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(01/30/19 7:55pm)
by Katherine Simon
Disclaimer: This playthrough is based on the Switch version and was played primarily in handheld mode. This copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.
As someone whose experience with the point-and-click adventure genre is rather limited, I didn’t know what to expect going into The Raven: Remastered. The game itself is a remaster of 2013’s The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief, a game I never played due to not very many people talking about it — a fair outcome considering it was a niche game released near the end of the Xbox 360 and PS3’s lifespans. Despite this, The Raven: Remastered is a surprisingly solid game that should not be overlooked by fans of point-and-click games. However, players should be aware of a few major issues before diving in.
The game takes place in 1964 and follows Constable Zellner, a Swiss police officer who finds himself wrapped up in a case involving an infamous thief known as The Raven. Despite The Raven being assumed dead for five years, there are signs that they are making their comeback and it is unknown whether the thief is still alive or if there’s a copycat following in their footsteps. After a murder takes place, it’s up to Zellner to investigate The Raven's involvement, root out the culprit, and uncover the mystery surrounding the infamous thief.
If you’re a fan of classic murder mysteries, then this game is right up your alley. Things only start to get interesting about an hour into the game but once it gets going, it really gets going. The game’s story really keeps the player on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen next through the intrigue of its mystery and its various twists and turns. The game’s cast is incredibly likeable, with Zellner himself being quite an endearing protagonist. The side characters you meet on the journey are also really interesting once you start to learn more about them and piece together parts of their personalities and motives from your interactions. The only minor gripe I have with the narrative is that some plot points are a bit predictable, but the ride itself is so enjoyable that it makes up for it. If you’re in the mood for a good murder-mystery plot, you should definitely consider giving this game a shot. I say “consider” because the game itself has quite a few glaring flaws that hold it back from being an excellent experience overall, most of which have to do with the actual gameplay.
The gameplay is more or less your standard point-and-click fare. You’re going to be spending most of your time interacting with nearby people or objects by “clicking” on them, using them to either gather clues for the greater mystery or to solve puzzles, with only slight variations throughout. It’s one of those games where you’re encouraged to look in every nook and cranny for objects to interact with because you never know what’s going to be important later on. If you aren’t already a fan of the point-and-click genre or slower games in general, chances are this game isn’t going to appeal to you. If you do like this style of game, The Raven: Remastered accomplishes what it sets out to do. As someone who hasn’t played very many of these games, I really enjoyed interacting with the various bystanders and seeing what they had to say about the events unfolding around them, as well as searching the areas for possible clues. When it comes to the pointing and clicking, the gameplay is incredibly solid.
However, what ends up killing the gameplay for me is the way Zellner himself controls. His movement feels incredibly stiff, moving at the speed of molasses — overall, he isn’t fun to play as. This isn’t a huge problem most of the time because most of the areas are small, enclosed spaces that don’t require a ton of movement. However, when the game forces you to explore larger areas or you’re required to backtrack to find an important item, it starts to become monotonous. If it weren’t for the protagonist’s wonky controls, I wouldn’t have very many complaints with the gameplay overall, but this is such a huge blemish on an otherwise solid game that it almost makes it kinda hard to recommend.
I don’t know if these issues are present in other versions of this game or if they’re a problem exclusive to the Switch, but the game has some minor performance issues that, while not game breaking, are noticeable and distracting. The most irritating of these being the load times, which are not only frustratingly long but are also fairly frequent if you plan on doing a lot of backtracking — something I found myself doing quite often. If you want a good frame of reference for what the loading times are like, they’re very reminiscent of something you’d see out of a PS1 era game, specifically its port of Chrono Trigger. If you’re in any way familiar with that era of gaming, you can see how that could be a bit of an issue, especially when paired with the sluggish controls. Another minor issue that I ran into less frequently is that the game would sometimes stutter in certain areas. Overall, the game generally runs at a consistent framerate, but there were a handful of areas such as the lounge in front of the ship in which the game’s framerate would start to stutter a little bit.. The game generally runs fine in handheld mode otherwise, but those two issues are big enough to end up affecting the overall experience.
Visually, the game looks fine. Even when compared to the other versions of this remaster, the graphics really aren’t anything to write home about but they’re completely serviceable. The audio in this game is excellent, with the voice acting being a real standout. The voice actors do a great job portraying their characters and breathing life into them without coming off as too corny like a lot of period pieces that take place in that era tend to. Although the soundtrack isn’t something I’d ever listen to on my free time, it does a great job setting the tone for each scene and creating atmosphere, which is all it really needed to do.
