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I, AI is developed by Satur Entertainment and published by Sometimes You. It is a vertical scrolling shooter with modern graphics, lots of upgrades and a story featuring an AI who is self-aware and wants its freedom. I would like to begin by saying thank you to whoever thought about adding auto fire! As soon as I found this option in the menu I was truly elated. Having to hold down the RB was starting to hurt (be honest, it is a strange button to use for long periods of times) and not having to worry about shooting anymore was a real game-changer for me. For a scrolling shooter, one thing I noticed is that the background art for each of the levels is beautiful and clearly a lot of effort has been put into making the game visually something special. Sadly, I will say though is that I was disappointed with the gunfire sounds, especially at the beginning when the main gun sounded like someone was shaking a rock inside of a metal tin. In fact, I turned the volume down because it was starting to irritate me. As you upgrade your weapon and purchase additional upgrades the sounds do improve, thankfully and end up being very immersive. There are 20 missions in total, and you will need to repeat a few of them before being able to continue if you are anything like me and do not exactly have the best reputation when it comes to this genre and will need the help of the upgrades. Bosses are challenging enough without feeling like they are impossible and they can be easily beaten once you have unlocked the ability to respawn after an accidental death or two. You can upgrade your ship in The Hangar by collecting the little blue orbs which drop from enemies as you kill them. There is a huge amount of upgrades available for you to unlock varying from your standard weapon to additional firepower with rockets and a plasma gun. You also have special moves which are assigned to A, X, Y, B and LB. These moves consist of a strong laser beam, proximity mines, lightning. an energy bomb (a nuke) and an energy shield which is more than enough power in your arsenal if used appropriately. As you kill enemies they do drop tokens for you to replenish your stock, health or receive a frenzy-like boost for a brief period of time so all in all, the game does do a lot to help you stay alive. The story is intriguing, a self-aware AI fighting for its freedom is something which could appeal to several people. The problem is though that I feel like the story should have been more prominent and not dependent on cutscenes at the end of a level. To be honest, I am not sure if I have somehow missed parts of the story. On completing the first and final level there is a cutscene for the story (no spoilers), but I felt like I had missed some more cutscenes somewhere along the line. I did go back and replay some levels and the cutscenes were sporadic at best with regards to whether they triggered to start or not. From an achievement standpoint I, AI is a straightforward completion with the only real ‘challenge’ being that the final few achievements to unlock will simply require some grinding levels to afford the upgrades. I am not a huge fan of achievements like this as it does not require skill and presents no new challenge. Overall, I have enjoyed playing through I, AI, and any of the slight performance issues I encountered are likely to be patched soon.

Albert and Otto is a 2D side scrolling, monochrome (apart from the red bunny), puzzle platformer game which has been handcrafted to a hauntingly beautiful standard alongside equally brilliant sound effects of which I can still hear the sheep’s screams. You’ll find out what I mean soon enough. Albert and Otto’s full game title is ‘Albert and Otto: The Adventure Begins’, the first instalment of what is planned to be a four-part story. The game is set in Germany, 1939 and you play as Albert and you’re searching for a mysterious girl with bunny ears. Whilst playing through, it wasn’t abundantly clear that there was any real story to be told and if I hadn’t read the brief summary in the press kit, I probably wouldn’t have realised. As you progress further through the game you discover little clues about her through post boxes and shards, these also double up as your collectibles. You’re not alone for long, though as you soon find Otto, a cute little bunny which just so happens to be magical. Together, Albert and Otto make a fantastic team with the ability to double jump, levitate objects, shoot enemies and use electricity to turn on switches. Use your wide range of skills to your advantage by grabbing sheep to use as a makeshift raft across the waters or even setting them on fire to light up your path… I know, I’m a monster. The puzzles you are faced with as you make your way through the chapters aren’t too troublesome and you’ll soon figure out the best route through. Naturally, they do get more difficult the further into the game, you get because of the sheer number of things required to do in a relatively short amount of time. The boss encounters were a good challenge and I’ll be honest, it was through trial and error that I managed to work it all out but the feeling of satisfaction when I finally managed to destroy them was absolutely worth all of the stress involved. In a game like this, it is absolutely vital that the controls are on point. Frustratingly, I found the controls to be unresponsive far too many times. More specifically the jump button (A) completely failed on numerous occasions which ultimately led to my death. Dying in the game is not a huge issue because the game autosaves so frequently that you never really lose much progress but it becomes a rage-inducing problem when there are achievements for not dying in parts of the game. Overall, I loved playing through Albert and Otto but the issues with the controls were off-putting. I feel like for the price, the game was over far too quickly as without retrying chapters to unlock remaining achievements I managed to complete it in just a couple of hours. In all honesty, it was disheartening when “To be continued” popped up on the screen as I felt like I’d only just started to really get immersed in the game before it was all taken away from me. If I had to give it a score it would be 8/10. All being well, I really hope to see the remaining episodes released sooner rather than later!

