1. Oxenfree is a few steps smarter than most teenage horror flicks but it is very much cut from the same cloth as those movies. A cast of characters gathers in a remote locations for laughs and libations. Most of them know each other but there is one person nobody has met. They start poking around their location and eventually disturb something they shouldn't have. Supernatural thrills ensue.
2. The main character, Alex, meets her step brother, Jonas, for the first time and takes him to a tourist-trap island for a night on the beach w/ three other friends. After what must have been a fairly excruciating party game, Alex and Jonas go off exploring and manage to use an old radio to unlock something very unfriendly from the bowels of the island. For the remainder of the game, our wily crew seeks a way to get off the island to safety.
3. The characters speak in an idealized teen dialect that has an easy, quippy irreverence that teenagers in the real world only wish they could pull off. Start w/ Buffy the Vampire Slayer then turn it down a notch or two. That's about where you'll find the script of Oxenfree.
4. The cast really helps get this over. The performances were very good across the board but Erin Yvette who plays Alex is good enough that she mages to pull everyone else along when there's an occasional stiff line from another performer here or there.
5. Dialog options are dealt w/ in real time as conversations occur and what you say during these is the most important way you interact w/ the game. The game never stops for a conversation. and you can always move about freely as you speak. You're given a few options if you wish to speak but you can also chose to hold your tongue. Having to chose on the fly, every now and then something will just pop out that you didn't want to say or you will miss an opportunity to speak when you wish you had. Sometimes you will be fiddling w/ your radio and just kind miss what's being said. You make mistakes and you can't go back and fix them. It's just how it works in real life.
6. The dialog is actually the only real way you have of changing the outcome of the game. Oxenfree
veers heavily into adventure/walking sim type territory and there is no
real challenge to speak of. Having your dialog choices actually make a
difference and putting them front and center goes a long way toward
investing you in the game.
7. While there are a few places that you are clearly making a single choice to make the story branch one way or the other, much of what matters in the dialog is actually little bits of offhanded things you say that are cumulative over time--again, much like real life. This feels really natural in game. You know it's happening w/o it ever being explicitly told to you.
8. The one thing indie games these days seem to have all over AAA titles is their music seems to just always be awesome and Oxenfree is no exception. The sound design and music for this both were lovingly crafted by a person who goes by the name scntfc. Sound effects fit in w/ the music which itself is perfectly fitted to each moment and scene.
9. The graphics are pretty unique too. I am not sure if it's just the 2D gameplay or what but they have a cool retro feel w/o being at all retro from a technical standpoint. It's not pixel art at all but the smallish sprites give it an old-school aesthetic regardless. There's times when I thought the emotional impact might have been a bit greater w/ more detail in the character animations but ultimately having character models be a bit more of blank slates lets the player fill in the details and I think that is a worthy trade-off.
10. Thought the story here is otherworldly in nature, the narrative never loses itself in mumbo-jumbo and unnecessary lore. Your situation is explained but the game never forgets that the humans involved are who the player will identify with. Oxenfree is supernatural, sure, but it is ultimately a story about people.
11. It also experiments w/ non-linear time in a way that is not completely stupid or confusing. Huzzah!
12. You can't really lose in Oxenfree but certain things can turn out differently than you would have liked. Once you know where you'll get to, wanting to go back and get there a few different ways provides great incentive to revisit the game.
13. Oxenfree feels like something special from the moment and it manages to carry this momentum through to its conclusion. It builds from its base as a horror game or a narrative game into something really original w/ remarkably good gameplay for a game where you spend most of your time walking around and chatting. It's good. You should play it.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Thursday, January 25, 2018
13 Points on L.A. Noire - Team Bondi - 2011 [PC]
1. L.A. Noire is a landmark, a game that pushed not only technical boundaries but the way games were be used as a storytelling and world building medium. It is a decent experience overall but it is starting to feel like the kind of thing that's worth playing because it is historically important rather than because it is genuinely enjoyable to play right now. This isn't a such a terrible thing. I'd put L.A. Noire in the same category as the first Resident Evil games. It's great, maybe a masterpiece, but as it ages and it can't rely so much on its unique presentation, you start to notice more and more problems w/ gameplay.
2. It takes place in a realistic but still stylish take on post-war Los Angeles. You get a real sense of its size w/o actually having to and see all of it--though you can go see all of it if you want. It does not quite give you the sense of a bustling city w/ a million things going on but, I dunno, if you want that, you have to have in-game traffic jams so a little poetic license in that regard isn't a bad thing.
3. The real news when this came out back in 2011 was its facial animation. Aaron Staton who you most likely know as Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men plays lead character, Cole Phelps, and there is not a moment that goes by where you are not like, yeah, that character model looks and acts exactly like the dude who plays Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men. The other character models are a little inconsistent--women esp. seem to look a bit funny for some reason--but the fact remains that the facial animations in this are so good they make everything else about the graphical presentation, which was still excellent for the time, look just a little bit clunky.
4. The acting across the board is compelling, which is necessary because L.A. Noire leans really heavily on its cinematic sequences. In addition to Aaron Staton, it borrows what must be over half the cast of Mad Men for various roles so that is the kind talent you an expect to see.
5. The sound design is right up there too. Voices sound like they are in realistic spaces, guns pop-off w/ convincing immediacy, radios blare period music, engines rev and roar and the whole thing is polished off by a memorable score that emphasizes the moment to moment impact of each scene perfectly.
