The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)

Nintendo's Legend of Zelda series is one of its longest lasting, most beloved & successful franchises and for a good reason. They have offered a lot of memorable adventures and often been on the forefront of imaginative adventure games pushing the envelope. The series isn't without its few missteps, but there's a reason why so few games have risen up to par or even close to the quality & success of the Zelda franchise. My favorite Zelda has always been A Link to the Past and I was very excited when Nintendo announced this sequel, although I only got the chance to play the game now, in 2015, almost 1,5 years after its release. Fortunately, the wait has mostly been worth it.

Not the same but the same
A Link Between Worlds takes place in the same Hyrule as A Link to the Past, only six generations has gone by. Hence, the Link we play as now isn't the same as the Link in ALTTP. Much like A Link to the Past, this game features a dual-world with one being the sunny Hyrule and the other a darker, more corrupt alternative, which is called Lorule this time, with alternative versions of people like Zelda (called Hilda) living in the kingdom. While Lorule isn't technically the same thing as the Dark World in A Link to the Past, it looks and feels very much the same, though with similar kind of differences to the Dark World of ALTTP as ALBW's Hyrule in comparison to ALTTP's Hyrule.

The events of ALTTP are a thing of legend in ALBW (pun intended).

The story itself starts of in a somewhat similar manner as well, though the early moments aren't quite as dark as A Link to the Past's. You are an apprentice of the blacksmith and are late for work. You get to work and after being chastised by your master, you get a job to deliver a newly forged sword to a captain of Hyrule castle who forgot to take it with him. This leads you to run around for a while until you are directed to the same sanctuary that was a part of ALTTP's beginning.

Same home sweet home.

 In the sanctuary, a new villain Yuga appears and transforms one of the new sages, Seres, into a painting. You try to fight against him, but are unable to do anything. After a few other events, Hyrule Castle is under dark magic and no one can enter, which sends Link to find the same three pendants that he had to find in ALTTP so that he could go retrieve the Master Sword which can then be used to dispell the magic surrounding Hyrule Castle. Of course Link doesn't win Yuga even as he does this and while Link has been running around to find the pendants & Master Sword, Yuga has painting-fied the rest of the sages. They move to Lorule where Yuga uses the painting-sages' powers to unleash a kind of Yuga-Ganon fusion onto the world. Hilda saves Link but in the process the Sage paintings are scattered all around the kingdom. Much like the Dark World, Lorule has seven dungeons/castles Link has to go through to save the sages.

The world is a bit TOO similar to A Link to the Past's, for being a sequel.

The biggest difference between ALTTP and ALBW is that ALBW is less restrictive in how to tackle the game. You can actually rent all of the items (except one) from the start, so apart from big boulders and a couple of other kinds of obstacles, there's really not much that stands in your way of going through the dungeons in any order you want. I'm not sure if it's more of a mental thing, but I liked ALTTP's approach more. It felt like every new item & skill gotten and every dungeon beaten took me closer to the climax of the story, with Link gaining more experience & preparing to take on Ganondorf with all of his new equipment. In ALBW I was kind of just doing the dungeons in whatever order and got the more powerful items so early on that I never felt any kind of progression, never feeling that kind of build-up to the finale because neither the gamepley nor narrative was pushing me into it like it did in ALTTP. I was just suddenly standing in front of Lorule Castle, ready to take on the final dungeon & battle. Other than having more hearts and a better tunic & sword, I didn't feel all that different from the Link that I had been when I first entered Lorule.

I've got the power!

Wall-merger all the way
The big gimmick of ALBW is that Link can merge himself into a wall as a kind of painting and move around on walls' surfaces (though only left & right). It's used to get over & around gaps, move through tight spaces, evading enemies and popping out of the walls to push stuff that's laying against the wall. It is used a lot during the game, perhaps a bit too much, as it feels most of the items aren't used much at all while it's rare that more than one minute goes between wall-merging. The good thing is that it's not a lengthy process. You pop-in and pop-out of the wall very quickly so it doesn't become too tedious to use it and it just becomes one form of traversal. Even then, the problem really is that the rest of the tools take a backseat.

Be prepared to see a lot of this.

Even in dungeons that supposedly focus on certain item's usage, the wall-merging is used for a lot of puzzles that overshadow the items. This is a bit disappointing as the use of the items almost never goes beyond anything that was already done in ALTTP. As a sequel to ALTTP, I'd have hoped that they'd come up with new, inventive ways of taking advantage of old items. And while there are a few times when some old stuff is used in ways that I don't remember them being used in ALTTP, those instances are far too rare. The problem with this is that there really isn't all that much they do that uses the wall-travelling in inventive ways, so it ends up making the puzzles throughout the game feel a bit same-y. Most of the time, it's mostly just about noticing that you can use the wall-travel in certain situations instead of figuring out how to use it to your advantage.

Rent-a-thon.

Another thing that ended up bothering me is the uneven difficulty level, especially when it comes to the combat. The beginning of the game felt exciting. Enemies could kill you quite easily if you weren't careful. I had rented almost all of the items and because I actually felt vulnerable, there was the kind of tension that I could lose everything if I died that the often-too-easy Zelda series rarely has. But this was quickly done away by the abundance of hearts and the new tunics that halve damage, so the game turns ridiculously easy quite abrubtly quite soon after arriving to Lorule. Only the final boss offered some challenge after the first few hours and even that only because I didn't actually find the second tunic. The game does offer a more difficult Hero Mode after beating the story once, but I don't feel like playing through the game again this soon, so its worth will have to wait for another time. If only it had been available from the start.

Perhaps the most surprising minigame I've experienced in a Zelda game. And I hate it.

 Perhaps the biggest complaint I have of ALBW is not about its quality per se, but more about its nature as not-quite-a-full-fledged-sequel to ALTTP. It feels more like an alternate take on A Link to the Past instead of an innovative continuation to its formula like what Majora's Mask was to Ocarina of Time. The world is different but it's almost the same. The dungeon layouts are different, yet the dungeons mostly function in the same way, having many of the same gimmicks yet oftentimes they aren't even as challenging as ALTTP's dungeons. This feels almost more like a more extensive Ocarina of Time's Master Quest like rework of the original ALTTP with a slightly altered storyline than a completely new Zelda game. It perhaps plays a bit too much on nostalgia and is too afraid to make bigger changes to the formula. Fortunately, even if the game perhaps feels a bit too much like a retread of A Link to the Past instead of an innovative game of its own, it's still a high quality game.

Another nitpick I have is the rewards this game gives you. Way too much of it was rupees and some of the rewards were shockingly unrewarding. I threw what felt like thousands upon thousands of rupees into a fairy spring and what did it give me as a reward? The FIFTH bottle, as if the four I had already weren't enough. What did feel rewarding were the upgrades to my items rewarded for finding all the Maiamai squids. The upgraded items felt suitably powerful. But otherwise, most everything else was Rupees, with a few heart pieces sprinkled here & there.

