Kick & Fennick review (PSVita)

There are lots of high quality platformer games on the Vita such as LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway and there are also already some really great duos like Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank. These are all well loved, and in some cases long running franchises. So for a new platformer it is always going to be quite a challenge to stand out. So has indie developer Jaywalkers Interactive done enough to get Kick & Fennick noticed?

The game begins with you, as a young boy, waking up in what looks like some sort of cryogenics pod. You wander around a ruined building and travel up and down in some fully functioning elevators, which considering the state of the building is some pretty hard wearing engineering. One of the first things you’ll notice is that you don’t seem to have any ability to jump; yes, you read that correctly, a platformer game where the main character can’t jump, it’s definitely an interesting idea and sets it apart from other platformers.

After a little bit of wandering about you come across a rifle and a cute little flying robot. You don’t get given much time to get acquainted before a huge robot attacks, the robot looks a bit like the Enforcement Droid from Robocop and acts like one as well. You fire the rifle at the Enforcement Droid but the recoil blows you out of the room and into the path of lasers. The little robot saves you but is left with a damaged core and so the two of you set off on a journey across the city to the Core Tower in search of a replacement.

The introduction leaves lots of intriguing unanswered questions. Why did the cryogenic pod open? How come you can fall from incredible heights and not die? Why are all the buildings in ruins? And why are all these robots attacking you? I also find it strange that at no point are you told which character is Kick and which is Fennick (FYI Kick is the boy). Well neither Kick nor Fennick offer up any explanations; Kick seems to be mute and Fennick only occasionally bleeps at you.

This is a classic side scrolling platformer but with a really interesting control system. You can’t jump but you can use the rifle to propel yourself across distances or to defend yourself against robots. You’re limited to just two shots of the rifle before you have to touch down and reload so can’t just fly around as you please though. You control the rifle by either using the touchscreen or the right analog stick. Personally I found it easier to switch between the two and use the touchscreen to jump and the analog stick to fire at enemies. When you initially start playing you’ll probably wish for the inclusion of a normal jump button to get over small objects instead of accidentally shooting yourself into the path of lasers but it doesn’t take too long to get used to the controls and the game introduces you to new obstacles gently.

Just because the game introduces things to you gently doesn’t mean that it’s easy, the difficulty ramps up over the course of the game. Bounce pads will probably be the biggest cause of death among players as trying to judge the right angles can be incredibly frustrating and sometimes I felt like I got through levels more by luck than actual skill. At times the difficulty can feel a little unbalanced, in some levels I died over and over again only to find the next few levels a breeze to get through.

It seems to be an unwritten rule that every platformer game has to have a water section and Kick & Fennick doesn’t disappoint. In some games water levels can be a pain in the backside with sluggish controls and the ever present threat of running out of oxygen. Thankfully Kick already knows how to swim and you don’t have to worry about running out of oxygen as Fennick wraps himself round your face like a little robotic Alien facehugger. Although in this case there is no robotic chestburster waiting to pop out, but if Jaywalker ever makes a sequel then maybe that’ll be the surprise twist. The water sections in the game are really fun, unlike on land you are not limited to just two shots of the rifle so you can shoot as many times as you like to quickly blast around obstacles and it feels really fast paced, almost like you’re flying through the water. There are also a few levels where you’re on high speed ramps and are literally flying through the air dodging robots and lasers with lightning quick reflexes needed. This game really is at its best in levels like this and it does get the adrenaline pumping. There aren’t many of these levels which is a shame but I suppose it’s good to leave us wanting more.

Screenshots don’t really give this game justice. When you play you really do feel like a small child in a massive city. The dramatic camera angles in certain sections show this off to great effect. There are occasionally times where I feel that the game gets a little bit too wrapped up in showing you a beautiful camera angle of the skyline instead of what’s actually in front of you but thankfully the camera angle is right more often than it’s wrong.

The boss fights at the end of each chapter are a great highlight and they do feel tense. The music and background environments do a great job of setting the scene and making you feel like you are fighting for your life. You have to use all the tricks that you’ve learnt in previous levels to survive and you will feel elated when you succeed. Again it’s a pity that there aren’t a few more of these fights as each one is different and it’s a good change from the normal levels.

In total there are 5 chapters and 45 levels to play through. This is only likely to take you around 6-8 hours but there are 50 little gears and 1 special gear to find in every level so this helps to extend the playtime. There are also 3 difficulty levels to try your hand at. Hard really is quite difficult, especially in the later levels as it removes the line assist when aiming the rifle but completing it will leave you with a great sense of pride.

Overall Kick & Fennick is quite an impressive little game; you can clearly see that Jaywalkers Interactive has put a lot of love into it. The music and graphics are definitely a work of art and wouldn’t be out of place in a bigger budget title. There are some really great moments like the boss fights and water levels which make you feel like you’re flying high it’s just a pity that the game doesn’t last a little bit longer. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Jaywalkers Interactive do next.

Is the Vita Dead?