6. I like what it attempts w/ its gameplay too. It is essentially an adventure game in the form of police procedural. In theory, I really like the idea of investigating physical evidence which you then use to tease the truth out of the suspects you question. In reality, investigating physical evidence is walking around and clicking on every little thing and interrogating subjects consists of asking suspects a limiting set of questions and trying to guess weather they are telling the truth or lying. The whole thing feels like you are stuck on rails rather that unraveling each case on your own.
7. This lack of control is really felt when you start seeing how little your performance affects actual outcomes. At one point, I really dropped a ball on one case. The police chief really let me have it but, in the very next scene, he says the DA is really happy w/ my work and drops a promotion in my lap. I did literally nothing in between.
8. There are also action sequences and these are outright miserable. I constantly found myself losing suspects I was chasing because I ran into something accidentally or got stuck halfway climbing up a fire escape. Aiming guns is a pain and the fighting system is just plain odd. The game basically admits to the player how bad these sequences are by just allowing them to just be skipped after a few tries. Thankfully.
9. The story is cut up into five sections, each of which has a few cases for you to solve w/ story-relevant cut scenes in between them. The first section is basically an introduction, the second is an extended introduction and the third is an in-depth introduction. Only once we get to section four is the overarching plot of the game revealed w/ any thoroughness. It is then wrapped up in section five. Needless to say, I found the pacing of the game to be a bit slow through some of the middle sections.
10. Women in L.A. Noire exist for the exclusive purpose of being victims--generally the victims of murder. The one female character that is given any sort of agency uses it to go ask for help from a man. She does this upon instruction from a different man.Similarly, black people play no other role in society than that of junkies, jazz musicians and small time criminals. Or, I should say black men. There is not a single black woman w/ a meaningful line of dialog in the whole game.
11. Some would be willing to write these issues off as either being a product of the 1940s setting or simply to genre tropes. I'm not. Fictional late forties L.A. presumably has a similar population as real late forties L.A. and real late forties L.A. County had a population approaching four million. If you cannot imagine, of these four million fictional people, a few that have control of their circumstances and who are not white men, you are just not trying. It is simple as that.
12. L.A. Noire is an open world game but doesn't really feel like it because you are pretty much stuck on a single path as far as the main story line goes. It does offer you some incentive to explore but the opportunities it gives you are lackluster at best. You can indulge in the horrible action mechanics and solve street crimes or go poking about looking for various hidden extras. Really, the best way to enjoy the scope of the game's take on Los Angles is just to go for a ride and see what you can see.
13. For all my complaining, most of what drives me nuts about this game was all done in service of what it does really well. You are stuck on rails because it has a story to tell. The mechanics are bad because the focus is on police procedure, not gun slinging. Women and minorities are portrayed poorly because... well, there's no excuse for that. Ultimately, L.A. Noire is nothing if not ambitious. In some regards, it bites off more than it can chew but it succeeds incredibly at building a believable world and spinning its twisted tale. I did not love every moment I spent playing it but it is a game that will undoubtedly remain bouncing through my thoughts for a long time to come.
2. It takes place in a realistic but still stylish take on post-war Los Angeles. You get a real sense of its size w/o actually having to and see all of it--though you can go see all of it if you want. It does not quite give you the sense of a bustling city w/ a million things going on but, I dunno, if you want that, you have to have in-game traffic jams so a little poetic license in that regard isn't a bad thing.
3. The real news when this came out back in 2011 was its facial animation. Aaron Staton who you most likely know as Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men plays lead character, Cole Phelps, and there is not a moment that goes by where you are not like, yeah, that character model looks and acts exactly like the dude who plays Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men. The other character models are a little inconsistent--women esp. seem to look a bit funny for some reason--but the fact remains that the facial animations in this are so good they make everything else about the graphical presentation, which was still excellent for the time, look just a little bit clunky.
4. The acting across the board is compelling, which is necessary because L.A. Noire leans really heavily on its cinematic sequences. In addition to Aaron Staton, it borrows what must be over half the cast of Mad Men for various roles so that is the kind talent you an expect to see.
5. The sound design is right up there too. Voices sound like they are in realistic spaces, guns pop-off w/ convincing immediacy, radios blare period music, engines rev and roar and the whole thing is polished off by a memorable score that emphasizes the moment to moment impact of each scene perfectly.
6. I like what it attempts w/ its gameplay too. It is essentially an adventure game in the form of police procedural. In theory, I really like the idea of investigating physical evidence which you then use to tease the truth out of the suspects you question. In reality, investigating physical evidence is walking around and clicking on every little thing and interrogating subjects consists of asking suspects a limiting set of questions and trying to guess weather they are telling the truth or lying. The whole thing feels like you are stuck on rails rather that unraveling each case on your own.
7. This lack of control is really felt when you start seeing how little your performance affects actual outcomes. At one point, I really dropped a ball on one case. The police chief really let me have it but, in the very next scene, he says the DA is really happy w/ my work and drops a promotion in my lap. I did literally nothing in between.
8. There are also action sequences and these are outright miserable. I constantly found myself losing suspects I was chasing because I ran into something accidentally or got stuck halfway climbing up a fire escape. Aiming guns is a pain and the fighting system is just plain odd. The game basically admits to the player how bad these sequences are by just allowing them to just be skipped after a few tries. Thankfully.
9. The story is cut up into five sections, each of which has a few cases for you to solve w/ story-relevant cut scenes in between them. The first section is basically an introduction, the second is an extended introduction and the third is an in-depth introduction. Only once we get to section four is the overarching plot of the game revealed w/ any thoroughness. It is then wrapped up in section five. Needless to say, I found the pacing of the game to be a bit slow through some of the middle sections.