Long time no see, d00d.

One neat feature is that A Link Between Worlds makes use of the StreetPass feature of 3DS. You can open up your 3DS to download challengers from other ALBW owners in the form of Shadow Links. They are other people's Links as they were at the time of the StreetPass pass-by, only controlled by AI that tries to emulate how the owner of the Shadow Link would play, with the equipment & hearts that the player's Link had. Unfortunately I only confronted one other person with ALBW, so my experiences with this are not that extensive. It seemed like something that could be fun if you live in an area with more 3DS owners, but my particular opponent was so weak that it wasn't much of a fight.


Well excuse me my smooth moves, princess
If there's something that I can't find any kind of fault in, it's the audiovisual side of A Link Between Worlds. The 3D effect is extremely well done (especially nice on New Nintendo 3DS' screen), the graphics are teeming with all kinds of nice details & personality that very few developers can do like Nintendo, it all runs so smoothly at 60fps no matter if you play with the 3D mode on or off and they have shifted the ALTTP 2d style into 3d pretty much perfectly. Although the graphics are a bit simple, it's still a very nice looking game and a joy to see in such smooth motion.

The music is an unbelievably great mix of completely new compositions and old tunes made anew with genius level orchestral arrangements that not only do good with the old melodies but also add new layers & extensions of greatness into them. The old melodies are recognizable yet fresh enough that it doesn't feel too safe. Ryo Nagamatsu has done an amazing job in arranging & upgrading Koji Kondo's old soundtrack to new orchestrated heights as well as offering worthwhile new music that will likely have earned its place among the best of the Legend of Zelda franchise's rich history of beautiful music once all things are said & done.

Meet Hilda. She's like Zelda, but with a totally innocent black/blue-ish hair.

Verdict: GREAT. After the extremely disappointing handheld adventures in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, which I personally consider thoroughly mediocre or even below mediocre games, A Link Between Worlds is a return to form for handheld Zeldas. The openness of the game's structure does mean some of the sense of progression is lost and I do have a lot of other complaints about the game's nature as a kind of half-remake, half-sequel, but in the end I can't say I didn't enjoy the game. Despite all my nitpicks with it, it did sink its hooks on me and it didn't take more than a few evenings to play through the game. I guess my biggest problem with ALBW, in retrospect, ends up being the fact that it either does things a tiny bit worse than ALTTP or doesn't do them better/different enough, not that anything it does sucks complete & utter ass.

It's a quality game, but feels like a (re-imagining of a) game that I already played when I was around 7 or 8 years old. Not a bad thing per se, but not quite the sequel I was hoping for. I guess it ended up harming the experience a bit when Miyamoto & Co couldn't decide whether to just remake A Link to the Past or if they should make a proper sequel, so they kind of did something in between. Maybe my expectations were a bit too high, but as a sequel (especially as a sequel to a Zelda game) this is a bit disappointing in how overly safe it seems. While it's nice to see old environments again, at some point you do kind of go "so what's so different about this?" As a game it's still a great one far above most other action adventure games that are usually just pale imitations of Legend of Zelda games.







p.s. I absolutely loathe the baseball minigame and it will probably be the reason why I'll never truly 100% this game. >_<


INFO BOX

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer(s): Nintendo EAD Group No. 3, Monolith Soft

Platform(s): Nintendo 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS

Release Date (Europe): November 22nd, 2013

Number of players: 1

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix (PS3)

The first Kingdom Hearts was a game that I don't think anyone could have seen coming and even once it was announced, few probably thought it would become one of the biggest JRPG series in the world. But exist it does and successful it did become, so here we are over ten years with the first game and the two interquels between Kingdom Hearts & Kingdom Hearts II compiled into a single package in preparation for Kingdom Hearts III.This is the review of KH 1.5 HD ReMix, with the review of the second HD Remaster collection to follow.

The beginning
The epic saga starts with three friends Sora, Riku & Kairi building a raft that they want to use to travel off their small group of islands to see what's beyond the horizon. Before they can do that, darkness starts to engulf their world. Kairi seems to disappear and Riku is swallowed by darkness, which leaves Sora alone to fight off dark creatures called the Heartless. Luckily he has just gained the skill to summon & use a weapon called Keyblade to ward off the shadowy beings attacking the islands. While he succeeds in fighting off a big Heartless monster, Sora can't escape the darkness completely and as the Destiny Islands disapper into the darkness, Sora gets thrown into a world called Traverse Town where lost souls gather when their worlds are overrun by the darkness. Here Sora begins to learn about the nature of the Keyblade and sets on a journey to find his friends with help from Donald Duck & Goofy. They travel through a dozen or so worlds looking for Kairi, Riku and King Mickey, all the while sinister forces have their own plans behind the scenes.

The first thing you'll notice when starting to play Kingdom Hearts is how well it has aged from a visual point of view. Even though it doesn't sport the latest graphical techniques, with just a bump in resolution it's still quite the pretty game to look at. The colourful cartoony style is probably to be thanked for that, but the original development team's mastery of the PS2 hardware should not be forgotten either. What these people got out of PS2 is nothing short of amazing.

Kingdom Hearts is a long-running series and while the franchise mostly appearing on handhelds in recent years has meant there have been no advances in the visuals (and the DS games naturally looking much worse), the games have taken great steps forward in certain aspects of gameplay. Kingdom Hearts 1 is a bit clunky by today's standards, but the fast-paced combat, decently challenging battles and worlds packed with secrets to find & stuff to do still make it entertaining to play. Still, there's no denying that the first game is a bit dated on the gameplay front. While it's one of the better games in the franchise when it comes to offering interesting locales and rewarding exploration in imaginative environments, a lot of fun optional things to do and a straightforward story, the basic gameplay could be tighter. Precision jumping, which is needed at certain parts of the game, is particularly annoying and the camera isn't the best of 3d action games. It's nothing you can't get used to if you enjoy the experience otherwise, but that doesn't mean the problem isn't present and it can annoy some more than others. Personally I've played the game so many times that the camera isn't much of an issue anymore, but I understand if it frustrates some.

All in all there are a lot of games that have aged far worse than Kingdom Hearts 1 from the PS2 era. It's still the heartfull, fun, exciting action RPG that made millions of fans in 2001 and can still enthrall people today. The biggest fault I can muster about the collection, as far as its nature as an HD remaster goes, are the trophies, which applies to both the first game & Chain of Memories. Both KH1 & Re:CoM have the worst designed difficulty trophies around. You have to play KH1 through at least 3 times on each different difficulty level and Re:CoM is even crazier because you have to play the game through on all difficulty levels with both Sora and Riku. This makes the platinum trophies extremely time-consuming & tedious to get. So these aren't the ideal games for trophy perfectionists. But that's about as bad as these HD remasters get.

