are keyboard and mouse. You’ll mostly control your character and the camera with the mouse, while rewinding, stopping, and fast forwarding are done with the keys such as A and D. After the correct decisions are made in practice, they are played out in real life. The scenes can be skipped, but some scenes do have a few surprises. Every action is repeated which can lead to some unintentionally funny moments.

The concept of this unique gameplay makes me feel like I’m editing a video. Seeing the fruits of your labor in action gives off a nice sense of accomplishment, especially since I’ve been gaining interest in video editing. People who know or like the satisfaction of a job well done may connect with the experience more than others. Only one enemy type exists, being a type of security bot, but said enemy has different patterns on each stage. Some will follow a set pattern and others will have a specific destination that they are going to in which you’ll have to beat them to the punch or distract them. Although I would have liked to see more enemy types, what Urnique Studio does with the one type available keeps things fresh enough.

Levels are divided into chapters, with five in total. Each chapter has its own set of gimmicks to prevent the experience from feeling repetitive. On one level, you’ll have to collect a glowing white cube to rebuild a broken path. In another level, you’ll have to collect these special purple cubes that reset time, adding a new obstacle and path that wasn’t there previously, but also a new pattern for the enemy to make. Some levels even have you controlling two characters at the same time. Controlling two characters at once is when things get spicy! Urnique Studio describes this as a “cooperative single-player experience” which can be a rather confusing statement, but it makes more sense the moment it is experienced. Both characters work in tandem, whether it comes to activating switches or distracting enemies. Going back to the playback feature and video comparison, you’ll even want one character to make certain actions and rewind to have the other character do another action. When time is rewound, any action you made them do previously will play out as you intended them to do. The only time they don’t is if you rewind and them make them do another action. I enjoyed the “co-op” experience, although some of the two-character levels can really feel like you’re cutting close for time as some puzzles require frame perfect decisions and no moment wasted.

With a narrativeless direction (meaning not one word of dialogue is uttered), Timelie’s story is up to the player’s interpretation. It can feel a bit confusing because there are some time shenanigans in the plot, and timey-wimey stuff is already confusing enough even with people in other media attempting their best to describe it. With no one there to tell you how things work, it’s up to the player to fill in the boxes themselves. I personally found the story to be enjoyable overall, although bittersweet.

Although I am left impressed with how Timelie functions and plays, two parts I'm not very fond of are the graphics and visuals. I don’t think they’re bad graphics, but I just found them to be basic. The character models are of a low polygon count, but the simplistic color pallets just make them feel like they are simply there. The visuals are also average for me as well. It’s strange as a shattered world aesthetic can really get the creative juices flowing and lead to a lot of interesting set pieces. Timelie doesn’t do much with it as the levels themselves start to blend together for me visually. In that regard, I was a bit disappointed.

The music set pieces fit for ambiance instead of a soundtrack. With a piano accompanying the background of the first few chapters, it does a good job to set the mood of an unknown and lonely setting but not much else beyond that. As the story tenses up in later chapters, the music uses more ominous sounds. There is a nice lyrical piece played during the credits. I don’t believe Timelie will be winning any rewards in the sound or music department, but it does its job.

When the main story is completed, free DLC is obtainable, named Hell Loop. Hell Loop is DLC purely meant for people who enjoy the gameplay components. People looking for more insight into story or worldbuilding elements will be left pretty disappointed. It is a set of 35 levels that push the concepts of the gameplay up to eleven. Timelie’s DLC levels make the hardest of the standard levels look like child’s play in comparison. If hard puzzles frustrate you, you’ll be ripping your hair out when confronted with these levels. The DLC is purely optional so the hardcore puzzle consumers will feel right at home with this one. As for casual players, the journey ends here.

In terms of moral concerns, there really isn’t much. Any supposedly violent action that could happen stops before the action is committed. When everything is interpreted to your own views and opinions, other “warnings” are subjective. The only objective thing I noticed is the supernatural elements. The unnamed girl uses telekinetic abilities to move and restore objects, and precognition itself can be viewed as supernatural.

Timelie manages to be a strong entry. With its clever mechanics and usage of the “cooperative features” and time mechanics, it is a good game for the price of admission. The mechanics are forgiving so even if there are tough moments, they can eventually be conquered. Hey, if you bang your head against a wall enough times, a crack will soon form! Anyways, with the experience being about a five to ten-hour ride with the DLC doubling that time, puzzle and stealth lovers will see little wrong with it. The lack of moral concerns also makes it pretty family-friendly; however, keep in mind that some fairly difficult puzzles (especially when accounting for the DLC) may possibly be too stressful for an especially younger individual.