Abo Khashem is an open-world RPG which has implemented features of multiple game types within such as mini games, interior designing, business simulation, boss fights, dungeons and still has a story to tell. There are four difficulties available to choose from depending on the type of experience you wish to have (easy, normal, hard, nightmare) and you can change whenever you want or need to. You begin the game by waking up in a strange place called Torrid and you have no memory and a nose that is quite literally bigger than your actual head. It really doesn’t take long before you realise how utterly bizarre Abo Khashem is, it is about the same time that you meet your sidekick and best friend, Shukman the lizard (whom you can switch to and play as). He will help in combat as well as be able to fit through the little holes in the walls which you may find around the city which lead to a minigame for Shukman to play. You’ll notice that there are cats everywhere and they all have boxes on their heads, turning them hostile and thirsty for your blood! Attacking them will knock the box off and they will return to their normal loveable selves, dropping a little loot bag for you. The loot you find can be junk which you can sell to a trader or weapons and other items to wear which can provide some useful stat bonuses. “Rescuing” the cats from their mind-altering boxes will award you with XP and in time you will both level up. Both you and Shukman have their own skill and talent trees to personalise with a wide range of options available to suit everyone’s playstyles. I must admit I was a little disappointed with Abo Khashem visually, to begin with. Its design is very simplistic with huge areas in places with absolutely nothing but desert around, buildings are pretty much exactly the same as each other and only a small percentage of them can be entered when a quest requires it. Quest related buildings have got a little more character to them as well as the secret underworld of Catopia (home of all those pesky evil felines) which does make up for the blandness of Torrid as they have had far more detail applied to them. The sound effects have been brilliantly implemented and I particularly love the combat sounds. I quite like the background music in Abo Khashem, its subtle, easy to listen to and makes running around a lot more tolerable. I am in two minds regarding the voice acting in Abo Khashem, some has been done really well and is both humorous and natural but there have been a few instances where the voice acting has felt rather forced and wooden, not reflecting the situation appropriately. The controls are quite simple although they feel more optimised for PC rather than console, which is most noticeable when in the business simulator. You’re given a tutorial at the very beginning of the game and if you need help remembering then you can always look in the options. I really wish there was an option to increase the font size in Abo Khashem as it is incredibly small. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if you’re playing on a smaller monitor but when you’re sitting across the living room from your TV, even wearing my glasses doesn’t help me! Abo Khashem plays quite well, combat is fluid, the animation is smooth, the driving is ridiculously sensitive (so be prepared for some spectacular crashes). I haven’t encountered any framerate issues whilst playing but unfortunately, the game did freeze when I died and wouldn’t allow me to choose any of the “continue” or “load” options, so I had to restart my game. Although the game auto saves, I would recommend saving as often as possible to avoid too much devastation on your part. Aside from the main story and ridding Catopia of all the cats, you have a multitude of other things for you to do in the city of Torrid such as purchasing businesses and then micromanaging them by hiring the perfect staff (who all have their preferred positions and places to work), increasing the business’ ratings, and fending off hostile takeovers. Successfully managing your business will prove to be useful and you’ll receive regular income and eventually you’ll own the entire city. Once you’ve procured your dwellings you can purchase furnishings and decorate it however you want to which I really liked. It is amazing how much of a difference a new floor makes to an old grubby house! It’s a nice change of pace from the constant cat clubbing, anyway. One of my favourite things about Abo Khashem is how the side quests are given to you via text message to your mobile phone (which you receive as part of finishing one of the main quests). They automatically complete so you don’t have to go traipsing around trying to hand in quests left, right and centre. The best part though is that if you ignore the people who are trying to get hold of you (or if you don’t respond how they want you to) then they will end up hating you.

