My Half Year Review of Google Stadia (2020)

For the last 8 or so months I've had access to Google's Brand New Stadia cloud gaming platform. Whilst the echo chamber of twitter has seemingly already written off of this new platform as dead before it's even a year old Stadia has actually been quietly and steadily growing, improving and becoming a small but very tight knit community to the gamers that have given it a fair chance.

So with that being said i am going to give my own personal thoughts on a few key areas at this yearly half way point, is it good? is it bad? is it somewhere in the middle? lets begin...

How does it feel to play?

The first thing an internet troll will say about Stadia is "Theres too much lag, it will never work" and on the whole i massively disagree with this statement. I have a modest internet set up in my city centre apartment, nothing special, and i have still encountered zero lag or performance issues on the chromecast ultra set up. The games are silky smooth, the UI is fast and the resolution is incredibly stable. TICK right? well, no, sadly. Performance on browser is still spotty at best for me on any of the 3 laptops/towers i have available to me and that's a real shame. I understand the need to use a chrome browser for ease of use but perhaps a more streamlined extension or maybe even a separate downloadable .Exe might serve to iron out a few of the low latency issues that i have encountered so far.

As for the mobile app, its great! Even on low quality internet at the local Cafe's and bars i am able to play fairly consistently stable games with little issue. I still think google would be wise to make something along the line of a controller dock (A controller for your phone to sit in not just the claw!) to make on the go gaming even better but right now the on screen touch controller works fine for most slower games.

Overall, i think Stadia from a tech side has come on leaps and bounds over the last year. Achievements are in, mobile gaming is in, crowd play is very soon, so yeah great stuff!

THE GAMES

This is the hardest section for me to review because it's been good...but also bad. Pro continues to be an excellent value for money with tons of games and deals being drip fed out at a fairly commendable rate. The quality of those games is top notch too, GRID, ESO and Rise of the Tomb Raider are all great additions to any library and the smattering of smaller titles such as the Steamworld Collection, Serious Sam and Spitlings rounds out the service nicely.

So where's the bad?.... Well.... There still isn't that 1 game that you HAVE to play on Stadia. Xbox had Halo, Playstation had MGS/FFVII, Nintendo had Mario and Sega had Sonic. Spitlings and Gylt are fun games but they are not going to persuade hardcore gamers to give up there consoles and buy full priced titles on a cloud service. Google is so close though, if they are able to produce a must play title from Jade Raymond's talented teams then i think the library stands up nicely to its competitors, especially in the cloud gaming sector.

My favourites!

I've played about 20 different titles so far on Stadia and my favourites are mostly the pick up and play titles on offer. Trials Rising was a big surprise for me, I've not played the previous games and thought very little of them but for £8 in a sale i took a gamble and my what a joy. It's simple try, fail, try again gameplay loop suits Stadia's play anywhere tag line perfectly and i think encapsulates the Stadias biggest strengths.

Another standout is the hugely addictive Spitlings. A simple and colourful puzzle game that starts easy and then gets brutal quick. Through its hilarious multiplayer and being a Pro game and you've got arguably Stadia's most fun exclusive game.

Overall i go into the second half of 2020 fairly positive about Stadia's future. They have some questions to answer about commitment, no one trusts Google after all, and desperately need a killer app but as the premiere Cloud gaming service right now, there is no better.

Evercade Console - First Impressions!

Collecting Physical Retro video games has become increasingly expensive in recent years. Gone are the days when you could walk into a charity shop and buy SNES games for £5 or a mint condition working Amiga for the price of takeaway pizza! So in this pricey world what is the aspiring retro collector to do?

Traditionally there are two options, either buy a "retro Inspired" mini console with 100's of ROMs built in or pick up the Retro collections for say the Switch or Xbox. The British company Blaze Entertainment has seen these options and decided its Evercade can be Both.

In essence the Evercade is a good quality handheld retro machine that uses changeable cartridges for its games. These cartridges are a mix of licensed older games from classic publishers like Data East or Namco and Indies/Homebrew labels such as Mega Cat Studios. This gives the Evercade a fairly unique place in the retro market as it potentially could be sustained by consistent and varied releases.

