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Wales Interactive has fully entered journeyman status in the world of FMV game development, putting out the vast majority of these kinds of games I've encountered on the App Store. I have said before (and will say again) that I find their releases most successful when they tighten their scope and lessen their stakes below “saving the world” or “solving the conspiracy” levels and focus on telling a more grounded story. The Isle Tide Hotel absolutely does not do this and suffers for it, and on top of that it contains performances and happenings that feel little more than strange just for sake of it.

Every body to the hotel

In The Isle Tide Hotel you play an absent father investigating the disappearance of his teenage daughter. Evidence to her whereabouts point you to a mysterious hotel that contains a lot of strange staff and guests. I don't want to spoil anything about the actual story as that's the core of these games, but almost immediately you can see through what is going on and it's very predictable genre schlock.

Instead of more typical FMV games, The Isle Tide Hotel is somewhat nonlinear, giving you some options as to how to investigate. There are–of course–dialog options to choose in the midst of video clips, but also times where you are in a room and can choose where to move to, who to talk to, etc. These are somewhat limited segments of the game, though, which helps prevent this already slowly paced game from feeling even slower.

Too many pieces

By the time I got through The Isle Tide Hotel, I found myself somewhat bewildered at what had happened. Everyone in this game has a strange manner about them and says or does at least one thing that doesn't really seem to make sense. The sense I get from the game is that I'm supposed to search for meaning behind these occurrences by playing the game again, but I am not curious in the slightest to go back through the game and figure things out.

Although I think it's nice for a game to be built around replayability, having a story-based game require you to replay it to understand the story is a step too far. I'm of the opinion that games with branching storylines should tell complete stories across all of its branches instead of just offering a lot of incomplete pictures that you have to piece together yourself.

Don't trust the tide

Part of the reason I am not interested in what might lay behind other playthroughs of The Isle Tide Hotel is because of the game's strange pacing that makes what is generally a pretty short game feel like it takes forever. Beyond that, though, I've been down this path before with games from this developer and have not really found the satisfaction I was looking for.

The game does itself no favors either, as it doesn't actually encourage players to replay the game outside of showing some menu items that aren't revealed unless you figure out how to unlock them with replaying. There's no hint of how significant these items might be, nor does it even plant questions into your mind about what you might want to uncover. If there was something in The Isle Tide Hotel that suggested what I might be able to figure out I may be more enticed to start the game again, but my assumption based on past experiences is that there's a reason for this: there isn't all that much to actually discover.

The bottom line

The Isle Tide Hotel is an FMV game that is just trying to do too much beyond what FMV games are good at. It adds more video gamey elements that clash with having human actors performing them, doesn't allow its actors to act like humans, and seems designed solely around the idea of someone playing it repeatedly to see everything that is in it. To all that I say “no thanks.”

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/the-isle-tide-hotel-review/

The Motorsport Manager games are far and away the management titles I've put the most time into on mobile. They are sharply designed and do a good job of teaching you about some of the nuances and excitement of racing that exist outside of sitting in the driver's seat. In playing Motorsport Manager 4, though, I found myself racking my brain trying to understand how this game is significantly different from Motorsport Manager Mobile 3, and I didn't come up with much.

Driving decisions

In case you haven't played one of these games before (or can't figure it out from the title), Motorsport Manager 4 is not about actually driving race cars. Instead, you manage an entire racing team operation, which includes charting out race day strategy but also extends beyond the track to driver contract negotiations, research and development, sponsor management, and more.

Most of this is completely menu-driven outside of the actual races themselves, where you then get a view of your races in real time that you can pause at any point to issue commands like calling for pitstops, pushing tires to the limit, and even things like managing the Energy Recovery System (ERS) for each driver.

Deja vu!

Motorsport Manager 4 is the slickest presentation of all of this managing action yet, but outside of its newfangled look, there's not a lot in this game that feels all that different from the last single-player entry in the series. There are some additional systems for sure, like an expanded race team staff to include strategists and some more store options to buying parts for your race car, but they feel like slight expansions to things that have already been in place as opposed to anything transformative.

I sort of get the rationale for being so incremental with a sequel. After all, Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a fantastic game and it strikes a great balance of feeling deep without ever getting too technical or overwhelming. That said, this is also what I said about the last game with regard to Motorsport Manager Mobile 2. This game feels like it does even less to progress the mechanics and systems at play here, and it would have been great to see some more dynamics added or just some more ambitious experimentation instead of another very safe and incremental release.

Where the rubber meets the road

So at this point you may be wondering if you should play Motorsport Manager 4. As someone who was playing the previous release on and off as recently as this calendar year, I can safely say that I am glad to have another game to dig into. Even with all of the similarities, the fresh visual presentation and having just a few more tools to play with is enough for me. The thing you have to keep in mind about this assessment though is that I love these games. I generally do not tire of them and find the upgrade path through racing leagues up to the big time meditative and fun, even if it does end up feeling like a bit of a grind.

If you've tried the other games and didn't quite feel that way about them, there's almost certainly nothing in Motorsport Manager 4 that is capable of changing your mind. If you've haven't tried any of these games before, then there's no reason not to jump in here, and–as I've said–I think they are among the best management games on mobile. On a final note, I do want to address the game's in-app purchases just to say that they are invisible to me. I don't know what they are, where I would go about purchasing them, and how they would help me do anything I haven't already been doing to play the game, so have no fear about this being a game that wants to just further monetize players.

The bottom line

Once again, Motorsport Manager 4 is an incremental step forward for an amazing series. It's still great, but the series is definitely starting to lose its shine.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/motorsport-manager-4-review/