Miasma Chronicles Review

Miasma Chronicles by developer The Bearded Ladies and publisher 505 Games—PC (Steam) review written by Robert with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Hi folks! T1ckles from Chalgyr's Game Room here to chat about a solid little "tactical RPG" that we were lucky enough to get our hands one, but before we do, please remember to like, comment, and subscribe for more!

I'd like to start this off with a resounding "thank you" to both The Bearded Ladies and 505 Games for providing a key for Miasma Chronicles. While I won't be getting into details about the mid- and late-game, there will be spoilers for the introductory level so please consider this your spoiler warning.

Taking on the role of Elvis, you're a young man who ,with the help of his trusty robot companion, Diggs, are trying to find a way to open a Miasma rift in an effort to save, "Moma." Though gorgeous and, to some degree, possessing of some quality voice-acting, one of the biggest issues I have with Miasma Chronicles is the use of the term, "Moma."  Whenever any character, Elvis included, says "Moma," it sounds a bit like it's a darker picture into fetishes that I myself am not comfortable with- it's pleading-sounding and just weird and REALLY off-putting.

While I didn't run into any crashes or game-breaking bugs, I did have an inconsistent framerate throughout the entire game. It's most notable right as you load into a new environment, or if you're transitioning between in-game cutscenes and gameplay itself.

The rig I'm using is powered by a Ryzen 9 5900x, Radeon 7900 XTS, 64GB RAM, Samsung NVMe M2 drive, and am only running at 1440p- I shouldn't really be seeing slippage/hitching, but it's certainly there and can be seen throughout this video. Noticeable stutter is there.

Audio quality (rather than the actual spoken dialog) is excellent; Diggs sounds slightly synthesized and hollow (as he's a robot, that makes sense). It was thankful to Elvis' smooth delivery, that I was able to make it through the cringiest dialog (I know it's personal preference, I just struggle as someone in their 40's to call my mom, "momama"- it's just gross. Fortunately the quality of the acting is exceptional and certainly helped me get past the weirdly cringe-worthy dialog.

The background music wasn't bad, but about 3-3.5 hours into the game I actually turned the music down. Not because it was bad, but rather because I felt most-immersed into the post-apocalyptic playground that Miasma Chronicles can be, when just listening to the juvenile banter between characters. In retro, looking back I'm a bit startled at not recognizing it sooner, but I half-wonder if The Bearded Ladies used Bioware's Dragon Age franchise as inspiration- Take, for example, the Miasma gates and the Rifts in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The heavy, if a bit immature at times, party-based banter and relationships feel like they'd be right at home in an early Bioware title.

That's not a bad thing- Bioware is who they are today because of those formulas and there's no shame in adapting what works into your own creations. While I consider them inspirations at best, it's pure conjecture on my part. I personally see some parallels between Miasma Chronicles and the greats that came before it. This leads into the general feel of Miasma Chronicles. Outside of the cringe-y dialog and frame-dropping optimization issues, Miasma Chronicles isn't a bad title- very, very far from it. It's simply more of the same; change out a couple character models and you might not be able to tell the difference between playing it and Corruption 2029. While I'm a fan of the gameplay mechanics and worldbuilding that Bearded Ladies have done with each of the different releases, I can definitely see how others may feel a bit tired/burnt out with the lack of major feature diversity between Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden or Corruption 2029.

However, I do think it important to note that while each release hasn't been ground breaking or earth-shattering, what it does bring to the table, it does very, very well. Miasma Chronicles, like its two predecessors, were excellently balanced and the environment art is absolutely top-notch. What I wouldn't give to be able to get a full-control camera utility to take some virtual photography shots...

In all, if you, like me, are sitting around waiting for the next XCOM or Xenonauts 2 to drop, Miasma Chronicles is an absolute treat to play and will leave you with plenty to do in the meantime! I happily give Miasma Chronicles on PC an 8 out of 10!

Thank you again to both The Bearded Ladies and 505 Games for providing us with the software key and an opportunity to review Miasma Chronicles!

Score: 8 / 10

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Corruption 2029 - PC Review

Corruption 2029 by developer and publisher The Bearded Ladies—PC (Epic) review written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

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The Bearded Ladies released their newest hybrid stealth and tactical turn-based strategy game a couple of weeks back and I became excited. After all, I do love a good strategy game that isn’t as frustrating as XCOM 2.

