Tomb Rumble (PC) Review

 

Tomb Rumble is a 2D Collectathon Platformer with the twist of being a competitive multiplayer game. As the name suggests, the game was heavily inspired by the Tomb Raider games and the Indiana Jones movies.

Tomb Rumble is a MMO, which means that all players enter the chosen level in real time. Players need to walk and jump through the levels, passing the deadly obstacles and collect golden Coins or more valuable treasures in the form of Sapphires. Every Level has a tight timelimit of 45 seconds to reach a rope at the end of the level, which helps the players to escape. Multiple levels are being played in a row and the aim is to be the player with the most loot. Every couple of levels you will return to a HUB area via a helicopter, where you trade your collected coins for cosmetics. After some stages you will also get a special combat level, where players don't have to collect to loot, but fight each other and the surviving players gets the most coins as a reward.

Overall there are hundreds of levels in the game, which provides a high level of variety (you can even create your own levels and share them with other players). There can be lavapits, ancient temple ruins, frozen places or dense jungle environments for example. The only common element are the deathtraps in every level, which ensure that you have to pay attention to the platforming, because one ill timed jump leads to your characters demise in that level. Defeated characters however are not gone for good and respawn as different enemy types, which can still collect coins, push other players into the pits and even finish the level via the rope (Players start as mummies and can unlock a variety of other enemies, like monkeys, werewolves, ghosts and so on). Living players btw can also push their opponents into pits and set up additional deadly traps behind them, which can provide some good entertainment.

The controls of Tomb Rumble are very simple. You can walk with WASD or the arrow keys and the W/Up key perform jumps and the S/Down key lays traps on the ground or pushes players. Despite its simplicity the controls work fine. The pixel art style also fits the game well and looks much better than in some other games.

There are however also a couple of annoying aspects about the game. The tutorial of the game for example explains the basics quite well, but unfortunately you get forced to play it every time you launch the game. There are sometimes popup messages appearing towards the end of a level asking you to rate the map. These however can only be closed with the mouse. Those are unnecessary annoyances.

Tomb Rumble's biggest flaw however is the very small screen size of the game. You can not play the game in fullscreen mode and the game is usually only taking around 40 % of the screen size, which is really small. Smaller objects in the levels are therefore more difficult to spot and when you have many players in a level, it can become very difficult to orientate yourself. They should have definitely handled that better. The playerbase has nowadays (February 2022) been shrinking noticeably in comparison to the release window. You rarely get more than 5-10 players in a level.

Something, that has been getting a lot of praise before the release, was the developers handling of microtransactions. They are not selling you any skins, but you instead have to trade them against the gold coins you collect ingame (so far, so good). Instead, the game is financing itself over purchasable DLC. You can buy yourself a sorcerer and a vampire DLC, which will replace the players enemy model, when he gets defeated. The catch however is, that vampires and sorcerers are more powerful than the other enemy types. They can fly through the levels and the sorcerer can for example shoot lightning bolts on other players. The Devs claim they are not more powerful than the other defeated characters, but I disagree. I believe they unfairly give advantages to defeated players, that invested real money into the game.

 

Pro:

- MMO Platformer

- High variety of levels

- Fast pace of the levels (no boredom/repetition)

- Cool Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones inspired Theme

- Easy Level Editor

- Simple, but functional controls

 

Contra:

- Small screen size

- Game can become disorientating Chaos sometimes

- Paid DLC seem unfair

- Forced Tutorial every start

- Shrinking playerbase

 

Result:

Tomb Rumble is a 2D MMO Collectathon Platformer, which makes the game pretty unique. The game lives up to its Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones theme and I appreciated the large variety of levels and quick pace of gameplay, which helped to keep things fresh. Creating your own levels is also pretty fun. The small screen size on the other hand is unfortunately a big weakness of the game and that sometimes creates an utter chaos, where you don't know what's going and whether you are still alive. The unbalanced DLC also really displeased me and the game might get problems to live up to the MMO tag, if player numbers don't improve. Tomb Rumble is certainly worth a try for 2D Platformer fans, just don't expect the same platforming quality you might see in a Singleplayer adventure.