As for the unit itself i must admit i am impressed. The unit feels sturdy and well built, the buttons are large, clicky and responsive and the D-Pad is smooth and comfortable like say a Mega Drive's D-Pad.

The only gripe that i have so far is that the cartridge slot on  my unit seems incredibly tight, once the cartridges are in it becomes very difficult to get it out again! Hopefully with use that will stop being an issue and as long as i'm not damaging the unit i won't hold it against the product. The evercade also sports a Mini HDMI out which outputs a fantastic 720p image directly to a modern TV and this has worked flawlessly for me so far. Overall for £60 the hardware feels like value for money.

So now the most important aspect of the Evercade, It's game library! As i mentioned earlier the Evercade's games come on Cartridges that contain anything from 2 to 20 games, usually themed around a single publisher. So far i have the Namco 1, Atari 1, Interplay 1, Mega Cat Studios and Piko Interactive studio carts (with a Data East 1 on its way!) and i have been pleased with the level of quality so far. The games are nicely emulated with very minimal input lag which is very impressive. I'm planning to review a few of the Carts going forward so i won't go into too much detail but Tanzer on the Mega Cat Cart and Earthworm Jim from Interplay are particular highlights of mine. Overall i think the 10 current carts (all priced at £14.99 Btw) provide a solid d launch library of games that has a fairly good variety overall. I must say that the Piko and Mega Cat carts provide the most varied games so i would recommended them alongside the starter or premium sets.

With Atari Lynx and Dizzy Cartridges among the ones announced for the end of 2020 i think the future is looking strong for the library to continue to expand.

Overall i think the Evercade is a very brave product that can certainly carve itself a place in the market, it is well made, well supported and most importantly knows exactly who its marketed at. If you want to collect physical retro games on a budget and play them comfortably on one machine then the Evercade is certainly worth its £60 entry point.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna: The Golden Country (Switch) Review!

The Xenoblade series from Monolith Soft is arguably the most "hardcore" of Nintendo's first party IPs and as such can be incredibly intimidating to new players. I have myself attempted to play the first game and X a number of times before and i quite simply couldn't get the games to stick for long enough, they are after all 100's of hours long!

So it's from this strange starting place that i decided to give Torna (A Prequel stand-alone expansion to the also massively long Xenoblade Chronicles 2) a chance to hook me into the series.

Torna is set about 500 years before the events of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and is spread across 2 of the series signature living land masses: Titans. You take control of Lora and her Blades (The name given to the games living weapons) Jin and Haze. You'll be joined in your quest by other characters throughout the journey with your party reaching 3 "Drivers" with 2 blades each. Although from what i understand of XC2 this is actually a very limited number of blades i actually came to enjoy the character development that everyone got as a result of this. I also understand that all of these characters are involved in the plot of XC2 so i'd imagine if you played Torna AFTER XC2 you will get an even greater insight into these interesting bunch of characters.

I don't want to go into the story too much as to not spoil it but i found it utterly engrossing. The dual tales of Lora/Jin and Adam/Mithra is brilliant told throughout the 20-30 hour adventure, each character develops over the course of the game, showing real pain and anguish at the events that unfold. It sets up the Main XC2 brilliantly to all those that played the game in this order and i couldn't wait to jump online and read theories of what became of world after the game was over.

The gameplay is what you would come to expect from the Xenoblade series, an active turn based system that reminds chaining elemental and situational damage together as a unit to take down sometimes massive enemies. There's no random battles here, everything you can see, you can fight! The main change to the battle system compared to XC2 is the ability for blades and drivers to swap positions allowing the blades to take the lead and causing massive damage as they switch in. Overall i found this to be a fairly enjoyable combat system that became second nature after a few hours.