Corruption 2029, the spiritual successor of Mutant Year Zero, revolves around an American civil war between the United Peoples of America (UPA) and the New American Council (NAC). For the uninitiated, the UPA is the group that players belong to, while the NAC is the group that players must infiltrate and destroy. To achieve this, players embark on several missions that will merit various augments which helps them prevail against their enemies. Augments gained from these missions are necessary because your squad consists of only three members. With these three characters, Wolf, Tranter, and Briggs, players must succeed in their mission objectives or else they are doomed to restart from a previous save or start again.

Overall, it’s another post-apocalyptic world that could very much become a reality given the current state of affairs, but I find that the game itself falls a little short for me. In no way is the game not satisfying, it just has some issues that bug me.

Mission Choices and Upgrades

The first quest that players embark on is to find a weapon of mass destruction known as “Savior”, but players don’t know where it is found. Missions require the squad to get information about this weapon and secure it at any cost.

Quest lines are categorized in Files, which have several individual missions that players must complete to get closer to finding Savior. At the end of the first mission, players receive information necessary to complete their tasks. The second mission, of which there are two, give different enhancements that can be used for the units. However, each augment can only be used by one character, and once players enter a mission, these augments cannot be changed. At the beginning of the game, this is a non-issue, but if players make it to a multi-objective mission (where all the primary objectives must be satisfied in order to succeed), players might want to consider their augment choices more wisely.

Some of the augments that players can receive are kinetic barriers, weapon range boosts, a long jump, mindhack, and a movement booster. Now, keep in mind that some of the augments are passive while others are active augments. However, the most important element is to consider which three augments your units will use. This allows for some customizability where the rest of the game is void of it.

Gameplay and Combat

Combat in Corruption 2029 is turn-based, much like XCOM or its own predecessor Mutant Year Zero, but it has a mechanic that I was not familiar with prior to this game. Corruption contains a stealth element where players can stake out the area for medkits, remote detonators, or other useful items. When roaming the map, players have the ability to set themselves up advantageous to them, making combat much easier than something like XCOM 2 where there is less ability to do so. In some cases, maps will have a radio that can be used to distract nearby guards or lure them into the radius of a remotely detonated grenade. It is a mechanic that is perfect for players like me because I absolutely love stealth-based games. Doing so means that players can potentially take out smaller guards before dealing with the heavy hitters. Also, this allows the squad of three to fight on more even footing rather than being overwhelmed by reinforcement units. (cough cough XCOM 2)

Much like Corruption’s predecessor, this game has a healing mechanic that other turn-based strategy games lack. If a unit is taken down by an enemy agent, the player has three turns to reach their squadmate to revive or heal them. This is both very useful and irritating because it forces players to keep units close to each other yet far enough away to set themselves up against the enemy, which is difficult if you have to devote a squadmate to save another. Players aren't overwhelmed in this game as easily, but if one goes down, the results can be dire. I once had a squadmate get taken out on the way to reviving his squadmate!

For all of the neat elements in Corruption 2029, the element of mystery, stealth mechanics, augmentation capabilities, etc…, it’s not without its flaws. For one thing, the AI is incredibly stupid. And by stupid, I mean really stupid. For example, I set my units to scope out the map for enemy locations, targets, and grenades or medkits. I was able to kill small groups of guards that were easy pickings. In each mission, I was left with the bigger, more challenging units, to take on. Here is the stupid part of the whole deal: not only was I able to take down units without alerting others, but I was also able to do so without hiding the bodies! On top of that, patrol units would walk right by a dead colleague of theirs without even noticing something was wrong! Oh wait, but there is more! In one mission, I was able to use the distraction radio multiple times without the enemy realizing that something was wrong. I expected them to pat around further or send another buddy over, instead of following the same path to the radio, allowing me to sneak on past.

Another flaw in Corruption’s design, in my opinion, is the fact that if a unit of yours goes down in combat, there is no penalty for the character once the objective has been completed! Let me explain. In an early mission, two of the three of my units were downed. As a result of this, I had nothing left to lose and so I sent the last guy to the computer terminal to hack it for the information. My hope was that I could complete the mission as well as see what the game does when losing units. The moment I completed the objective, my other two units just GOT BACK UP and had FOUR HEALTH BARS just given to them! In other words, unless players enter in massive combat missions where they don't stealth through the area, units going down is not worth the medkits.

In fact, on that note, there is no cybernetic repair cost, penalty to the mission, or anything to show that players had a rough mission. Players will either succeed or they will fail. That is all. And the fact that the AI is unintelligent, makes Corruption 2029 a much easier tactical strategy game.