 

6/10

Push Battle (PC) Short Review

 

"This game is ass" would be the perfect description of Push Battle. In this game you play as an ass person, whose only objective is to push/'smash' 3 other players off a platform as many times as you can within 1 minute. There are no other game modes or other content here. The visuals are minimalistic, the movement speed slow and the gameplay not that exciting. Maybe you can laugh about the game for a minute, but does that really justify the download?

Push Battle is a good evidence, that every absurd nonsense can become a videogame. Every game can be fun with friends, but Push Battle is just weird and in my opinion not a fun game.

 

2/10

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 8 (PS4) Review

 

Chapter 2 Season 8 of Fortnite was called 'Cubed' and featured the ominous Cubes, that have, as a result of the Operation Skyfire Event, been dropping around the Fortnite map.

The Skyfire Event in fact made it look like we would be getting a completely desolated and changed map in CH2S08, since at least a handful of major POIs seem to have been destroyed by space ship debris and falling cubes during the event. The start of the season was therefore a major disappointment, because it was the first season since CH1S02 that didn't feature at least one new POI or major Map change. You could for example see Steamy Stacks going up in flames during the event, but just one day later apparently all damage got fixed up, without a trace left. The only POIs, that changed their names, were Corny Crops and Holly Hedges. Holly Hedges just lost the Anti-Gravity Boxes from Holly Hatches and returned to its original Holly Hedges form, it kept during nearly the entire Chapter 2. Corny Crops on the other hand is identical to the last stage of Corny Complex, just without the floating islands.

The only environmental changes at the start of the season were some wreckages of gigantic alien spaceships (abductors) scattered around the map. These ship wreckages had some 'corrupted' areas around them, which honestly just looked like orange painted ground, very underwhelming. These areas also only covered a very small portion of the map. The only cool thing was, that each of the wreckages also featured a purple Cube, which allowed players to bounce on them, and air slipstreams around them, which worked like the slip streams from CH1S09 (only that they are limited to wreckage areas this time instead of the entire map). The map changes at the beginning of the season therefore overall felt like the devs were showing a big middle finger to the community.

Aside from the regular purple Cubes, there were also a special yellow and a unique blue Cube. The blue Cube (called Blevin) was apparently a friendly Cube, who gave players 20 Armour each time they touched him. Blevin remained for the entirety of the season in a little forest near Camp Cod. The yellow Cube on the other hand was presumed to be evil and turned out to be the leader of the Cubes. The purple and yellow Cubes started moving throughout the season and created together a really large Cube Town, which was known as 'The Convergence' and 'The Pyramid', in the last weeks of the season. Even though I didn't like the new POI aesthetically (because it looked so plastic and fake), it was still a noticeable improvement. There were a lot of bouncable places in the area. This Cube Town was right in the middle of the map and finally replaced the empty hole, known as 'The Aftermath' POI. During their travel, the Cubes also corrupted the majority of the Fortnite Map, but it disappointingly only changed the ground colour into orange...

The only really cool addition to the game (at least in my opinion) were the Sideways Anomalies/Encounters. Those were extra areas from a different dimension, where building wasn't possible and legions of sideways monsters spawned. Inside the Sideways areas, there were also low gravity conditions and the air changed into some orange fog, which totally gave it an apocalyptic or mysterious monster vibe. The Sideways was probably supposed to resemble the alien areas from the series Stranger Things and I think the devs at least did a good job in these areas. The Sideways areas would randomly spawn around the map and also contained new loot in terms of extra Sideways weapons. The Sideways Rifle and Sideways Minigun both had a cooldown system and I wasn't the biggest fan of either of them. I found the normal AR's to be more efficient, but I at least sometimes played the minigun to shred players or structures. The Sideways Scythe was a melee weapon, which got released later in the season and I found it to be much more fun. The attacking speed was rather low, but if you got close enough, the weapon could kill quickly and was also very efficient against multiple wooden walls.

The season also introduced other new weapons and items. The Combat AR had a high rate of fire, but also a pretty bad recoil pattern and I didn't enjoy the weapon much. The dual fiend hunters were double pistol crossbows and worked alright. The paper bomb kunai were Naruto inspired grenade kunai. They were a nice gimmick, but didn't do enough damage to often use them. Two new items were Chilly Chug Splashs (Chug Splash with the speed bonus of peppers) and the Armoured Walls (rare, but very robust walls). Players could never pick up more than a few of them, but they did have around 2500 HP per wall. This was great, if you wanted to calmly heal yourself, but annoying if you wanted to actually fight somebody. I understand its purpose, but I am not a friend of anything that encourages more building inside the game.

