In Tidbits, we cover games that are difficult to cover in our regular review template. In this Tidbits, we review Metal Tales: Overkill, Fluffy Cubed, MEGALAN 11, and Underland: The Climb.
Metal Tales: Overkill | 25% – This is a typical twin-stick shooter that barely managed to keep my attention. Just like Metal: Hellsinger the heavy metal theme around it makes it a bit more unique but they don’t actually do much with the music. You shoot around with your A, X, Y, and B buttons (weird, right?) but you can use your analogue stick to shoot around in 360 degrees too. You have the typical dodge option and a powerful screen-clearing bomb move to destroy the enemies. Eight levels are waiting for you and all of them have randomly generated rooms with a bunch of enemies or upgrades for your character. You’ll try to search for the boss room but be sure to explore each level thoroughly as you’ll need all the help from powerups and upgrades! Boss fights are pretty challenging, but with each defeat, you can do some permanent upgrades. You know, rogue-lite stuff! Metal Tales: Overkill is a game that has more bugs than guitar riffs in Back In Black from AC/DC. Sound randomly vanishes frequently or controls stop working so you have to restart. I even lost my saved file TWICE! Visually it doesn’t really look great either, so I wouldn’t recommend buying Metal Tales: Overkill any time soon.
Written by: Dae Jim
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Fluffy Cubed | 61% – There is a large community around this type of puzzle game, called Sokoban. In case that’s Japanese for you (spoiler: it actually is), in this game genre you move around boxes to solve puzzles. It looks very colorful and for some reason, you control a box with a cat face. I finished Fluffy Cubed in under an hour and I never got really challenged to use my brain. The developer is going for a chill and relaxing experience, something you can play after a long and tiresome working day. Personally, I would have preferred that the game would be more difficult, 120 levels isn’t a lot for this type of game and all of them took less than a minute. Luckily the price is cheap enough for what you get in return, especially Achievement hunters should keep an eye on this one for a ridiculously fast Gamerscore completion.
Written by: Dae Jim
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
MEGALAN 11 | 10% – Avoid this! Don’t even waste €1 on it if it ever gets a sale on the Xbox Store. During the first few minutes of the game, you crash your spaceship on an unknown planet. The game is as broken as that spaceship, it really looks like the developers had a working game and then threw it against something at the speed of sound, saw that it was completely destroyed, and then thought, we’ll release it anyway. Every annoyance you could have from games can be found here, even with something as simple as using the X-button and not the A-button for menu inputs. The worst thing? You have no clue about what you have to do. It doesn’t help that things you can do often don’t work as the game doesn’t recognize that you pressed a button. One thing I thought was necessary was defending your base against dangerous aliens, you and your computer-controlled allies take shelter at a building near the crash site. I restored doors and defensive weapons but the aliens destroyed all of that in mere seconds while gathering resources and building all of that took minutes. After my first failed attempt at playing MEGALAN 11 I uninstalled it, a few days later I had to reinstall it as I was lucky enough for having the task to review this piece of crap. I took all my courage and started playing again, immediately after reaching the base the game stopped working and crashed to the dashboard… bye bye courage. Third time’s the charm? Yes and no, I played it for two more hours and finally decided that nobody in the world should be forced to play this shitshow. Crewmate voices are super annoying, it controls poorly, visually you have better-looking games on the original Xbox, and damn it is SO ANNOYING to constantly revive your idiot crew mates as they have the brain of a fly.
Written by: Dae Jim
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Underland: The Climb | 65% – Underland delivers us a standard game with an increased difficulty challenge. You’ll go from level 1 (super easy) all the way to level 30 (really hard) in under 2 hours, depending on how your problem-solving skills are. The setup is really simple, aliens have invaded and you are the only person left that could possibly rid the world of these pests. You, a daring adventuring power woman, are tasked to make the climb to the surface and detonate a set of explosions that would rid us of these pests. The controls are fairly rudimentary. You switch between controlling your character or controlling your environment. This can be done by digging tunnels with a pickaxe, using lava to kill some aliens that are in your way by engaging in a physics puzzle or just moving cranes or bridges. Visually there isn’t much to say here either. It’s a complex pixel-esque game that is delivered in a one-tone visual style. Though I do have to say that I commend the fluidity of the in-game liquid motions. In regards to sound, don’t set the bar too high either. Outside of some stock sounds and music, you won’t be blown away either. Overall Underland is a generic puzzle game with a bland story that doesn’t deliver nor under-deliver. Something like your common oats without sugar.
Written by: Alexis
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Hello, I’m Victoria. I’m from the UK and have been playing video games for as long as I can remember; back on DreamCast. I’ve pretty much fallen for Xbox since I was around eight years old and remember BioShock being my first game on the Xbox360. Although I find it thoroughly enjoyable to not only experience gameplay, I also find comfort in getting lost and engrossed in the online worlds that sometimes differ greatly from what we know. Another side of my Xbox passion would be achievement hunting and gamerscore. I thrive when I hear the little sound of one popping up on the screen and I’m always finding ways to work on my backlog when possible. Horror is my favourite genre so if you have any recommendations, don’t be afraid to send them my way!