A memory of cards
Sora's journey to find Riku & Mickey takes a slight detour in Re:Chain of Memories. This PS2 3d remake of the original GBA game takes Sora and his friends into Castle Oblivion, a mysterious place filled with people dressed in black-hooded leather coats and filled with memories of places visited & people met in the past. These people seem to have some kind of plan for Sora, who only wishes to see his friends again. The story introduces some new, long-lasting characters like Axel and Namine, who have major roles in many of the future games. It also gives us our first experience of playing as Riku, who is still haunted by the darkness he succumbed to in the first game and has to redeem himself if he ever wants to see his friends again.

As a game, Chain of Memories is very divisive, which is mostly due to its gameplay & structure. The combat is done with cards and if you don't learn the ways of exploiting the system, it can get a bit annoying with enemies & bosses interrupting a lot of your moves. Basically, you have a deck of cards that you can build with the cards that you get throughout the game. Each card has a numeric value that decides its strenght against enemies' cards. If it's higher than the enemy card, you'll manage to attack. If it's lower, your attack is blocked no matter what. If you don't know how to build an effective deck of cards, you'll have to get used to tons of attacks blocked by enemies. You can also do a combo of three cards that will launch different kinds of destructive special moves depending on what attack, spell & other special cards you use in the combination. The catch is that the first of the three cards will be eliminated from your deck until the end of the battle, so you can't abuse the system too much, although certain powerful special moves make that limitation somewhat obsolete.

Another flaw of the game is that it's very much a retread of the first game when it comes to the Disney worlds, stories & bosses as well as basic enemies. That wouldn't be too bad, but it's not even a very good one in the sense that the overly simple rooms that Chain of Memories consists of are quite boring in comparison to the lively, varied worlds of the original. It feels more like a randomized dungeon crawler with Disney world skins than the kind of romp through (more or less) fun worlds with distinct locations & actual exploration.

I personally like Chain of Memories, though it's far from my favorite overall game in the franchise. The card combat isn't all that bad if you get the hang of it and aren't annoyed by the interruptions to your attacks by enemy cards, and the story is easily the strongest in the franchise. The worlds are a bit boring, but the intriquing story pushes you to go forward and collecting cards & leveling up can be quite addictive. While ultimately the things that are introduced in Chain of Memories do lead to some of the more crazy aspects in the franchise's storyline, as a self-contained story Chain of Memories is the best one in the series. Organization XIII messing with Sora's memories is an intriguing concept and it's handled surprisingly well with enough complexity to have some real surprices yet not too much so that it becomes needlessly convoluted. All the plotting, backstabbing and manipulating within the Organization XIII's ranks is entertaining to watch unfold. On the other side of things, Riku's story of redemption & learning to control his darkness starts in a well done way in Chain of Memories and it's what made him a long-lasting favorite of mine and a lot of other KH fans. 

Another prequel-sequel-interquel
The last of the "games" in this collection is the movie recapping Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days' story. Days is another interquel taking place between the first and second mainline entries in the franchise, taking place prior to, in parallel AND after the events of Chain of Memories. The main gist of the story is to tell about Roxas' time as a member of the ominous Organization XIII, showing how he got there, what he did during his time there and what eventually lead to him leaving the organization. It also gives a slightly deeper look of the other Organization XIII members, their interactions and what they were doing at the time.

Outside of ReCoded, Days is perhaps the most pointless entry into the franchise from a story perspective and not all that special from a gameplay point of view either, so it's perhaps best that a lot of people can just experience it as a 3 hour movie instead of slogging through the repetitive gameplay badly paced story of the original. It's a game/story for the Roxas & Axel fans, but its significance in the bigger picture is pretty small. It doesn't really take the story forward, but its function is merely to fill some of the blanks in the timeline of Roxas, though it does hint at some still untouched storylines such as Saix & Axel's connection and some kind of secret plans that are somewhat separate from Xemnas & Organization XIII's.

Be prepared to see a lot of sea salt ice cream eating.

It goes through the story much in the same way the original game did. You go through Roxas' days in the Organization XIII and can see the passage of time as the day counter  counts towards Roxas' inevidable last day (#358) at the Organization XIII, right before the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. While you could say that it does a decent job at telling the story of Days, all-in-all the movie is boring because they haven't really added any action scenes into it to bring some variety to the watching experience. And since pretty much all of the action in the game was in playable form, there's not much of it in the movie. This means you will see characters standing around and talking, sitting and talking, eating sea-salt ice cream and talking, and doing all of the above and talking.

 Final remix HD superiority
 Kingdom Hearts 1.5 is a very good remaster. It runs at 1440x1080 resolution with a decent 2xMSAA to smoothen some of the edges. It could have done with a bit better anti-aliasing, but the image quality looks really good otherwise. It runs at a smooth locked 30fps and I don't remember too many instances of it dropping below that.

The KH1 in this collection is the Final Mix version of the game. While it's not nearly as big an improvement over the version we got in the west in the first place, there are still some things that western players will have missed because it was never brought outside Japan, most notably the optional, hard-as-balls Xemnas fight and the cool extended secret ending. The recoloured enemies are a bit of a hit & miss, but even the worse ones aren't too bad, except a select few.

There is one thing that I haven't talked about at all in this review yet, and that is the music of the package. And what glorious music it is. Square Enix hasn't done the bare minimum with updating the music, no, they have orchestrated every song that wasn't orchestrated before. The new orchestral arrangements sound absolutely amazing. There are a few where it's a bit uncertain if the new one is better than the original, but most of it is a big improvement over the already great midi sounds. Some purists might have preferred an option to choose between the original and the new arrangements, but personally I don't ever want to return to the originals, the arrangements are just that good.

Verdict: GREAT. Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix is one of the best HD remasters around. They've updated it to look & sound amazing, brought the previously unreleased version into the west and done everything to make the collection worth every penny for both people new to the franchise & returning fans who want to relive the past. While the games themselves do show their age in some aspects of gameplay and the intro to KH1 is a bit too long & boring, they can still offer plenty of enjoyment if you can get past the somewhat clumsy controls & slow start of the first game and the unorthodox card battle system of Re:Chain of Memories. Outside of completely remaking the games and/or their graphics, this is pretty much the best possible way for Square Enix to re-release these games.

INFO BOX

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer(s): Square Enix Osaka Team

Platform(s): PlayStation 3

Release Date (Europe): September 13th, 2013

Number of players: 1

Life is Strange Episode 1: Chrysalis (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbone, X360)

Telltale has seen much success with their story-driven, interactive movie like games in the last few years. As such, it's a bit surprising that there aren't many others who have tried to get a piece of that pie. Now Dontnod Entertainment has teamed up with Square Enix to bring along something that is clearly going for the audience that buys Telltale's games, but fortunately isn't just a copy-cat, rather setting out to try to do its own thing.

 

Episodic, interactive, graphic adventure video game indie movie
The word 'indie' gets thrown around a lot nowadays, as indie games have found the kind of success through digital distribution they could never have imagined before when physical releases were pretty much the only way to find real success. However, Life is Strange is perhaps the first game that really feels like one of those stereotypical indie movies with an unknown cast, soundtrack filled with non-mainstream bands with melancholic music and set in smaller towns with a more personal slice of life type story than something bombastic & epic.