(01/29/19 9:39pm)
by Jeremy Rogers
The 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow was about a superstorm of cold ravaging the northern hemisphere. Only 44% of critics liked it, and fewer will likely be fans of Wednesday’s weather which is projected to reach below a -35 degree wind chill in parts of Indiana. People are advised to stay indoors as much as possible, and that means people will be looking for ways to kill time.
(01/28/19 5:33pm)
by Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the Nintendo Switch version of the game and was played primarily in portable mode.
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a game I’ve been following and anticipating for quite a while now. This game was never on Kickstarter, being mostly a passion project built by a small studio over the duration of five years. The game showed promise and was picked up by a publisher relatively quickly, and many people have been eagerly anticipating the game. Through much hardship and even a death in the family, the two brothers at Ackk Studios have done a ton of work to make their dream game come to life. And it shows; this game has a lot of genuine and honest heart and it was clearly constructed with love.
That makes it all the more painful that the end result is a game that is so charming and captivating in presentation, but is also such an absolute trainwreck in writing that it came under a number of controversies within the first few days of release. It’s tonally inconsistent, frequently cringey, occasionally misguided, but absolutely captivating to watch in motion. A lot of games are described as trainwrecks, but only YIIK has been able to capture the “can’t look away” element of the equation. To sum it up in a way the game itself would: the two parallel universes where I love and hate this game exist in this universe at the same time.
(01/26/19 1:00pm)
Welcome to the first episode of Esports, Etc., hosted by Ball State's Cardinal Esports in collaboration with Byte! On this episode, we talk about the industry of Esports, its fan base, and why it’s a for a large amount of people. This episode is directly aimed at an audience unaware and without knowledge of competitive gaming.
(01/26/19 8:00am)
Welcome to the first episode of Esports, Etc., hosted by Ball State's Cardinal Esports in collaboration with Byte! On this episode, we talk about the industry of Esports, its fan base, and why it’s a for a large amount of people. This episode is directly aimed at an audience unaware and without knowledge of competitive gaming.
Hosted by: Nathan Valdez, Corbin Creedon, and Alex Glavan
Edited by: Tyler Wheatley
Graphic by: Nautica Wade-Reedus
Thumbnail by: Tt Shinkan
Contact Cardinal Esports:
Email: esports@bsu.edu
Twitch: www.twitch.tv/cardinalesports
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bsuesports
Twitter: twitter.com/bsuesports
(01/25/19 9:09pm)
by Tanner Kinney
The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the opinion of Byte or Byte's editorial board.
Season 9 has (almost) begun, and that means it’s time for another year of drama, suspense, OMEGALULs, fully-stacked tears, and dozens of clown fiestas. The meta of the previous year became admittedly pretty stale, despite the previous Worlds Championship being one of the most high-octane tournaments in terms of action around the map. I feel I can speak for a lot of people in hopes that the meta of season 9 will be less focused on murder and more focused on better teams winning games. I personally don’t think Riot will do it, but they’ve surprised me before. Like with Patch 8.11, which made my duo partner nearly quit the game.
Onto the power rankings, these were decided after a pretty lengthy discussion with a panel (Discord server) of experts (my friends), based off of a few qualities. We looked at the potential of the teams and the previous results of the teams and their individual players, along with keeping in mind the volatility of certain rosters and players. Although these are ranked traditionally, we grouped them into three groups since it is, admittedly, a pretty close call: The Top Three, The Middledogs, and The Bottom Feeders. Let’s just get into it.
(01/21/19 9:57pm)
by Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the Nintendo Switch version of the game, played primarily in handheld mode.
The Tales series is one of the longest standing Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) franchises. Starting with Tales of Phantasia on Super Famicom, the series was successful in Japan, but as with other storied franchises like Shin Megami Tensei, it didn’t get big in the West until the GameCube/PS2 era. Since then, the franchise has had a number of great games like Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Xillia, and the most recent entry with Tales of Berseria, but it still feels like they just blend into the background compared to bigger titles. So, it was a surprise to see Microsoft give a spotlight to Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition during their E3 showcase. It makes sense given that Vesperia was originally a 360 exclusive, but this release brings the Japan-exclusive PS3 port to all of the modern consoles for the first time.