10. Women in L.A. Noire exist for the exclusive purpose of being victims--generally the victims of murder. The one female character that is given any sort of agency uses it to go ask for help from a man. She does this upon instruction from a different man.Similarly, black people play no other role in society than that of junkies, jazz musicians and small time criminals. Or, I should say black men. There is not a single black woman w/ a meaningful line of dialog in the whole game.
11. Some would be willing to write these issues off as either being a product of the 1940s setting or simply to genre tropes. I'm not. Fictional late forties L.A. presumably has a similar population as real late forties L.A. and real late forties L.A. County had a population approaching four million. If you cannot imagine, of these four million fictional people, a few that have control of their circumstances and who are not white men, you are just not trying. It is simple as that.
12. L.A. Noire is an open world game but doesn't really feel like it because you are pretty much stuck on a single path as far as the main story line goes. It does offer you some incentive to explore but the opportunities it gives you are lackluster at best. You can indulge in the horrible action mechanics and solve street crimes or go poking about looking for various hidden extras. Really, the best way to enjoy the scope of the game's take on Los Angles is just to go for a ride and see what you can see.
13. For all my complaining, most of what drives me nuts about this game was all done in service of what it does really well. You are stuck on rails because it has a story to tell. The mechanics are bad because the focus is on police procedure, not gun slinging. Women and minorities are portrayed poorly because... well, there's no excuse for that. Ultimately, L.A. Noire is nothing if not ambitious. In some regards, it bites off more than it can chew but it succeeds incredibly at building a believable world and spinning its twisted tale. I did not love every moment I spent playing it but it is a game that will undoubtedly remain bouncing through my thoughts for a long time to come.
Monday, January 22, 2018
13 Points on Scanner Sombre - Introversion Software - 2017 [PC]
1. Scanner Sombre is one of those games where you walk around until it's time to stop walking around. Don't worry, it's not terrible.
2. My problem w/ this genre is a lot of the games in it tend to feel like they are in love w/ themselves and drag on for hours too long. Scanner Sombre presses up to the allowable time threshold for such a game but does not cross it. It absolutely maximizes the amount of time you can spend in its strange, psychedelic cave world. I'd say this is pretty much hitting the mark.
3. This game looks like you took a fistful of hallucinogens, closed your eyes and imagined a cave.
4. It doesn't really look like that. Nothing you can create on a screen actually looks like that. The graphical presentation is truly unique though. The gameworld starts out pitch black and you can only see the world you're in after finding the titular sombre scanner. You use this thing to tag little multi-colored dots all over the place. You can't actually see anything just the dots you've sprayed around everywhere. This is hard to describe. I'm sorry. I'm terrible at this.
5. As cool as it looks, I think the sound design of Scanner Sombre impresses even more. You have to find the scanner based on sound alone and you can do so w/o a problem because the directional sound is so well done. It's good on more than just a technical level though. The haunting music and echoey sound effects draw you in and set the mood for the whole thing.
6. There is a horror element that is really emphasized by this bit of sound.The game is mostly quite quiet and sudden sounds are used to great effect in punctuating tense moments.
7. Gameplay won't surprise you much if you are familiar w/ the genre. You move along through the cave this is set in and more and more about your situation and surroundings is revealed to you as you move forward.
8. This uses text rather than voice acting for its narrative. I recognize that preferring to listen to the voices in my head over an actual human being has alarming connotations but not having a voiced protagonist helps me to better put myself in the player character's shoes.
9. You can die in Scanner Sombre but it is not really a great choice for those looking for a hardcore challenge. There are points where it's a bit tough to figure out what to do next but, really, just wandering around will get you where you are going eventually. Still, you have to put in just enough work that you are made to feel invested in your progress.
10. One of your primary rewards for progressing in Scanner Sombre is upgrades to your sombre scanner. These are functional but more so than that, it just looks really cool to use them--so cool I would get excited when I'd hear a beep-beep-beeping upgrade off in the distance.
11. The fact that the cave's history and your own story are pretty interesting doesn't hurt your motivation either. You are left not only wondering about the history of the world but how you got there and where exactly you are supposed to be going. The cave's story is very grim and knowing that you are going to fit into it somehow lends a sense of foreboding to your journey.
12. I know how the title of this game is supposed to be pronounced but in my head sombre will always rhyme w/ hombre.
13. As per point 2, I think this type of game is often poorly done and I feel like developers often lose the player while they go building their beautiful worlds. Scanner Sombre provides just enough structure, challenge and reward to keep you absorbed for its duration. It is carefully constructed from start to finish to be not only visually and audibly striking but also compelling from a gameplay and world building perspective. I'm into it.
2. My problem w/ this genre is a lot of the games in it tend to feel like they are in love w/ themselves and drag on for hours too long. Scanner Sombre presses up to the allowable time threshold for such a game but does not cross it. It absolutely maximizes the amount of time you can spend in its strange, psychedelic cave world. I'd say this is pretty much hitting the mark.
3. This game looks like you took a fistful of hallucinogens, closed your eyes and imagined a cave.
4. It doesn't really look like that. Nothing you can create on a screen actually looks like that. The graphical presentation is truly unique though. The gameworld starts out pitch black and you can only see the world you're in after finding the titular sombre scanner. You use this thing to tag little multi-colored dots all over the place. You can't actually see anything just the dots you've sprayed around everywhere. This is hard to describe. I'm sorry. I'm terrible at this.
5. As cool as it looks, I think the sound design of Scanner Sombre impresses even more. You have to find the scanner based on sound alone and you can do so w/o a problem because the directional sound is so well done. It's good on more than just a technical level though. The haunting music and echoey sound effects draw you in and set the mood for the whole thing.
6. There is a horror element that is really emphasized by this bit of sound.The game is mostly quite quiet and sudden sounds are used to great effect in punctuating tense moments.