“if the Vita is dead then it must be a zombie as it sure as hell ain’t taking it lying down”

The PS Vita was released in February 2012 and I have to admit that I was a little bit dubious. When the original PSP was released I was an early adopter and overall I was…underwhelmed to say the least. The console looked shiny and exciting but it just felt chunky and heavy to hold. I completely understand that handheld consoles are supposed to be used for short periods of time but some days even after just using the system for half an hour my hands would be aching. The lack of a second analog stick really didn’t help and I felt that some games just really struggled without it. 

I also felt that the gaming catalogue lacked anything that really set my heart a flutter. Sure there were some games that I really enjoyed like the colourful happy world of Locoroco and playing as the cheeky rascal Daxter in his own self-titled game. There were even some pretty good exclusives from popular series such as Crisis Core: FF7 and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. But I felt that overall the console never really lived up to its full potential. The weight and feel of the console made me reluctant to get into any games that were long as I didn’t want my hands to permanently turn into deformed monster claw hands leaving me unable to release my grip on the PSP. This was definitely an issue for me as I love super long Japanese RPGs so being unwilling and unable to play it for long periods of time was very off putting. So I vowed to dismiss the PSP as an expensive mistake and to never return to Sony’s portable offerings, instead sticking to Nintendo’s family (and hand) friendly offerings on the DS.

So when the PS Vita was released I looked on with mild interest but had already made up my mind that I really didn’t want to jump in this time. I wasn’t even that tempted when I saw that they’d made many improvements to the hardware. It was lighter, and more powerful, it had front and rear touch-screens, a Sixaxis motion sensing system, a camera on the front and rear and, in my opinion, one of the most important new features… a second analog stick. It all sounded very nice but possibly a little bit gimmicky, two cameras and two touch screens…anybody else think it sounds a little like overkill? I really couldn’t imagine many games using all the new features and if they did then some of them might feel a little forced. That is an issue that I think the Nintendo Wii suffered from at times.

So that’s it I’d made up my mind and wasn’t going to fall for the temptation of this new shiny, powerful machine. Nope definitely not going to do it…not interested at all…

In 2013 I finally joined PS Plus – the service which, for a small subscription fee, you receive access to a selection of different games from the PSN catalogue on a monthly basis. By the summer of 2014 I had quite a substantial list of games sitting in my download library just for the Vita. The more I looked at the list the more I thought wow. I’d been given access to games such as Virtue’s Last Reward, Gravity Rush, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss to name just a few. They all looked pretty fun and ticked all the boxes of having great graphics, rich storylines and fun gameplay. When I looked down at the ever increasing list of games I was being given access to I realised that I’d be stupid not to give the Vita a chance, so I did, and boy was I impressed!

Reading a list of specifications really doesn’t give the Vita justice, you need to hold it in your hands, see the screen burst into life and the colour on the screen wash over you. Even the user interface (UI) is a breath of fresh air, instead of the XcrossMediaBar interface that the PS3 and PS4 has, the Vita has a unique touch-screen based UI which is really fun to play around with. Seriously, I’ve never had more fun with a UI. It actually feels quite relaxing to wiggle the menu screen and see all the applications jiggling about, or swiping down and across to peel an application off the screen in order to close it.

Through the PS Plus service, and my own purchases of games such as Danganronpa and Persona 4 Golden, I have access to a vast library of really varied and incredibly entertaining games. I enjoy my new Vita so much that I even prefer it over my other home consoles, even with my Sony Bravia 50inch TV and comfy sofa setup it struggles to compete with the portability and beauty of the Vita.

Let’s move forward now to 2015 and the ever eloquent Sony Execs gave their usual end-of-fiscal-year presentation to investors. One statement in particular stood out, CEO Andrew House referred to the Vita as a ‘legacy console’. Legacy generally means that a company has plans to fade out support so that means reducing first party games development, reducing application support and the decrease in manufacturing of any new stock. After the conference, when various online gaming sites started pumping out stories announcing the death of the Vita, Sony was quick to release a statement that what Andrew House actually meant was that the first generation PS Vita models were considered ‘legacy’ not the current PS Vita model or PS TV. So did anyone really believe the hasty correction? Not if the online forums were to be believed. The Vita had already lost support for Maps which also meant that it’s Near app had effectively been rendered useless. Ok, admittedly the Near app had always been pretty pointless but it’s still never a good sign when companies start removing things. Perhaps more worrying was the YouTube app being removed from the Playstation Store and no longer supported. You can still access YouTube through the web browser but again it’s a worrying sign to remove an app especially such a well known one. To top it all off Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios announced that Sony Computer Entertainment won’t be making any more AAA games for the system.

So we have no first party games development, check, declining application support, check, and declining manufacturing. Admittedly I don’t have their manufacturing figures but I’d be really surprised if Sony wasn’t decreasing the number of PS Vita consoles being manufactured especially with the success of the PS4. Overall it definitely sounds like they’re treating the Vita as a legacy system.

