GAME REVIEW: Terraria

In the way that steampunk envisions a future where technology progresses while remaining focused on the mechanisms of steam power, so does Terraria envision a future where game consoles are state of the art, but the games stay firmly rooted in the 16-bit days of yore.

Terraria is an open world sandbox that blends games like Minecraft with Zelda II and Super Nintendo RPGs. Its graphics may fool you at first glance into believing there is little more behind the charming pixel art than the simplicity of SNES games past, but Terraria uses the power of modern consoles to generate huge worlds, tons of items, and a fully fledged game that will eat away as much of your time as any glossy AAA title would.

After creating a cute 16-bit character, you are dropped into a randomly generated world with only a few tools at your disposal. Your first assignment is to build a shelter by nightfall to protect you from certain enemies that only arise after dark. With axe in hand you get to chopping down trees. You whip up a workbench from your crafting menu and make doors, chairs, tables, and wood paneling for your new abode. Toss a couple of torches on the walls and you’ve got yourself a secure domicile to call home base. Now is when the fun starts.

There is really very little in the way of direction or linearity. The idea is to just start exploring the world, collect materials, build new tools, then explore some more. There are several big boss fights, and you can “beat” the game in a way, but that isn’t really the focus. The focus is on exploration and building your world. With the right structures built, you can attract in NPCs that will help you in various way, like selling you weapons and crafting material. You can roam the lands and underground caverns slaying monsters, or you can plant a garden with the many different seeds you’ve gathered during your travels. It is all up to you how you want to play.

Despite its overall awesomeness, there are a few things that are irritating about the game. The lack of direction can be frustrating at times, especially when trying to build suitable structures for living. If you are missing a required item or combine two materials that don’t like each other, monsters can spawn inside your house. Also, the crafting menu is awful and clunky, and even though you eventually get used to it, it never feels as fluid and intuitive as it should. These seem like pretty minor nitpicks, but a lot of the game is spent crafting items and building your houses. These irritants don’t ruin the game, but they can be really annoying from time to time.

I’m loving the new indie friendly revolution in gaming because we get amazing games like Terraria. It may not be for everyone, but if you enjoy open world freedom and pixel art nostalgia, download it and enjoy. Beware, though! This game is a devious time sink. Before you know what has happened you’ll have given many hours of your life over to its charm and incredible fun. Still, it's time well sacrificed.

GAME REVIEW: Dead Island

Do you like killing zombies? Do you like punching zombies till their limbs break? Do you like stabbing zombies, drowning zombies, lighting zombies on fire, blowing zombies up, running over zombies in your car, cutting off parts of zombies, cracking zombies over the head with paddles, crowbars, and planks of wood, electrocuting zombies, poisoning zombies till they puke, stomping on zombie heads, and other zombie related shenanigans? Well, then you’re going to love Dead Island. But you better really, really like all those things I listed above because that’s pretty much all this game has to offer.

Dead Island came out several years ago and is pretty much irrelevant today, but since I pride myself in being well behind the times, I picked it up recently and gave it a whirl. What I found at first was a bug ridden, stiff and repetitive game, but overtime it grew in me a deep rooted love of killing zombies in every way I could imagine.

My first playtime in this game was an attempt at multi-player with my brother. After seeming eons of trying to connect with each other, we finally succeeded, only to find missing graphics, skippy lag times, and an eventual PS3 freeze. By the end of this ordeal and a flurry of obscenities, I sent my brother a text that pretty much summed up my thoughts on the experience: Worst. Game. Ever.

But after awhile I decided to give it another try, this time by my lonesome, and what I discovered was a flawed, but actually good gaming experience. There’s not much to the story and there doesn’t need to be. A cliché MTV beach house island resort somewhere that I don’t know where suddenly sprouts a growing population of the undead, and four characters that are immune to their bites band together to kill them all and try to escape from the island. Naturally, everyone else they meet in their travels are useless, sentimental sacks that ask you to go on fetch quests for teddy bears and necklaces and booze and juice boxes. Of course, there are always about a billion zombies between you and your mission objective.

The first thing I noticed about the game is that your character is not a badass. At least not in the beginning. Duke Nukem style protagonists these are not. My first meeting with more than three zombies at once ended badly. Fortunately, you are given a smattering of weapons, both everyday and custom built. Anything you find lying around, like paddles, frying pans, and lead pipes can be used to bludgeon your enemies to re-death. But weaker objects like these have a limited lifespan and will eventually break, leaving you with not, but your bare fists and the ability to run like hell. Eventually, you are able to find blueprints that allow you build custom weapons, like machetes with cell phone batteries duct taped to them to cause electrocution, and baseball bats that continually burn without ever burning away.

Alright, so the upgraded weapons aren’t that realistic, but they are at least plausible in their way. The rest of the game world does provide a sense of realism and that’s one of the few things that the developers nailed just right. The scenes of horror that you come across on beaches and patios, bar side massacres, and fancy swimming pools full of blood and bodies are pretty unpleasant. As scary as zombies are in closed, dark corridors, there’s something much more unwholesome about bikini clad zombies chasing you down in bright sunlight, through trimmed hedges and by pool side lounge chairs.

This game is fairly long and can become repetitive. While the settings change up, from beach side to abandoned city, to sewers, and deep jungle, the enemy threat really doesn’t. Sure there are a few different types of zombies—you’ve got the slow walkers, the speedy infected, and thick skinned thugs—but in the end you pretty much just face wave after wave of zombies. There aren’t many surprises here and if you don’t like the formula, you’re not going to stay on board for very long.

As buggy and repetitive as Dead Island can be, there is still plenty of unsettling charm to keep you coming back. If it had been polished a bit more, it would have been fantastic, but as is, it is an acceptable game for a niche audience. We can only hope that the forthcoming sequel, Dead Island: Riptide, will fix all these problems and add some much needed variety. Too bad it looks pretty much exactly the same…. Well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.