7. Gameplay won't surprise you much if you are familiar w/ the genre. You move along through the cave this is set in and more and more about your situation and surroundings is revealed to you as you move forward.
8. This uses text rather than voice acting for its narrative. I recognize that preferring to listen to the voices in my head over an actual human being has alarming connotations but not having a voiced protagonist helps me to better put myself in the player character's shoes.
9. You can die in Scanner Sombre but it is not really a great choice for those looking for a hardcore challenge. There are points where it's a bit tough to figure out what to do next but, really, just wandering around will get you where you are going eventually. Still, you have to put in just enough work that you are made to feel invested in your progress.
10. One of your primary rewards for progressing in Scanner Sombre is upgrades to your sombre scanner. These are functional but more so than that, it just looks really cool to use them--so cool I would get excited when I'd hear a beep-beep-beeping upgrade off in the distance.
11. The fact that the cave's history and your own story are pretty interesting doesn't hurt your motivation either. You are left not only wondering about the history of the world but how you got there and where exactly you are supposed to be going. The cave's story is very grim and knowing that you are going to fit into it somehow lends a sense of foreboding to your journey.
12. I know how the title of this game is supposed to be pronounced but in my head sombre will always rhyme w/ hombre.
13. As per point 2, I think this type of game is often poorly done and I feel like developers often lose the player while they go building their beautiful worlds. Scanner Sombre provides just enough structure, challenge and reward to keep you absorbed for its duration. It is carefully constructed from start to finish to be not only visually and audibly striking but also compelling from a gameplay and world building perspective. I'm into it.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
13 Points on Gorogoa - Jason Roberts - 2017 [PC]
1. Gorogoa gets called a puzzle game but it's more like a game that is a puzzle. It acts as a single contiguous whole rather than a series of challenges like, for example, Portal. There are definite stopping points and sections to it but each new bit feels more like turning the page in a book than reaching a new chapter.
2. Generally, this feels a lot like reading a picture book. Everything is lovingly hand drawn. Many of the scenes are layered and a major gameplay element is pulling one layer off a scene and finding another scene to fit it in. They whole thing feels very papery generally--and I mean that in a pretty literal sense.
3. Gorogoa really leans on its presentation to keep you pushing through. W/ every new thing you find or fiddle w/ and every section of the puzzle you complete, you are rewarded w/ a bit more of the story's narrative which is delivered by graphics alone. The visual style of this has to be good for this to work and it is.
4. The soundtrack plays a huge roll in this as well. It is ambient and subdued but not the sort of music you ignore. It draws you into the stage it sets w/o getting in the way.
5. Gorogoa is not all that challenging. Or, rather, most of the puzzle sections can be solved by clicking everything indicated as clickable and trial-and-error if it comes down to it. This tests your patience and your ability to put fresh eyes on something you've been looking at for ten minutes in order to find solutions.
6. It is still satisfying even though you don't need to be the cleverest fox on the block to figure any of this stuff out though. Everything you finish seems to lead to a meaningful change in the information the game presents to you. It is not all a bunch of superfluous pixel hunting. You feel like what you are doing, you are doing for a reason.
7. Games like this frequently get marked as being relaxing or casual but I found Gorogoa to be a rather intense experience and I preferred to play it in shorter sessions to give my brain a break. Upon completing a particularly vexing bit of puzzling, I'd find myself letting out a sigh of relief and I'd just be like, "Okay, that's enough for me right now. See you tomorrow, game!"
8. There are a few sections here that require some tricky timing, which I generally kind of hate when I'm solving puzzles, but these ones were satisfying enough once I executed the solution that it did not bother me in this case.
9. There were a couple red flags I noticed in the hype surrounding Gorogoa on its release in late 2017 so I was a bit disinclined to check it out but a decent sale on a certain massive digital distribution platform roped me in and I'm really glad it did.
10. The thing that made me most suspicious was the fact that it constantly was described as gorgeous, first and foremost, and I find that people who write about indie games are, for whatever reason, blinded to a game's problems when it looks pretty enough. (Case in point: Owlboy.) I'm personally immune to this because my eyes are befouled by bad genetics and years of staring directly at the sun. You can trust my opinion.
11. Additionally, people kept bringing up the protracted development process of this game as if that was necessarily a positive thing, like we live in a world where Duke Nukem Forever doesn't exist.
12. I was wrong to be skeptical though and I'm glad to admit I was wrong. I'm growing as a person.
13. I actually pretty much knew that this was going to be great w/in five minutes of playing. Some of the best games games feel like the developer has created a direct and vital connection to the player and Gorogoa is one of those games. It makes you feel as if you are getting to know a person--or at least a person's perspective--almost as much as you are exploring a game world. There's lots of games that create an full and engaging experience but few do so completely and elegantly as this one.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
13 Points on LiEat - △○□× (Miwashiba) - 2016 [PC]
1. I am not sure how LiEat is pronounced but I recommend pronouncing it the same way as "1337."
2. This seems to get pegged as an RPG but it's really only an RPG in the most shallow sense. It uses the basic mechanics of an old console RPG but it's really more of an interactive mystery story.
3. LiEat would seem to be one short game but it's actually a collection of three very short games. They are related--it is a broader story told episodically--but you don't carry progress from one section of the game to the next.
4. The first two episodes are monster-of-the-week type deals were you walk into a new town and solve some mystery that's going down. These get you interested in the characters, the origin of whom is explained in the third episode. This structure worked really well, much better than if the origin story had been told first thing.
