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Archives for September 2022

Mist Guard Review

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So, since I have been playing a lot of games on Steam as well as the Meta Quest 2, I found this Indie game known as Mist Guard that caught my eye. I had a chance to play the demo of it, and I can honestly say that I wanted to play it further.

However, Mist Guard feels like a game that I have played before. As I have said before, this is an Indie game, and it feels like it is some kind of game engine calibration. In Mist Guard, you fight as this character who looks like a Playmobil toy.

For some reason, this character is in a dungeon, and has no memory of his past. Yes, it uses that lazy video game trope, and there is a voice telling the main character to escape. From there, it is about picking up a sword and attacking people who get in your way.

It’s also about getting hearts and other things similar to The Legend of Zelda games. There is even this one part where there are these spinning fan blades, which even make the same noise as the ones in the Zelda games. There’s homage, and then there’s rip-off, and I cannot tell which this is.

There was a lot of interesting fun to be had in Mist Guard, and I can’t help but wonder what is the story involved here. Perhaps there would be a lot of dungeons with cool puzzle solving stuff. As it was, it was one boss that I had to beat with a bow and arrow, and it was really hard to aim that thing.

In short, Mist Guard is one of those games that old-school gamers will love due to its praise of nostalgia. It is available on Steam now.

EOLIA, a Fantasy Adventure that will Change the MetaVerse Forever

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This would be the first time that I have done a review of a MetaQuest 2 game, but I don’t think it will be the last. I did a report of the Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest 2) on our sister site TheGeekChurch.com, and you can see the report and the video here.

The issue with the MetaQuest 2 and the MetaVerse in general is how new it is, but we all can see the potential. It feels like we all want some kind of world like in Ready Player One where there is a virtual universe of potential is available to us, another dimension of opportunity that exists outside and get inside our own world.

The sales of the MetaQuest 2 are actually quite good, as there is a scarcity of the Xbox Series X and PS5. Those aforementioned gaming systems are years old, and Nintendo doesn’t seem to be wanting to do anything new anytime soon. The MetaQuest was flying off the shelves, and the gaming content for it is much cheaper than games from the big three.

This is quite an introduction for EOLIA, which is really showing the potential for the Meta Quest 2 and the Metaverse as a whole. EOLIA is this fantasy game in the Rhythm of the Universe series, and it is quite something.

I mean, look at the visuals here, this game had some kind of universe that feels as rich and well-thought as The Legend of Zelda. In fact, this world feels so flushed out, I have a hard time jumping into it.

When I say jumping into it, this is a game where you step in and play someone in a rich fantasy world full of a history that feels about as complex as Game of Thrones. I honestly had issues with it because of that, but this world is a mix of natural beauty like the Grand Canyon mixed with the beautiful monuments of The Lord of the Rings.

If you aren’t familiar with the Meta Quest 2, it has hand controls, but occasionally these hand controls are not needed. I was more comfortable with the hand controls, and the game allowed me to use them.

This would be a good time to talk about how awkward some of these controls were. There was this journal that I could open up by folding my hands out, but going through the journal and selecting something often didn’t work. It’s like you try to pick a page, but you just end up grabbing the whole thing. There was this other time where I was supposed to pick up a key, and I dropped it. I could not for the life of me figure out how to squat down and pick it up, so I just restarted the level.

Something tells me that playing this game over and over will insure that I learn how I am supposed to interact with this game, and there is a lot to get into. I like how I am able to climb ladders by gripping, and there is something about the interactivity of EOLIA that shows the future of the Metaverse. There was another part in the game, where I am riding this buffalo and the controls feel very authentic as well.

So on the whole, EOLIA is a game that shows that every game on the Meta Quest 2 could be as good as a VR version of Breath of the Wild, with action, activity, and puzzle solving. It’s what we want, and I love it and want more.

Game Review: Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack

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Once again, I find myself reviewing another great point and click games, but this one was made in the present, rather than some of the classics, such as the Monkey Island series. I can’t help but feel that Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack owes its own existence to games like the Monkey Island series, so much so that it references it as an Easter Egg.

So what is this game? I’ve played about a few hours of it, and it involves time travel to the ancient past and the far-flung future. It begins when a typical cubicle-dweller Justin Wack puts a strange snack in a microwave, and since there is metal involved, it opens up a portal in time. Yeah, that’s about as seriously as this game will take itself.

Justin goes back in time into prehistoric times, where hairy men and dinosaurs live together. Yeah, I don’t think fossilized records show any era where this has occurred, but hey, for the sake of this story, it is happening. Apparently, a robot from the future has been sent to deal with this situation, because those darn robots are always coming from the future to stop us fleshy humans from doing…something.

What is interesting is when Justin went back in time into caveman times, a caveman from the past came forward into our time. Now, I’ve only been playing this game for a little while, but this caveman doesn’t seem to have much to do. However, the player is able to switch between Justin and his caveman time traveler, and I’m guessing that solving the game has to do with switching back and forth between the two eras. At least, most games that I have played like these make that a requirement to beat it. You can’t just stay in one era and solve all kinds of puzzles, right? As I have said before, I have been playing the game for a few hours, and most of the puzzles that I have solved have been in the prehistoric era.

I have to admit that the puzzles of this game are not very straightforward. I’m finding several of them difficult, particularly one which involves setting a trap. This is one of those games that has inventory puzzles, which means that you are using whatever you can find, and then combining items to solve puzzles. This, of course, leads to more puzzles, and I can’t help if whatever Justin Wack does in the past will affect the future, or his present.

I think that Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack is trying to be an homage to old-school point and click games, while also attempting new things within them. If you are interested in this, head on over to the Warm Kitten website to read more information about it, and check it out for purchase on Steam.