(Review written by Scott Dirk.)
Yonder is an open world exploration game that really delivers on its premise. You begin your journey on a ship your parents have sent you away on in an attempt to keep you safe from danger. After talking to the crew, a storm rolls in and the ship is quickly struck by lightning. A Sprite then intercedes and makes a deal with you to help you if you help the spirit find its children. These Sprites help you to combat the Murk that is littered across the land in which you are now stranded.
The game has a relaxed atmosphere of letting you explore your surroundings with childlike wonder without fear of monsters or traps. The game has a lot to explore, from huge plains, forests, and towns for trading and quests. Once you obtain tools, you’ll be able to collect various resources which you can use for crafting. The main mission is to restore the land from the infection of the Murk, but you do so at your own pace. The game gives you a lot of side quests to do as well as having farms and ranching.
The graphics in the game are very lush, but are not too demanding. The landscape is very enjoyable to look at while traveling between locations, and you can get lost in simply exploring what is around you. The world music is relaxed, but cycles between varied motifs, so it’s not just one tune set repetitively. There is also a day-night cycle which seems to have little effect other than the wild animals sleeping; the NPCs seem to be night owls.
The mechanic I enjoyed most was fishing, where you cast your line and use WASD keys to move the bobber. Once a fish bites, you then pull in the opposite direction of the fish. There is an arrow to help you with the direction, which made me feel like I was pulling in the fish. The fishing mechanic does seem better suited to a controller with thumb sticks but combing WASD keys worked well; you can also customize the key bind commands.
This is one of those expansive games that may take players a while to complete depending on how they pace themselves during gameplay. I think it’s worth the time to explore Yonder in this world.
Yonder is available on PC and PlayStation 4.
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@Microsoft’s decision to reverse its online policies
Dunno about it. I think it’s a bit too late. Just like a commented to a youtuber, similar hardware, smaller price – I think PS4 is better placed.
And due to using similar hardware, I expect the game libraries to be similar.
If you ask me, it’ll be the price and the exclusives that will make the difference.
@EA’s Soderlund states next-gen consoles should have come a year earlier
… idiot.
Hardware takes time and resources to develop. It’s not like you can set up a day one patch for a piece of hardware. Oops, the CPU bus should have been 256 bits wide, well, no worries, we’ll ship a day one motherboard replacement …
@Fish claims Fez 2 won’t come to Xbox One due to anti-indie policy
mmm not sure about it being a fit. I think that Team Meat was also a bit angry at the new consoles. So …
Thing is, while something to be praised, making such a stand can cause them some financial grief. I mean the devs built some communities on the platforms they released their games. Switching the platform could mean a smaller community, possibly a smaller market.
@Better late than never
It’s never late to have a new generation of consoles. If it came a year earlier, it would most likely be more expensive. Or less refined. Still, I can barely wait for the PS4. The Microsoft swing did nothing to change my mind.
I still will be getting a PS4. Probably will import it because of the atrocious Europe and UK price markups. I know there are taxes involved but we have to pay almost as much in pounds as you pay in dollars.
@Premium games
At the beginning of the previous generation here in UK games cost almost £60. But it quickly fell to £40 which was the price of premium games last generation. No one in UK is going to pay more than £40 for a game. Especially now that the consoles are region free.
@Betrayal
I agree with Alien. I know that Microsoft won’t turn back on their new promises as it would be financial suicide. But I hear a lot of people saying that they don’t trust Xbox anymore and won’t buy the Xbone. I think Microsoft shot itself in the foot pretty bad. That and the price. Here in UK the price differential is pretty bad(£429 vs £349) It will make a lot of difference here in UK.
@Star Wars Battlefield
Battlefront was a blatant rip off of Battlefield and now seeing DICE have the development is quite strange. I am just glad the game is being developed by someone. I loved the first 2 games and the Lord of the Rings: Conquest atrocity which came out some years ago was a poor representation of the series.
@There is something Fishy about the Microsoft East Indie Trading Company
I quite enjoy indie games on Xbox 360. Recently played White Noise (multiplayer rip off of Slender) which cost as much as a can of coke and gave me more fun than most premium games. I would love to see greater support for Indie games in the next generation. A note on Fish rant, if Microsoft policies are so anti-Indie than how did those thousands of games made it to the Indie channel?
@being impressed
None really. I mean, the games are good but none of them struck me as particularly amazing. Probably because I don’t tend to watch much trailers and just wait for the games. If I was to choose one then I enjoyed the Battlefield 4 gameplay. Looking forward to bringing down skyscrapers and reducing maps to rubble. And 64 player console battles. The game itself looked just like Battlefield 3 thou.
@loosing a game disk on a territory of your own bedroom
I think the problem here is not that Alpha Protocol disk was easy to loose because its tangible but because you are a scatterbrain. A digital copy won’t fix that.