Torn Away - PC Review

Torn Away by developer perelesoq and publishers perelesoq, Hawthorn Games—PC Steam review written by David with a copy provided by the publisher. Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://keymailer.co. #keymailer #TornAway

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.

Fleeing across Germany and Poland would be hard for anyone in trouble, but for a little Russian girl in World War Two, it would prove to be a nightmare. We’re going to follow Asya on her journey home as an escaped ostarbeiter in search of her family. “War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.” Hawkeye from M*A*S*H said this, and the friends I’ve spoken to who’ve seen live combat agree; Torn Away goes on to show that quite clearly.

The game opens with Asya waking up in Stalingrad, on the morning of her mother’s birthday. Mother isn’t home, so we go about our efforts as a little girl to make mother a birthday present. We learn some details about life here. Father is on the front lines, mother seems upset lately and Asya blames herself. We get glimpses into her self image through her conversations with her two friends, a doll and a broomstick horse.

We are introduced to another companion during this process, as Asya creates Comrade Mitten when she repairs one during her tasks for the day. Comrade Mitten served on the front, and knows Asya’s father, of course. Mother doesn’t make it home for her birthday though, because it’s August 23rd, 1942. Today, the battle of Stalingrad begins. Bombs are dropped, and Asya is taken prisoner.

The game skips around a bit in the timeline, some parts as active fleeing across the countryside and others told through dreams or flashbacks of earlier points in her imprisonment. From working with Asya’s mother on a time-based task that’ll determine if you two get rations as the war prisoner slave labor you are. During her flight portions, we get direct views into the world around her as she escapes and explores. A note from a family begging their Nazi son to change his course. An abandoned hut, with the skeletal remains of a hidden survivor in the cellar completing a tragedy you begin reading about upstairs as you search for firewood to ride out a storm.

Asya’s story is a tragic one. Every time things look up this war slams her back down face first into the snow. It took two of her companions right at the start. Her father is somewhere on the eastern front. She has nobody to turn to after she escapes the war camp due to an Allied bombing raid on it. Everyone who shows her kindness, everyone who helps her along the way, gets hurt by the horrific, oppressive Nazi regime she flees from.

Torn Away is functionally an interactive novel. While primarily a 2d side scrolling platformer with some stealth mechanics, it is incredibly narrative focused, and has a mix of first person exploration and nicely varied puzzles to accent that narrative. The snowstorm I mentioned earlier has you running between boulders to keep from being pushed back down the hill from the hut you take shelter in. At one point you help a crashed pilot by fixing his arm, and another you simply cook breakfast yourself as an independent young girl.

The emotional rollercoaster that is this game is combined with some of the most beautifully done, and incredibly fitting visuals I’ve seen in a game in a long time. Described on the Perelesoq website as “inspired by social realists and French animation,” it really sets the mood as soon as you see it, and then they pair it with excellent, tone-setting score that they did. The story just swallows you, keeping you moving Asya through her journey home, determined as this little girl is to keep standing up no matter what happens.

 Torn Away is a heavy-themed reminder that video games are art. Every level of this piece is art from every direction you look at it. Every story beat, every note, every color placement, contributes to a combined art piece that multiple skills and visions came together to create in order to tell us a story based on the diaries of wartime children, to tell us their story. The top games every year are war games, but they’re never games that show just how beyond-hellishly full of innocents war truly is.

Score: 10 / 10

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Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance Review

Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance by developer StarniGames and publisher Klabater—Microsoft Xbox Series X review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance takes a pair of releases previously available on different platforms and puts them together on the Xbox. The Strategic Mind games are not to be taken lightly, and are dense tactics titles that may not be the most welcoming title to the strategy genre, but for those who are willing to put the time in to learn the controls and appreciate the depth of strategy here, will likely come away feeling rewarded for the time they put in.

To start, Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance is a combination of the two games Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg and Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism. Essentially what you do in Dominance is pick which of the two campaigns you want to play. Both titles are history-driven World War 2 settings, but as you could likely discern from the name, puts you in charge of either German or Russian forces. I’ve played some of the other Strategic Mind games on PC, and this campaign is much more focused on the ground units than Strategic Mind: The Pacific, which was centered on naval combat.

In general, I’d say that the Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance stories are basically adequate, but far from riveting. There’s important historical figures like Stalin and Hitler that help set the tone for the objectives, but the visuals and voice acting during the cutscenes are pretty rough. Character models are stiff and the mouths aren’t even close to being synced with the speaking parts. While many of the scenarios make an attempt at historical accuracy while setting the table for your skirmishes, there’s obviously some liberties taken with stages as well, as you are basically leading one side to victories that they did not always achieve.

From a presentational standpoint, things get a bit better once you’re in the game itself – but not much. This is a hexagon-style turn-based strategy. For fans of the genre, a lot of games come to mind that fit this description, and honestly… most of those other ones probably look as good if not better. The biggest issue is that in order to avoid the sort of ‘sameness’ from one hex to the next, you have to be pretty well zoomed in, but that makes deploying units – especially across larger maps – rather cumbersome. There’s a pretty nice zoom-in effect that often takes place when units are moving or engaging in combat, but it’s nothing special.

There’s not much in the way of a tutorial here, though the initial campaigns are meant to sort of walk you through the basics. The first time to choose a unit, you get a pretty detailed audio description of how it’s best used, which is nice enough. You start to get a feel for managing fuel and ammo, understanding how you can provide cover for your ground forces using aircraft and large artillery guns and more. Each scenario presents primary objectives and secondary ones. Most of the achievements are tied to secondary ones, so for achievement hunters you will find yourself moving at a slightly slower pace to the end-game of each scenario as your primary objective might be to take a string of cities in a specific order, but the secondary asks you to assist with rebels in some side-city you wouldn’t otherwise have ventured towards or to use your new tanks a few times to make sure they’ve been properly ‘tested’ on the battlefield.

