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Dead Rising is a game I’d been wanting to check out for a while, and I wasn’t disappointed

There’s…a lot to unpack with Dead Rising

The game features journalist Frank West-he’s insane; upon hearing of a zombie outbreak in a Colorado city, he has a chopper land him on the roof of the city mall, to pick him back up in 72 hours

He’s most preoccupied with getting good photos, than trying to save survivors

The mall has numerous mechanics; the player is free to explore all the different stores, picking up different objects that can be used to kill the zombies

All of the items have different pros and cons-
Weaker objects can be kept in inventory
Large sticks can break easily
Big objects pack a punch but slow you down
Guns can only be fired standing still
Chainsaws can’t kill in one hit
Even cars eventually run out of gas

Frank can also whip his camera out and photograph the zombies, different actions, closeups, and tons of zombies in a picture can get you more points a la Pokemon Snap

Good pictures and murdering zombies gives you experience points, which improve stats such as health

The game can be saved in bathrooms, and Frank has to find food to replenish energy and change camera batteries

Secret objects like skateboards can speed up walking distance but are fragile

Dead Rising is mainly a nonlinear sandbox, but there are objectives to complete

The player can explore anywhere from the start, but this is generally unintuitive

The different areas of the mall are split between a large plaza, which is mobbed with zombies; it’s possible to escape them, but between large walking distances and hostile NPCs; it’s best to try to get to quests

Frank can help survivors and unlock shortcuts by finding keys, he can also mess around dressing up and skateboarding

Dead Rising is pretty difficult; the zombies can be stunned but still drain health, and save points are pretty far between

The game’s open-ended scope is fantastic and it’s a fun game to mess around in, with crazy characters and crazy action

I love the game’s creativity, it’s a very surreal game, with a unique setting, games with suburban settings are an interesting concept, making up gameplay from everyday objects, and the mall is so highly detailed

In terms of graphics, Dead Rising was a very early Xbox 360 game, while it makes good use of the technology with the multitude of zombie models and objects, the game certainly has uncanny character models and noisy textures, but here’s the thing-due to the mall setting, the game forgoes the brown visual style prevalent at the time for a more bright and colourful style that actually still looks pretty good

Overall, I recommend

Tinykin is a very impressive indie title, with typical issues, but playing this game, it’s difficult to put it down

Tinykin takes a lot from games like Pikmin and Chibi-Robo-manoeuvring a giant house, picking up objects to put in the right place, amassing an army of little creatures with different abilities to help you

Tinykin’s worlds (or rooms) are dense and massive, it’s quite a technical feat how much there is here-though this can partly be attributed to all the characters being sprites

Graphically, the game certainly has a very stereotypical indie appearance-with pale colours and bare textures, but the creativity on display is unprecedented

Ok, the game’s level design is massive on a horizontal and vertical scale, yet it never gets tedious due to two factors-the game is fast and flexible

Ok, what’s not as good?

Well, Tinykin suffers from being a game not particularly focused on plot, trying to cram plot in at the VERY last minute-the twists certainly explain some things, but also adds more confusion, ultimately opening up sequel potential

The game’s major flaw, is that it’s virtually impossible to 100%

The game suffers from excessive lack of communication

Each room has a variety of objectives to complete

The secondary collectible-pollen-fills each room in the hundreds

Every room has a primary quest, requiring you to find the necessary items, as well as some other quests on the side

There’s artifacts to collect, letters to take to a postbox for more pollen, bubble extenders

And a ton of in-game achievements
...
The game never gives you a detector or anything to find things

There is a first-person view, which highlights certain quests with icons, and special objects as blue wireframes, but it’s still hard to locate stuff, not everything is highlighted-especially pollen

Regardless, the game is still incredibly fun despite those issues, I highly recommend it

Yooka Laylee
Helmed by former Rare crew, the developer Playtonic crowdfunded the game as a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie

Once the game released-reception was mixed

Having played it twice, I can see the critiques, but I had a lot of fun with it

Let’s begin with the good-Yooka and Laylee control really well, they’re fast and snappy compared to the admittedly very slow and bulky Banjo and Kazooie

Their moveset is based around their lizard-bat combination, Yooka can eat plants with his tongue for temporary power-ups, and later use it as a grappling hook

He can throw Laylee into the air to propel them off the ground

He can bounce with his tail

Double jump, hover and spin

Yooka can roll into a ball that Laylee rolls on

Laylee’s abilities focus on echoing powers-she can reveal invisible platforms and stun enemies with a shriek

One thing I love about the platforming is how the game lets you climb anything-every rock ledge has collision detection

Upgrades are gained by collecting quills and spending them on moves taught by Trowzer the snake-one of many NPCs who appear in each level

Others include Kartos the minecart, Rextro the retro dinosaur, Dr Puzz, and Vendi the vending machine

There are also the Ghostwriters-the equivalent of Banjo’s Jinjos-who are caught in different ways

The graphics are fantastic-colourful huge levels that manage to be easy to traverse, you’ll rarely lose track of where everything is

I’m incredibly surprised at how uncompromised the Switch port is-little in the way of visual sacrifices, the game still runs well aside from a few stutters, it’s impressive

There are a lot of neat ideas-a giant casino level, galactic pirates, even a dungeon at one point that pays homage to Rare’s early title Knight Lore

The game uses the same captioned gibberish as Banjo, as well as Grant Kirkhope returning for the soundtrack

Now what about things that aren’t quite good?

Let’s break down the gameplay-Pagies are collected to unlock new levels and expand old ones

The game’s jiggy equivalent-pagies are found by completing various objectives-which arises one of the game’s core issues-it matches Banjo too close with many of the objectives being mediocre minigames

Minecarts, races, awkward puzzles, timed challenges, slide rooms, they aren’t that great

But I will say this-you more often than not can just go find an easier or more fun Pagie to collect, and the levels are still fun to explore

Also-a number of challenges can actually be cheesed by coming back later with the flight ability

Enemies can be pretty annoying, Rextro’s minigames are very meh, the minecart sections are awkward but simple score challenges

The transformations from Banjo Kazooie are included-I like how they incorporate both characters this time, but they’re mixed

The plant is just use for one Pagie really, Snowplow and Pirate Ship are used to clear rubble throughout the stage, which is fine, the Piranhas are cool, and then there’s the Helicopter, which is awesome

There’s a lot of neat stuff in Yooka Laylee-I won’t deny its inconsistency, there was more they could have done with a modern Banjo Kazooie, but it’s still an enjoyable time