So is the Vita dead? Well if the Vita is dead then it must be a zombie as it sure as hell ain’t taking it lying down. The Vita has had some really awesome games this year such as Steins;Gate, GrimFandango Remastered, Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines and OlliOlli 2. The releases for next year are also looking really exciting with the likes of Rainbow Skies, World of Final Fantasy and Zero Escape 3 all coming to the system.

The Vita is also an excellent system for indie games it’s the perfect home for all the slightly quirky and thoroughly enjoyable adventures made by indie developers. Lots of indie games released on the Playstation Store are cross buy and cross save between the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita which means you can play at home infront of your big TV but then when you leave the house you can continue to play on the move with the Vita. The Vita is such a versatile console and it’s a shame that Sony aren’t properly supporting it or advertising it as like they’re advertising the PS4. Thankfully the Vita still has great support from third party developers and indie developers. The Vita still has some great years ahead of it and you only need to look at lists of upcoming games to prove it.

That happy time of the month - October 2015 PS+

Last week there was an exciting announcement that I look forward to every month, the Playstation Plus announcement! It's the build up of a month's worth of rumours which these days unfortunately usually ends up with a gigantic outpouring of complaining and disappointment from legions of Playstation fans.

I can definitely understand some of the complaints, the most common of which is that PS+ is full of indie games and there are hardly any big AAA titles. If we compare this month's offerings to the last two years you can really see that we do seem to be missing some of the big titles...

October 2015
Unmechanical Extended (PS3, PS4)
Kickbeat (PS3, PSVita)
Chariot (PS3)
Kung Fu Rabbit (PS3, PSVita)
Broken Age (PS4, PSVita)
Super Meat Boy (PS4, PSVita)

October 2014
Batman Arkham Asylum (PS3)
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (PS3)
Rainbow Moon (PS3, PSVita)
Spelunky (PS3, PS4, PSVita)
Dust: An Elysian Tale (PS4)
Pix the Cat (PS4, PSVita)

October 2013
Far Cry 3 (PS3)
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS3)
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (PS3)
Street Fighter X Tekken (PSVita)
Touch My Katamari (PSVita)

The question that I have for readers is is this really such a bad thing? What I really value about the PS+ is the fact that it gets me to try out games that I wouldn't ordinarily think to purchase.

PS+ has always had indie games, in October 2014 we had Rainbow Moon and Dust both of which are games that I absolutely adore but it's unlikely I would have played them if they hadn't come to PS+. I love the fact that PS+ gives me access to a varied range of games. Sure there are months where there is nothing that's really to my taste but if I'm honest there are only so many hours that I can devote to gaming so if there were 6 games every month that I liked the look of then I'd never get round to playing let alone finishing them! Everyone has different gaming tastes so I think people need to accept that as PS+ is catering to a wide range of gamers. What's in the monthly selection isn't always going to appeal to you but give some of them a go anyway and you may surprise yourself.

I'm really happy with this months selection, 3 of them in particular. Broken Age is a point-and-click game that I have been meaning to buy now for a while. I've seen some trailers of Unmechanical Extended and think it looks like a pretty fun little puzzle game, and finally there's Super Meat Boy which seems to have quite a lot of people online singing it's praises.

In fact I'm so happy with this month's selection that I've made some super tasty meatballs for my household to celebrate Super Meat Boy!

So what do you think of this month's selection and of PS+ in general? let me know in the comments!

Grim Fandango Remastered - Time to visit the land of the dead?

So I'm definitely a bit late to the party on this one, the original Grim Fandango came out in 1998 and while I had heard of it I never got round to actually playing it so with the remastered version out I knew I had to give it a go this time...except as usual I didn't get time to, I blame my large gaming backlog! As GF was in one of Playstation's Summer sales I knew that I finally had to make time for it. So was it worth it?

Yes is the short and simple answer!

I'm a fan of the old adventure games such as the Monkey Island series so I knew that the chances are I'd like GF as well. Sure the graphics, even though they have been 'remastered', aren't the prettiest that have ever graced the Playstation the game's charm and humour more then makes up for this.

In terms of graphics all that really seems to have been updated is the character's texture quality has been increased and the lighting has been improved slightly. There are some new features like concept art and director commentary, I would recommend finishing the game first before listening to any of the commentary though.

The story and characters are what really makes this game worthwhile. You spend four years in the life of Manny Calavera a travel agent grim reaper as he journeys through the afterlife. I won't go into detail about the storyline but will say that this is one of the best adventure games out there and if you haven't played it yet then you really should give it ago. Some of the puzzles are tricky so it would have been nice if they'd implemented a hint system like the Monkey Island remake did but I suppose it's easy enough to look on gamefaqs for a walkthrough. Also for some bizarre reason they didn't put in any auto save feature so you have to keep remembering to save occasionally...why would a game not have an autosave feature?!

Grim Fandango is definitely worth a visit to the land of the dead even for people who missed it the first time round so don't have rose tinted spectacles on.