As is standard with Xenoblade there is a huge amount of side quests in the game that vary from the standard fetch quests and monster hunts to more elaborate combat style based mission that reward you for fighting in specific ways. The quest log does a great job of showing you what to do and where to do it but at least twice throughout the game you will hit a massive roadblock where you need to complete a certain amount of side quests to improve your "Community" and thus progress the story. This is obviously not really a problem overall but the game does a poor job of signposting this early on so if your like me and tend to mop of the side quests post game at a chilled out speed you may find yourself grinding through a lot of similar quests for a few hours before the final boss. Thankfully the fast travel system and the fact the Switch is portable make this much more manageable.

Overall i think Torna is both a great addition to the XC2 universe and a good starting point for the series. It's shorter length and small band of characters really help to tell a personal and emotional story that ramps up by the end to a climax that is truly something special. The combat is fast and fluid and despite side quest roadblocks and occasionally frustrating collectables Torna is wonderful place to explore. And hey, if you liked it then you can go out and buy Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to find out what happened to Lora, Jin and the rest of your Tornan allies.

My first few days with Google Stadia

I'm a crazy early adopter and decided to pick up a Google Stadia Premiere edition despite all of the frankly negative response it had its in first week. Is that all fair? Well lets see!

So first of all what did i get with my premiere edition? Well it gets you a White Stadia controller, a Chromecast Ultra, 3 Months of Stadia Pro and the Destiny 2 collection. For it's RRP i still think this is a pretty good deal even this early in the services life.

I actually got the 3 month Pro code when my package shipped so i got to use the service for day using the browser set up and.... to be honest.... i was really worried i had made a grave impulse decision. I had quite abit of visual lag and latency using my ancient Ubuntu laptop wired in via Ethernet. Using both mouse/keyboard and an Xbox controller it was pretty unplayable about 50% of the time which isn't ideal. I'll also point out straight away that i don't have a HDR/4K set up so i was just looking for a solid 1080p look.

Thankfully as soon as my Chromecast and Stadia controller turned up my experience changed dramatically. It was super easy to set up and worked flawlessly which really surprised me. A lot of talk has been about how unplayable Stadia is but in this set up i couldn't tell the difference people it and my Xbox which is crazy impressive this early in its life.

It terms of eco system, Stadia is very lacking at the moment. There's no achievements, browser/chromecast store usage, A LOT of its advertised features such as Stream Connect and Youtube connectivity and Google could really of avoided being criticised for this if they had just said this was Early Access at the moment. On a positive note what is here is very slick and clean, its very simple to buy a game and be playing it immediately which shows me the crazy future we could have if these Cloud services take off.

Now Games! With Pro i got Destiny 2 and Samurai Shodown so whilst i have been hesitantly testing the service i have stuck to just these two games right now. As i said earlier, once my Chromecast set up arrived my experience was great and actually ended up playing a good 10 hours of Destiny 2. A great aspect of Destiny is that you have make your characters cross save so i was able to pick up straight from my Xbox character and keep playing from there which is great. There isn't a whole lot of point me reviewing Destiny 2 but if you liked it on other platforms then you will love it on Stadia. The player count is starting to get up there now too and the community, being so small, is super friendly right now! I played a game of Samurai Shodown and... well... i  suck at it. But it looks and plays great so theres that!

With PRO next month we get Farming Simulator and Tomb Raider DE so i am looking forward to playing something abit more Single player focus and seeing how that experience holds up.

Overall im fairly impressed with Stadia so far. It needs more of its features and some more games but the tech is already in a great place. Would i recommend it? unless you're an early adopter... no i dont. Stadia Base will be free in 2020 and i think that will be the best time to jump in. Gylt is the only exclusive right now and at £30 it is rather over priced to just try out right now!

I look forward to seeing the service expand and don't you worry, i will review a whole lot more when there is more to review!

Sonic: Lost World (Wii U) Review!

After writing my top ten Wii U backlog list last week i decided to play one of those games, after all the large open world games i had recently played i decided on  the seemingly forgotten exclusive Sonic game Sonic Lost World and as it turns out... i can see why no one talks about it.