5. Your character is a dragon that makes lies become physically manifest and then eats them. She doesn't look like a dragon but she is. Your partner, who serves as something like your legal guardian, is some kind of detective or something. I'm not honestly sure what he does. He collects information and sells it. What manner of profession is that? Who knows. Regardless, neither being a dragon that eats lies or working in the field is particularly strange in LiEat's world.
6. The bit-era throwback graphics look nice enough but I honestly had trouble telling some characters apart based on their pictures.
7. The music is flippin' awesome. I listened to it a bunch outside of playing. Best part of the game, hands down. It is a just-convincing-enough symphonic soundtrack w/ a bit of a vintage-keyboard edge that fits the retro-influenced but not retro-shackled presentation of the game perfectly.
8. Going back to number 2 and how this isn't really an RPG, there is not much meaningful character advancement. You do level up and upgrade your equipment but, at the start of each section, you pretty quickly discover very overpowered equipment which makes any improvement to your character pretty much immaterial. Even if you chose not to use this stuff, you really don't find many other things to use anyway.
9. The focus here is very strongly on story. If your favorite part of old RPGs is going around and talking to everyone once you've found a new town, LiEat is very much for you as that comprises the meat of the gameplay.
10. Thankfully, there is no voice acting involved in this clearly lower-budget production. This is a problem for people like me who never learned to read but most of you nerds should be fine.
11. Some menus in this were in Japanese only. It's not a big deal but made it tough to figure out how to get this into full screen. Hit F4 then F10 for nostalgic 4:3 goodness that fills your monitor as much as possible. Huzzah!
12. The characters in this are all pretty cute but the subject matter can be quite dark indeed. We are talking people dying here. The combination of these two elements is quite disarming and helped to bring me into LiEat's charming story.
13. I think if you go and watch the trailer for LiEat and it looks like something you'll enjoy, you'll enjoy it. It is not a deep, complex RPG--or even an RPG at all--but it delivers quite well on its promise of an engrossing story with an endearing set of characters. I am always impressed when a developers really nail the bullseye they are aiming at and I think that Miwashiba did that here.
2. This seems to get pegged as an RPG but it's really only an RPG in the most shallow sense. It uses the basic mechanics of an old console RPG but it's really more of an interactive mystery story.
3. LiEat would seem to be one short game but it's actually a collection of three very short games. They are related--it is a broader story told episodically--but you don't carry progress from one section of the game to the next.
4. The first two episodes are monster-of-the-week type deals were you walk into a new town and solve some mystery that's going down. These get you interested in the characters, the origin of whom is explained in the third episode. This structure worked really well, much better than if the origin story had been told first thing.
5. Your character is a dragon that makes lies become physically manifest and then eats them. She doesn't look like a dragon but she is. Your partner, who serves as something like your legal guardian, is some kind of detective or something. I'm not honestly sure what he does. He collects information and sells it. What manner of profession is that? Who knows. Regardless, neither being a dragon that eats lies or working in the field is particularly strange in LiEat's world.
6. The bit-era throwback graphics look nice enough but I honestly had trouble telling some characters apart based on their pictures.
7. The music is flippin' awesome. I listened to it a bunch outside of playing. Best part of the game, hands down. It is a just-convincing-enough symphonic soundtrack w/ a bit of a vintage-keyboard edge that fits the retro-influenced but not retro-shackled presentation of the game perfectly.
8. Going back to number 2 and how this isn't really an RPG, there is not much meaningful character advancement. You do level up and upgrade your equipment but, at the start of each section, you pretty quickly discover very overpowered equipment which makes any improvement to your character pretty much immaterial. Even if you chose not to use this stuff, you really don't find many other things to use anyway.
9. The focus here is very strongly on story. If your favorite part of old RPGs is going around and talking to everyone once you've found a new town, LiEat is very much for you as that comprises the meat of the gameplay.
10. Thankfully, there is no voice acting involved in this clearly lower-budget production. This is a problem for people like me who never learned to read but most of you nerds should be fine.
11. Some menus in this were in Japanese only. It's not a big deal but made it tough to figure out how to get this into full screen. Hit F4 then F10 for nostalgic 4:3 goodness that fills your monitor as much as possible. Huzzah!
12. The characters in this are all pretty cute but the subject matter can be quite dark indeed. We are talking people dying here. The combination of these two elements is quite disarming and helped to bring me into LiEat's charming story.
13. I think if you go and watch the trailer for LiEat and it looks like something you'll enjoy, you'll enjoy it. It is not a deep, complex RPG--or even an RPG at all--but it delivers quite well on its promise of an engrossing story with an endearing set of characters. I am always impressed when a developers really nail the bullseye they are aiming at and I think that Miwashiba did that here.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Sort by Lowest Price: Asphalt 3D - Gameloft - 2011 [Nintendo 3DS]
I don't know why bargain bins are always littered w/ driving games but such has been the way of things for as long as I can remember. Currently residing on the dustiest shelves of a game store near you is one particular driving game that absolutely deserves to be there: Asphalt 3D. You can get it for maybe five bucks from any large chain of game retailers or your favorite auction website... but don't.
Asphalt 3D seems solid at first. We are not talking AAA-level polish but a decent B game is nothing to sneeze at--esp. for a launch title, which this was. It is not a world beater as far as driving mechanics but its graphics look good enough to make for some nice screen caps and there's a good number of unlockable tracks, licensed cars and upgrades to keep you busy. This seems to check most of the boxes for a good arcade racer. Unfortunately, check the boxes is all it does.