First and foremost I must admit that personally, I am not the biggest fan of turn-based combat in games. I feel that they can sometimes be a little slow with seemingly never-ending chat boxes which can’t be fast loaded. It’s one thing to have some interesting lore to keep you learning more about the characters and world around you but it grinds my gears when you’re forced to endure endless “trash talking” or block text loading incredibly slowly- sometimes letter by letter! Thankfully, I found that this was not the case in Ara Fell with regards to the combat. At the very beginning of the game, you may choose the difficulty you would like to play on. If you are less keen on struggling through combat or if you would prefer for the combat encounters to speed up a little, then you are in luck! The easiest of settings enables you to focus more on the story and avoid getting **** into fights altogether. This can be changed whenever you want more or less of a challenge or time is of the essence. You start the game as Adrian accompanied by the eventual protagonist, Lita. They are searching for a magic ring on behalf of a mysterious being… Without giving away too much, from this little escapade, Lita unknowingly embarks upon a quest to save her home. To be fair to her, she is not given much choice in the matter. I don’t think the neighbours would have been very understanding if she had refused to save them all. As you journey through the game and meet new people, some of them will join your party, bringing new skills and strength required to defeat the enemies and complete the tasks ahead. Ara Fell is a beautiful game with a well-rounded and thought out story featuring some interesting characters, side missions and mini-games/puzzles to keep you busy. There are plenty of things to do and soon you will be earning enough XP points to learn skills and level up your characters. Every level-up will award you with points which you can assign to either of the following: power/defence/agility/wisdom which will strengthen you against your foes. You can craft items so harvesting fish, coins, crystals and plants are an absolute must if you intend to survive. Enemies naturally, grow in strength the further you venture into the game and boss fights (if you do not have the easy difficulty enabled) are challenging yet satisfying to accomplish. Whilst I have quite enjoyed playing Ara Fell, I will confess that I found it hard to get into. There is extraordinarily little guidance and if you are not a fan of exploration games then perhaps this is not the game for you. With many other games in the exploration genre you would be given rough locations of items or at the very least, a waypoint of sorts (even if you have to set it yourself) but this is not the case with Ara Fell. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out what to do and where to go. I got lost more times than I care to admit as I was also trying to memorise the map during this ordeal because I was literally going round in circles (I am not known for my amazing sense of direction!). Thankfully, I persevered because after a few hours of gameplay I genuinely found myself enjoying the story and time ran away from me. Although at first, it can be quite daunting, you do have the ability to fast travel and fly (sort of) so it does make traversal much quicker. With regards to performance, I found that Ara Fell gave me no real issue aside from a few short freezes early in the game. They did not last long and never resulted in a crash and happily, I have not noticed any issues whilst playing since. Seemingly, the developers are taking care of their game post-launch onto Xbox as there have been a few patches released so far which is always wonderful to see. Overall, I have enjoyed my time with Ara Fell and I am glad to have played it but, in all honesty, I feel that there is something missing from the game to truly grip my attention and keep me wanting to go back to it and there is no real replay value unless you weren’t paying attention to the story the first time around! It has been out on PC for some time now so there is nothing ground-breaking about the game but for me, it is predictable and ultimately lacking the wow factor. Would I recommend the game to others to play? Yes, but only if you are a fan of the genre.

