The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Nintendo - 1998 - N64/3DS

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games list

I was having a discussion with a friend about which Zelda game a newcomer to the franchise should play first. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were brought up, but Ocarina of Time wasn't even mentioned. And I wasn't really opposed to that. This game is a difficult sell to someone who has never played a Zelda title before. It's not so much that subsequent games have made massive improvements on the formula that OoT established or anything like that. But I realize that the reason I love this game is that I have SO MUCH NOSTALGIA tied up in this game. It was the first Zelda game where I got to explore the sprawling fields of Hyrule, the first Zelda game that really hooked me on its story and got me interested in its locations and characters and it was the first Zelda game I replayed over and over again obsessively. And the music! Oh man, the music. It always brings back so many memories. So either you read the last few sentences and knew exactly what I was talking about or you haven't played OoT. While I don't necessarily believe that subsequent Zeldas are "better" games, it's hard to come up with a sell for this game over other Zelda titles that isn't childhood nostalgia. But it's important to note how hugely important and impactful this game was when it came out.

This game was made in the era where 3D games were starting to come into their own. The first 3D game I played that really blew my mind was Mario 64. Those Mario worlds were fun to play and run around in, but what set the 3D worlds of OoT apart from Mario 64 were that OoT's 3D world felt "real" and lived in. It was a joy to explore. Especially with all of the detail put into the world; it made you want to explore each nook and cranny to make sure you didn't miss a hidden secret. I can distinctly remember being totally blown away by this the first time I played the game. I remember just walking around some of the villages and using the first person camera to admire all of the details.

The gameplay of OoT was revolutionary at the time and set a lot of precedents for how the rest of the 3D Zelda games would play. It sounds kind of silly now, but a lot of what we take for granted gameplay and systems wise not only in Zelda games, but 3D games in general had to be invented from scratch here. Everything from the way the puzzles worked to how the combat would function had to be converted from a 2D world to a 3D world. One of the most notable of these new 3D game systems was OoT's "Z targeting" system which governed how the camera would function in combat. By facing an enemy and pressing the Z button, the player could focus the camera on just one enemy until either the focus is switched by pressing the Z button again or the enemy is defeated. The developers did a fantastic job bringing this franchise into a 3D world

The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time Video Review

Summary:
OoT is sort of a difficult sell for someone who has never played a Zelda game before, because I'd only be selling them on nostalgia. My personal recommendation is to play Wind Waker if you've never tried this franchise before. I understand the WiiU version, which contains some graphical enhancements and gameplay tweaks, is the definitive version of the Wind Waker. But for "game connoisseurs" and people who have somehow otherwise missed out on playing OoT and are interested, it is one of my all time favorite games. I actually haven't played the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time, so I can't speak for its quality, but I hear good things. I'm not really interested in playing OoT on a handheld and while the enhanced graphics look beautiful, they also clash with all of the great memories I have of playing the original version. And while I admit there's a great amount of nostalgia tied to my Ocarina of Time love, I am still confident in saying it is one of the greatest video games ever made.

Final Fantasy VII

Squaresoft - 1997 - PC/PS1

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

I actually played Final Fantasy 7 for the first time several years after it was released. A friend of mine gave me both the FF7 and FF8 discs at the same time. I initially decided to play FF8 as it was the newer and more graphically realistic of the two games. FF7's blocky and cartoony graphics initially turned me off and I didn't get around to playing through it until after I finished FF8. I liked FF8 well enough at the time, but it wasn't until I went back and played through FF7 that I realized how superior of a game Final Fantasy 7 is. It taught me an important lesson that I still think about when playing games now: graphics are just not as important as good gameplay and an interesting story

Final Fantasy 7 was the first game in the series released on the PS1 and was also the first game in the series to not appear on a Nintendo console. More importantly, it is also the game that is credited with popularizing the Japanese role playing game genre for western audiences. It is also the first game in the Final Fantasy series to fully embrace a futuristic sci-fi setting as opposed to the Tolkien-esque fantasy settings found in the previous games. Earlier games in the series had some futuristic and science fiction elements, but Final Fantasy 7 really embraced this aesthetic and fully built its characters and setting around it

Final Fantasy 7 follows the story of Cloud Strife, an amnesiac mercenary who joins a band of freedom fighters who call themselves Avalanche and are trying to stop the money-loving Shinra corporation from installing environment polluting "mako reactors" across the planet. The first part of the game deals with the Avalanche vs. Shinra conflict, but then the game and story really opens up as you begin to uncover the details of Cloud's past, his lost memories and how a mysterious man known as Sephiroth ties in to the story. You'll also of course explore the backstory to all of your party members, who are all well written and interesting characters. It's a truly gripping and mysterious story that had me hooked from the beginning and kept me interested to the end. It's a difficult game to put down because if whatever's happening in the story doesn't hold your attention, the addicting and well designed battle system probably will.

