On January 11th, The Escapists 2 was ported to the Nintendo Switch by Team 17. This title, developed by Mouldy Toof Studios is a sort of prison escape simulator. Your goal as a prisoner is simply to escape, but any number of obstacles from fences to guards to walls can stand in your way. In order to get around this, you need to collect and craft materials and tools to help you get past. Of course, it’s never THAT easy, but the premise does remain this simple throughout all ten missions on offer. (I suppose that’s eleven, if you count the tutorial.) So let’s get deep into our Escapists 2 Review.

Escapists 2 Game Play and Mechanics

Overall, this game is pretty fun. Its wacky sense of humor and surprisingly interesting core game play offer more than enough to keep us playing. The game offers multiplayer or single player–online or local. The missions range from easy to hard to locked up tighter than an actual prison. There are loads of items to craft, stats you can raise to help you escape, and shenanigans to be had no matter how you choose to play.

Crafting allows you to make bigger and better items, but be careful. Many of these items are contraband and can get you in big trouble with the guards.

Most importantly, the game gives you creative freedom on how to make your escape. Are you a fan of the classic digging a tunnel? How about using wire clippers to get through the fence? Or perhaps you wanna do something wacky like escaping a prison camp on a motor cycle? The choices are yours, though unlike the first game, The Escapists 2 offers some objective-based escape options rather than just the sandbox that the first game had to offer. This may be one of the biggest points in the game’s favor, offering an option for people who like to make their own goals and people who prefer to follow some kind of checklist.

So while you’re playing, you are expected to follow a routine, as any prisoner might. For the most part, missing a routine will cause you to look suspicious, but the actual threat there is minimal. Your security rating will go up half a star, with each full star causing prison security to get a bit beefier. At worst, this will just make the game a little bit harder. However, if you miss roll call, the prison goes into lock down and the guards come looking for you. It’s in your best interest to keep to your routine. Just don’t be afraid to miss something if you’re working on something important.

The Trouble With Multiplayer

So in particular, multiplayer seemed more fun than single player, even online. There, you can’t talk to other players outside of the canned speech accessed via the directional buttons. It’s just more fun to interact with other players and their plans which may not line up with yours. In one instance, playing online, we were on a train mission where in multiplayer your only options are to break away the back car or take over the whole train. Well, after failing to take over the train, our teammate got discouraged and chose to just stay in bed and give up. We weren’t having that. So we collected the crowbars, knocked him out, and dragged him to the back of the train in order to break it off and complete the scenario on our own.

The best moments we’ve had happened to us in multiplayer. However, the multiplayer content is not without some issues. For one, it is possible to screw over your partners, opening the door to griefers and the like. That’s not always a bad thing. However, the biggest issue came when attempting local co-op. Local co-op in The Escapists 2 causes the screen to split vertically into two screens. This doesn’t sound too bad, except that the UI gets scaled down to match. What was once readable with a little difficulty became nearly impossible to make out. Occasionally, we’d get a weird bug where the text descriptions for stuff refused to even show up. It really made the game harder than it needed to be, forcing a lot of guess work on our part.

The text in these notices above becomes difficult to read. However, being in two places at once is very helpful, at times.

Still, despite flaws like graphics jumping around a little and some unusually long load times, nothing ultimately interfered with my play or enjoyment of the game more than this did. The core mechanics certainly get a passing grade.

Audio and Visuals

The Escapists 2 is a game that’s done entirely in basic pixel art graphics. As such, it’s already doing better than expected if you can tell everything apart. Mouldy Toof delivers on that front, providing something that doesn’t look out of place, but pops enough to give you an idea of where to look. It’s a massive upgrade from the predecessor, but ultimately, the visuals just do their job. Now, each location is distinct, and you’ll always know exactly where you are, which is a bit of good level design. Whether you’re at sea, in the desert, or the frozen tundra, each level has its own atmosphere, which is as good a reason as any to talk about the soundtrack.

So the music in this game can actually be pretty closely compared to the visuals. There are different tracks for each part of your routine in each level, but there aren’t any major standouts that’ll find their way into playlists. However, the amount of music made is pretty impressive. After all, what was stopping them from making one track per level and simply altering the tempo to suit the time of day? For everything “just doing its job,” it really comes together to make something truly solid.

Content

Finally, that brings us to the meat and potatoes of the game. The Escapists 2 overall isn’t really brimming with content, but it does offer plenty of replay value. There are eleven compounds to escape, with the first being a tutorial and the rest unlocking in groups of three. The final one, of course, unlocks on its own. Each group has two regular compounds you can escape by simply finding a way out. Each group also has one timed mission that requires you to track down certain objectives. If you escape three times, either using different methods or in different compounds, you’ll unlock the next set.