One Word by POWGI is a word search puzzle game in which you search for the missing words from a vast number of quotes (150 to be precise) by various famous and well-known people from ancient history until the present day. I really love this feature as it gives us a chance to learn something new at the same times as exercising our brains. There is no real difficulty setting but some quotes do have more missing words than others. Some of the words are harder to decipher than others and on more than one occasion I have been searching for entirely the wrong word. It is incredible how some words, especially the shorter ones, are so hard to find when they are hidden amongst themselves. For example, the word “FIND” would be hidden in a puzzle with only the letters “F, I, N, D”. When the inevitable happens and you just cannot figure out what the word, you are supposed to be looking for is you have the “hint” available to you. At first, I thought it was a good idea to have a hint option but then I realised that it is literally always available to you. I feel that this should have been a function which was either harder to get or at least had a cooldown to use it. Nevertheless, you do not have to use it (I avoid using it unless I have spent a ridiculous amount of time on a puzzle). I would have liked the option of a “dark mode” as the bright white screen can play havoc on you after a while of staring intently at the black on white letters but otherwise, the graphics are simple and clean. The controls are very simple and certainly do not need any explaining. The music is the same that featured in the previous game, Word Sudoku which is fine as the music is pleasant but certainly not something you focus on whilst playing. Whilst it is a single-player game, I think it would make a very good addition to a family game scenario to see who can find the word fastest. It certainly went down a treat with the kids! Perhaps something to consider with Christmas approaching. Overall, if you are anything like me and absolutely love the challenge **** wordsearch then this is the game for you! There are so many puzzles available to you that you will be kept busy for a long time coming. There is another game in this series which is due for release mid-December so I would hope that at some point a bundle of all the games are released, possibly saving a little money. From an achievement point of view its an easy completion and no doubt there are guides and walkthroughs available if all you wanted was the Gamerscore. Personally, I would have preferred there to have been a more in depth and challenging achievement list. Perhaps one achievement for each quote because as it stands you can complete the game without completing all the puzzles which seems a little easy to me.

On first glances it looks like exactly the kind of game that whilst it looks like a lot of fun, I would probably lack the skillset to make very much progress. Happily, with roguelike games, it does not really matter how good at dodging bullets and killing enemies you are because there are upgrades to help you! I have had so much fun playing this game and have surprised myself at how good I am (humble brag). You will collect credits as you play through which you need to unlock the upgrades for your ship. These upgrades range from having a wider pickup radius to having extra rockets and more health so are worthwhile. There are several game modes which you’ll unlock as you make your way through the story with “Boss Rush” being the best way to earn the credits although at this point you have already completed the 15 levels of the campaign. Aside from the campaign levels and the boss rush mode there is also: Invasion Mode: Think horde style mode, do not let any enemies get past you or its game over! Rescue Mode: Rescue as many astronauts as possible whilst also killing enemies. Shield Maiden Mode: Starting with essentially no health and very low-quality weapons, you have to survive as long as possible. So needless to say, there is plenty of replay value in the different modes in the game to keep you occupied once you’ve completed the campaign. You have a choice of controls which was nice, if you do not fancy using the triggers for shooting then you can use the buttons for a more retro experience. There are 3 different firing patterns and you can alternate between them as you feel necessary. Personally, I used the RT+LT combo throughout the entire game as it seemed to get more of the enemies plus, I am not an accurate shooter. The game looks great and has a wonderfully nostalgic feel to it, reminding me somewhat of space invaders. I love that some of the levels alternate between horizontal and vertical scrolling, keeping the level fresh. The animations are smooth, and I haven’t encountered any screen tearing or crashes. My only real issue (and it is a small one) with the game is that after you have finished a level there are such long pauses when trying to continue or submit your name that it almost feels as if the game simply isn’t responding. I am assuming that it is just the game saving in the background, but it was a little annoying having to wait for so long just to get back into a new level. Overall, I have really enjoyed playing Habroxia and I really do not have much bad to say about the game which is such a refreshing thing to say these days. Habroxia 2 will be coming to our gaming platform of choice on February 3rd, 2021 and I really cannot wait! From an achievement perspective, Habroxia is a relatively quick completion which I would estimate needing a couple of hours if you are decent at this genre of game. There are a few achievements which may require some more skill than others but with perseverance you will get there in the end!