Just like any other entry in the Final Fantasy series, the battle system in FF7 is completely unique, but I believe this is my favorite battle system found in any of the Final Fantasy games. This battle system allows for a high degree of character customization through the new "materia" system. In the game, materia are basically little magic jewels that characters can equip on their weapons and armor to grant additional stat bonuses or new abilities. For instance, if you want a party member to learn a fire spell, you simply place the "fire" materia into one of the materia slots on that character's weapon or armor. What makes this system interesting is that some materia can be paired together. For example, if you wanted to be able to cast fire on all enemies at once, you can pair a "fire" materia with an "all" materia, assuming you have both. Players have to make some fun strategic decisions when building out their party as some weapons may be statistically better, but have fewer materia slots. Further adding to the strategic complexity of this system is that materia can gain experience and level up, granting you further statistical bonuses or more powerful spells. Another smart piece of game design is that some weapons and armors can increase the growth rate of the materia, but at the cost of fewer total materia slots. It's an excellent battle system that forces the player to think carefully about their party's build.

Adding to the perfect harmony of excellent gameplay and well-told story is the masterfully composed soundtrack. I know I've said it before, but Nobou Uematsu is a genius. The PS1 sound chip makes the tracks sound very MIDI-ish, but pay attention to the composition of the pieces. It's genius. Even more mind blowing is the crazy musical variety found in each track. There's the sleazy "Oppressed People", the dark and beautiful "Anxious Heart", the playful carnival-like "Gold Saucer", the nightmarish "Those Chosen by the Planet" and of course, the rockin' boss battle anthem "Those who Fight Further". But really, the whole soundtrack is totally amazing from top to bottom. Give it a listen if you're into video game music

Final Fantasy VII Video Review:

Summary:
Final Fantasy 7 is a masterpiece of a game. It's a perfect blend of engaging story, smart game design and a top-notch soundtrack. I've tried many times to recreate the experience of playing FF7 for the first time be trying various other Japanese role playing games, but none can quite recapture the brilliance of FF7. It's a must-play for fans of RPGs with great storytelling, don't let the blocky graphics scare you off. Speaking of which, I'd love to see that FF7 HD remake sometime in my lifetime

Portal

Valve - 2007 - PC/PS3/X360

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

Continuing my little list of favorite games, this week I want to write about portal. I'm quite aware that most everyone who is reading this is probably already quite aware of the brilliance of Portal, but if there is by some chance some soul out there that is reading this and hasn't played this game, YOU NEED TO PLAY IT. Portal gets an emphatic and universal recommendation for me no matter what gaming preferences are or what genres you usually gravitate towards. It is that important of a game. 

Back in 2007, Valve released "The Orange Box" in retail stores. It was a combo pack of Half Life 2, both Half Life 2 episodes, Team fortress 2, and a little game called Portal. I bought the Orange Box mostly for Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 as these were titles I was already familiar with. Portal was pushed to the side for a while while I played the other games. HL2 and TF2 were fantastic games, but when I finally started Portal, my mind was totally blown. I don't use that term lightly either. I can count on one hand the number of games whose mechanics have blown my mind. The original Pokemon blew my mind. Mario 64 blew my mind. Ocarina of Time blew my mind. And Portal blew my freaking mind. 

So for those who are reading this and are unaware, the main gameplay mechanic in Portal is the titular portal gun. The gun allows the shooter to create two separate spatial rifts on flat surfaces that connect one place to another. For instance, if I placed one portal on my floor and one on my ceiling, I could jump down through my floor and come out of the ceiling. Or if I placed one portal in my kitchen and one in my bedroom, I could have an easy shortcut for getting midnight snacks. You can start to imagine the gameplay and puzzle possibilities with this mechanic. The spatial reasoning puzzles were absolutely mind bending and I loved it. Even the momentum based platforming challenges were a blast. The gameplay varied from puzzles to platforming to bullet dodging and sometimes blended all three. The entire game felt fresh and each room was a new challenge to conquer

