MOTORSLICE - PS5 review

MOTORSLICE by developer Regular Studio and publisher Top Hat Studios. PS5 Review by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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Are you ready to slice and dice in some mechanical mayhem? Do you love exploring abandoned megastructures full of traps looking to kill you? DO YOU DO PARKOUR? Well then, may I introduce you to MOTORSLICE.

In MOTORSLICE we are introduced to a girl known as ‘P’. P has come to a megastructure in the middle of a desert with the goal of wiping out all the sentient construction equipment that currently inhabits it. Armed with her handy chainsaw, she’s a force to be reckoned with. Being a megastructure inhabited solely by machines, the construction is anything but human friendly. As such, P will need to run, climb, crawl, and parkour her way to the top of the structure.

MOTORSLICE has a pretty refreshing gameplay style, being a cool mix of Mirror’s Edge and Shadow of the Colossus. What this means is that you’ll be doing parkour through a section of the megastructure, usually introducing a new mechanic to you, swinging from rods and climbing poles while dispatching the occasional group of enemies, until you reach the top of the area. At the top you will do battle with an elder machine, which in this case is a giant piece of construction equipment.

So, let’s take a look at megastructure climbing and exploration to start off. As a game with a focus on parkour, you will do a lot of running, jumping, climbing, wall riding, and using your chainsaw to properly ride up or across walls. Let’s go over some of the basics first. You can run up or along walls depending on how you jump at them, climb and jump from poles, and swing on rods. You can climb up and around cracks on the walls, leap from walls or objects, and do a sort of tuck and roll to get a little more distance or control.

Lots of areas of interest are colour-coded orange (or yellow) for your convenience. These colours indicate areas you should pay attention to, and usually indicate a way forward or something you can interact with in a parkour sense. Included in these are these yellow-orange mechanical style walls. With these walls you can pull out your chainsaw and ride them. You can go both horizontally and vertically, but only one direction at a time. Basically if you’re aiming along the wall, you shoot along it. If you’re aiming up it, you shoot up it. It’s also used to make transitions between large zones faster, i.e. after a boss as you’re heading toward the next themed segment of the megastructure.

Along the way you may come across a rest stop where P can catch a break. If you decide to take a pause here, P may strike up conversation with the drone that’s been following her around. Actually, your viewpoint as a player is from the drone, which is a really interesting manner to in-game justify a third person point of view. The rest-stops are a way of exposition for interesting things you may have seen and some background world-building about the megastructure, robot uprising, P herself, as well as the world you find yourself in.

The drone that follows you around isn’t the only one you’ll see. There are a bunch of miscellaneous drones scattered throughout the megastructure. If you find and touch them, you can bring them back to certain locations to “cash them in” as it were. These are entirely optional, and generally provide a good challenge of your parkour skills to get and return with. If you’re having trouble finding them, you can activate a vision mode that will highlight drones even through walls, as well as the walls you can use your chainsaw on. It’s pretty handy when going for the extra drones or trying to orient yourself.

Next let’s talk about non-boss combat. As you explore, you’ll run into small groups of enemies. These fellas are hostile, and it’s your duty to dispatch them. Or rather, you kinda have to since their existence creates a sort of barrier that prevents you from continuing until they’re all dead. Thankfully combat is pretty fluid and quick with most of the enemies dying in one or two hits. You slice the enemies in half, or deflect saw blades shot at you to dispatch your foes, and I can definitely say that the sawblade parrying is actually really fun once you get used to it.

While enemies only die in a few hits, unfortunately so do you. On the plus side, death is relatively cheap in MOTORSLICE. You’re expected to die a lot, so there are many checkpoints to respawn from, and the loading is pretty fast. You can also manually reset to a checkpoint as well. I say checkpoints, but it’s closer to a respawn point I suppose? There are also checkpoints in each chapter, based on segments of the megastructure, that you can return to the main menu to select. These will drop you at the start of a mini segment, but there are multiple points to respawn from within these checkpoints usually.  

Now, let’s talk about the big bad bosses, the oversized construction equipment. When you reach a boss, the first few things you’ll likely notice are: one it’s really massive, and two it has a segmented health bar. Here’s where the “Shadow of the Colossus” parallel comes into play. You have to scale the mighty machine, then use your chainsaw to “ride” along some segments of the mechanical monstrosity similar to the walls you’ve been using. The different parts you need to ride along correspond to the different health bars. Each boss is incredibly unique both in design and in the manner you need to tackle it in. Some you can get to and start climbing, others have mechanics you need to use to take it down. It’s a huge amount of fun.