As we mentioned before, the game offers the different objective-based escape missions. These include dressing up as a mike operator to escape with the crew that’s filming the prison, building an aircraft and busting through the wall to fly out of there, and even hijacking a helicopter in order to make your escape. Escapists 2 does this part really well, giving you many options to keep it interesting for another play through. On top of this, the game gives you a score and rank, based on how fast you made your escape and what way you chose to do it. So even score chasers will find something to love about this game.

There’s also some amount of customization to the player characters and even the other prisoners and security guards. This is great because the game already encourages some amount of individuality. You unlock more customization options as you play the game, but realistically, you can already make your character look unique without any of that.

Everything isn’t perfect, however. Again, going back to the UI, there’s a lot of items in the crafting menus that are there only for specific missions. As cool as that is, you can’t find the materials to craft a lot of these in other prisons. This means that leaving them in the crafting UI for other missions just makes them feel like an annoyance more than anything else. Still, this is a relatively minor gripe with everything else right with the game.

Rifling through other people’s desks can help you with quests and finding weapons or components. This can get you in a little trouble, though.

The Escapists 2 Review Conclusion

The Escapists 2 is a very fun game that offers players freedom, co-operation, and most likely a few funny stories to tell around the campfire. While it may be far from perfect, even the issues we did have with the game seemed to be just minor gripes. The biggest hindrances to enjoying this game are the UI in local co-op and single player feeling less interesting overall.

Players can freely take their time on a level, speed through it, or co-operate with friends for something crazy. There really is something for just about everyone here. However, the issues with the game do stop it from achieving the highest heights. On top of that, while the game is a lot of fun, there’s nothing here that’ll make players  come back after they’ve had their fill. It’s not anything breath taking, but a solidly competent game that deserves a little of your time. So with all things said, we can honestly recommend this game to just about anyone. Just don’t punch your friend for trying to fight all the guards and making everything harder for you.

Big thanks to Team17 for providing the Nintendo Switch review copy of The Escapists 2. 

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]intendo has finally released Arms, the fighting game they’ve been touting since the January presentation that gave us our first look at what was coming to the Switch. It’s incredible to see that the game still plays as fluidly as it did during launch. However, now that all the features are available to us, it’s time we gave this game its full review. How does the game stack up against other fighting games? Do the game modes do what they need to do? Is Arms going to survive in the competitive scene or even in the party gaming scene? So let’s dive in and answer some of these questions!

Gameplay and Mechanics

The emblem on the top left is your current rank.

Diving right into the meatiest part of the game, we have the actual gameplay. Nintendo is known for games that make you want to play them more when you see someone else playing them. There’s no question that the same can be said for Arms. Like any fighting game, Arms can be fast and frantic, or slow and paced. How quickly the game moves depends on the players and by extension, their chosen characters.

Arms revolves heavily around a rock-paper-scissors mechanic seen in most fighting games. Grabs beat blocking. Blocking beats attacks. Attacks beat grabs. However, this isn’t as straightforward as it sounds, at first. Just because you punch doesn’t mean you won’t get grabbed, as blocking opponents can counter you by dashing with their guard up. Or perhaps an opponent in the air drops down just as you start to punch them, avoiding your fist and following with a grab.

Flow of Gameplay

This kind of complexity can lead to some stress on the part of newer players. Perhaps someone tried to punch through a grab only to get grabbed, anyways. They might feel they were punished despite reacting properly. However, they were baited, which leads me to a key point about this game. Arms allows you to moderate the time you have to react to what your opponent does without directly altering their options. That is, when you play up close and personal, the game becomes about making reads and the usual fighting game fare. However, when you fight from a distance, it gets more reactionary.

I clearly didn’t do so hot in this match.

For this reason, many matches, when played defensively become a game of chicken. The first person to act will usually get hit. Then, with less health, they’re now pressured to get more aggressive or risk being timed out. This leads to them being reacted to some more, which ends poorly. The game is a slippery slope, in this way. Playing more aggressively against defensive opponents often ends poorly. However, if you play passively against a defensive opponent in the lead, they’ll happily run out the timer.

That’s not really a problem on its own, but it does mean that, at least for now, higher level play will be very defensive. This will inevitably rely on matches dragging on, which will push away a lot of competitive players. It’s hardly a death sentence, but will likely limit the game’s competitive appeal.

Controls

I honestly applaud Arms for using motion controls as its primary control scheme. This, more than anything, makes it stand apart from any other game out there. And as expected, Nintendo made sure you could play Arms with any controller available to the Switch. Since not everyone is fond of motion controls, this is nearly a necessity for the game to function for many.