Audio and UI

The UI in Corruption is fairly straight forward. Players use WASD to move around the map, they can use the spacebar to execute commands, and they can see most of the information needed on the screen. In the top right, is a small bar of icons that show how many medkits or grenades a player has available to use. Please note that players only have access to 3 of the medkits, grenades, and remote detonators. The way the UI is set up is extremely user-friendly.

Before starting any mission, players choose which task they will complete first (because sometimes there are a couple of options), then they pick their loadout. This is where players will add any augments they wish to have on the units during a mission. After these are chosen, players get to pick their dropzone. (Which, is useful if you want to stock up on supplies but know that if you complete an area and then go back to it, there will be more enemies and items will be in different locations. Just be warned. There isn't a free pass in Corruption.)

The only issue I had with the UI in this game was the camera pan. It’s incredibly awkward to hold down Q and rotate around the character to see nearby enemies. It's a feature this isn’t really grating, but it took a little getting used to. I wasn't a fan of the way players needed to camera pan, but we can't have everything…

My biggest issue with Corruption 2029 is the audio. While the gameplay and UI had its issues, and the AI annoyed the crap out of me, and the story wasn't fully thought out, the audio ruined the experience. I'll try and explain my issue with the audio. It wasn't the sound effects of the water when walking through puddles or the birds fluttering off, because all of those added to the atmosphere. But, when players are about to enter combat, the sound becomes a slow heartbeat and it intensifies for every step players make closer to an enemy unit. It's at that point when the music glitched out. Corruption’s combat music sounded a lot like it was being played in slow-motion, with a hint of background static. I’m not even sure how to explain it properly, except that the music only caused a problem right before combat situations. This was enough of a bother that it soured my experience of the game, where the rest of it was mildly satisfying. And what’s worse is that I have no idea if the issue was limited to my copy of the game or not. I've looked through other reviews and not one single other reviewer made mention of an audio issue. Furthermore, I assume the problem has to do with my copy of the game because I played it on a couple of different computers to end up with the same result.

Corrupted Final Thoughts

Overall, I enjoyed my experience with Corruption 2029. While it is not as difficult as other turn-based strategy games like XCOM 2 or BattleTech, it has its charm. I love the ability to stealth around before combat begins, and I love that players get to outfit their units with various augments to give them an advantage in missions. In fact, despite my issues with the game, none of them are game-breaking where I'd be forced out of playing it. I really do enjoy the fact that I can both stealth and employ tactics to complete missions.

Even though Corruption 2029 is much more simplistic (in my opinion) than others in its genre, it doesn’t make it unworthy of play. In fact, I will go as far as to say that Corruption is an entry-level strategy game that doesn't force players into unfair fights which cause you to scream endlessly at your computer. If you want a challenge, play XCOM 2. If you want easy, play Corruption 2029. If you want something in the middle, well, I'm still looking…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQGZPbn39m4

In my opinion, if players are looking for a game that shows aggro radius, allows time to set up their positions, and very little penalty when losing squad members, then this is the game for you! It’s not as tactically challenging as others in its genre and I find that it is a great place to start. In short, while I had my issues with Corruption 2029, I think the overall game is worth a 7.5 out of 10.

 

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - Deluxe Edition - Switch Review

The polar ice caps have melted due to global warming. The plague came back due to lack of vaccinations and swept across the globe leaving corpses in its wake. The nukes have finally dropped in what was most likely what would amount to World War III, and what was left afterwards? Those tough enough to survive. Starting off with the mutants Bormin (a boar) and Dux (a duck), you’re heading back across Ghoul infested territory towards your home the Ark with scrap to fix the broken water filter. Make you think of the original Fallout? It did to me but this is so much better.

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden falls into a very particular style of gaming experience. On one hand, you have your RPG elements that let you level up your party “your way”. On the same hand, you have the freedom to explore your surroundings at your own pace. Do you take it slow or do you simply rush through? In either case that choice is yours. Finally though, on the other hand, you have a very linear and very specific path to take forward and there’s no grinding on the side to help you make it through. You either plan accordingly or become the ghouls’ next meal.

None of the above is ever hidden from you and the game is pretty upfront about it. Knowing that things are going to be biased helps put you into a mindset that “cheating” is fair game and using every tool in your possession is a must. Starting off with only two characters, the first few scenarios are fairly manageable but it doesn’t take long for you to start being creative with how you approach your enemies. Being stealthy is always an option but you can only keep things quiet for so long before someone yells, screams or fires a weapon without a silencer. Jerks… we were trying to be stealthy here.