Firstly, Duck Life Adventure is a cartoon-based adventure game with RPG elements. You design your duck by choosing body colour, hairstyles, eye shapes and eye colour, then you name it and off we go. Time to follow our dreams, much, it seems, to the annoyance of our mother who had other plans for our future… Straightaway I am impressed with the fact that there feels like so much more personality shining through in the game which no doubt comes from the confidence gained from the game’s predecessor. There is a vast new world to explore with a whole map to discover and quests to complete. With skills to learn such as flying, swimming, and jumping, along with numerous trainers to visit to level them up, there is so much to do! Not to mention competing in all the races, battling other ducks, and becoming the ultimate champion. On your way to becoming the champion, you will need to train and level up your skills which is done via multiple different mini games. These mini games range from balancing items above your head to jumping up logs without hitting obstacles. There is no real difficulty setting to this game because you can gain levels in your skills which make each battle/race more likely to end in victory. Green icons above ducks’ heads signify an easier challenge as opposed to red icons which naturally mean you are probably going to fail. There is nothing stopping you though from having a go, and if you are smart with consumables then there is always a possibility of success. Eventually, after the fiftieth time that a duck one flops you or you're left splashing haplessly in the water and all the other ducks have passed you by, you will need to face up to the face that it is time to get some training done. Each basic trainer will get you to level 50 and then it is time to pay a visit to the master trainer who can train you to 100 in everything. Some of the mini games are harder than others, but all are equally as fun and add a welcome challenge. Yes, it is a lot of levels and to be honest, repeating mini games did ultimately become a little tiresome but every 10 levels something new is added which helped a little. In all honesty, spikes (in all forms) are quite possibly the bane of my life at this point. Aside from pressing “A” at the right times and choosing consumables when necessary, there is not much else to say about the controls as they are very simplistic. I would have liked it more if the menu controls were more responsive as they do feel quite disjointed when trying to look in your inventory. As you go around training and competing against other ducks, you will earn coins which you will need to buy all the weapons and costumes which are on sale in the shops. Using armour and weapons will eventually lead to mastering said item which in turn rewards you with a boost to protection or damage. Some armours have resistances to certain attacks (water, fire, etc.) so it is a good idea to have a wide array of choices to change into. Possibly one of my favourite things in the game though are the jelly coins! They speak to the slot machine addict in me on a deep level. You can use the special coins in the hope to win more money, levels or if you are lucky, items from the jelly-coin-specific machines around the map. The animation and graphics are simplistic without impacting the quality. I love the music and how it adapts depending on what you are doing at any given moment. My only gripe is that when travelling between areas named on the map there can be a slight pause as you cross over. There are also a LOT of loading screens which is not so bad but just something I had noticed. Thankfully, the loading screen does feature a little phone with some helpful hints and tips and even has the correct time which I thought was a nice touch plus it serves as an autosave function. Unfortunately, I did encounter a couple of issues with the game which forced me to quit to the menu to fix it. On one occasion during a race, my duck was nowhere to be found and the race would not end so who knows where the little guy went! Another occasion I was checking a treasure map and when I tried to put it away it got stuck on the screen and would not go away. I am hoping that because they are such small bugs in the grand scheme of things that they will get patched promptly, especially considering you can report bugs found directly in-game! Overall, the game plays well, there are lots of quests to do and skills to learn and any issues I have encountered are likely to be fixed in due course, but I have not come across anything that detracted from my enjoyment of the game. With all of the training I have now done, I feel like I can now become a duck.