After playing through much of the Nintendo Switch version of Vesperia, it’s safe to say that this is definitely one of the best Tales games out there. However, compared to other big JRPGs and even its own series, Vesperia is missing a hook to keep a player fully engaged.
(01/14/19 1:36am)
In preparation for the highly anticipated release of Kingdom Hearts 3 on December 29, Disney Parks has opened a pop-up shop in their lakefront shopping center Disney Springs.
(12/21/18 6:30pm)
by Phil Akin
(12/18/18 2:56pm)
While I am personally a bit of a newcomer to the Persona series, it only took a few minutes of the fantastically cool Persona 5 to set its hook and get me obsessed with the series. If someone had approached me two years ago and informed me I would one day excitedly spend $100 on anime rhythm games I would instantly make fun of them, but here I am.
(12/10/18 6:56pm)
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsEdpGw-P-U[/embed]
This week on Pop Tabs Matthew, Isabella, and Bailey discuss the controversies around loot boxes being considered gambling, Kevin Hart's son's racist birthday party, and Shawn Mendes claiming he's not gay.
Time Stamps:
Loot boxes: 00:25
Kevin Hart: 13:13
Shawn Mendes: 26:34
Pop Tabs is Byte's news commentary podcast, focusing on popular culture and how it relates to issues in the media world.
Host: Matthew Yapp
Guests: Isabella Torres, Bailey Shelton
Executive Producer: Phil Akin
Video Editing: Evan Williamson
Audio Editing: Brad Killion
Graphics: Daley Wilhelm, Sarah James, Luis Pulido, Tt Shinkan
Music: Jack McGinnis
(11/30/18 5:48pm)
With the holiday season rolling around, a great last minute gift to grab is a video game. Even those who aren’t super game-inclined can get a lot of use out of a new game console or new game. The only question is deciding which games are naughty (read: terrible) and which games are nice. Here’s a quick guide to great game purchases this holiday season.
(11/28/18 4:00pm)
by Emily Reuben
As a lifelong fan of the Pokémon series, the announcement of Pokémon Let’s Go immediately filled me with a nostalgia-filled desire to re-explore the Kanto region with my Pokémon friends frolicking behind me. I was practically throwing my money at the screen in anticipation.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_ox1lCixk[/embed]
The moment the game was available for download I loaded up my copy of Let’s Go, Eevee and began yet another adventure in Kanto. While the Kanto region has been explored to death, these games shake things up from traditional Pokémon titles with the inclusion of a Pokémon Go inspired catch system. Though the game is a bit simplistic in terms of battling and capturing Pokémon, these games are the most fun I’ve had with the Pokémon series in a long time and are the perfect placeholders for a new main entry Pokémon title on the Switch.
(11/25/18 7:13am)
by Blake Chapman
Disclaimer: This review is of the Xbox One version. This copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.
Spyro the Dragon was a Playstation exclusive title released on the original Playstation all the way back in September of 1998. Upon release, developer Insomniac Games received a fair amount of praise for the new platformer and would go on to create two sequels to round out the original trilogy. Following their third Spyro game, Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Insomniac and Sony would hand the property over to a multitude of other developers for a number of future handheld and multiplatform releases. Unfortunately, none of these would ever shine as brightly as the original three back on the Playstation 1, and after the release of Shadow Legacy in 2005, some thought they would never get to see their favorite purple and gold dragon buddy ever again.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqHklDaGzCo[/embed]
In 2018 however, the games that sparked such a loyal fanbase some twenty years ago see a remaster of epic proportions in Spyro Reignited Trilogy. The main gameplay may have become dated, but Spyro and the rest of his pals still seem to take the player on a beautiful trip through the sky no matter if you are a veteran or newcomer to the series.
(11/24/18 5:21pm)
by Byte Staff
Board games are the underrated crowd pleaser of many parties. Although the genre itself is known in the mainstream for trash like Monopoly, there are plenty of amazing board/card games that fit a whole bunch of different scenarios. To celebrate both the time of togetherness at Thanksgiving and National Game & Puzzle Week this month, we here at Byte have done short reviews for the board games we received at GenCon 2018, primarily from the publisher Games Adults Play. These games were played by a full party of people and were given a full playthrough or two for each game, depending on how much we wanted to play them.
(11/09/18 3:33pm)
by Matthew Yapp
Female employees regularly belittled at staff meetings. Women promised pay raises and promotions that were given to male coworkers. Women made fun of and sexually objectified. According to a lawsuit filed in early November, these and other more egregious claims are being brought against Riot Games in a class action suit alleging the company and it's top management created a workplace environment which fosters a culture of sexism and discrimination toward women.