First of all i must say that the presentation is fantastic. Lost world is a bright and colourful game that oozes the cheesy charm that Sonic used to have. It Runs perfectly well on Wii U too and the music is great which is standard for the series. A few of the worlds are beautifully designed too, Windy Hill Zone, Tropical coast and Frozen factory in particular are so great to look at and provide some of the more fun high speed platforming action. It also contains a few really interesting pieces of Free DLC in the form of a Yoshi's Island world and a Legend of Zelda world. These worlds are super cool and are arguably the best parts of the game!

Now for the bad..... the game just doesn't feel right. It's hard to explain but it feels like 3 different games mashed together and it just doesn't work. Firstly the controls are strange. Sonic now runs while you hold the ZR button which feels unnatural, Sonic just doesn't pick up momentum in a way you would expect, this caused me to fly off the edge of platforms or be unable to change direction as quickly as the level required.

The second part of the control woes is the parkour. look, it felt like every game tried to do this at the time and it does LOOK cool but it just doesn't translate to fun. The amount of times i had Sonic running half way up a wall by accident, failing to jump or again flinging himself off an edge was insane. Couple this with a completely random level design structure (some levels are like Mario galaxy, some pull the camera way back almost like its open world and others are super close behind Sonic in a cylinder) and its a recipe for frustration.

The final and crucially worst part of the game is the damned wisps. Oh my god these things barely work. They almost all required some form of motion control with the gamepad and again do not work as intended and feel shoehorned into the game.

Overall this is sonic Lost World's biggest problem, it just doesn't know what game it wants to be. If they had gone all in on the parkour, fixed the wall run and not used the Wisps i feel like this game could be something special. It looks great, Sounds great and even the new characters are fun... but its just not fun to play.

Its better than Sonic Boom though.... so there's that.

My Top Ten Backlog Games On Wii U (2019)

Hey so it's 2019 and i am still playing Wii U! Although i have talked AT LENGTH about Nintendo's most underrated console (Don't @ me) there is still actually a sizable amount of games i own that i haven't played or finished and sit on my dreaded backlog.

So today i sat down, looked at my game shelf and compiled a list of the Ten games on Wii U i would still like to get to soon! Honourable mentions go to Star Fox Zero, Lego Batman 2, Splinter Cell Blacklist and Hyrule Warriors' Adventure maps!

10. Virtual Console

Ok...so i know this is cheating but hear me out. We are 2 years into the Switch's life right now and other than a limited amount of NES games we still can't play Virtual Console games on that system so the Wii U is really the best way to play digital versions of Nintendo's past from just about every major console apart from the GameCube! 

The games in particular i want to get to are Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), Super Mario RPG (Snes - Never released in Europe prior to the Wii!) and Metroid Fusion (GBA)

9. Darksiders 2

Another potentially controversial choice here. Last summer i gave the Warmastered remaster version of the Original Darksiders on the Wii U a go and i ended up loving the game enough to finish it. The second game, with its more fantasy driven world design, has been a game i have had sat on the shelf since launch so i really should get to it soon. I played a few hours back when i got it and i did enjoy what i saw so who knows, i may love the rest too.

8. Bayonetta 2

Before anyone hunts me down with pitchforks i HAVE played quite alot of Bayo 2.... i just never finished it. Its one of those games that requires your full attention to play at the harder difficulty settings and as such i got stuck and haven't had the patience to go back and finish it...yet. If you have a Wii U or Switch get this game btw, it really is special.

7. Batman Arkham Origins

Ah yes the forgotten game in the Arkham series. Arkham origins was not built by Rocksteady and as such is often seen as the black sheep of the franchise and i think that is a little unfair. From what i have seen of origins it looks and plays just like the other games. The younger and less experienced batman story is also something that intrigues me alot. I love the other games so i have no doubt i'll love this one too when i get to it!

6. Rayman Legends

Alot of people give Skyrim a ton of stick for being on every console...but in reality Rayman Legends is available on at least 8 platforms that i can think of off the top of my head and as such it is crazy to think it was once planned as a Wii U Exclusive. The delay from its exclusivity is ultimately why i have never got around to playing a game that i was soooo hyped for before Wii U's launch but i picked it up cheap last year and it joins the rest of my games on the backlog pile!