From a game design, balancing and difficulty curve perspective, this game is as close to perfection as I think I'll ever see a game come. It's a game that knows its mechanics are difficult to grasp for first time players, so it starts out slow to make sure the player understands the basics before things get more complicated. It first introduces the basics of how portals work before it even gives you the gun. Then once you get the gun, it only shoots one end of a portal at a time while the other connecting portal remains stationary to help minimize unwanted confusion while players are adjusting to the mechanics of the game. Then once all of the mechanics are introduced, the game starts slowly ramping up the difficulty of the puzzles and platforming at a perfect pace to match the player's understanding and comfortability with the game. Once you master one mechanic, the next room throws a different one at you. Or sometimes even layers several mechanics from previous rooms all together to make sure you understand them all. Another important thing Portal does is that it never outstays its welcome. Right when it's done throwing all of its layers of tricky game mechanics at you, the game winds down. It winds down particularly well with a satisfying and hilarious boss fight too, but my point is that there is nothing that feels stretched out or tacked on with Portal. Every part of that game feels very necessary and deliberate. It's totally brilliantly constructed and Portal is my gold standard for excellent game design

Also not to be forgotten about is Portal's excellent sense of humor. There's really only two characters in Portal, yourself and the intelligent computer system guiding you through the maze of rooms who is known as GLaDOS. Since your player character is silent, all of the humor in the game is delivered through GLaDOS. It's a subtle type of humor. The game initially wants you to trust GLaDOS as she is the voice who is instructing and coaching you through the test chambers. But then every once in a while, GLaDOS will utter a line of dialogue that makes you think "wait, what?" "did the computer just say what I think it said?". A lot of these lines are intentionally humorous and the game uses this subtle humor to eventually break down the trust that you place in GLaDOS in the beginning of the game as it slowly becomes obvious that GLaDOS is trying to kill you. The game brilliantly uses its subtle brand of humor throughout the course of the game and it has become famous for well known memes based around "the weighted companion cube" and "The cake is a lie".

Portal video review:

Summary:

Portal is an experience that every gamer should have. The puzzles are mind-bendingly brilliant, the platforming is fun and challenging, and the subtle humor keeps the game interesting throughout its duration. Portal 2 was a great game as well, but it didn't really add anything THAT new or mind blowing other than the multiplayer. The game's humor was still really funny, but it was more of an "in your face" comedy than the subtle "what did she say?" style. In any case, you absolutely must play Portal if you haven't already. It's my favorite video game in the last 15 years. 

Mass Effect 2

BioWare (EA) - 2010 - PC/X360/PS3

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

I initially thought it would be a neat idea to close out this year and the month of December by doing a countdown of my all-time favorite games and writing reviews for them. But then I realized that I had already done reviews for some of my all-time favorite games like Project M, Minecraft, and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. So while this isn't truly a countdown of my favorite games, the games I write about this month are still very important to me and I have replayed all of them many times. 

The first BioWare game I ever played was Knights of the Old Republic. I admittedly picked it up mostly cause, you know, it's Star Wars! But I actually thought it was mostly a pretty good game. Then Mass Effect came out. I freaking LOVED the first Mass Effect game. Even without the Star Wars license, it was an undeniable improvement over KOTOR in every way. It had a much more interesting and engaging combat system, it had more impactful narrative decision making, and it had more interesting characters and better told story. But maybe most important of all is that the in-game world felt so real and immersive. It had massive lore and backstory and I could read as much or as little about all of the locations and technologies as I wanted. The voice acting and writing was excellent and the game pulled off humor and sarcasm better than most other games at the time. Plus the game looked (and still looks) pretty darn impressive.

Mass Effect 2 is all of these things and more. I believe it to be the epitome of the Mass Effect franchise. ME3 is a good game too, but it didn't feel as refined or complete of a game as ME2. It seemed like one of the design goals of ME2 was to trim a lot of the excess fat that was present in the first Mass Effect. Gone are the clunky vehicle sections. Gone are the annoying canisters of useless extra weapons and armor that you trip over every 5 steps. But returning is the excellent writing and character design. The crewmates on the ship were so varied and interesting, even more so than ME1. Arguably the least interesting characters were the ones that returned from the first game which isn't so much a slight of the first game as much as it is a compliment to the excellent character design of the second. I loved that you also got to see some of the impact of the decisions you made in the first game. It's also a nice reminder that the impact of a lot of the important decisions you make in ME2 will be felt in the next game. Or at least felt at the end of ME2.

