Redlightsaber13

I’ll start by saying that this game’s platinum trophy can be earned in about 10 minutes or less. For the low price of $1, this makes it well worth it for the trophy hunters out there that want to boost their score. Onto the game, it’s an endless obstacle crossing game that takes form of a postman attempting to cross roads, streets etc whilst avoiding all the obstacles you’d expect. The further you go the more difficult it becomes, however never really being that difficult. I think the intention of this game is purely for platinum grabbers and it is an extremely easy one at that.

Windbound is a rogue like, third person survival game where your character, Kara starts of stranded on a small island. The story begins here as you progress from island to island (all procedurally generates) activating beacons before ultimately heading to your next set of islands. The story is okay and spans five chapters but failed to keep me interested past the second chapter. The rogue like mechanics in the game conflict with the open areas that kind of deter you from setting out on your crafted boa and exploring what the seas have to offer. Whilst this is generally the norm for rogue likes, I found myself feeling like it didn’t fit the style of the game. Whilst there is an easier difficulty the only real difference is either restarting from chapter one, or restarting from the chapter you’re currently on. You also keep all your items on the easier difficulty, compared to only keeping what is held on your person on the survivalist difficulty. The game looks pretty, clearly drawing inspiration from Breathe of the Wild, this translates to combat aswell, however it never felt as clean and smooth as you would expect. Sailing is disappointing until the later parts of the game once your boat has been upgraded and your used to the way you should be sailing, however it never felt rewarding enough. There are slight performance issues and occasional frame rate dips at time but that doesn’t takeaway from the experience too much. The only major bug I encountered was playing on story difficulty, for my second play through, but the game not registering that I was on story difficulty, therefore resetting all my progress upon death. Overall my experience with Windbound was not as great as I had hoped for this game. The repetitive nature combined with the rogue like elements don’t make exploring outside of the story path worth the risk. The combat isn’t as intuitive as it could of been and the game is definitely lacking polish.

Initially the game is quite fun when booting it up and playing for the the first few hours. The fighters look great and animations for moves are as better as ever. The career mode is a move in the right direction compared to recent instalments, however most of it is just filler and becomes really repetitive. Create a fighter is easy to use and you can be as in depth or ridiculous as you want it to be. The fight now matches are typical ones you’d expect and have featured before. K.O mode is your typical fighter mode with each fighter having a health bar and going best out of three similar to your Tekken or MK games. The extra modes again just seem bland and like they are there to fill some space however I’m sure some people will find joy out of them. Gameplay wise there are some improvements, however the ground game isn’t exactly tweaked as they may have advertised. There’s just simply been an assist option, whilst this makes it easier to transition on the ground by giving you three options, it also makes it a lot easier and more predictable for opponents to counter transitions. This is the area of the game that still needs work the most. The submission system has improved once you figure out how to use it properly as the game doesn’t do the best job of explaining it to you. The game in its current form does feature a game breaking bug, occasionally when loading into online fights, ranked, blitz etc, the character select background screen will basically takeover the screen and impede you from seeing the fight your taking part in. This became extremely frustrating as it extended to every mode of the game. Overall it’s a fun experience that looks good and is enjoyable but still feels lacking in some areas of the game. Career mode has taken a step in the right direction and hopefully they can further improve on that in future instalments If online is where you spend most of your time, you’ll be really disappointed. Best not to pick this one up until the purple screen bug is fixed for this one