GameTech: Grounded inspired by Honey, I Shrunk The Kids
Honey, I shrunk the bits (and bytes)! For such a brilliant idea, it’s a surprise that the theme of shrinking hasn’t been more popular in modern culture.
Even now, three decades later, we still reference the Rick Moranis movie and little else.
Perhaps knowing that, Obsidian are developing Grounded, a game that is very much inspired by Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in spirit.
It takes place in world where you have shrunk to the size of an ant, in your back garden, where blades of grass are taller than trees and lost toys become the size of monuments.
A demo of Grounded has been released to Early Access on both Steam and Xbox Game Pass, so players have the chance to test out the fun premise while Obsidian continue to develop the full game.
So far, the response has been largely warm.
Players really seem to love the shrunken universe, where you are tasked with all the usual actions of a survival game – collecting resources, building tools and camps, and generally just exploring and getting incrementally more sufficient.
Early complaints, however, won’t please arachnophobes, as most players are saying the Wolf Spiders in Grounded are terrifyingly overpowered, killing you in just a few hits and appearing out of nowhere, without warning.
In addition, sometimes it seems as though your resources can be lost or pillaged a little too easily if you don’t pay close attention to ants.
With Grounded being in Early Access, the whole point of the process is to identify and iron out these little (ahem) problems and discover how best to balance the game in the long run.
What’s most impressive is that Obsidian have created a world that most people seem to love, which is no small feat.
Ironically, they now need to grow that world into something bigger, a fully-fledged game that people will play for years.
Speaking of games we have been playing for years, let’s talk about Crysis: Remastered.
When we first bought Crisis in 2007, the talk was that PCs would take years to catch up with the graphics. So advanced was the technical fidelity, that statement proved to be true.
To this day, people still use Crysis as a benchmark for a PC’s power.
Still, that doesn’t mean Crysis can’t run on other machines too, and Crisis: Remastered proves the point.
This version of Crysis has been released on the Nintendo Switch, the least powerful of the current generation consoles and a far cry (no reference intended) from the beastly PCs required to run Crysis in 2007.
The good news is that Crysis runs well on Switch, hitting a stable 30 frames per second by all accounts, and looking surprisingly good on a portable. Considering there aren’t too many games of this nature of the Switch, Crisis might do well for itself.
The bad news, however, is that Crysis was never that much fun in the first place. It was largely designed as a technical showcase, so the gameplay, which is a mixture between Splinter Cell stealth and Call of Duty gunfire, doesn’t really offer much.
If you like the idea of super-powered exosuits in a Far Cry-style game, or if you just want to see the Switch run Crysis, then this remaster might be worth a look.
Perhaps you would prefer to embody the crisis? If so, then Destroy All Humans should light up your day – while you light up the humans.
Another remake, Destroy All Humans is a highly enjoyable game where Earth is facing an alien invasion. Sadly, humans are losing badly.
On the plus side, however, you don’t play as a human.
As an alien invader named Crypto-137, you are on a revenge mission, after your comrade Crypto-136 was captured and killed by the humans.
Using your trusty raygun, you can zap, disintegrate and even shoot probes at humans (you don’t want to know where those go).
In fact, you can even hop into your trusty ship and rain down destruction from above.
Destroy All Humans does have a fun, satirical plot that leans heavily into the 1950s vibe of paranoia and secret agencies, but let’s be honest – we play this to destroy stuff. Take me to your leaderboard.
Finally, today (Wednesday) is a big day for Fortnite as the game introduces usable cars.
The Joy Ride update will provide access to the sporty-looking Whiplash, a red pick-up truck called the Bear, and various other vehicles.