5. Sonic: Lost World

Does anyone remember this game? I remember the hype around it pre launch and the "Meh" response it got on release. It's Mario galaxy style world design and beautifully bright graphics are super appealing to me so i will for sure play this very soon. Not Rise of Lyric though, Even i draw a line guys!

4. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

It's funny, despite my love for Nintendo i have never been a massive fan of the 3D Zelda games. Not because i prefer the 2D games or that i want to be a massive hipster, i just didn't play many of them back in the day and crucially i didn't have an N64 as a kid. Twilight Princess with its dark tone and horse riding combat has also enticed me to play it over the years but the Wii version with its waggle shenanigans has never interested me. Now, with my partner being a Zelda nut and thus having pretty much all the games in the flat i think ill give Twilight Princess my time soon.

3. Yoshi's Woolly World

This may shock a fair few of my friends but i have never played a Yoshi game for very long. Again, not because i hate them, i just never had them! But the adorable and beautiful Woolly art design and calming gameplay makes this one of those games that would be perfect after a hectic day of work. Another game from the many games my partner bought at launch for our Wii U that i need to get to.

2. Xenoblade Chronicles X

So the last 2 games on this list are understandably the largest games and arguably the Wii U games that i really should of played when i got them. Xenoblade X is a massive open world JRPG that is still exclusive to the Wii U. Friends have told me for years that after 20 hours or so when you get a Skell the game because utterly engrossing but i have just never had the time to start a game of this length. I think it is time.

1. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

As a massive Fire Emblem and Persona fan why on earth have i not played this gorgeous JRPG? I guess that much like Paper Mario Color Splash (That i beat and reviewed last year) i think its 2016 release at the end of the consoles life really hurt alot of hype for the game. From what i have seen this could reach the top of my favourite Wii U list when I'm done with it!

So that's my little look at my Wii U backlog! 

A Look At The Sega Game Gear (1991)

For those of us that grew up in the late 80's and early 90's playing games on the go was very different then it is now. Now your basic Mobile phone can play any number of high quality games in just about every genre as well as call your mate, schedule your doctors appointment and take a photo of every dog that you walk past in the street!

But back in the day you had to have a bespoke Game console to play for those long family trips to avoid the endless games of Eye Spy. Nintendo's Monochrome Tetris Machine the Gameboy was the clear undisputed "Winner" of this battle but there were alternatives. The Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Colour and, the subject of this blog, The Sega Game Gear.

The Game Gear was a handheld from the Master System and Mega Drive magicians at Sega that came out in the UK in 1991. It sported a COLOUR BACKLIT screen which was crazy at the time compared to that dark green and black crap the Gameboy used. It had roughly the same power as the Master System and could even play Master System games with a cheap adaptor!

It had a TV Tuner too which was heavily pushed here in the UK which i can imagine was even cooler at the time but is sadly worthless now in this digital age.

My earliest memories of the Game Gear was playing one at a friends house and being blown away by the quality of the graphics for a handheld compared to my Gameboy. As someone who had a Master System when they were little seeing Sonic The Hedgehog and Fantasy Zone looking this good on the go was frankly crazy. I eventually got my own one much later in life and for a few years i fell in love with the beastly unit with its 6 AA Batteries tha gave me 4 glorious hours of escapism.

Sonic 1 and 2, Fantasy Zone Gear, Micky: Castle of Illusion and Streets of Rage 2 were some of the games that i remember playing to death at the time. Sega were known at the time for the quality arcade style games that they produced and i feel the Game Gear had a version of most of these at the time that was certainly passable for a handheld.

Sadly the Game Gear just couldn't compete with the Game boys battery life in its early life and as soon as Pokemon arrived in Japan SEGA quickly discontinued the system and focused its efforts on its home consoles.

I have recently got a newly recapped Game Gear so i may review a few of the games i've been playing on it soon so if this little look interests you then keep you eyes open for more!