On that note, however, the actual controls screen makes the game a little more confusing than necessary. That is, it doesn’t list what every button does. They only tell you to punch with A and B when honestly, the triggers feel more natural for this. Further, playing with two players, people are bound to notice that the second player has no control or options anywhere. In fact, throughout the entire game, the second player is always just an add-on. Nothing more.

Game Modes

Now, we already have an article giving the run down on a lot of this, which can be found here. It briefly goes over each of the basic gameplay modes. The main menu has the major categories set up: Grand Prix, Versus, Party Mode, Ranked Battles, play with Friends, and Local (LAN). Grand Prix is the closest this game has to a story. It’s somewhat bare bones, though, even for a fighting game. The main story is that your character has entered a tournament and you want to win. The only thing of interest that happens is at the end if you’re playing on a high enough level, but I won’t spoil that for you.

Grand Prix with two players makes every match a doubles round.

Suffice it to say, this game takes a lot of its direction from Super Smash Bros. The game modes kind of mirror what Smash on Wii U had available. A campaign, a For Fun mode, and some mini-games that could arguably feed into teaching the gameplay. However, while Smash was absolutely packed with content, Arms seems to give you what it thinks you NEED and not much more. It’s really a lot more like Splatoon, in that regard.

Also, there are currently ten characters available to play as and a secret character (not really a secret anymore) that will become playable whenever the first DLC drops. He even has three arms of his own, but we won’t get into that, here. Which yes, each character has three Arms that are particular to them, though you can use these Arms as any character, as long as you unlock them through the Get Arms mini-game. Pay in-game money to play a single player skill shot mini-game for a chance at some new weapons to play with.

Ranked Matches

So, this mode is actually locked when you first get the game. They want you to play through Grand Prix on level 4 or higher before you can start joining in on ranked matches. This is possibly one of my biggest gripes with the game. I understand that this is too keep ranked from being flooded with try-hards that don’t understand the core gameplay. However, I don’t think making them fight AI opponents is an elegant solution.

Any fighting game pro will tell you that AI is either a joke or unfair, and sometimes both. AI, no matter how well-programmed, never fights like a human being. There’s a level of unpredictability it just can’t reach without RNG, which just makes things unfair, at best. AI also has some ungodly reaction speed (think Lvl 9 Lucina counters in Smash). While you can artificially slow this reaction speed, it’s still going to feel very different from a real player.

Overall, I think a party mode quota or leveling system similar to Splatoon would have been a more reasonable solution. Build up to fighting good players by fighting anyone that joins in Party Mode.

A new challenger approaches!

Regardless, once Ranked Matches are unlocked, they work pretty well, I think. The game sets you up to search for a ranked match while you go on and do anything you want to do. If a challenger approaches, you’ll find yourself pulled from whatever you’re already doing to face them. This does seem a little unnecessary, as at least for now, you’ll almost never have trouble finding an opponent, but in the future, this could be very useful.

Overall Arms Gameplay Impressions

Overall, I think the game and controls work intuitively. It’s clear they tried to cover their bases, though as of launch, that seems to be all they did. I don’t have any problems with the core mechanics, though I could see competitive groups complaining that it’s too reactionary. Still, I think the game is a lot of fun and it can lean heavily on its core mechanics and the upcoming content. Free DLC will likely help out the content end of things, but for now, I can’t say there’s too much to do, yet.

Of course, Arms relies heavily on online multiplayer to keep players occupied, and thankfully, this works well. There’s party mode, which gives a more varied gameplay experience and ranked matches for competitive players. If nothing else, the game definitely covers its bases on the online gameplay.

Visuals and Soundtrack

I don’t think I can gush enough about this aspect of the game, however. For whatever flaws the UI and content (as of launch) might have, Arms looks and sounds incredible. From the intro theme, you already know you’re in for something unique. The soundtrack opts to use bongos and a choir as its main s0und. The whole thing is upbeat and really gets you pumped for the game, itself. Each character has a stage and theme song to themselves, and while they all use the same motif from the main theme, each one still sounds entirely unique.

Speaking of unique, between the eleven characters currently in the game (including the new character coming in the DLC), none of them could every really be mistaken for one another. Each character has a central theme that defines them and guides their design, which is then accented with bright colors. Everyone’s looks tell you a lot about their personality. You can tell a lot of love and care went into the character design and original soundtrack. This part of the game is nearly flawless as almost every aspect oozes appeal. Even if I decided I didn’t like the game and wanted to spot playing, I’d likely keep my eyes on it just to see what new characters, stages, arms, and music they roll out with.

Final Thoughts on Arms

Arms is a game with lots of appeal covering up it’s light content. Customizing your character and arm choices is a great feature but the game modes still just cover their bases. It’s just enough to let you decide whether to take the game seriously or play for fun. It’s enough to let you play on your own, with friends at home, or with anyone online. Arms does what it needs to do and not much else.