The other complaint that needs to be brought up is in the interface and control scheme. These titles were initially designed for PC, and the port to console feels rough around the edges. Cursor movement and selection even in the first map when trying to apply custom settings had me accidentally starting the campaign twice before I figured out how they wanted me to interact with those sliders on the right-hand side (spoiler alert: not with any of the face buttons on the controller). Even then, moving around the screen and choosing units while playing is just easier if you go to the bottom and click on each unit as shown there, so it jumps you to where they are on the map, as opposed to trying to find the units on the map due to the aforementioned rather muddy textures to everything. There were times my cursor wanted to jump to the upper right of the screen for what seemed like no apparent reason. All of these things make it a bit of a slog to really get into Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance, and could likely scare newcomers off from really playing it.

Which would be a shame, as the actual tactical depth here is really quite good. For starters, credit to the developers for having some customizable difficulty settings. I played some of these titles on PC previously, so I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into, but these options can really help players get the feel for the combat. You have multiple types of units – naval, airborne, anti-aircraft, carriers, recon and more. Some have very specific purposes both on offense and defense, while others such as tanks might offer a bit more of a well-rounded set of uses on the battlefield.  

There’s all sorts of layers to how the strategy unfolds here. For example, the longer a unit remains in place, the more of an entrenchment bonus it receives. There are some scenarios where this is hugely helpful as you try to fend off attacks. You start to get a feel for how to protect your ground units by using long-range cannons and airborne units – but you need to be mindful of things like their fuel. Those planes can only control the airspace for so long before they need to head back to refuel, so you need to learn to operate them in waves. Recon units are immensely helpful to avoid ambushes. Those aforementioned planes won’t be of much help if you accidentally fly them right into antiaircraft guns.

The progression elements of the units you use is pretty strong as well. They can gain experience. You can provide them with equipment upgrades (which can have a tremendous impact on combat depending on how you tailor them) and by and large new types of units are historically accurate. This means that as you progress through the timeline, you’ll gain access to new types of units that are period appropriate.

Strategic Mind: Fight for Dominance is an above average pair of strategy titles bundled together into one package. The presentation across the board fails to impress, and the UI suffers from this series having been designed for a mouse and keyboard, not a controller. There’s a lot of hurdles to get past with the control scheme, rough cutscenes and little to no handholding when you start to play. However, if you work past those issues, you’ll find a pair of lengthy campaigns with a high attention to detail and some truly interesting strategy gameplay. 

Score: 6.5 / 10

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News - Square Enix Collective Exclusively Signs Old-School WW2 Shooter ‘Battalion 1944’

The Square Enix Collective is on a role for the titles that they've been picking up of late and Battalion 1944 is no exception. Several members of the team are fans of shooters and I think this one will easily with a home with us.

Here's the Press Release!

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Square Enix Collective Exclusively Signs Old-School WW2 Shooter 'Battalion 1944'

Return to raw, skill-based multiplayer FPS on PC, PS4 and Xbox One

London, UK - March 9 2017: Square Enix Collective®, the platform that brings diverse and quality indie titles to market, has inked a deal with Derby-based Bulkhead Interactive™ to exclusively publish 'old-school' multiplayer WW2 shooter Battalion 1944™ on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

This time last year Battalion 1944 smashed its crowdfunding campaign with a promise to recapture the core action of classic multiplayer FPS game and propel WW2 into the next generation. Having grown up playing the sensational WW2 shooters from the turn of the century, the designers at Bulkhead Interactive have utilised the most up-to-date industry technology to create a visceral and heart-thumping multiplayer experience featuring raw, skill-based infantry combat across tight, focused, and competitive maps.

After the huge success of last year's The Turing Test™, Bulkhead Interactive chose once again to partner with Square Enix Collective for their latest title. Fans are the heart of multiplayer games and by choosing to work with Square Enix Collective, Bulkhead Interactive knows the task of expanding and nurturing Battalion 1944's community is in very experienced hands.

"From having partnered with Bulkhead before on the hugely successful The Turing Test, we know they're a very talented studio making great games", said Phil Elliott, Director of Community & Indie Development at Square Enix® Limited. "We trust Joe and the team as we know what they're capable of and we see them actively listening to their community. Our relationship is built on a foundation of minimum publisher interference with maximum support where needed. We'll help nurture and grow the community while Bulkhead can focus on crafting a fantastic FPS experience with Battalion 1944".

"We received some strong offers from other very big publishers on Battalion 1944. But ultimately, the one team that really stood out for us was Square Enix Collective", said Bulkhead Interactive's Senior Game Producer Joe Brammer, "Why? Because they published our previous game, The Turing Test on PC, so we've gotten to know them well and that means we know how they work. Crucially, we know that the relationship will be based on trust; and that's something which works both ways".

Joe continued: "On the one hand, we know that Phil and the team will come to us with suggestions or ideas but they'll leave us to make the creative decisions. On the other hand, from past experience we know they'll trust us (as FPS players) to make those decisions in the best interests of the game and its community and that we'll keep our heads down, work hard, and design the best game possible. Not only that - and it shouldn't be assumed even now - but the deal enables us to keep all IP rights to Battalion, and it was exactly the same thing with The Turing Test. So what Collective is doing is helping us build a sustainable business".

To announce their partnership, the team at Bulkhead Interactive released the following video explaining why Square Enix Collective is the ideal publisher for Battalion 1944: youtu.be/Ub1kUg670LU

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Article by Pierre-Yves

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