So taking things from the top, Mutant Year Zero is a real time stealth while you’re not in combat and a turned based strategy when you are. Going a visually darker route, you’ll be moving around various locations from underground tunnels to busted up docks and torn apart towns as you move forward on your quests. Using a flashlight to move at a normal pace, objects will shine out in the darkness begging you to pick them up. About ninety percent of the time these objects will be nothing but metal scrap or busted weapons but both of these are basically your currency to buy new weapons and mods, or upgrade your current weapons to be of better use to you.

While moving around with your flashlight, you’ll often hear your enemies before you see them in which you’ll also see a ring come out of the darkness that tells you how far your enemy can see. Turning off your flashlight, you start to move in a crouch and hide behind a tree, a busted car, the corner of a house, the top of a play structure. You lay in wait for the moment which you can pounce on your enemy either in a blaze of glory for everyone to hear or within pure silence making even the dead of night proud.

Once you’ve decided to engage in combat by ambushing your enemies, or if they somehow spotted you first because you were not paying attention, the mode changes for any character that was spotted or that you want to get involved. If you have someone in hiding and the enemy hasn’t seen them yet, you can either keep it that way or have them join the battle but unlike a lot of other titles, they won’t be on the enemy’s radar until they’ve done something noticeable. This leads into one of the more advance features called overwatch which allows your unit to scan the field and only fire if an enemy crosses their line of sight.

If you’re not lying in wait for an enemy though, you have two real options. The first is to move, the second is to do an action. Moving is easy enough and you can move as far as your character’s movement will let you or how far a special ability will allow you to jump. Moving itself though while an action, is free to perform as long as you stay within the white lines, moving into the orange lines will cause your character to sprint and to lose any second action that you had planned, unless of course you are using an ability that lets you.

So once you’ve moved into place, you can decide which weapon you want to fire, if you want to reload, if you want to throw a grenade or if you want to use a health pack on yourself or your allies. Spreading the party far enough apart isn’t always a bad idea, especially if you can three point pincer attack your foes but if they fall? You only have a few turns to get over to them before they are considered “dead”. You also don’t actually have to move if you don’t want to. This let’s you do two actions, such as reload and then fire, reload twice, reload and then throw something. The only thing that you cannot do twice, is fire a weapon unless you unlock the perk, or mutation, for it.

As you take on, and take out, your enemies, you’ll be gaining experience. Each time your team levels, each character gets access to Mutation Points that can be used as you see fit. While there is technically a tree for each character, it’s really an, do you want A or B before C, rinse and repeat with another straight line on the side. So in reality, do you want to sprint really far and then fire on an enemy? Or do you want a bit more health? Do you want to fly and become a supreme sniper? Or do you want to be able to jump to any point within movement distance. In case, the required points vary so sometimes you need to save up, and other times you can just unload on a few mutations.

The “trap” that I feel that Mutant Year Zero falls under is that regardless of the difficulty that you’ve picked for damage modification, the scenarios ramp up a bit too fast compared to what you’ve got access to. What I mean by this is that sure, you can take out a few people quietly but after a certain point, everyone comes crashing down on you. While it can take a few tries, it gets there a bit too fast especially when these psychic powerhouses get introduced that can hit your entire party regardless of how far apart they are for a stupid amount of damage. They are also always around someone else so taking them out fast is important because you can’t seriously take them on at the same time as the rest and win. It’s one or the other and it stops being a challenge and just becomes unfair

As for performance on a console? Mutant Year Zero runs flawlessly in the cradle and still fairly well in handheld mode as long as you don’t mind the visual quality drop. It’s noticeable enough, but it isn’t the end of the world compared to some other titles. You will notice if you go straight from handheld to the cradle as the processing needs to be switched modes, but from a gameplay perspective? This PC based title has made an excellent transition over.

Overall, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden’s Edition is a great addition to any Switch owner who loves turned based strategies. With great stealth mechanics, a solid turned based strategy setup and some decent banter between your party members, and it’s easy to lose an entire day going through this post apocalyptic wasteland.

Game Information

Platform:
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
Funcom Oslo
Publisher(s):
The Bearded Ladies
Genre(s):
Turned Based Strategy
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4
Microsoft Xbox One
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - XB1 Review

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is built off of the hit tabletop game, Mutant Year Zero. For those unfamiliar, Mutant is a hugely popular tabletop game from Sweden that was first released in 1984 and the "Mutant: Year Zero" franchise is something of a prequel if you will, taking place a few hundred years prior to the original 1984 release. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is set in the new Mutant: Year Zero era and is, frankly, wonderful to behold. A mutated blend of adventure, stealth, roleplaying, and tactical strategy, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a gorgeous game that does what few games manage to do … surpass the hype train.

