Tag: Video Game

Game Review: Banished (Steam/PC)

7/10/2022

Ban­ished is a city-build­ing game released Feb­ru­ary 18, 2014 by Shin­ing Rock Soft­ware for PC. You direct a group of exiled peo­ples as they strive to sur­vive by gath­er­ing resources, build­ing dwellings, farms, and oth­er struc­tures.

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Price: Paid $6.79 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: No

One Word Descrip­tion: Stag­nant

  • Pros: Good bones, good tuto­ri­als, intu­itive, ini­tial­ly fun, many mods to sig­nif­i­cant­ly help
  • Cons: Frus­trat­ing build­ing sys­tem, dif­fi­cul­ty, slow game speed, sound effects

Game Review

Before I start, I need to admit that it was not clear to me until I start­ed writ­ing this that the game was released back in 2014.

OKAY, so, after about an hour of game­play, I found myself need­ing to com­plete all of the tuto­ri­als. That did the trick and the game flowed smoothly…at least for the next hour or two. For the record, I played on the eas­i­est mode. My first city was going swim­ming­ly until I real­ized I was miss­ing some very impor­tant build­ings and then every­one died, and I was left with no work­ers, doom­ing me. I then tried a sec­ond game/city which I restart­ed a few times to get a more favor­able map. For that playthrough I was para­noid and would save con­stant­ly in case cat­a­stro­phe struck. I did have to load the save once. There is a flow you have to fig­ure out time­wise to avoid wide­spread death. First, estab­lish­ing sev­er­al (real­ly, all of them) food sources is nec­es­sary, then make sure you don’t clear-cut too much because the work­ers just do what­ev­er, noth­ing in a par­tic­u­lar order as far as I could tell. Then, a trad­ing post is nec­es­sary for emer­gency low-food times (which is often), and then quick­ly estab­lish­ing a black­smith before every­one’s tools are bro­ken and things go even more slow­ly. And then as the resources start to dwin­dle, you have to quick­ly build a quar­ry and a mine. How­ev­er, the return on that isn’t too much and not only that but the death rate is high and mys­te­ri­ous if it was­n’t from star­va­tion. Even­tu­al­ly, things go smooth­ly, though, and some­times nomads will appear at the Town Cen­ter (if you’re able to afford build­ing one) that you can allow to join the set­tle­ment or not. They pro­vide much need­ed labor until they ran­dom­ly dis­ap­pear or demand hous­ing even though there are already hous­es.

Just like any city-build­ing/­sur­vival game, you need the basics: shel­ter and food. Ban­ished suc­cess­ful­ly illus­trates the sig­nif­i­cance of these two ele­ments to sur­vival. Every­thing else is just a side thought until those are tak­en care of. Graph­ics are fine, not the best or the worst. The music starts out good until it–and espe­cial­ly the sound effects, damn cows–grate upon the ears. In fact, that about sums up the game in a nut­shell: Enjoy­able ini­tial­ly before becom­ing aggra­vat­ing.

My gripes are many.

  • Build­ing any­thing is supreme­ly frus­trat­ing. Build­ings are best built one by one because it is unnec­es­sary to have all of the resources before set­ting the build­ing plots. This in and of itself is not the prob­lem. The major issue is that there’s no way to pri­or­i­tize any par­tic­u­lar build­ing. For exam­ple, if you set the plots for 2 hous­es and a farm and in total you’d need 40 wood amongst the 3 build­ings, the builders will allo­cate the wood slow­ly amongst the 3. They will still build the first house you set first, but not until the resources are spread apart. Apart from remov­ing the plots, you can’t tell them to go build that farm first. And then, when they are final­ly build­ing the house, it takes sooooo loooong for them to fin­ish because they have to go get food or rest or get more items? Even though they already have the items there?
  • That brings me to anoth­er gripe: it’s con­fus­ing how the vil­lagers oper­ate. Say that Jack­ie is the black­smith and there’s an option to fol­low a par­tic­u­lar vil­lager around the map. Well, then lat­er, Jack­ie is a min­er and Lem­my is the black­smith. Why? As I men­tioned pri­or, the builder will ran­dom­ly trav­el around the map instead of final­ly build­ing that bridge that’s been in the works for the past 3 years.
  • Hous­ing is a prob­lem, too. Each house as sev­er­al slots in them for inhab­i­tants. So, say that each house has 8 slots and there are 8 hous­es for a total of 64 open­ings. Even if there are 55 peo­ple, sev­er­al peo­ple will com­plain of no hous­ing despite there being 9 avail­able slots.
  • Mys­te­ri­ous dying. If there is a “low food” alert that’s been going on for too long, or “too cold” com­plaints, then peo­ple will die. You are alert­ed to their deaths. How­ev­er, some­times, peo­ple will dis­ap­pear, but you get no noti­fi­ca­tions except that a farm plot has no work­er all of the sud­den. Do they leave? Do they die? UFO body snatch­ers?
  • Unex­plained ele­ments. I guess the mys­te­ri­ous dying goes under this head­ing, too, but there are oth­ers like a pas­ture will get an infec­tion. The game tells you absolute­ly noth­ing about how to fix it. The work­er there will just dis­ap­pear and then appear and then dis­ap­pear. It nev­er explains how to get more vil­lagers. They have chil­dren, but it is not a con­trol­lable ele­ment. I can’t encour­age or dis­cour­age growth. When there’s an excess of sup­plies, there seem to be no chil­dren born, but when there’s hard times, there seems to be way too many babies who end up dying.
  • Mines and Quar­ries vs. Gath­er­ing resources with labor­ers. Both the quar­ries (stone) and mines (coal and iron) are both expen­sive to build but seem to not be worth the effort. The pro­duc­tion from either one is by far slow­er than gath­er­ing in the wild with labor­ers and seem to yield much less, too. Per­haps they are last ditch efforts after exhaust­ing the map.