There are a few frustrations I had while playing through MOTORSLICE, although thankfully they’re rather minor. The biggest issue I found was trying to land on small platforms that can be rather frustrating. Usually you end up sliding off either because you started rolling or you had too much momentum. While this doesn’t happen so often that I would get fed up, and normally it only happened while going for the bonus drones, figuring out how to orient yourself is key. Speaking of orienting yourself, the amount of times I ran at a wall and accidentally went up it instead of across it, or vice-versa, was moderately frustrating. While this isn’t a big deal in long segments because the nature of the segments of wall running or jumping leans away from this being an issue, I definitely ran off a wall a few times more than I would care to admit. Admittedly this is partially a me problem, but you definitely need to learn how your orientation and button pressing affects how you interact with walls.

The only other real conundrum I had was when I was looking for bonus drones, and I accidentally went the right way for story and not drones, and hit a checkpoint along the way. Returning from some checkpoints can be really tough if you aren’t going back to a previous one through the menu. Overall a very minor issue, as you can always just go back to the previous checkpoint in the menu and you retain your drone collection, but it could be a bit frustrating at times. An option to go back a checkpoint/respawn point within a segment would be a nice quality of life option, but like I mentioned, only a concern if you’re trying to do everything on your first playthrough without going back through areas.

Now we get to talk about the visuals. An amazing job in the design department for MOTORSLICE, described as “modern low-poly graphics”, the atmosphere of the megastructure combined with the gameplay style mesh incredibly well creating a sort of retro yet modern combined feeling that for me really helped sell the aesthetic. While enemy designs don’t have much variation for the common mooks, the bosses are wonderfully innovatively designed both in terms of look and methods to beat. A somewhat upbeat music choice while fighting the towering menaces also helps keep the frustration of many failed attempts at bay as you may find yourself challenging the bosses again and again until you can beat them. 

Overall MOTORSLICE is a really great title that I feel really shines through. With an action packed core coupled with some fun parkour and cool bosses, I can pretty confidently claim MOTORSLICE as one of my favourite games of the year so far. Utilizing a rarer art-style and interaction method between the main character and player is also a well received choice for the apocalyptic megastructure setting. While it isn’t the longest game I’ve ever played, my first though on clearing it was “this was really fun. I want more. When is the sequel coming out.” Thankfully it’s also not overpriced for it’s length, so I’m happy about that as well. As a final word, I would like to congratulate the developer on making such a wonderful title that mixes two underused styles into something I was absolutely enamored with. I highly anticipate their future titles and hope they keep up the good work.

 

Score: 9.5 / 10

 

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Ova Magica - PC (Steam) Review

Ova Magica by developers Skinny Frog and ClaudiatheDev and publisher Top Hat Studios—PC (Steam) review written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.

 
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

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The farming simulator genre has solidified itself as a fantastic way to pass the time. Often these cozy games have a top down perspective and a pixelated graphics style, but there are some games that set themselves apart from that mould. Ova Magica is one of those farming simulators that is beautifully designed in a full 3D environment. While it's still in early access, there are nods to beloved farming games like Slime Rancher and Stardew Valley to roleplaying games like Pokemon Let's Go or Sun Haven. After watching the development process over the last year and a half and then playing it over the last couple of weeks, I can honestly say that I adore this game. 

Gameplay

One of the first things to note about Ova Magica are the familiar inspirations from Slime Rancher, Stardew Valley, Sun Haven, Palia, Animal Crossing, and Pokemon games. Part of the reason I wanted to play this game is because of my love of several of the aforementioned titles. But what really sold me was the Slime Rancher inspiration. Each blob has unique traits that fit within the categories of storm, magma, and forest. The blobs share similar graphical traits to Slime Rancher models, but regardless of that, they are useful in many ways. Blobs are not merely combat companions when battling other townsfolk, but their abilities help you with farming tasks too! How you use your blobs is up to you, but consider breeding them to gain handy abilities while exploring a charming place like Clover Town.