Of course, this will be fixed via free updates, offering more content. Splatoon had a similar issue at launch, so it’s hard to argue that really hurts the game overall. The competitive mechanics are in play to make sure that Arms takes some skill, but the randomness exists to ensure no one gets shut out. That may make some matches feel really unfair. However, ranked battles exist solely to scratch that itch for a fair fight.

To top it off, the game looks and sounds amazing. The only issues I really have are a few things it fails to mention and a couple decisions that don’t really feel like they hit the nail on the head. Player two has no control or options in the main menu. The controls aren’t fully explained. Ranked Battles being locked behind Grand Prix seems questionable. Arms was clearly intend for a single player to go online, but at least it offers options just in case.

Overall, I think Arms is a decent game with good potential and not enough content, yet, to see it through. My opinion will likely improve over time, but it’s going to be a very interesting game to keep track of for the future.

–Special thanks to Nintendo for sending us a review copy of Arms for Nintendo Switch.

Starting from launch, we’ve been playing the new Cooking Mama title on the 3DS. As always, Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop is an assortment of short mini-games played end-to-end in order to make a dish of some sort. You’ll cook one meal and they give you another to replace it. That leads into the most prominent thing about the game. Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop wants you to always have options.

That leads into probably the most prominent thing about the game. Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop wants you to always have options. Whether it’s the food you cook, the clothes Mama wears, or the store you sell your sweets in, this game always gives you a choice. So much so that this is likely the reason the game is so addictive. Because just about every detail is customizable, there are hours of menu-surfing to do until you have everything just the way you want it. This almost seems to overshadow the core gameplay at times, but in the end, that’s kinda what the game is really about.

Core Gameplay and Customization

At its core, Cooking Mama is all about utilizing the touch screen on the 3DS to perform various tasks. This can range from repeating numbers you’ve just seen to whisking a bowl full of eggs carefully. You’ll even need to balance food items at times and on rare occasions, the game even makes use of the built-in mic. As with most mini-game collections, Cooking Mama doesn’t really seem to focus on one thing in its core gameplay. Instead, the focus of the game is somewhere between the lines.

Everything you do in Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop brings you closer to more customization options. Cooking enough treats will unlock more in the store and sometimes unlock bonus mini-games. These bonuses allow you to play one mini-game over and over until you get a high enough score to unlock more outfits for Mama in the store. You can customize the floor, walls, and counter of your kitchen, as well as your appliances and tools. The layout and decorations in your store are yours to pick and choose. You can even change the in-game clock (although I’ve yet to figure out how you get more of those).

Customize your pancake towers~

This leads me back to my previous point: this game is all about giving you, the player, options. And you have those options so you can spend more time customizing. This pads out the length of the game, turning what could be beaten in one day with ease into something that’ll occupy the faster players for a week at best. Players with less focus may be occupied for much longer. Which really makes me feel that the game works best for those that have their 3DS with them for those long train or car rides.

The Charm of Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop

Gameplay is great and usually, it’s what I focus on most in a review, but to do so misses one of this game’s greatest assets: the presentation. Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop, like any other game in the series, is very cutesy and always gives you something to look at. It’s the spectacle that really makes Cooking Mama work as well as it does. You’re given a motherly character who appreciates everything you do. Almost all custom setups will still look good. Everything is stylized and cute.

On top of that, the soundtrack, while a bit repetitive by the end, is very appealing. The game works out well in the sense that it gives you plenty to do without much effect aside from your own enjoyment. Then the cute personal appeal draws you back in for more.

Everything is just so cute~

Conclusion

Ultimately, Cooking Mama is a delightful game that keeps you playing for better or worse. You’re never locked into one path and the aesthetic appeals greatly to a more casual audience. This game works best in a pick-up-and-play setting, which makes sense as it’s on the Nintendo 3DS. If you’re looking for the deepest depths of content, you won’t find it, here, as the game is overall somewhat short, if you’re not into the customization aspect.

For those that ARE into the customization, this game could easily eat a week or a month or longer, just depending on how much you get into it. There is plenty to choose from to make every aspect of the experience suit you. For a more casual audience or younger players, I recommend this game. For core gamers, you can probably afford to look somewhere else unless the aesthetic just suits you that well.

In the end, Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop does nothing that we aren’t already used to. If you’ve liked this series in the past, you’ll probably like it, now. If it wasn’t your cup of tea, you probably shouldn’t expect this one to be, either. And if you’re new to the series altogether, this may not be a bad place to pick it up.

— This review of Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop was based on a review copy given to us by Rising Star. Special thanks to them for making this review possible.