Now, just to get it out front, I absolutely and utterly abhor stealth games; they are literally the worst and I struggle to really get "into" games that heavily rely on stealth elements. It is even worse when games that have no business being stealthy, put stealthy elements into them (looking at you Battlefield 1 …). I just find so very little enjoyment in hiding or sneaking my way through a game. MYZ: Road to Eden blends the heavy stealth element into its narrative quite well, but does not force it upon you; heck if you would like, you can go in guns blazing (as I do), though it will certainly increase the difficulty, which is interesting because the three difficulty settings are "Normal," "Hard," and "Very Hard" with an "Iron Mutant" option (as opposed to the traditional "Ironman" mode in other human-based games).

From the start this game wants it to be a challenging experience and it is, but not to the point of controller-throwing frustration; it teaches you well throughout the campaign that careful planning mixed with the near-fanatical need to explore every scene for loot, is far more important than guns-blazing or stealthy-stab-stab. If there is a single piece of advise that I can give, it is to save before every. single. fight. Period. You are going to fail and the last thing you want is to have to go back to a save that is twenty or thirty minutes prior.

Gameplay is a rich blend between real-time exploration and turn-based combat; you enter the scene and have free reign, moving no different than you would in a more isometrically-angled Witcher III third-person style, but in stealth or free-form movement. If you spot enemies you can straight up fire on them with your non-suppressed / quiet weapons (like Dux's crossbow), or you can scout the area in stealth-mode and set up an ambush.

Once you enter combat you will find where XCOM becomes a major influence, moving into specific squares and your characters will have action points they can spend on things like using throwables (Molotov cocktails are great!), using items like medkits (you will use these … all the time), moving/sprinting, setting up overwatch, reloading, using a skill (Bormin's charge is pretty wonderful; reminds me of the biotic Charge ability in Mass Effect, but with more blue glowy effects and more meat), or straight up attacking with one of your equipped weapons.

Setting up areas of fire and trying to funnel the enemy towards your tanky character is key and combining character skills will be paramount to success (like rooting an enemy into place after using a Molotov on them, then charging them once the Molotov area of effect has warn off) is a great way to pin an enemy into place for a round or two so you can focus on damage, then charging them to (hopefully) knock them down for a few more turns, is an excellent way to provide some fantastic punishment. A word of caution though, enemies are not all susceptible to the same tactics so you will need to reinvent your style on-the-fly.

By way of post-apocalyptic settings, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden simply wipes the floor with other franchises. The waxy look of the new Fallout games, the dusty Mad Max setting, the broken dystopia of The Last of Us, and the cold, hard crush of the Metro titles are all interesting in their own rights, but none of them feel truly alive. The fall of civilization is not supposed to be alive you say? I counter that post-apocalyptic titles are about life, and how it finds away <I so very wanted to put in the mythical Jeff Goldblum GIF here> to thrive in a decimated world. Horizon: Zero Dawn and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden are the two that come to mind that really embody this ideal; I am confident there are others, but these two stand far above the rest.

As you take your little squad of mutants and head out from the Arc, you will find yourself in a lush world inhabited by the detritus of the civilizations of yesteryear that beckon you to explore every nook and cranny and if you do you will be rewarded. Gathering parts, picking up loot, and farming every enemy on a map will become an obsession and it pays off in dividends as you earn mutation points to level up your squad and work to improve your weapon loadouts. MYZ: Road to Eden is about exploration with a healthy dosage of excellently balanced tactical combat.

There are very, very few things to be concerned with when looking at Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, chief amongst them being the difficulty. Outside of it simply being a hard yet challenging game, the only real gripe I can come up with Is less a gripe and more just sadness in the fact that the Xbox One version, which looks great, cannot hold a candle to the PC release. That is common in nearly every game that is ported cross-platform, but still, the Xbox One version (and presumably the PC version) is so good that the only real concern I have is that it does not look as good as the PC version? Laughable as an issue; in fact, it is not even an issue. I am literally reaching to provide some criticism and the one thing I can come up with is so incredibly shallow I probably should not have mentioned it.

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a must-buy this holiday season. Such a seamless and wonderful amalgamation of genres is rare and The Bearded Ladies have blended them so well that in Road to Eden you have a completely unique experience that feels natural, almost welcoming. Until it steps on your face but I say that is a part of the charm…

Game Information

Platform:
Microsoft Xbox One
Developer(s):
The Bearded Ladies
Publisher(s):
Funcom
Genre(s):
Turned Based Strategy
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Robert

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