One of the best features that Ova Magica has that no other game in the genre has (that I can think of) is a magical storage box. Scattered throughout Clover Town are storage boxes that you can use to access items located on your farm. You never have to worry about leaving important quest items on the farm again! What's even more of a bonus is the direction signs act as a teleport which are often located next to the boxes. Goodbye movement restriction and panic, hello freedom!

Apart from the blob mechanic, there are other familiar features present in Ova Magica. There is farming, mining, bug catching, fishing, and cooking. With respect to farming, unlike other simulator games where you are given a gardening plot of land, you define your gardening location. Designing the farming system around a per crop placement as opposed to a block crop placement allows you to decorate and arrange things to your liking. 

The mining is another aspect that I enjoy about Ova Magica. Each time you enter the mines, you have the option to enlist a helper who's blob will be integral to your survival of the random battles. Being able to bring in some of the townsfolk to help you get through the mines, is certainly unique to this game. Another aspect of the mining I enjoy is the fact that the levels are randomly generated and pretty! It is not a standard run of the mill dark cave with mining nodes and stone, the expedition levels feel more like you stumbled into a beautiful landscape that has cool looking trees along with some mining nodes. You get there by using a portal which you must activate with an item, and you can get out of the expeditions with a return wand. Personally, I do hope that more farming simulators use Ova Magica as inspiration to shake up the genre.

There are other elements like romanceable characters and working for the newspaper to conduct a census of the citizens, which are aspects found in games like My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock. Each feature in the game ticks off the boxes for required elements in the farming simulator and cozy game genres. They allow players to kick back and relax as they enjoy running around Clover Town with reckless abandon. While doing so, be sure to chat with all of the diverse characters that are found within Ova Magica.

All of that said, the game does have some pain points. New players will note that several features are not available in the early access build of the game. It may detract players from being invested in the game, not because it isn't cute or well optimized, but because there is a lack of features in this build. Despite that, Ova Magica will see more content as it progresses through the early access stages. So, while it may not be ready yet, it has a lot of potential to dominate in the genre. 

UI and Graphics

Like with other games of this type, I play on a controller. This is important because that tells me how well the UI can be maneuvered and understood. Ova Magica is incredibly well done which encompasses everything from object placement to daily tasks to combat design. The UI is not clunky or oversaturated with too much information either. There is just enough present to make it accessible and comprehensible, which is something I appreciate in a video game. Nothing is more irritating than having a game you really enjoy that has a terrible UI. Trust me.

When you're chopping down trees or mining rocks, it is easy for other objects to obfuscate the dropped items. However, Ova Magica outlines the player if they are performing any of these actions where you can't see yourself. While I think about it, there was no time in which the camera panning would phase through a wall nor the ground, so that is a positive point as well. It's too easy to have a fantastic game where the graphics are not quite right. This one hasn't done any of that which is fantastic.

However, there are a couple of minor gripes that can easily be added to the game later on. The first of the issues is the lack of buying products in bulk. You have to buy your seeds individually, which may be irritating down the line. Related to that, the only place you can sell items is at your farm. This cannot be done at any of the stores, much to my disappointment. 

Secondly, the magic storage box is a fantastic feature that I would love to have in other cozy games. That said, if an item is on a different page than the one you're looking at, it will not deposit it in the box. Similarly, if the page you're on is full, the page will not change to add the new item. You have to manually switch pages to be able to deposit items. 

As for the graphics of the game, it is smoother than silk. Not only are the characters and the blobs well animated, but each one is unique. Also, graphically I love the inclusion of different skin tones or styles that do not require being pigeonholed into a gender type. You can even create a character that has a hijab, too! And honestly, we need more games with diverse character customization.

I also noticed that the area transitions are almost seamless. If you blink, you'll miss the changeover from one location to the next without any loading time to stop you. 

Finally, I really love the chibi art style of Ova Magica because it is graphically a great departure from some of the other farming simulators on the market. What can I say? The game is cute. It's good to have cute things once in a while.

Exploration and Combat

Unfortunately, the game has a distinct lack of exploration at this stage of early access. It appears as though there will be another area we can explore in the future, but right now you can wander around your farm, the town, and the train station. Aside from that, I do know that there will be more buildings added in future. This is based on the fact that there are several blocked off plots of land in Clover Town. These could be housing plots or perhaps additional shops. Maybe they could be player housing if ever there is a multiplayer mode added. Who knows?