The driving mechanics ultimately feel shallow and fiddly and the way the game creates difficulty is just cheap. You get blown off the line by AI opponents in every race and by the fifth circuit or so, this is a big enough disadvantage that you basically might as well restart the race if you make any kind of major mistake. To make matters worse, the draw distance isn't good enough to see oncoming traffic so you get into a head-on collision through no fault of your own every few laps or so. Every single time, this knocks you into last place. Every. Single. Time. There is no rubber banding to help you catch up so this is one just one more thing that will have you restarting races constantly once you are a few hours in.
The chief driving gimmick is a boost you can get if you fill a meter on the screen. This is done w/ on-track pickups, going airborne and using the game's drifting mechanic. The drifting seems to be the main way you can use this to your advantage but it's implementation is weird and finicky and it's really hard to tell which corners are suited to it w/o trial and error. You might get through a tough corner losing minimal speed or come to a nearly complete halt and there is never any clear indicator why or when either of these two things will happen. Using drifting to fill up your boost meter at first seems like a good way to make up ground when you fall behind in a race but it ultimately ends up being unreliable enough that it doesn't work for that purpose.
I will admit, I did enjoy the first few circuits of Asphalt 3D. It feels pretty good until they throw the first bit or real challenge at you and then it's problems add up in record time and the whole thing becomes insufferable. I do suppose that a couple of hours of entertainment for five bucks makes this a better value than seeing a new movie or something but, as a game, it is truly lacking. If you accidentally buy it, give it to someone you don't like. But not me. I'm on to your little games.
Asphalt 3D seems solid at first. We are not talking AAA-level polish but a decent B game is nothing to sneeze at--esp. for a launch title, which this was. It is not a world beater as far as driving mechanics but its graphics look good enough to make for some nice screen caps and there's a good number of unlockable tracks, licensed cars and upgrades to keep you busy. This seems to check most of the boxes for a good arcade racer. Unfortunately, check the boxes is all it does.
The driving mechanics ultimately feel shallow and fiddly and the way the game creates difficulty is just cheap. You get blown off the line by AI opponents in every race and by the fifth circuit or so, this is a big enough disadvantage that you basically might as well restart the race if you make any kind of major mistake. To make matters worse, the draw distance isn't good enough to see oncoming traffic so you get into a head-on collision through no fault of your own every few laps or so. Every single time, this knocks you into last place. Every. Single. Time. There is no rubber banding to help you catch up so this is one just one more thing that will have you restarting races constantly once you are a few hours in.
The chief driving gimmick is a boost you can get if you fill a meter on the screen. This is done w/ on-track pickups, going airborne and using the game's drifting mechanic. The drifting seems to be the main way you can use this to your advantage but it's implementation is weird and finicky and it's really hard to tell which corners are suited to it w/o trial and error. You might get through a tough corner losing minimal speed or come to a nearly complete halt and there is never any clear indicator why or when either of these two things will happen. Using drifting to fill up your boost meter at first seems like a good way to make up ground when you fall behind in a race but it ultimately ends up being unreliable enough that it doesn't work for that purpose.
I will admit, I did enjoy the first few circuits of Asphalt 3D. It feels pretty good until they throw the first bit or real challenge at you and then it's problems add up in record time and the whole thing becomes insufferable. I do suppose that a couple of hours of entertainment for five bucks makes this a better value than seeing a new movie or something but, as a game, it is truly lacking. If you accidentally buy it, give it to someone you don't like. But not me. I'm on to your little games.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
13 Points on FarCry 3: Blood Dragon - Ubisoft Montreal - 2013 [PC]
1. Let's face it, the FarCry 3 is mechanically and technically excellent but it's kind of stupid in an unintentional way. Between the oblivious, bro-y racism and ludicrous plot, it is really hard to take it too seriously even though the game seems to strive for a certain psychedelic emotional realism.
2. FarCry 3: Blood Dragon is actually even more stupid but there is nothing unintentional about it. It strives to be that kind of stupid where you can tell the people who made it are actually smart. It doesn't quite get there but does manage to condense the fun parts of FarCry 3 into a bite size package for easy FarCry snacking.
3. Blood Dragon combines the climb-towers-to-reveal-map-icons and capture-enemy-bases elements of the common open world game formula. You only have to capture enemy bases and you get the most important map icons revealed w/o climbing a singular tower. Huzzah! The rest of the map icons can be purchased from vending machines because I guess you need plenty of icons on your map.
4. This game is rendered in glorious hi-resolution 3D polygonal graphics but the cut scenes kind of look like someone who never played Sega Genesis games trying to imitate Sega Genesis cut scenes. I found the transition between these two elements kind of jarring, to be honest. Also, if you are like me, you sit through all cut scenes on the edge of you seat, hoping upon hope that the game will you control again at any given moement. When the cut scenes look completely different from the game, it takes away my hope, which is sometimes the only thing keeping me going through troubled times where I am playing a video game and find that my input has no effect on what's happening on the screen.
5. The overarching idea is to be a send up of 80's action movies. You are a cyborg super soldier. Your cyborg super soldier colleague goes mad w/ power and decides to destroy their world and you have to stop him. You hook up w/ the only woman around. There's dragons. Every 80's action move was like this. Trust me.
6. The gameplay is kinf od a parody of the main series as well, though I'm not sure how intentional that is. Stripped of the pretense of meaningful plot and a quagmire of superfluous upgrade systems, FarCry 3 really does just boil down as follows: go to all the places, kill all the people. Here, that's presented as a joke of sorts but, honestly, that is just what the series has always been at its bones.
7. The humor in Blood Dragon falls flat in nearly 100% of cases. Sorry you had to hear it from me.
8. You didn't come for the humor or the cyber-soldier-gone-rogue plot though. You came for the action and Blood Dragon delivers. The controls are super tight whether you use mouse and keyboard or a controller. We are not talking Arma-level simulation here but if you point a gun and shoot at something enough, it dies and you know you killed it.
