(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.
Hearing about Drones delivering packages I have to agree that will be abused and people will attempt to steal and break them. I’m sure the paranoid people will think they are being used to track everyone.
On the continuing discussion of boss battles I agree with Paul that just because there are bad implementations of it doesn’t make it a bad concept idea. I think Jada Empire was a very narrative game and had just fine boss battles. I do agree there are games that don’t need them or have them in a way that doesn’t make sense.
I was watching a PS4 game about Zombies, the hero went through hordes of zombies with ease until he came up against some human bikers. I watched as he drove a car through several of the bikers causing explosions and the bikers just continued somehow to survive. Then after an some invisible timer ran out a Boss Biker suddenly appeared.
The Boss Biker rode a huge bike that spewed fire forth and had grinding blades in front of it. Otherwise the bike was unarmored and the hero free to pump several dozen rounds of blood splattering shots into the guy. Slowly lowering the the large life meter.
A boss battle like that is a slag and not fun. I do have to say also my favorite part of Fable 2 was indeed being able to kill the final guy and interrupting his evil overlord speech.
Quest For Glory series was good at having multiply paths to victory depending on what character build you went with.
QOTW: GTA also had a companion app, the IFruit. It was nothing more then an a glorfied Tamagotchi game only your feeding your dog so he can have better snooping skills. I didn’t find it necessary to do this app thankfully.
Hey guys! I had to take a break from posting comments with all that new-gen stuff going around…
It’s great to have Paul back. His sarcasm and no-bullshit approach to the news items and his fellow podcasters add a lot to the show 😉
Let me add my 2 cents to the boss battle discussion. In the past I usually didn’t have a problem with them but the more I play the more I dread the inevitable final boss battle in some of the games. I hated the final battle in Killzone: Mercenary. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to complete all the contracts on the highest difficulty settings and I simply gave up.
On the other hand, in games such as Resogun or Super Stardust, the boss fights add a lot to the titles. It’s like Paul said – there’s nothing wrong with the boss battles intrinsically but sometimes the implementation blows.
As far as the QOTW goes, my ‘smartphone’ is not so smart anymore and most of the companion apps don’t work on it. My only 2nd screen experience so far has been the PS Vita Remote Play with the PS4 and I really enjoy it, although it’s not really 2nd screen. It also has this functionality but there’s nothing to use it with at this point. The Vita is similar to the WiiU in that your 2nd screen is also a controller so it should work as a gaming companion and I can see myself using it in the future.
I know that Knack has a companion app that is a Bejeweled-style game. The one thing I don’t really get is why they don’t release those same apps on the Vita.
By the way, since Dan is enjoying Tearaway so much, maybe he’ll also enjoy my blog post on it – http://playstationpalo.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/platinum-tracker-tearaway-29 😉 Shameless plug FTW !