All that said, the story starts out with a bang. The main character is Maxine Caulfield, a somewhat self-conscious teenager who has just returned to her hometown recently to study photography and you are near what seems like a destructive tornado approaching her old new hometown Arcadia Bay, until she suddenly wakes up. Just a dream or a vision of what's to come? That is a bit unclear as Max wakes up from the dream in the middle of a lesson. Startled by the vivid dream, she decides to go to the bathroom after class to freshen up. In the bathroom, she witnesses an argument between a boy and a girl that leads to the boy shooting the girl. Freaked out by what she just saw, she suddenly notices she's in the middle of the lesson that she thought had already ended. It seems Max has somehow gained the power to move through time.

What follows is the slow-building first episode of a five-episode indie drama. The first episode's 3-4 hours are mostly spend with introducing the people of the town and setting up the main mysteries of the story; mainly, what was that tornado all about, Max starting to experiment with her new-found powers and starting to unravel all the behind the scenes shenanigans that are going on in this small town, some of which might have something to do with the disappearance of this Rachel girl whose Missing-posters are all over campus.

The writing in this first episode is a bit uneven. Most of the time it's serviceable enough that it shouldn't take the player out of the experience and they succeed decently well at giving characters distinct personalities that feel natural, but there are some jarring lines of dialogue here & there. Luckily even though they don't always quite talk like actual real-life people, the characters still mostly feel like actual human beings with a past that has shaped their personalities & lives and the game sets up potential storylines for most of them that seem like they are worth seeing till the end There's some not-so-sunny things going on with many characters and we'll undoubtedly get to uncover a lot of secrets many of these characters have, which will hopefully make up for some good drama.

Welcome to Arcadia Bay
So what do you actually do in Life is Strange? Well, it's a story-driven game, but with quite a lot of exploration and optional discussions. One thing that sets Life is Strange apart from Telltale's games in a positive manner is that it does feel a bit more like a traditional graphical adventure game and less like just an interactive movie. You are more in control of your character & her actions and there are even some puzzles to solve. Exploration is rewarded with all kinds of objects & things Max will comment on, easter eggs about Square Enix games and meeting more people that will shed light on the dynamics & going-ons of the small town. There's also a side quest of finding certain events, moments & things to photograph. A lot of Life is Strange is about the interaction between Max and Arcadia Bay's inhabitants. Getting to know people, finding ways to get more information about certain things and figuring out what you should do in surprising situations. The game does also have some hidden things you can find to do that could affect future events and which you can only find by thorough investigation of the different locations.

There's plenty to interact with in the game, most of it not in any way integral to the story

Max's time-rewind skill comes into play a lot during the game. The time-rewind skill is handy in that you can remember conversations you have even if you rewind time. For example, if you don't remember someone's name immediately and they complain about it to you, you can just rewind time and use your newly gotten information to get a better reaction. Items are carried through time, which is mostly used in puzzle-solving. You can also alter your decisions based on the immediate reactions of other people to your actions, though what long-term effects they'll have aren't clear, so most of the time you are still forced to live with your choices not knowing what kind of ramifications it might have in the future. Is the goodwill of a bullied girl better in the long term when you angered the security guard to get that goodwill? There are some fairly strickt limits as to how much you can rewind. Most of the time you can only rewind until the beginning of the discussion and there are some bigger decisions that are locked in after certain checkpoints the game will notify about in a "after this point this decision made cannot be changed anymore, do you really want to continue?" manner.

Tunes of a small town
Life is Strange isn't the most technically impressive game, but it's adequate enough to carry the experience and to not affect the experience too negatively. The art style is the kind that it looks good even though the budget isn't on AAA level and everything runs perfectly fine on at least PS4. It has some areas that could use some improving, like lip synching, but otherwise the art style comes together with the small-town feel & soundtrack to successfully create the perfect kind of atmosphere for this kind of indie movie imitating game. At best it feels like Twin's Peak, even if the writing isn't up to par. Speaking of the soundtrack, it's quite good. It's exactly the kind of indie folk music that can create that kind of melancholic sense of nostalgia of small town life that fits the vibe Life is Strange is going for. The soundtrack is the perfect companion to the whole Life is Strange experience.

The game does have its pretty moments despite budget restrictions

Verdict: INTRIQUING. This first episode won't blow up anyone's mind, but it is a strong enough start for this episodic small town drama that you'll most likely be left wanting to see more, especially if moody, melancholic low-key indie dramas are your thing. Unlike Telltale's games and despite the dramatic beginning with tornadoes & school shootings, Life is Strange so far is less about who lives and who dies or making constant life or death decisions and more about a somewhat slow-building drama about life in a small town hit by a tragedy in the not so distant past with many people who have something to hide. You aren't fighting against impossible odds against a zombie apocalypse and you aren't fighting to stop the downfall of the whole Fables society as much as you are seeing Max slowly getting used to living in her old hometown again, growing a bit more confident as an independent young adult person and gathering knowledge of the town, its inhabitants and all the campus & small town drama and politics/intrique as they have become since she first moved out of there. Based on the first episode, this seems like something that could grow to be quite special if they can just keep the awkward dialogue to a minimum and build on the promising premise adequately and end it up with a suitably climactic & intriquing, yet personal finale. Even if you aren't ready to jump in just yet, this is one episodic game to keep your eyes on.


INFO BOX

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer(s): Dontnod Entertainment

Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Playstation 4 (tested), Xbox 360, Xbox One

Release Date (Europe): January 30th, 2015

Number of players: 1

What we know? Kingdom Hearts III (PS4/Xbox One)

"What we know?" will be a frequently infrequent series of articles about what we know  (& some speculation) about upcoming games that are still ways off and thus still somewhat shrouded in mystery. I'll try to summarize as much as we know about the projects based on interviews, preview, official announcements and, if possible, what we know based on prequels. This is the first article in this series and it is about a game that has been on my Most Wanted list ever since I finished Kingdom Hearts II in Spring 2006.

Basic info:
Platform(s): PlayStation 4 & Xbox One
Release date: TBA
Director(s): Tai Yasue & Tetsuya Nomura

Background
Kingdom Hearts III is the next installment in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. It has been a long time coming. Kingdom Hearts II was originally released in December 2005 in Japan and after that the franchise has seen numerous spin-offs on handhelds, which are meant to expand the story & set up Kingdom Hearts III in numerous ways. After somewhat lackluster sales of the few last handheld KH titles and the state of handheld gaming outside Japan, SQEX made the decision that Kingdom Hearts needs to return to home consoles as soon as possible (since the best selling KH titles are still the original two PS2 KHs games), which possibly lead them to scrap Birth By Sleep Vol. 2 and make Dream Drop Distance instead, which would bridge the gap between the end of KHII and beginning of KHIII. And so, after almost a decade of waiting, the third mainline Kingdom Hearts title is now actively in development.