To support the release of the new Venom movie, Venom and Carnage Symbiote items were also introduced (which reminded me of the many superhero abilities from CH2S04). They both functioned the same way and allowed grabbing players (even through walls) and gave their users a speed boost plus the ability to redeploy Gliders. They were a nice addition, which was neither too strong nor to weak. The bonuses already made it worth a consideration, but at the same time, you had to weigh up, whether to drop a weapon/item for it or not. Additionally the Cube Stones (from CH1S06) returned and the new Shadow Flopper Fishes worked the same way. Other weapons like the Auto Sniper were unvaulted and the majority of stuff from the previous Alien Season got vaulted instead.

The redacted Bunker near Catty Corner got finally opened during the end of CH2S08 (after around 8 Seasons) and instead of something cool, it only featured a small generic IO base inside. Another disappointment... And did I mention, that the season also brought the universally hated 'Brutes' (Mechs) from CH1S10 back? The Mechs have been nerfed pretty heavily (like the planes, when they were reintroduced during CH2S05) and now had far less health and required two players to walk and shoot. In the beginning of the match however Duos (or Squads with two strong supporting team members) could still crush multiple players pretty easily with the Mechs. If the Mech however didn't notice you, it could be taken out rather quickly. Their introduction was certainly much better than the original Brutes, but it is still weird to bring them back anyway.

Another cool addition (aside from the Sideways) was a community voting system, called 'War effort'. Every couple of weeks players could donate ingame gold for a selection of two items or weapons. The option that received more donations would be brought to the game with the next update. This was a nice system, even though I can't say fore sure if they didn't fix the results (the devs admitted to doing so during CH2S02, when players could choose Ghost vs Shadow). A rather boring addition to the game however were the Caretaker Bosses during regular BR matches. They were invincible and wouldn't really bother players, unless they got really close to them. I rarely ever discovered them and found them to be rather pointless (in contrast to them being in the Horde Rush mode).

There were also 2 major Events during Chapter 2 Season 8. One was the Final Event and the other one was the yearly edition of Fortnitemares. The question which version of Fortnitemares is the best, should probably be answered at some other point, but this one was at least rather well done. I personally don't really care about the Halloween cosmetics, since  I never buy things from the shop, but the game once more pushed a couple of fancy skins etc. Much more interesting was the addition of the Horde Rush Mode. While I probably liked 2020 Fortnitemares Royale even a bit more, it this time didn't replace the regular playlists and was instead a LTM. During this gamemode, you and three other players would get dropped onto a random spot, where you had to defend yourself from Hordes of Cube Monsters. Players would than move onto different points of the map and when they survive the journey then defend themselves there again. The playable area would always be pretty limited and on the third point, they would have to battle the Cube Assassin and on the fourth and final point, they would have to slaughter an extra strong Caretaker. The timelimit on the last point was also pretty strict. If you didn't work together as a team and attack the Caretaker together, than the playable area would shrink so fast, that the whole Squad gets overrun. I overall definitely enjoyed this mode, even though it unfortunately got pretty repetitive after the fifth or sixth time. 

The End Event was a giant battle between the ominous Cube Queen, which used the Cubes from the Cube Town, and the Fortnite players. The Cube Queen even used a portal to let a legion of Alien Spaceships enter the Fortnite world and wreak havoc. The players were on the brink of defeat and even Blevin got destroyed by the Aliens, but than some of the Seven returned to save the day. The Foundation arrived in an underground base to free Agent Jonesy from Dr. Slone, and they together activated some device to change the gravitation of the island and make it flip on the other side. In the meantime the Visitor fought of some of the Cube Monsters, while the Scientist escorted the players to Jonesy and the Foundation. They got attacked by a Caretaker, which flooded the entire underground base. They however have been successful in their plan and the island did indeed flip, killing the Cube Queen in the process and closing the Portal to the Alien planets. A new side of the island awakened and the players however remained unconsciously floating in the ocean, till Chapter 3 started the next day. Overall 'The End' Event of Chapter 2 was pretty cool, even though I did prefer 'The End' Event of Chapter 1. Nonetheless, this Event was, different than most other things in Chapter 2 Season 8, worthy of being the End of Chapter 2.