9. Over time, the weapons all upgrade to the point of being ridiculously overpowered. It kind of Nerfs the experience but they get overpowered in unique and sometimes unexpected ways. For example, upgrading the sniper rifle w/ explosive rounds makes it super effective for close combat. By that point, you have the health to tank some splash damage so you basically just have to point in the general direction of your enemies and have at it. Sure, it's over-the-top but it's fun.
10. Challenge is not really the name of the game here anyway. At the default difficulty, you can pretty much bumble your way through the whole game if you wish.
11. The fun is that most situations allow you to approach them in a variety of ways. You can always just rush in guns ablaze but stealth, ranged weapons, mines and even baiting the titular Blood Dragons to attack your enemies will work in most situations. If you are like me, you will plan out an intense and devious plot to sneak your way through each area, blow your cover halfway through and start chucking grenades willy-nilly until everything is dead.
12. Because of its relatively realistic setting, the FarCry series sometimes has trouble coming up w/ a good final boss battle. You can't exactly have towering ro-bots w/ flamethrower arms in a world where only present day technology exists. You'd think the dragons and cyber warriors would give Blood Dragon an out and let the developers throw an epic boss in at the end but you'd be wrong. This just seems like a missed opportunity from where I'm at.
13. There is a certain purity of form I admire in FarCry 3: Blood Dragon. Aside from the fact that it's not funny at all, it pretty much is exactly what it's supposed to be: an open world shooter stripped to its basest elements. It's fun, it's stupid and it works.
2. FarCry 3: Blood Dragon is actually even more stupid but there is nothing unintentional about it. It strives to be that kind of stupid where you can tell the people who made it are actually smart. It doesn't quite get there but does manage to condense the fun parts of FarCry 3 into a bite size package for easy FarCry snacking.
3. Blood Dragon combines the climb-towers-to-reveal-map-icons and capture-enemy-bases elements of the common open world game formula. You only have to capture enemy bases and you get the most important map icons revealed w/o climbing a singular tower. Huzzah! The rest of the map icons can be purchased from vending machines because I guess you need plenty of icons on your map.
4. This game is rendered in glorious hi-resolution 3D polygonal graphics but the cut scenes kind of look like someone who never played Sega Genesis games trying to imitate Sega Genesis cut scenes. I found the transition between these two elements kind of jarring, to be honest. Also, if you are like me, you sit through all cut scenes on the edge of you seat, hoping upon hope that the game will you control again at any given moement. When the cut scenes look completely different from the game, it takes away my hope, which is sometimes the only thing keeping me going through troubled times where I am playing a video game and find that my input has no effect on what's happening on the screen.
5. The overarching idea is to be a send up of 80's action movies. You are a cyborg super soldier. Your cyborg super soldier colleague goes mad w/ power and decides to destroy their world and you have to stop him. You hook up w/ the only woman around. There's dragons. Every 80's action move was like this. Trust me.
6. The gameplay is kinf od a parody of the main series as well, though I'm not sure how intentional that is. Stripped of the pretense of meaningful plot and a quagmire of superfluous upgrade systems, FarCry 3 really does just boil down as follows: go to all the places, kill all the people. Here, that's presented as a joke of sorts but, honestly, that is just what the series has always been at its bones.
7. The humor in Blood Dragon falls flat in nearly 100% of cases. Sorry you had to hear it from me.
8. You didn't come for the humor or the cyber-soldier-gone-rogue plot though. You came for the action and Blood Dragon delivers. The controls are super tight whether you use mouse and keyboard or a controller. We are not talking Arma-level simulation here but if you point a gun and shoot at something enough, it dies and you know you killed it.
9. Over time, the weapons all upgrade to the point of being ridiculously overpowered. It kind of Nerfs the experience but they get overpowered in unique and sometimes unexpected ways. For example, upgrading the sniper rifle w/ explosive rounds makes it super effective for close combat. By that point, you have the health to tank some splash damage so you basically just have to point in the general direction of your enemies and have at it. Sure, it's over-the-top but it's fun.
10. Challenge is not really the name of the game here anyway. At the default difficulty, you can pretty much bumble your way through the whole game if you wish.
11. The fun is that most situations allow you to approach them in a variety of ways. You can always just rush in guns ablaze but stealth, ranged weapons, mines and even baiting the titular Blood Dragons to attack your enemies will work in most situations. If you are like me, you will plan out an intense and devious plot to sneak your way through each area, blow your cover halfway through and start chucking grenades willy-nilly until everything is dead.
12. Because of its relatively realistic setting, the FarCry series sometimes has trouble coming up w/ a good final boss battle. You can't exactly have towering ro-bots w/ flamethrower arms in a world where only present day technology exists. You'd think the dragons and cyber warriors would give Blood Dragon an out and let the developers throw an epic boss in at the end but you'd be wrong. This just seems like a missed opportunity from where I'm at.
13. There is a certain purity of form I admire in FarCry 3: Blood Dragon. Aside from the fact that it's not funny at all, it pretty much is exactly what it's supposed to be: an open world shooter stripped to its basest elements. It's fun, it's stupid and it works.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
13 Points on Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - WayForward - 2014 [Nintendo 3DS]
2. The first Shantae game I played was the original for Game Boy Color. I did not like it enough to finish. This one, I loved. If you had trouble w/ earlier games in the series, this one may still be worth checking out if you are a fan of the genre.
3. Gameplay is really the focus here much more so than story. Controls are tight, the challenge builds at a reasonable rate, the difficult sections really feel cheap and there is only one horrible stealth section in this non-stealth game. In short, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse does almost everything right.