Development
Kingdom Hearts III is being developed by Square Enix's Osaka-based team which Tetsuya Nomura has dubbed as the reigning "Kingdom Hearts Team" after the original KH Team spent years with Nomura on Final Fantasy Versus XIII/XV. They are quite likely developing the game with help from the Tokyo offices and probably with plenty of outsourcing as well, as the Osaka Team isn't big enough to handle the development of a PS4 level Kingdom Hearts game alone (though they have been hiring lately).

The development of Kingdom Hearts III began soon after Osaka team was done with the last entry in the series, Dream Drop Distance for 3DS, although at the time and until recently the team has also developed the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 & 2.5 HD ReMixes concurrently, with team members switching between working on KHIII & the ReMixes as need be.

The earliest hints of Osaka Team working on KHIII came in the months following DDD's western release. It was hinted that Osaka team had a new project underway and that this project would be much bigger than anything they had worked on by that point. Given that the next step from Dream Drop Distance for the KH franchise could be nothing else but Kingdom Hearts III and how Nomura had dubbed the Osaka Team as the new "official" KH team, it was pretty clear that this project could be nothing else but Kingdom Hearts III.

Luckily we didn't have to wait for too long for the confirmation that this is the case, as Tetsuya Nomura announced Kingdom Hearts III during Sony's E3 2013 press conference. Unfortunately, the game was still early in development so they didn't really have much to show, but at least it was confirmed that the game was in development and had been for some time by that point.

In addition to the short announcement teaser trailer at E3 2013, Kingdom Hearts III made another brief appearance at a Disney event in Japan in Fall 2013, which showed the first glimpses of an early playable build with some of the new gameplay features they were planning for KHIII. This would turn out to be the last time we'd see KHIII in public in 1,5 years and counting (excluding the short footage shown to a small group of priviliged fans who were at KH2.5's launch party, which hasn't leaked to the general public).

Since it's 2013 showings, not much has been shown of KHIII, but there has been some information about the game. Most recent big news headlines were caused by the announcements that Tetsuya Nomura was the director of FFXV no more to focus on KHIII and that KHIII would be using the Unreal Engine 4 instead of Square Enix's own Luminous Studios like was originally announced. This is presumably because the Luminous team has been integrated into Final Fantasy XV's development team, which is bad for KHIII because Osaka team admitted that they'd need the full support of the Luminous team to help them get up to par with current gen level game development as well as helping with some more technical problems they run into, and they actually thought they would get that support around E3 2013. Since then, situations have changed, so either they had to wait for the Luminous team to be freed from FFXV, or they could switch to UE4 and get Epic's support immediately. Tai Yasue has guaranteed that this switch has not affected KHIII's development much at all nor does it mean they have scrapped any of the work done so far. The biggest problems seem to have been with the "Kingdom Shader" technology they were creating to create a unique look to different worlds and getting that to work with UE4.

Beyond that they have talked a little about the world choosing process and how they had yet to choose all the worlds by Fall 2014, so don't expect KHIII to be released anytime soon. Late 2016 is probably the earliest anyone should expect to play KHIII, though it's likely that the game will not be released until we are further into 2017.

Story
Kingdom Hearts III will be the end of the "Dark Seeker Saga" that focuses on the villain Xehanort. In Dream Drop Distance it was revealed that Master Xehanort's reincarnated human form is trying to arrange a clash between 7 warriors of light and 13 seekers of darkness (the "real" Organization XIII) that will help with reforging the X-blade that will give its wielder access to the mysterious Kingdom Hearts & all its powers.

Kingdom Hearts III's story will focus at least partly in the good guys preparing for the eventual final battle with Master Xehanort & his other incarnations. This means that the good guys need to fill out their ranks, as currently the only keyblade wielders capable of fighting are Sora, Mickey, Riku & Lea. So who are these 7 lights & 13 darknesses? Well, potentially Sora, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, Lea, Aqua & Ventus will make the 7 lights, though don't be surprised if somehow people like Xion & Roxas enter the fray if something happens to one or more of those seven (Sora's struggles with the darkness inside him might mean he could be out of the picture if something bad happens to him). The problem with this is that only Sora, Riku & Mickey are actually available and ready for battle. Kairi isnt' really a Keyblade wielder yet & Lea had barely gotten to the point that he can summon a Keyblade at will by the end of DDD, so they will still need to be trained to become strong enough Keyblade wielders to help with the fight against the 13 darknesses. In addition to that, Aqua is lost in the Realm of Darkness and Ventus is locked away in Castle Oblivion, which was - coinsidentally - "made" by Aqua, so they'll need her to rescue Ven. 

Riku gained the power to awaken sleeping hearts in Dream Drop Distance, so his skills are probably crucial to the story of KHIII. In addition to that, it seems they need the "Key to Return Hearts", which is one thing that Sora is seemingly going to search for in KHIII.

The 13 darknesses are harder to pin down too accurately. Young Xehanort, Fake Ansem, Xemnas, Braig/Xigbar, Isa/Saix, Terra and Master Xehanort are the ones that we can be certain are currently part of the 13 as they have been shown or, in Terra's case, heavily hinted at being one of them. That's only 7 out of 13, so there are still 6 seekers of darkness we can't be too sure about. They could be old Organization XIII members Nomura didn't want to reveal in Dream Drop Distance or Xehanort-created creatures of darkness like Vanitas. It's also possible that the relatively recently made relevant KH Chi will introduce one of the 13, considering they are building up its importance. And there's always the possibility that one of the lights turns to the dark side (Sora seems like a real possibility).

So, to recap, KHIII's story seems to focus at least partly in the preparations to fight against Master Xehanort and the other 12 seekers of darkness. To do this, they'll first need to find the Key to Return Hearts and rescue Aqua from the Realm of Darkness. After this, Aqua can restore Castle Oblivion into its original state, the Land of Departure from BBS. Then, they'll possibly use the Key to Return Hearts to return Ven's heart to himself from inside Sora, after which Riku can use his powers to awaken Ven's heart.That should theoretically mean they have the 7 lights all ready to fight Xehanort, but we know KH likes to throw curve balls at us so expect some surprises along the way.

Another aspect of KHIII's story will tie into things that are happening in KH Chi right now. While Chi seems to take place in the distant past, around the time of the Keyblade War that lead to the separation of worlds, they seem to be introducing new plot threads that seemingly have a connection to Master Xehanort. We have a KHIII video where we hear two characters speaking about the Keyblade War and lost masters (see HERE), these characters might be Young Xehanort and a young Eraqus. It seems that what happened all those years ago in the Keyblade War has a lot of relevance to what is going to happen in KHIII. 

Gameplay
Not much has been said about the gameplay. Supposedly they'll move away from BBS/ReCoded/DDD type command deck and make something more like the other mainline KHs, though they won't necessarily abandon everything related to the command deck and they won't develop KHIII without utilising some of their experience with those three games and adding their own touch to the original KH combat. In relation to the combat, Nomura has made a funny remark that he had been testing some end game build of Sora and had asked Osaka Team to maybe tone it down a little bit because Sora was simply too overpowered & unbeatable.