I also secretly hope that the train station could take us to new places to explore or to battle or both! The potential is there. But for now, the only place that is on the map under a fog of war is a large area on the west side of Clover Town. I have no idea what that area will have and what challenges await us, but I'm excited for its unveiling.

Now, as for the combat system, I really like it. You see, aside from blobs being used to assist in farming tasks, you have the ability to battle other townsfolk similar to Pokemon. And like other popular monster catching games, this is done through a turn-based combat system. With options of fighting, using an item, defending, or retreating, you can win the battle with some strategic planning. The turn order is displayed as a bar at the bottom of the screen that shows all of the blobs action time. Using it to plan out your next action is integral to the success or failure of the battle. What is neat about the battle mechanic is it's used in seasonal events too! For example, the fall spooky event has you running through a maze where smaller blobs can attack you. If you make it through them to the final area, you can take on the final blob. If you are successful in defeating this enormous blob, you will gain tickets to buy seasonal recipes that you can use to spice up your farm.

Now, to be more specific about the combat, it is simple to grasp, but will become more interesting as you fight larger or harder blobs. At my painfully low level, I attempted to take on the large creature at the end of the fall seasonal maze. That was a mistake. Don't go in there without leveling. (Just to be clear, I evaded all the smaller mobs beforehand.) Anyways, there are three phases to a turn in Ova Magica. The beginning of the bar is the recover phase. If you've just executed an action, you will end up in the recover phase. The next phase is the command phase. As the blob images move across the bar, the one on the right will be the first in the turn order. While all of you will be able to determine what action you will take, the execution won't occur until the final phase which is called the cast phase. Should another blob be further in the line, you may want to defend yourself because any damage you take will knock you back in the turn order. With multiple blobs performing actions, it can get messy. However, visually it will be relatively easy to tell which blob is up next.

An important thing to note is that the combat aspect of the game is integral to Ova Magica's core gameplay loop. This is true not only for participation in the blob tournaments, but the mining and fishing mini game too! While the mines aren't traditional in its visual presentation, there are blobs that will attack you when you get too close. If you want to be successful in completing the expeditions or the seasonal events like the aforementioned one, you will need to level up your blobs. And it wouldn't hurt to breed them either, so that you have more abilities. As an aside, I much prefer a combat mini game for activities than a bunch of random QTE's, that's for sure! Besides, the combat gives you reason to use all the food that you've cooked back at the farm! That, my friends, is what we call brilliant.

Pros and Cons

To recap the good and the bad points about Ova Magica, it has many more positives than negatives, which is a great way to leave a wonderful first impression. 

Good Points:

• Diversity in character creation
• Freedom to customize your farm layout
• Easy to get into and play
• Entertaining character interactions
• Beautiful graphics and seamless transitions between areas
• Different interpretation of mining within a farming simulation game
• Easy to understand combat system
• Blob breeding creates fun and cute results
• Can teleport to notable town locations through the direction signs
• Magical Storage Access everywhere!
• A daily health wheel
• And plenty more!

Underwhelming Points:

• No ability to sell at vendors, only on the farm
• No autostacking of multiple items in the magic storage box
• If a page is full in the magic storage box, you have to manually switch pages to deposit items
• Unable to buy seeds in bulk
• The balance between possibility of combat versus successfully hooking fish is a little off-kilter
• Not enough area to explore at this time

Final Thoughts

Although Ova Magica is yet another cozy farming simulator / RPG in the list, it has enough innovation in the genre to stand on its own and I'm here for it. The game is not only beautiful but fun! There's always something to do, whether that's chasing after meteors of copper that fall from the sky, breeding your blobs, or romancing characters. It will have you hooked in no time. Besides, it's hard not to love this game, as I suspected would be the case when I first saw images on social media. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good relaxing game, especially if it has Slime Rancher inspiration. All I need now is for more elements to be available, and this game will knock the socks off cozy players feet. You see, I'm not surprised that this is the case, I'm over the moon about Ova Magica! You might be too, so what are you waiting for? 