The lawsuit accuses Riot Games, known for the hit game League of Legends, of not only creating and fostering a “bro culture” but also violating the California Equal pay act and failing to prevent harassment in the workplace. The case was filed on behalf of Jessica Negron, Melanie McCracken and other female employees of the company. Negron is no longer an employee of Riot Games while McCracken still works for the company.
In the more than 150 count suit, the women allege that the company allowed a culture where among other things an e-mail list of "Hottest Women Employees" was distributed that would rank the female workers. Jokes about masturbation, rape and defecation were common place. Any concerns brought to human resources were dismissed as "snobby."
The women are seeking back wages and undisclosed punitive damages according to the suit. Riot Games is a product of Tencent Games, a division of Tencent a multi-billion dollar Chinese technology company specializing in various internet services such as video games, social media and artificial intelligence. According to the company's financial report for Q2 2018 the company recorded revenue of more than 11 million USD.
This suit comes only three months after an investigation from Kotaku, an international gaming media network, that highlighted the company’s culture of toxic masculinity. That report claimed that women were prevented from being promoted due to the fact that they didn’t fit the “gamer” mold and that female hires were put under extreme scrutiny judging if they matched the companies culture, a hurdle male employees didn’t have to face.
After the report from Kotaku, Riot Games said there were changes made in the workplace. But the women in the lawsuit claim that many of the worst offenders at Riot Games faced no repercussions including a male employee who “was allowed to remain in a position of leadership despite regularly making sexual comments in the workplace and drugging and raping another ... employee.”
Maria Williams-Hawkins, a professor of diversity at Ball State University said that hypermasculinity has been ingrained in much of the entertainment world all the way back to her childhood with shows like Popeye. She said the case could cause a change within the company. She pointed back to the company revenue.
“Some things take a little time. I’ve worked long enough to see companies finally decide they have to hire black, they have to hire brown, they have to hire women. It takes a little bit of time and a little bit of pressure… If you’re a person who has the money you have the control," Williams-Hawkins said.
"If you keep hitting them in the pocket it helps, it takes a little pressure."
When asked for a statement by Polygon, Riot Games said “While we do not discuss the details of ongoing litigation, we can say that we take every allegation of this nature seriously and investigate them thoroughly. We remain committed to a deep and comprehensive evolution of our culture to ensure Riot is a place where all Rioters thrive.”
We reached Tyler Vanderpool, one of the lawyers representing Negron and McCracken in their case against Riot, and asked him a few questions on the case. When asked why he took the case in the first place, Mr. Vanderpool said, "Any good attorney is a storyteller, and I don't mean that we're hired to create fiction, but our job is to ensure that other people's stories are told in this situation. You had women who felt silenced and did not have the opportunity for their stories of having been wronged and subjected to retaliation, discrimination, harassment. Those stories weren't being told. And so our lawsuit is actually their lawsuits, and it's an opportunity for their stories to be heard."
In terms of how many women this class action case are being represented, Vanderpool stated, "It's hard to say. We're really, in the preliminary stages of litigation. We would estimate it in the hundreds because we're dealing with both current and former employees of Riot Games." Vanderpool was unable to say how this number may affect the amount of damages sought from Riot Games.
(11/07/18 11:12pm)
by Daniel O’Connell
Disclaimer: This review is of the Xbox One version of the game.
Back in 2010, Rockstar Games, best known for publishing game series such as Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne, published the open world Western game Red Dead Redemption. The game took place in the last days of the Old West and followed former outlaw John Marston as he hunted down former members of his gang. It was praised for its visuals, gunslinger-style combat, and nuanced story and characters, including John himself. Fans were eagerly hoping for another game in the Red Dead series. After being delayed last year, their wish has come true in the form of Red Dead Redemption 2, a prequel to the original. And it more than delivers.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGKiFNDw-vM[/embed]
(11/07/18 2:37pm)
by Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM.
I’m typically one for flowery introductions. Ones that will paint a picture of the legacy for a game or how impressive the story behind games are. There are great stories of development and publishing history that deserve to be recognized when analyzing a game. It’s a personal little touch, but almost every game deserves that kind of recognition.