So far they've only shown a couple of new combat features. The first one is something that isn't a completely new concept for the franchise although they haven't been featured as player usable skills yet. I'm talking about Keyblade transformations. For example, Sora's Keyblade is seen transforming into two guns that shoot fireballs. The other new combat feature takes inspiration from Disney park attractions/rides, the two examples shown so far is a pirate swingboat and a rollercoaster like train ride.

It's still unclear whether Kingdom Hearts III will only allow gamers to control Sora like the other two  mainline titles (apart from some prologue and a random special occasions) or if the game will have a multiple playable main characters like BBS, Chain of Memories & DDD. Nomura has repeated many times that he considers the mainline KH saga as Sora's story and he will always be the main character of these mainline titles, so that could. On the other hand, so many KH games have featured more than one playable character by now that it would be somewhat of a shame if Kingdom Hearts III returned to a single character game like its mainline predecessors.

Other small tidbits about the gameplay include a comment from Nomura where he claims that they'll really improve the AI in Kingdom Hearts III. Hopefully this is true because Donald, Goofy & other AI controlled characters have been almost useless in past KH games. They will also aim to make Sora more agile in KHIII, so we'll probably see something akin to the DDD's Flowmotion moves that gives Sora more movement options when running around the game's environments, although I doubt they'll repeat the somewhat criticized Flowmotion feature as is.


Summary
So, at this point we don't really know a whole lot of concrete info about Kingdom Hearts III, but there are enough snippets of info and some pretty solid ground for speculation that we can make some educated guesses into some aspects of the game. Hopefully 2015 brings along at least a couple of trailers featuring gameplay and the first proper look at the story of KHIII to clear up some confusion. At 2.5's launch party, Tai Yasue mentioned that they would likely show & talk more about Kingdom Hearts III in 2015, so expect KHIII to maybe be at this year's E3 or at least at a Japanese event like Tokyo Game Show in September or Jump Festa in December.

DriveClub (PS4)

DriveClub was among the first PS4 games announced and after a few updates it's easily among the best games of this generation, but its road to greatness was not without a few bigger bumps. Its first trailers wowed gamers but subsequent gameplay showings failed to impress as much. The game still looked rough a couple of months prior to PS4's launch, which wasn't a good sign for what was intended to be a console-purchase-justifying showcase launch (era) title. In the end, the game was delayed by almost a year and even then the game's online features were horribly broken at launch. Luckily, if you weathered through the shit storm near the launch of the game, what emerged from the train-wreck of a launch is easily one of the finest pure racing games of all time.

These vistas just beg you to come play the game

Focus on the road

DriveClub is a fairly simple game. The focus isn't on The Crew like Ubisoft design philosophies where you repeat pointless tasks around an open world to garner some form of experience points and/or cash you can use to improve your avatar's driving skills or cars. You don't drive around a city to break stuff in the environment and there is no superficial story that gives context to the races. You don't begin as some kind of newbie racer who has to compete in beginner class races to get cash to buy faster cars to enter higher class races. The focus is on racing, pure and simple. You choose your event or track, then the car selection pops up and then you are usually already in a race after a shortish loading screen. It's a no BS racing experience where the actual racing is the focus. And what magnificent racing it has.

DriveClub is considered a simcade racer. It's not Burnout or Ridge Racer like arcade racing where the laws of physics are not just bended but blasted away with a hydrogen bomb, yet it's not Gran Turismo level racing simulation either, let alone like the truly hardcore racing simulations like iRacing. It inserts some level of realism into how different attributes of the car affects the handling somewhat realistically and the handling has somewhat realistic weight to it, but driving isn't quite as punishing as more realistic racing simulations. You won't be nailing all corners in the game without taking your foot of the gas pedal and drifting isn't as efficient way to get through corners as it is in Ridge Racers, either. You need to learn optimal driving lines and learn when to brake and then throttle again when going through corners. Shaving off seconds with skilled driving feels extremely satisfying.

Not only does the handling feel good, DriveClub really nails the sense of speed. From the visual effects to the actual speed of movement and tire screeches & engine sounds as you push the car to its limits, driving feels exciting. When you're driving at 270km/h in DriveClub, it really feels like it.  You feel like any bump in the road can send you flying towards the rails on the side of the road and ruin your perfect lap. The sense of speed makes driving through the beautiful landscapes equal amounts exciting & terrifying. Even more terrifying are the rain conditions that were introduced in the December update. Rain combined with dark night is something to behold and be experienced. DriveClub has, without a doubt, the most impressive rain & wet road effects & physics of any videogame ever.

I challenge thee!

As far as gameplay modes go, DriveClub has a basic campaign mode where you advance quite straightforwardly through a few different types of preset events, starting with slower Hot Hatch cars and working your way up to the super fast Hyper class cars. There are a few different types of events: races, time trials, drift events and multi-race cups. In races & cups you race against 9-11 AI drivers, in time trials you try to get your own time below set times and in drift challenges you'll try to get tons of points by drifting and driving as long & fast as possible. All of these have three challenges that earn you stars that are used to open up more events. The event specific challenges range from your basic "win the race" types to reaching some level of average speed or getting enough points in cornering face-offs.

You can customize your own kind of events in Single Events mode. You can freely choose the track, car, type of event, time of day, weather and other such options and drive to your heart's content. You have the same time trials, races & drift events as in the campaign mode except with total freedom over all aspects of them. Single events aren't the most exciting thing by themselves, but the challenges (which I'll talk more about later in this review) really make it a worthwhile game mode even for people who aren't necessarily interested in shaving off that 0.010 your best times. Driving some random track with whatever car and then sending that time as a challenge to another player is a really fun way to play the game, a kind of asynchronous multiplayer that helps you circumvent some of the annoyances & obstacles of the actual online multiplayer. You don't have to figure out times when all friends can play the game together and there are less problems with online lobbies dropping players or timing out.

Then there's the online multiplayer. In the online multiplayer, currently all you can do is to drive either with max five of your driveclub friends against other clubs (or individuals) or drive alone. You cannot create races yourself, but the game has a constant flow of changing multiplayer events you can join if you wish. They mix different kinds of events pretty well, so you don't feel like you're just driving the same races with the same cars constantly. All the DLC content is in rotation enough as well. Sadly, there aren't any private lobbies or ways of playing only with friends yet. Evolution has promised it will come sooner rather than later, but it's somewhat disappointing that they are still missing.

While the online multiplayer is a bit barebones still, the most interesting & perhaps best part of DriveClub's online features are the challenges. Challenges are things you can create after any race, time trial or drift challenge with the result of that event and then send them to your friends or even total strangers to see who is the best driver. These challenges are timed and once time runs out, the biggest Fame-pot goes to the best driver. You can also send challenges as a club to other clubs, which easily expands the competition in challenges beyond just a few friends.  The third way to enjoy challenges are the Community Challenges. These are completely public challenges that anyone can participate in. Community challenges are something you'll want to do because if you are an even half-decent driver, you can pretty easily earn tens of thousands of Fame points if you manage to get anywhere near the Top 100.