The Battle Pass of CH2S08 is (once more), in my opinion, the worst in History of Fortnite (I even prefer the very short CH1S02 one over this). There are only 2 out of 8 Skins, which I  liked a lot. One is Torin, who is not only on the Cover of the Season Poster, but she also fits the theme very well as a Sideways Hunter (her built-in Emote allows her to transform into a Sideways version of herself). I really liked her Skindesign, just a shame her potential role for the Storyline wasn't used at all... The other really good Skin was Carnage from the Venom 2 Movie 'Let there be Carnage'. He looks very much like his Comic/Movie counterpart and I appreciated his inclusion (even though I would still prefer more original skins, it is still a lot better than underwhelming original skins). Charlotte and Chimpanski were okay till good. Chimpanski is a Monkey in a golden Astronaut suit. I do like his suit and nothing against monkeys, but this kind of skins always seem a bit over the top and a little too weird to me. Charlotte's default outfit is a really bland dress, but her alternative 'Enchanted Spirit' outfit however looks much better (spiritual Ghost Ninja outfit). If Charlotte and Chimpanski were the worst part of the BP, than I would be really happy. Unfortunately I found Kor and the Cube Queen to be quit underwhelming. Kor is a really bland IO employee, with double coloured hair (lame). My impression of the Cube Queen is certainly more controversial, since a lot of people seemed to like her. I am sorry, but I do find her outfit to be way too variegated and weird (her alternative outfits are even worse). I just don't like this over the top multicoloured Hipster design, but apparently Fortnite seems to want to appeal to Fans of that visual style. I do appreciate that the secret skin, after 7 seasons was finally an original one instead of a Collaboration skin (Level 100 however was once more Collaboration and the BP also once more went to Level 140 instead of 100.... Are they ever gonna learn?), but in comparison to the much cooler Cube Assassin skin (that actually had a connection to Cubes, but unfortunately was part of the Fortnite Subscription service instead of the BP), the Cube Queen seemed very disappointing to me. Fabio Sparklemane (pink unicorn for Christ's sake...) and Toona Fish (black and white comic version of a Fish) on the other hand were so terrible, that I actually felt slightly disgusted by them. Overall this Battle Pass was another huge disappointment for me.

Another very problematic area of this season was the challenge and XP System. The main challenges of this season were 5 quests, that each NPC had for players. Fortnite Players had to do this challenges in the right order, which meant you could only do Quest 2 from NPC A, if you had already completed Quest 1 from NPC A. You could however only activate 5 different Questlines, every additional Questline deleted the progression of one of the previous Questlines. You also had to actively search for every NPC on the map and talk with them to activate their first quest. This was very counterproductive, if you actually wanted to play a Battle Royale match, which is more about looting and shooting, than searching for NPCs. You could however not do any quests in Team Rumble, since NPCs got removed from that mode. The season started with around 20 NPCs and added around 2 each week. The XP rate was however really slow and you often had to repeat Questlines for daily challenges (The weekly challenges only consisted of random X,Y,C challenges and so on). The whole Challenge system was so messed up, that Fortnite had to drastically buff the XP rates. In the beginning of the season levelling was too slow and at the end it was way too fast, where you could make around 8-10 levels each day you played. After the interesting Story Quests from the previous seasons, the generic and broken quests from CH2S08 were a colossal failure.

I shortly mentioned it, but the devs managed to screw up the 'Team Rumble' mode even worse than in CH2S07 (which I didn't thought possible). The playable area got even smaller and the storm faster, plus you couldn't really do any challenges anymore. A once very good mode had finally be brought to its knees.   

At least the season length was pretty optimal with around 2,5 months. I guess that's something.

 

Pro:

- Well executed 'The End' and Fortnitemares Event

- Sideways Inclusion was fun

- Community Voting System showed potential

- Optimal Season Length (around 10 weeks)

(- Cube Town was decent)

- Core Gameplay kept the quality from previous Chapter 2 Seasons

 

Contra:

- Lack of Map Changes (Operation Sky Fire Event simply reverted)

- Dozens of Cubes far less exciting than one Kevin

- The Weakest Battle Pass in Fortnite History

- Still 140 Level BP

- Weekly challenges (only through talking to NPCs during matches) and quests were a mess

- Team Rumble in the worst state ever

- Unworthy weak end season for a strong Chapter 2

 