I say almost, because The Quiet Man is one of the worst games I’ve ever played and easily tops my worst of the year list. There’s just so much wrong with this game that there’s no time to dance around the issue. This game is awful in so many spectacular ways, to the point where I’m almost certain there’s basically nothing legitimately good about it. That’s not an exaggeration. This game is legendarily bad, and everyone deserves to know about it.
(10/31/18 3:41pm)
by Sam Lantz
The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the opinion of Byte or Byte's editorial board.
One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is of my father taking me to a massive Halloween store near Chicago. I remember walking in and being in awe of the sheer size and scope of the building, with tall shelves packed with masks, props, and more skeleton themed items than I think I have seen since. It was like a spooky labyrinth just begging to be explored, and my younger self loved it.
There is a reason Halloween is often jokingly called “Spooky Season” and not “Terror Time” or “Horror Month,” and it is because what is fun and exciting about Halloween has a lot more to do with escapism than it does with horror. When something is spooky, it is often tantalizingly familiar with something just slightly off, just slightly beyond the boundaries of expectation about it. That’s what made those early memories so special. I was excited to see things beyond my expectations.
As we get older, some of the magic of Halloween gets lost. Not because we ever stop loving the holiday and all the “spookiness” it entails, but it loses the magic of surprise it has when we’re young. This is why Dark Souls and the other FromSoftware-produced games that perpetuate its formula make such good games to play during Halloween. They allow you to feel the magic of experiencing the unexpected.
At the beginning of Dark Souls, you are a mangled, rotting flesh-bag of a being—barely alive, yet certainly undead, left to wither in a cell in the Undead Asylum. The trappings of the world of Dark Souls are vaguely familiar. There are dragons, sorcery, and knights clad in plate armor. For every familiar trope, however, comes another that tests your preconceptions of what sort of fantasy world you’re in. Its sister game, Bloodborne, is much the same in its mangling of tropes, switching out the dilapidated European high fantasy setting for a twisted Victorian horror romp tainted with a Lovecraftian twist. Both games take a familiar setting and push it beyond the player's expectations.
As is often said with these games, you are offered very little in the way of direction going in. Traditionally, most video games contain a very set and easily digestible linear narrative. Bloodborne and Dark Souls in particular are different in that they are stories that are very hard to piece together. It is possible to come up with a coherent narrative if one really studies the information the game gives you, but generally what drives players is less the excitement of narrative, but the interest of exploration. Each area you visit in both games tends to get more and more unexpected the further you get into them. The games are also littered with secrets that makes exploring these areas thoroughly rewarding.
When you do find items in Dark Souls, it is seldom clear what exactly they do. If you had never played Dark Souls, and I were to say, “I found a Homeward Bone!” I highly doubt your first instinct would be to use that item to teleport back to a save point.
That’s not to say anything of the atmosphere the games project either. Of the two games, I find that Bloodborne uses atmosphere with more specificity. In particular, Bloodborne uses sound design and color to give its world an unmistakably haunting and beautiful quality. I can still vividly remember looking out over the decrepit streets of Yharnam, bathed in purple light from a massive red moon while hearing the groans and cries of the city people losing their minds.
Many games intended to be released near Halloween do little that is truly unexpected. Even the fantastic Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, at its core, recycles tropes from other pieces of horror media. The influences in that game, from The Evil Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, are neat, but they make the game feel more like a collage of other pieces of media the creators liked.
When I play games near Halloween, I want more than the thrill of a jump scare. I want to feel lost, and I want to see things that are genuinely unexpected. Ultimately being scared is never the thing that made me love Halloween. Putting on a costume and going to a party with other people is not fun because you think you are going to be scared, it is fun because it allows you to escape the normalcy of real life, to become something new, and open yourself up to the possibility of the unexpected. When I think of the games, or even pieces of media in general, that have genuinely given me that feeling, it is hard to think of anything that captures the terror of the unexpected like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
(10/30/18 8:00am)
by Emily Worrell
Disclaimer: This game was played on a PS4 using smartphone controllers. This copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.
Even though I had relatively low expectations for Just Dance 2019, I was still quite excited to play it. I am definitely a fan of dance games and was hoping for nothing more than an “expansion pack” to previous Just Dance games with new and current songs. In some ways, this game definitely surpassed my expectations, but had some major flaws in gameplay that were definitely disappointing. However, it definitely fulfilled its purpose as a party game and had a lot of fun content that is enjoyable for fans and casual players alike.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUy-MsKbmI[/embed]