Another fun little distraction are the face-off challenges during any & all events. These are a type of mini-challenges where the tracks have assigned points where you might have to try to get as high a drift score as possible or try to get as fast an average speed as possible. They spice up the racing a bit but focusing on them is completely optional.

Update bonanza

As mentioned before, DriveClub didn't launch in the perfect condition. It lacked some basic features, the online was a mess for the first couple of weeks before it started getting better little by little and some of the more impressive features were still a WIP. But now, 4 months after release, DriveClub is almost like a different game. Don't get me wrong, DriveClub got the basics right from the start. It's an absolute joy to drive and the track designs are marvelous, truly some of the best in the business. But overall it felt like maybe the game should still have been delayed a bit more. I'm not sure if they could've avoided the online problems, but at least some features would've made DriveClub feel like a fuller experience.

So what, exactly, have the updates done to the game? Well, most importantly they've fixed the online problems almost completely. I have had almost zero problems this year with DriveClub's online features, which is a vast improvement over the launch period, when I could never even connect to the servers let alone play multiplayer or have working face-offs during races, and the challenges were simply turned off on the server side even long after they had made big improvements on other online features. Nowadays multiplayer rarely times out, face-offs & updating your times to leaderboards work flawlessly and while sometimes the Challenges are a bit slow to load, they actually work now instead of being greyed out for two or so months after launch.

Dynamic weather with rain & snowing is the second big addition and it's truly a game changer. It's just insane how well made the weather system and its effect on gameplay are. During storms, the game is close to being the best looking game in existence. And it's not just a visual gimmick, it's like the hardcore mode of DriveClub, where you have to be completely focused on what you are doing if you want to make it to the finish line without having spun out of control even once or slided outside the track a few times. The rain drops' effect makes driving feel even more exciting, when your view is somewhat obstructed by them. In the worst conditions, you really need to know the courses by heart if you want to stay on track.

Other additions include a robust photo mode with all kinds of settings to dabble with if you are even a little bit knowledgeable about photography, and of course all the new tracks & cars, which add to the already decently respectable number of tracks in the game and helps fill out the somewhat small-ish selection of cars.

Eye-meltingly beautiful

There is no doubt that DriveClub, at its best, is one of the best looking games released so far. It can have its uglier moments where the sometimes more noticeable aliasing affects the image quality, but the jaw-dropping spectacle vastly exceeds the less impressive moments. The car models are modelled in huge detail inside and out, the environments are insanely detailed, effects like motion blur aren't too overbearing, the lighting in this game is phenomenal and the added weather effects lift the visuals to a whole new level. There's some problem with visible aliasing that affect some tracks more than others, but otherwise Evolution Studios has gone to ridiculous lengths in their attention to detail with DriveClub. I don't see DriveClub necessarily being topped any time soon, as far as graphics go.

The details in this game are on a whole other level.

The sound effects aren't too far behind the visuals. The engine growls are as aggressive as need be and Evolution has gone into as much detail in their sound design as they have with their crazy-detailed graphics. They've recorded engine and other sounds of the cars in meticulous detail inside & outside the cars to give as accurate sound effects no matter what view you are driving from. It's a particularly weird experience to drive one of the (free) DLC cars, Renault DeZir, which is a completely silent electric car. It's such a funny experience after driving the typically loud cars, especially when you're not expecting it. You feel like the game has glitched when DeZir gets off to such a silent start. The DLC campaign race with nothing but DeZirs is a particularly funny event. Never has racing been so silent.

Somewhat curiously, Evolution Studios has actually turned off the BGM as a default setting to satisfy those people who prefer their racing to be all about the engine noises and tire screeches. And speaking of the music of DriveClub, perhaps the weakest aspect of DriveClub is its soundtrack, though not because of lack of quality. The tunes the Welsh band Hybrid has created for DriveClub are great for racing.The problem is more with quantity. Evolution should've either had Hybrid compose a few more songs for the game or had more bands/artists provide their material for the game. As it is, it doesn't take long for you to hear the same song again & again even during shorter sessions.



Verdict: AWESOME. It may have taken an extra year to come out and had a troubled launch and the PS+ version is still nowhere to be seen, but after all the great updates with added features, content & fixes to the online side of things, DriveClub is easily one of my all time favorite racing games, right there amongst Wipeout 3 & HD, Gran Turismo 3, Burnout 3, Need For Speed Underground, Mario Kart DS & 8 and such. While there are still a few features gamers are waiting for, it has come a really long way from its launch. It's a no BS racing game where insanely satisfying driving takes presedence over more superfluous aspects of some more recent (open world) racing games.

Pros
+ Excellent driving model
+ Truly superb sense of speed
+ Challenges are a great feature that extends the life of the game considerably (with or without friends, but even more with)
+ Free content updates (tracks & cars)
+ God tier track designs
+ Execution of dynamic weather is mindblowing in terms of both graphical prowess and the effect it has on gameplay

Cons
-barebones multiplayer features currently (private lobbies are apparently coming later on)
-soundtrack could have used more songs
-vanilla campaign mode can be a bit short, especially for experienced drivers
-still no kind of replay mode
-car selection is a bit small in comparison to the Car Pokemon Collectathon games like Gran Turismo & Forza

INFO BOX

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Evolution Studios

Platform(s): PlayStation 4

Release Date (Europe): October 8, 2014

Number of players: 1 (offline), 1-12 (online)

Rayman Legends (Vita)

Rayman Legends (Vita)

Platformers are a rare breed in the retailer space nowadays. Other than Nintendo, not many other publishers dare to enter that realm of uncertain sales. Ubisoft tried with Rayman Origins a couple of years ago to high critical acclaim, yet mediocre sales. Luckily for fans of platformers, Ubisoft didn't let that prevent them from trying again, resulting in Rayman Legends, another imaginative and fun platformer from the brilliant minds at Ubisoft Montpellier.

The detailed, colourful graphics really pop out on Vita's OLED screen.

Return to the legends of yore 

Legends' gameplay is an excellent proof of the fact that simplicity isn't a bad thing. The game is played with the d-pad and three buttons, which might sound simple and it can be, but you can push the simple mechanics to incredible lengths if you know what you are doing. When you are trying to shave away that final 0,5 seconds in your quest for a diamond trophy in the challenges, you'll learn all kinds of little tricks how you can increase Rayman's speed, get through certain parts faster or keep his momentum going.

There's really not much to complain about with the basic gameplay per se, other than it is perhaps a bit disappointing that Michel Ancel & his Montpellier crew didn't really come up with any new moves or abilities for Rayman. His skill set is exactly the same as it was in Origins. As it is, the game almost feels more like an expansion pack rather than a full new game, mostly offering more of the same.

