Banished Review

Banished Review

     This game has no story, except for the one you create. Banished is a city builder where the townspeople are your most valuable resource. They are seeking new life, after being exiled, in a new land. You guide them to survive. New Townspeople are born, and the old ones die.

     There are no locked buildings or skill trees; everything is open to be built if you have the resources saved up. With 20 different jobs, it’s easy to get everyone working. You can also trade your excess resources for new livestock and seeds, but this may also bring about disease.

     The first village I created started well enough, but I managed to build too fast and outpace my population, giving me too many jobs and few townsfolk to fill them. So pacing is an important part of this game. Don’t worry, you can adjust the speed of time passing if you’d like.

     Also, every time you start a new village, the map changes. I believe this gives the game replay value. Whether you stopped playing yesterday or a month ago, you can dive in and start anew.

     Visually the game is pleasing, especially watching the smoke from chimneys being swept away, seeing footprints in the snow, and even seeing the seasons change.

     I feel that this city builder makes seeing the town grow more personal; you know what everyone does, what they need, and see their families grow. I like to make little stories. When seeing the miner marry the gatherer, I imagined them passing glances on their way to work every morning. I really enjoyed this game as it can be soothing and stressful at the same time. So yes, I recommend anyone to pick it up if they can. 

The Banner Saga Review

The Banner Saga Review

     A world where the Gods are dead, the sun stands still in the sky, and darkness invades from the north. This is where you enter the story of this game. But it is more than just a game, it’s a story that you partake in. A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure RPG with turn-based combat and Oregon Trail survival all wrapped under a bow of beautiful artwork and a vivid soundtrack.

      You play this story out through the eyes of various characters, most of which come into contact with one another. As you travel the world, a large banner is at the head of your caravan, this not only tells of where your caravan is from, but also holds the story of all the families that are and once were that lived in your village, town, or city. Be aware as you have to keep your eye on your supplies, if you run out, your caravan begins to starve. There are also many events that occur on the road, with you deciding the course of action to be taken. You also make decisions when you camp or stay in a town, as well as with dialogue. Remember as everything you do affects the world and those around you in some way, good, bad, or maybe both.

     When you do fight, you choose a roster of six combatants from those you have available within your caravan. There are unique characters with unique classes and some who have the same class as another. It is up to you what strategy you wish to use. The combat itself is similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, where you move one and the enemy moves one. You can move, attack, use a special ability, and rest as can the enemy.

     I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants to be dragged away to a different land and enjoy partaking in an evolving story. The combat is easy to learn the basics of, and many strategies can be effective. The Artwork itself is a reason to continue playing. It is reminiscent of an 80’s high fantasy cartoon.  So yes, go and play this game. 

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Review

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

I know it’s a bit late, but here’s my review of this game. It has kicked my ass, on several occasions. And I love it.

 This game takes me back to the days of The Legend of Zelda before the Ocarina of Time, except it’s harder. The controls are simple; you move in all four directions and shoot tears in four directions. The way you move affects the tears speed and trajectory. I do recommend a controller for this game as the keyboard controls might be cumbersome for some. There’s a button that drops a bomb, another for a usable item, and another for a one-use item.

The main goal is to clear the floors boss in order to descend to the next one, while picking up power-up items that affect Isaac in one way or another.

Now, what makes this game is the randomly generated dungeons. Every time you start a new game, everything is randomized, the floor layout, the rooms, what items are on the floor, and the pills. There are multi-colored pills that have good, bad, and neutral effects. Some give you an extra heart, another takes away a heart, and one gives you bad gas.

Of course there are some things that carry over to every game. The more times you “beat” the game, there is a chance of more power-up items, new characters to play, and even more floors to get through. There are also unique rooms that you may run into, I won’t spoil anything, as at the core of this game is the sense of finding things out on your own. The one room I will mention is the store. You can buy items that can add an extra affect to Isaac, or if there aren't any items you want, you can donate your coins to the store. This helps upgrade the store, so the next time you come in there will be more items. This carry over’s to all future runs that you’ll do. You can even blow up the donation’s box to get a few extra coin to get the really good item.

Overall The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has good game-play that punishes and pushes the player so much that when you’re able to beat a run it fills the player with a sense of overcoming great odds. Plus this game has all the re-playability in the world. This will definitely be one of the games I fall back to when it seems like I have nothing to play.