Score: 9 out of 10

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Legend Bowl Review

Legend Bowl by developer Top Hat Studios Inc and publisher YoYoGames—Microsoft Xbox Series X review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Football season is coming up sooner than later, and as the leaves change color and the cooler air surrounds us – I get excited. Legend Bowl helps to embody that excitement as it combines nostalgia and a surprising amount of depth in this non-licensed American football title.

Tecmo Bowl is the clear inspiration here, in the name and the visuals. That tickled a little something in my psyche, as my more recent years have seen me focus on football games like Madden – and for a short time – the 2K NFL games. However, I cut my teeth on the NES Tecmo Bowl. I later played the sequel games and ate them up.

That however, was the 80’s and 90’s, and it raises the question whether or not this type of a game still has a place in more modern gaming. I think the answer here is ‘yes’, but it is going to have some niche appeal, I suspect. First the basics: This is not a Madden-killer by any means. If you are looking for a AAA presentation with real NFL teams and players? You’re not getting that here, at least not out of the box. Now, to Legend Bowl’s credit, there is a lot of flexibility in player and team editing. On PC there’s already plenty of NFL roster mods available that can be imported to create a more realistic NFL facsimile.

I actually spent more time than I had expected to with some of these editing features, because I generally like putting my own customized spin on teams, and these features were fun to play with. Aside from those editing features, there’s a few different modes to play with. Exhibition is the kind of quick game you would expect, and Tournament Mode is basically the playoffs to a championship (like the original Tecmo Bowl) and there is a Training Camp Mode that tries to teach you the basics. I’ll admit – I didn’t really expect to need much out of that mode given my extensive history of playing video game football, but Legend Bowl is a different kind of game than I was used to. While I thought the tutorials could have been better, they were certainly necessary.

Last but hardly least is the Franchise Mode, which is where most of my time was spent and where I suspect fans dedicated to this title will also get the most bang for their buck. It’s a pretty traditional setup with choosing a team, creating a custom coach (or using an existing prefabricated one) and playing a full schedule with stats being kept, player progressions and more. It culminates in a championship and then an offseason with free agency and drafting. These RPG-lite elements have always been among my favorite aspects of sports titles and Legend Bowl does a solid job on this front. There are just a ton of stats to look through, and it feels like a fully flesh, deeply featured mode that is really well done.

The presentation is going to be hit or miss, and is one of the reasons I feel as though Legend Bowl is a rather niche title. The pixelated graphics give off a retro feel that compliments the catch chiptune music nicely. Because of these more limited character models, gameplay has some tweaks as a result. Things like trying to break through the offensive line is represented with a bar that you fill up by mashing a button to bust through. In fact, a lot of the elements here feel like mini quicktime events. On the one hand, almost all games are this, but it’s more pronounced here since it’s visually represented on the screen. At the higher difficulty levels, you will generally lose these, as the computer is simply going to be better at spamming an input button than most people.

The gameplay is another reason why I could see Legend Bowl failing to appeal to a broader audience. The passing mechanic is interesting, as it has a press and release, again with a bar that fills up to try and guide you. Though after a while I was oblivious to the bar as it only distracted me from looking at the receivers down the field once I got the timing down for my QB. Some of the defensive and ball carrier controls also didn’t feel as intuitive to me as I had hoped – especially early on. It felt a bit like I was being asked to unlearn everything I had learned from video game football over the years. I eventually got the hang of the controls, but it was often times frustrating, especially the passing mechanic which felt like it just leans to one extreme or the other (bullet or lob pass) most of the time.

Legend Bowl does lean into a more arcade feeling, yet doesn’t quite feel like the old school Tecmo Bowl games it visually reminded me of. There’s a lot of menus here as well, and I suspect they work a bit better on the PC with a mouse and keyboard than they do on console with a controller, but it’s hardly a deal-killer, just an inconvenience.

On the whole, Legend Bowl does a lot of things right, but isn’t going to dethrone Madden either and that’s okay. If you are a diehard NFL fan who wants to play a more realistic simulation, there’s a good chance that Legend Bowl is not going to scratch that itch. However, if you can adjust to the more arcade-like controls and don’t mind the numerous menus, there’s plenty of fun to be had here. I just had to make sure to give myself time to learn to play the game, which is a different type of game than most other football titles. The numerous statistics make the Franchise Mode the most rewarding feature of Legend Bowl, and those willing to push through the learning curve will find plenty of reason to come back to it.

Score: 7 / 10

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