Of course the depth of gameplay would be nothing without good level design and this is where Rayman Legends shines, for the most part. You can take your time searching every nook & cranny for secrets, collecting every lum and trying to free every Teensie, yet there is a lot of room for speed runs. Most of the levels can play very differently when you don't have to worry about collecting every lum and can just speed through the levels as fast as you can.

While Legends mostly feels similar to Origins, it does have some new tricks up its sleeves. One of the more fun addition are the music levels. These levels have been designed in a way that everything that happens on screen is in sync with the background music, so you are jumping, hitting enemies or bouncing on them in the rhythm of the music. The songs used in them are mostly new Rayman-fitting arrangements by Christophe Héral from more or less well known classics like Eye of the Tiger, Black Betty and Woo Hoo with a couple of original compositions from Héral. The music levels aren't too hard apart from the 8-bit versions, but they still offer fun variety to Legends' level selection.

Mini-Rayman is just one of the fun gameplay gimmicks in the game

Perhaps the best part of the offline content are the Invasion levels, especially for gamers who want a bit of challenge. These levels were originally missing from the Vita version, but after three months of waiting they were added into it for full level parity with the home console & PC versions. They are essentially time trials, where you have to go through remixed parts of the levels in the game as fast as you can to save all the Teensies. There are added enemies and dangers which mean you aren't playing the exact same thing as in the normal levels. In these levels, you really have to put your skills to the test if you want to save all Teensies. For the more experienced gamer, these aren't anything too impossible, but they do require much more skill & understanding of the gameplay mechanics if you are to get through the hardest of them.

Some legends are best forgotten...

Legends' origin as a Wii U exclusive game is most clear with the addition of new type of touch-based Murfy levels. In both the Wii U & the Vita version, you are not in control of Rayman's friend Globox, but have to rely on his AI to get around the levels while you are in control of tiny green creature called Murfy. Your job is to flip switches, move platforms, tickle enemies & cut ropes as the AI controlled Globox tries his best to die.

Unfortunately, the Murfy levels are the weakest part of Rayman Legends. You are in the mercy of Globox's AI, which can lead into incredibly annoying leaps of death that no human controlling the game would ever do. Globox seems to have no sense of self preservation, opting not to save himself even when it would be as easy as extending your leap by a couple of meters. The Murfy levels during the main campaign are passable, but frustrations will arise when you are trying to get through some of the harder parts of challenges. To give an example of how big of an issue this is, there was a daily challenge you couldn't even complete because no matter what you did, Globox would just jump into his death.

Who's the best Globox in the world

Another new addition to Rayman Legends are the daily & weekly challenges. These are randomly generated levels where gamers around the world compete for trophies. There are five types of challenge levels which can be further divided into a few different sub-types of challenges. In one type of challenge level, you might have to collect 150 lums as fast as possible while falling down a neverending pit filled with fireballs, spikes and other kinds of deadly traps. In another, you are trying to climb an infinite tower as high as possible with an increasingly challenging set of obstacles getting in your way. As mentioned before, unfortunately Murfy-levels are also a part of these challenges and they are the worst part of them as well.

While you'd think you'd get tired of repeating the few different kinds of challenges every day, the challenges are different enough to counter tedium. The set of challenge rooms in the Dojo are a fundamentally different experience from trying to make sure you are constantly moving up in the Infinite tower challenges or controlling the pace of your constant falling in the Neverending Pit.

9 seconds to go to one of my few diamond trophies.

The reward for the challenges are bronze, silver, gold and diamond trophies, each rewarding you with a certain number of points. In addition to challenges, you can get a set amount of trophies from the regular levels. The points you get are counted towards your Awesomeness level, which is a completely pointless addition to the game. Your Awesomeness level doesn't really do anything past a certain point and is mainly there to force perfectionists/trophy hunters to play the game daily. The base game only nets you around 4000 points, so to get to the final 11th level of awesomeness (6000 points), you have to go through months of daily Rayman Legends gaming. Unless you're continuously among the Top 1% who are rewarded with the 50-point Diamon Trophy, your maximum number of points per day is probably 20 or even less if you can't even reach the much more attainable Gold trophy.

As far as the more superficial side goes, Rayman Legends doesn't disappoint. The 2D art is even more beautiful than in Origins and the game looks gorgeous running on Vita's OLED screen in native resolution. The game manages to mostly keep up the respectable 60fps framerate throughout the 120 levels helping the controls feel extra responsive, but there were a few Invasion levels where, for example, the molten lava effects on the screen caused some slowdown.

The soundtrack offers the kind of catchy fun, whimsical tunes Origins did which compliment the colourful yet sometimes goofy style of Rayman perfectly. If you are not humming the themes as you play and don't get a smile on your face while listening to the happy melodies of Legends, you might just be dead inside. If only Christophe Héral composed more music for video games, the video game music world would be that much better for it.

All-in-all, I can't feel but a little disappointed in Rayman Legends. At its best, it's platforming nirvana on the palm of your hands but some things like the Murfy levels definitely bring down the package as a whole. As it stands, Legends perhaps has higher highs than Rayman Origins, but it also has the lowest lows of these two games. Legends is a no-brainer for fans of platformers, but you have to approach it with the knowledge that you aren't getting as thoroughly perfect a package from beginning to end as Origins was and the fully original content is over a bit too soon. The Vita version is a very good port - especially with the now-returned Invasion levels - but the lack of online multiplayer is a bit disappointing, considering there are likely a lot of people who don't have real-life friends with a Vita and interest in Rayman. Of course Rayman works perfectly well as a single player game as well, so us Rayman-loners of the world can still experience the platforming bliss. Alone.

Pros

* super-tight controls & simple yet deep gameplay
* imaginative & well designed levels
* Invasion levels offer challenge to those who want it
* daily & weekly challenges are a great way to get more out of the game and its mechanics
* the graphics are as gorgeous as ever
* Christophe Héral's OST perfectly compliments the visuals and shenanigans of Rayman

Cons

* doesn't really noticeably improve or add anything on top of what Origins already did, gameplay-wise

* the whole Awesomeness-thing is completely pointless and requires way too much grinding with the game being as it is

* Murfy levels are, frankly, passable at best, shit at worst

* there are too many Murfy levels vs. normal ones

* the ghost/closest challengers features in the Daily & Weekly challenges are a bit broken & often don't work

Verdict: GREAT. While Legends is a somewhat disappointing sequel because of the numerous mediocre Murfy levels and slight lack of wholly original content, at its best it's a masterfully crafted platformer that puts a lot of others in the genre to shame and even puts up a fight with Nintendo's best ones.

INFO BOX

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier

Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 (upcoming), PlayStation Vita (tested), Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One (upcoming)

Release Date (Europe): August 30th 2013 (PC, PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360), September 13th 2013 (Vita) & February 27th 2014 (PS4, Xbox One)

Number of players: 1 (offline), 1-4 (online)