4. Graphics work well too. This is not going to blow your neckbeard friends away with polygon counts or whatever but when you're talking about a 2D game, it is more about artstyle and this has it in spades.
5. On the 3DS version certain... assets... of the female characters pop out just way too far in 3D. I found this endlessly hilarious but not really in a good way.
6. The music is a bit hit or miss but the songs that are great more than make up for the boring ones.
7. The story is something bad happens and Shantae is forced to team up w/ her former enemy, Risky Boots, to defeat the evil villain or whatever. In reality, the story here is just a thin excuse to go tromping about the gameworld collecting items that let you tromp about other parts of the gameworld.
8. Number 7 is not a problem in games where tromping about is a lot of fun.
9. There are some light puzzle solving elements to this but they are of mostly of the oh-there-is-a-door-that's-closed-and-also-a-switch variety. The more interesting puzzle solving element is figuring out where to find what item you need to advance, the Metroidvania-type element.
10. My biggest complaints is some of the collectable/purchasable powerups seemed to Nerf things a bit too much. Some of the boss fights, especially, you could just use a few powerups and hack away randomly rather than have to figure out their patterns and actually fight them.
11. The Pirate's Curse offers up some replayability by offering up special endings for 100% runs, speed runs, etc. An NPC actually tells you this outright at some point in the game, which is appreciated.
12. Number 11 is only a big deal because this game is actually worth playing more than once.
13. I recommend this to anyone who likes playing good games. It has classic elements w/o being an outright rehash. It has style and humor. It's actively fun to play for the vast majority of time you will spend playing it. Many developers try but few actually achieve all of these things. Appreciate the ones that do.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Sort by Lowest Price: F1 2011 - Sumo Digital - 2011 [Nintendo 3DS]
Reviews from around its release would have you think this akin to a real-life combination of cancer and the actual feces of a bull but I think there's a lot to like about Sumo Digital's 3DS version of F1 2011. It's true that it fails to be a good racing game but it's a decent F1 time trial sim and I think if they had maybe pared this down to its best parts, it could have found an audience the actual released version never did.
The main complaint about this is the AI is terrible and it's completely valid. The other drivers race as if you are not there. If you are on the line the computer controlled cars were going to take around a corner, you are going to get hit by the computer controlled cars because they will follow that line regardless of your presence. Depending on how realistically you have the driving set up, this behavior ranges from infernally annoying to game breaking. It's terrible and there's no getting around it.
The thing is, though, you can play w/o the AI and a lot of the joy of driving an F1 is not lost w/o having competition. F1 2011 has solid driving mechanics top to bottom w/ all the various difficulty and realism settings you would expect in such a game. It delivers much of the thrill of a good racing sim, it just can't do so w/ other drivers on the track. If the primary pull for this sort of game is that feeling you get where after practicing a corner dozens of times, you figure out just how to hit it such that you can get through a sector a split second faster, this game actually delivers.
It might be a stretch but I'd say the fact that this can give you a decent time trial but not a good race might make it a good fit for big time sim enthusiasts--and I mean the kind of people who consider a three-digit priced racing wheel as "entry level." If you live and breath F1 in your gaming life, something like this isn't going to replace the more full-featured home console and PC versions of F1 games but it can give you a chance to get some extra mental reps in when you are out on the road. I'd be curious how this would have done had they called it F1 Trials or something like that and marketed it as a trainer to help F1 memorize tracks and corners.
In any case, this game doesn't focus on time trials and isn't a good racing game so I can't fully recommend this to anyone, especially not here in early 2018. Still, I must say, I figured I'd pop this in for a session or two--just long enough to find something to say about it--and I wound up keeping it in my 3DS for weeks. Especially once you've gotten a track down well enough that you can turn off the racing lines and driving assists, it provides the sort of deeply engrossing driving experience that sims do so well.
The main complaint about this is the AI is terrible and it's completely valid. The other drivers race as if you are not there. If you are on the line the computer controlled cars were going to take around a corner, you are going to get hit by the computer controlled cars because they will follow that line regardless of your presence. Depending on how realistically you have the driving set up, this behavior ranges from infernally annoying to game breaking. It's terrible and there's no getting around it.
The thing is, though, you can play w/o the AI and a lot of the joy of driving an F1 is not lost w/o having competition. F1 2011 has solid driving mechanics top to bottom w/ all the various difficulty and realism settings you would expect in such a game. It delivers much of the thrill of a good racing sim, it just can't do so w/ other drivers on the track. If the primary pull for this sort of game is that feeling you get where after practicing a corner dozens of times, you figure out just how to hit it such that you can get through a sector a split second faster, this game actually delivers.
It might be a stretch but I'd say the fact that this can give you a decent time trial but not a good race might make it a good fit for big time sim enthusiasts--and I mean the kind of people who consider a three-digit priced racing wheel as "entry level." If you live and breath F1 in your gaming life, something like this isn't going to replace the more full-featured home console and PC versions of F1 games but it can give you a chance to get some extra mental reps in when you are out on the road. I'd be curious how this would have done had they called it F1 Trials or something like that and marketed it as a trainer to help F1 memorize tracks and corners.
In any case, this game doesn't focus on time trials and isn't a good racing game so I can't fully recommend this to anyone, especially not here in early 2018. Still, I must say, I figured I'd pop this in for a session or two--just long enough to find something to say about it--and I wound up keeping it in my 3DS for weeks. Especially once you've gotten a track down well enough that you can turn off the racing lines and driving assists, it provides the sort of deeply engrossing driving experience that sims do so well.
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