Result:

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 8 overall left a really disappointing impression on me. I was shocked by the awful start of the season, which seemed to simply refuse all potential map changes, that have been strongly hinted during the very well done Operation Skyfall Event of Chapter 2 Season 7. The 'Cubed' theme of the season also didn't manage to impress me. The single Cube from Chapter 1 Season 5/6 had a much more mysterious and powerful impact on the Story. Making this special thing into an army just ripped it of its uniqueness and interest. Less is sometimes better. The Events of the Season were overall pretty good (even though the Chapter 2 End didn't come close to the Chapter 1 End). The Battle Pass was, in my opinion, the weakest Fortnite ever had. If you pair this with a devastatingly bad Challenge/Quest System and an awful Team Rumble (plus you again need to level to 140 instead of 100 to get all content of the BP), you get one of the worst Fortnite seasons. If the Sideways wasn't somewhat interesting and the Story didn't deliver at least some content towards the end of the season and the Events weren't enjoyable, than this would have been dead last. As the end of the entire Chapter 2, CH2S08 is still unworthy. It was the weakest season of Chapter 2 and unless you consider the Mechs, it was worse in every regard to Season X of Chapter 1 (worse map changes, worse story, worse Battle Pass, worse Challenge System etc). All the gameplay things, they kept from the previous seasons, were still enjoyable, but I hope we will not discover any season like this in the next time.

 

6.25/10

Tag Royale (PC) Review

 

Tag Royale is a 'Hide and Seek' Battle Royale Game. This is a somewhat unique concept. Unfortunately the execution of the concept turned into a complete disaster in Tag Royale.

As many people (lets better say the majority of the few people who had the misfortune to 'play' this game) have pointed out, the technical status of the game is a mess. The matchmaking is currently completely broken and there are no signs for a fix. It is simply not possible to join the matches of other players, which makes it impossible to ever start one. One of the dev updates claimed to have included Bots to the game, so it would be easier to start matches. Sadly that is clearly not true. The game is currently not playable, you can just walk around the map on your own. Since the map is pretty terrible, that can't really be recommended.

The Tutorial used to be playable a few months ago. If you start it now, it will just stop after 5 seconds of no explanations or anything happening and load you into a never starting match lobby... Amazing!

The gameplay idea of Tag Royale is that a chosen player has to search for the others and tag them by touching them, so that their roles switch and the first player has to hide instead of seeking. You could at least give the game credit for attempting a new spin on the BR genre, even though I am not sure, if 'Hide and Seek' is the right format for a Battle Royale game. The game also has a couple of abilities, like a teleport ability, unlimited sprint, camouflage (which shortly makes you invisible) and a super jump. These abilities can be picked up by walking on hideous cube shaped items (most basic block texture) and usually only have one use. The abilities at least bring a bit more of variety into the gameplay, even though the 'hide and seek' aspect still remains the same.  

The map in Tag Royale is among the most hideous I have ever seen and I unfortunately have seen a lot. 95% of the map consist of one really weird ground texture (the other 5 % are bushes and stones). Even the two mountains in the otherwise empty map consist of this same element, but look totally scuffed on them. There are even a couple of holes on these mountains, where players can get stuck without being able to escape or die... Maybe the idea was to make this map so ugly, that the eyes of the seeker will hurt and it will become easier for the other players to hide. There is another map, which is also being the main part of all promotion material, but that is only being playable in the tutorial and since the tutorial is not being playable... (I mean its not like the regular map would be playable, you can just walk around the map on your own).

 

Pro:

+ Tag/ Hide and Seek version of a BR game (at least unique)

+ Different abilities

 

Contra:

- Servers are broken (matchmaking not possible)

- Tutorial is broken (stops after 5 seconds)

- Inclusion of Bots is a lie

- Visuals and Map are disgustingly hideous

- Too many places to get infinitely stuck

- Hide and Seek gameplay pretty boring

 

Result:

The concept behind Tag Royale was really something new, but at the same time new doesn't always equalize good. Even a well executed 'Hide and Seek' BR doesn't sound too interesting (I would give SlapBR a bit of credit, but that game mixes 'Hide and Seek' with Horror elements). Tag Royale however is not well executed and beyond the limited gameplay is a technical disaster. A game, that is no fun and broken, can not be recommended.

 

1.5/10