Max play­time before quit­ting and unin­stall: 5 hours.

Over­all, it feels like a frac­tion of a game. The bones are sol­id, and the core mechan­ics are good. How­ev­er, by the time all build­ings are built, it just…stag­nates. There’s noth­ing left aside from watch­ing the vil­lagers scur­ry about com­plain­ing of bro­ken tools, the tem­per­a­ture, and hunger. I found myself wish­ing I could build a mil­i­tary or have some ene­my come so that I could fight them. It need­ed an upgrade ele­ment to keep it going. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it does­n’t have that. The replay val­ue is extreme­ly low. I under­stand that it is now an 8‑year-old game, but games like Age of Empires have been around for 25 years and offer much more! There­fore, I can­not rec­om­mend this game. I’m glad I bought it on sale because it is def­i­nite­ly not worth $20 MSRP to me. The ini­tial allure quick­ly fades into frus­tra­tion and soon into dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

Game Review: Summer in Mara (Switch)

writ­ten 07/04/2022

Sum­mer in Mara is an Adventure/Simulation game released by CHIBIG on June 16, 2020, for Nin­ten­do Switch, PS4, and Steam. You play as Koa who was res­cued from a ship­wreck by an elder­ly Qui­do named Haku and raised on her island in the sea of Mara.

Rat­ing: 3.9 out of 5

Price: Paid $9.49 out of MSRP $24.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Yes

One Word Descrip­tion: Relax­ing

  • Pros: Decent graph­ics, good music, relaxed game­play, farm­ing, craft­ing, fish­ing, cook­ing, build­ing, sail­ing not annoy­ing, sto­ry­line, many side quests, east­er eggs, quick jumps avail­able
  • Cons: Back forth fetch quests, no vehi­cle to make main town island eas­i­er to nav­i­gate, hunger and pow­er meter, anti­cli­mac­tic end­ing, bug­gy game­play, some quests unclear, unsat­is­fac­to­ry end­ing

Game Review — The game starts off with young Koa run­ning around the island and Yaya Haku being the stern but lov­ing grand­ma. The tuto­r­i­al turns out to be a flash­back and all of the sud­den, Koa is old­er, the island is in dis­re­pair, and the only reminder that Haku exist­ed is a lit­tle shrine dec­o­rat­ed with shells near the mys­te­ri­ous stone gate. She’s been bare­ly sur­viv­ing on her own and con­tin­ues to sub­sist off oranges, black­ber­ries, and fish until one day a strange crea­ture she names Napopo hap­pens by. With sud­den inspi­ra­tion, Koa fix­es the island, makes new tools, and even­tu­al­ly repairs the boat to explore Mara!

First stop is Qalis, the main city of Mara, which is the main island in the game. There Koa meets with many new char­ac­ters and thus starts the game. Sum­mer in Mara is a quest-cen­tric game. Fin­ish­ing tasks for the inhab­i­tants of the sea unlocks new quests, items, tools, char­ac­ters, and most impor­tant­ly: the map. There is a good rhythm to the flow, offer­ing many choic­es to the play­er. The time ele­ment gov­ern­ing night and day has no bear­ing upon things aside from shop times and forc­ing Koa to rest. The lat­er it becomes, the faster the sta­mi­na depletes, and no amount food will ful­ly sus­tain her until she either sleeps at her house, at the inn of Qalis, on the boat or in a sleep­ing bag/tent.

As a gen­er­al rule, when new things are avail­able to be built, build it! Often­times, the act of build­ing on Koa’s island will unlock new recipes allow­ing the play­er a sigh of relief and the fun of dec­o­rat­ing the island. Cut down, burn, replant trees as you like. The game impos­es lim­its on num­ber of trees, but build­ing wells increas­es that amount. Col­lect­ing ani­mals who then pro­duce items when fed, encour­ages farm­ing of crops. Ini­tial­ly, the one-time-use items and lim­it­ed mate­ri­als can be anx­i­ety-induc­ing, but most items can be bought if you have enough mon­ey. How­ev­er, the game is extreme­ly gen­er­ous with ran­dom free items so long as the play­er spends time sail­ing and speak­ing to mail crabs. Speak­ing of mon­ey, it’s easy to sell items for cash, AND the nice thing is that aside from a 99 item cap, there is no inven­to­ry lim­it.

