Gaming on the go with Backbone
Plus Puyo Puyo, Ticket to Ride, Rockband guitars and the Atari 400 mini
Hello there! It’s a hardware heavy issue this week as we’re testing out the latest version of the Backbone One mobile controller, a brand new Rockband guitar and a miniature version of a pretty obscure home computer. Plus Ticket to Ride New York, and some suggestions for your game time this weekend. Let’s go!
The best gets slightly better
By Tim
The Backbone One has been around for a while, and in my mind is the clear frontrunner when it comes to mobile-specific controllers you can throw onto your phone. It strikes a good balance between compactness and control, is compatible with anything that works with controllers, has a nice companion app and connects physically to the phone so you don’t need to charge it. But it hasn’t been without its issues.
The newly released BackBone One 2nd Gen may appear to be exactly like the original, but it’s actually taken care of a handful of little niggles that you may have never noticed, or that might have made your experience really poor, depending on your situation.
First off is the fit. The old Backbone fit most phones pretty well, but if you had a bulky case you would always need to remove it before you played. Then Apple changed the size of its iPhones and the position of the main cameras a few years ago, which made play on Backbones awkward, and the company had to send out little rubber adapters to make some extra space. With Gen 2, it’s tried to negate all that.
The device now has removable magnetic panels at either end, so you can adjust the size of the gap while keeping things nice and stable. They’re a bit fiddly to remove, but you really only need to do it once, or if you change phones. By default there are three different sizes, with the most spacious even able to fit a phone while it’s in a decently chunky case. But the setup means Backbone should be able to include new adapters if phones happen to change in size again.
The 2nd Gen is available with USB-C, or Lightning if you still have an old iPhone, and with either Xbox style or PlayStation style buttons. Regardless, it works great for Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass games, mobile shooters, MOBAs and platformers, cloud streaming and remote play to your own consoles. The D-pad is still a bit too much work for the thumb compared to the best controllers, but that’s my sole complaint about an otherwise extremely good device.
What to play
New on Game Pass this week is excellent FPS roguelike sequel Superhot: Mind Control Delete, adorable 3D platformer Lil Gator Game, arcade racer Lego 2K Drive and golf sim EA Sports PGA Tour.
Over on Apple Arcade there’s a brand new entry in the long-running Sega puzzle series Puyo Puyo, which includes a full new adventure mode. Unfortunately at time of writing it seems to have an issue specific to the Australian iPhone version that makes all the text unreadable, but you can fix it by stumbling your way to the settings and changing the language to English.
Freedom Planet 2, the sequel to an excellent 2014 Sonic fan game turned original project, is finally out on consoles this week. And from my (Tim’s) years of experience with the PC version I can tell you it’s extremely good.
Free on the Epic Games Store today is The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition and Thief. Both games had their excellent moments, and are absolutely worth picking up during this time of free-ness.
Rhythm games are making a comeback
By Alice
I’ve spent this week testing out the new PDP Riffmaster guitar controller for PS5, and it turns out that at heart I’m still the teenager who spent all their time in their room trying to get that Xbox Achievement for playing through the entire RockBand 3 setlist on Expert.
I think that inside all of us, there is a dream of playing guitar on a big festival stage, the crowd around you singing your song. Sadly, playing the guitar for real and then turning it into a successful career is hard, but at least the ghost of that feeling can be summoned for moments at a time.
I didn’t really play much RockBand 4 when it first launched, because the instruments were almost impossible to get, and the dongle that made my old instruments work with my (then) Xbox One was even more impossible. Because the Riffmaster I got was for PlayStation, I can’t use any of my Xbox DLC or games with it, so I ended up picking up RockBand 4 for PS5 and discovered a series of delightful things:
1. RB4 is cheap on PS5, at only $15 for the full Rivals bundle, which is cheaper than you can get the used disc at EB.
2. Most of the DLC is still available. I got all the essential Sleater-Kinney songs, plus some Paramore songs for $2.95 each (much cheaper than tracks in Fortnite Festival).
3. It plays exactly as you remember it. Glorious.
The only disappointing thing is that it turns out skills fade when left dormant. I used to get top 10 scores on the global leader board, now I’m struggling to get 95% accuracy on Expert.
Of course, the team at Harmonix has now been moved to work on Fortnite Festival full time, so there is no more RB4 DLC, and will be no more updates. But when Fortnite Festival finally gets guitar support, we can synthesise a similar experience.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Continuing with the theme of playing every version of Ticket To Ride, I recently tried Ticket To Ride New York. There are a lot of similarities to the base game here – tickets, routes, and plastic pieces. But what makes New York different is everything else – a smaller map, it’s designed to be played in 15 minutes, the pieces are taxis instead of trains, and there are tourist attractions which earn extra points at the end of the game. It’s also designed for 2-4 players, instead of 2-5, though I can’t imagine four people actually playing it.
Generally, it’s a much more approachable game. It’s the kind of game you might take on a camping trip, or to a picnic (if you had confidence you wouldn’t lose the pieces in the grass). It’s a very chill board, and well suited to younger players.
However, I don’t think it makes for a good first introduction to Ticket To Ride. You’d think being stripped back would make it an easier introduction, but I think the longer game of the base Ticket To Ride is still the best way to start playing, because it gives you more time to ease into it. New York is over so quickly that new players might only start getting the hang of it towards the very end of the game, whereas the base game has enough turns that a new player tends to catch on while the game is still warming up.
That said, I still think it’s a great Ticket To Ride to have in the games cupboard to play when you just feel like something quick, or when you’ve come back from a trip to New York. I’d consider it a good afternoon tea game, where the aim is more to chat than to invest too heavily in what’s going on on the board.
Next up: Ticket To Ride Germany
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Do you remember the Atari 400? Don’t feel bad if you don’t; at 44-years-old it and the other Atari 8-bit home computers are almost as old as the venerable 2600, but nowhere near as iconic or popular. Yet this ancient workhorse PC — with its membrane keyboard, sci-fi silhouette and very 70s brown, orange and yellow appearance — deserves to be remembered, and the latest microconsole from Retro Games Ltd is a nice way to do it.
THE400 Mini is an adorable $190 device that comes with a replica Atari Joystick and 25 games built in, though you can also load any game for Atari 8-bit computers or the 5200 console from a USB stick. There are four USB ports at the front for controllers, and it works fine with the ones included with other Retro Games microconsoles, like the C64 or Amiga.
One of the most interesting things about revisiting this era is the reminder that the “games are for children” mindset was largely manufactured in 90s America. Home computers of the 70s and 80s were a grownup affair and, while they hosted their fair share of kiddy and educational content, there are some surprisingly complex and adult experiences too.
This console includes M.U.L.E. for example, a four-player corporate strategy game where you're a land-owner on a foreign planet and you need to amass the most wealth, while also working with the other players to keep the markets afloat. There’s also the deep and complicated open world colonisation sim Seven Cities of Gold, and tactical dogfighting game Star Raiders II.
Being a powerful platform for the time you also get to play some very early 3D efforts like competitive maze racer Capture the Flag, tank fighter Encounter! and ball-bouncing platformer Yoomp! (which is not actually an early 3D game, it’s a homebrew title developed in 2007).
And of course there are plenty of arcade ports and arcade-style options as well. Miner 2049er is a unique Donkey Kong like that really holds up despite some steep difficulty, Wavy Navy channels Galaxian but with boats, and the version of Berzerk here is the 5200 edition with the sweet synthesised robot voices.