The main sto­ry quest can be…frustrating. There’s a lot of back and forth and fetch­ing this and that, and deal­ing with irri­tat­ing, stub­born old peo­ple. While that is eas­i­ly for­giv­en of side quests, main sto­ry quests are bet­ter off being more straight for­ward in my opin­ion. Thank­ful­ly, I spent so much time gath­er­ing items that most quests were quick­ly and eas­i­ly dealt with. The sto­ry is most­ly told through char­ac­ter dia­logue, but some­times there are ani­mat­ed sequences. Try­ing to pro­tect Mara from enter­pris­ing aliens was sur­pris­ing­ly mak­ing me angry for the inhab­i­tants, and I was excit­ed­ly look­ing for­ward to the big end­ing as the events were reach­ing a cli­max when–

–an error occurred, and I got back into the game only to have missed it all. It had thrown me direct­ly into post-game con­di­tions. I had to go dig­ging around on YouTube for the cutscene only to find that I missed almost noth­ing. The ani­mat­ed scene was short, a lit­tle con­fus­ing, and not all that sat­is­fy­ing.

Hmm. I decid­ed that I would actu­al­ly fin­ish the rest of the quests out and spent sev­er­al more hours dig­ging up chests (appar­ent­ly, I nev­er knew about the shov­el the entire game!) and mak­ing mon­ey. I kept hit­ting more and more game bugs as it went on until I thought I hit the biggest bug of all: an unfin­ish­able quest! How­ev­er, as is turns out, it’s not a bug. You lit­er­al­ly can­not fin­ish all of the quests because accord­ing to the devel­op­ers it sym­bol­izes the idea that quests nev­er end in Mara :). Buh. While I under­stand where they’re com­ing from, that does­n’t sit well with me… does­n’t give me clo­sure. Ugh. I wish they’d come up with a dif­fer­ent way.

So, basi­cal­ly, I qui­et­ly fin­ished the game and…I guess…that’s it…?

Gripes

  • Some things are unclear. Like some of the quests sent me to the search engines because I sim­ply could not fig­ure out where to get some things. I kind of wish they’d men­tioned some­where that build­ing items on the island would help unlock new recipes. If they did, I def­i­nite­ly missed it as did many oth­er play­ers accord­ing to the forums.
  • Run­ning around on Qalis was hel­la annoy­ing!!! It’s nice that the island is well laid out, but geez, run­ning lit­er­al­ly back and forth to oppo­site ends of the place over and over again was get­ting seri­ous­ly tir­ing. Plus, I think the ZR but­ton on my Switch is per­ma­nent­ly affect­ed by con­stant depres­sion. I wish more devel­op­ers allowed con­stant run­ning tog­gles. Rune Fac­to­ry 5 did a great job of that.
  • A horse, or roller skates, or a bike would have helped tremen­dous­ly on Qalis
  • BUGS. GLITCHES. From ran­dom tele­por­ta­tion, to get­ting stuck on things, to menu lim­i­ta­tions. Admit­ted­ly, it was­n’t game-break­ing and only one sig­nif­i­cant glitch (though I think that might be Switch and not soft­ware?) that pre­vent­ed me from see­ing the end cutscene.
  • It would have been nice to have more access to workshops/kitchen/tool mak­ing out­side of the home island. The con­stant need to go back because I need­ed to make ONE item was irri­tat­ing. Maybe make it a boat upgrade?
  • There are 3 types of trees that need to be plant­ed on high­er ele­va­tion. That’s kind of cool to have that con­sid­er­a­tion, except that the only place on the island to grow the 3 fruits was so super tiny! Why!?
  • I real­ly wish there was more post-game con­tent. Some­thing like restor­ing the old Navy Acad­e­my would have been neat or estab­lish­ing a new Navy alto­geth­er. Per­haps as a reward for com­plet­ing all of the quests, it unlocks that! Or maybe com­plet­ing the colos­sus. All in all, too short.
  • Some of the islands seemed use­less. Like the GIANT island in the north that became a waste­land because of the Elits and hous­es a giant bun­ny. Or the two map squares that are com­plete­ly emp­ty. Even the weird Hal­loween Island.

Over­all, a cute game! A lit­tle bug­gy, but very sol­id. I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend it to any­one who enjoys fetch-quests, farm­ing, cook­ing, craft­ing, fish­ing, div­ing, and sail­ing. It is extreme­ly relax­ing with no time lim­it (aside from parts of the main sto­ry that requires you to sail and there­fore can’t quick jump), so you can explore, or craft, or build, or what­ev­er at your leisure. The mechan­ics work well, the hunger and sta­mi­na meters are fair. There’s a col­lec­tion ele­ment, and there aren’t too many lim­its on build­ing. Devel­op­ers crammed lots of lit­tle details into the game and got many things right! Very enjoy­able and I will always have fond mem­o­ries of it. The 4ish stars out of 5 are for annoy­ing back and forth run­ning, lack of sat­is­fac­to­ry end­ing, and all the glitch-bugs I kept run­ning into even if they’re not game-break­ing.