Perhaps the most notable improvement in Mass Effect 2 is the combat system. Combat in the first game was somewhat clunky and awkward. It was sometimes hard to tell if you were actually hitting your target and shots tended to clip into invisible barriers or sometimes seem to miss for no reason at all. The combat in ME2 is much more polished and visceral. You KNOW when you get a kill and it feels satisfying. My favorite change in the combat system is with the different weapon types. It's much more rare when you acquire a new weapon, so it feels more exciting. And it's not simply a binary "Is this gun better or worse?" like in ME1. The weapons are all different and have varied strengths and weaknesses. They all play and feel fundamentally differently with different reload speeds, ammo clip sizes, range, and also varied damage and accuracy. You have to play around with the weapons a little to see which one best suits your playstyle. And I love that. Also the excellent level design in ME2 facilitates constant changing of weapons. Some levels are close quarters with lots of short hallways that are perfect for strong shotguns while others can be long, open courtyards perfect for sniper rifles. And the refined abilities and powers are a nice added touch that separates Mass Effect from other action-shooter games. 

While the refinements to the combat system are nice, the real reason I come to ME2 is to get my story on. I loved the darker or at least somewhat more mysterious themes of ME2. I liked that Commander Shepard was no longer a pawn of the Alliance, but was a renegade in league with Cerberus who were villains in the previous game. Sure, Shepard sort of takes orders from the mysterious "Elusive Man" throughout the game, but you're always free to pick your own destinations on the map and unfold the story at your own pace. It gives the game a more open-ended "explore the galaxy on your own terms" kind of feel. The game seems thematically closer to Star Trek than Star Wars which is ironic considering the development team's pedigree. But I loved exploring and discovering the game world in ME2 and the set pieces are all so well written and memorable. Especially at the end of the game. I won't spoil what happens for those who still haven't played it, but ME2 nicely and meaningfully wraps up all of the choices and decisions you've made in the game up to that point. And it does it in a way that is both exciting and memorable.

Mass Effect 2 Video Review:

Summary:

Mass Effect 2 is a great example of a perfect marriage between excellent gameplay and storytelling. It's an excellent sequel that refines everything that was good about the first game in the series and trims out everything else that was not. It should be a must-play game for fans of shooters and fans of great storytelling alike

Depression Quest

Zoe Quinn - 2013 - PC

Depression Quest is a game that makes me really excited about where the medium of video games is now and direction it's going in the future. Depression Quest is an interactive educational simulation about living with depression. It attempts to use game mechanics to communicate to the player what living with depression feels like. The mechanics are simple and certainly nothing revolutionary. But what makes me excited about this game is that to me it serves as an indicator that the medium of video games is maturing to a point where games can start to cover serious topics like this and tell deeply personal stories.

The game of Depression Quest is basically a text-only roleplaying experience that repeatedly presents you with a scenario and then offers you several choices of how to deal with a the presented scenario. For instance, your in-game girlfriend may call you up and ask you if you'd like to attend a birthday party. You're then given several choices like "attend" or "politely decline" or "say you're not feeling well" or something like that. The catch is that while you can see all of the options, the ones you can actually select are almost always limited based on how depressed you're feeling. There's a few blurbs of text near the bottom of the screen which essentially serve as your "depression meter" and as you get better or worse, more or fewer options are available to you. As far as a simulation of depression goes, it was pretty effective. Sometimes you can see the option you'd really like to choose, but you just can't pick it, which is kind of frustrating.

The game states that its authors have personally struggled with depression before which makes Depression Quest's story feel very authentic. Now I'm not sure if it was the quality of the writing or how personal it felt, but I was alarmed at how many times the writing really struck a chord and resonated with me. There were many times where I was like "Oh wow, I think that to myself all the time". Again, I've never struggled with the serious, deep kind of depression this game is about, but those thoughts I had were a testament to how relatable the writing is even to someone who doesn't know much about the subject matter.

Summary:
As someone who has never personally dealt with depression before, this game was a very educational tool for me and I'm very glad that this game exists. I hope it helps to raise awareness of what exactly depression is and how the people suffering from it can feel limited in their lives. I also hope that this can influence more developers to make more really personal experiences like this game. It's probably less than an hour long, but it's totally free and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a personal game or anyone who would like to try to roleplay what it's like to live life with depression

A Bird Story

Freebird Games - 2014 - PC

Earlier this year, Freebird Games and head developer Kan Gao released a free mini-DLC epilogue for their excellent 2011 game To The Moon. This DLC served as a sort of epilogue for To The Moon that wrapped up the story and tied into the next entry in the series. A Bird Story, which came out earlier this week, was teased as being the game in the To The Moon series and that's both true and misleading at the same time. I found A Bird Story to be actually more like the DLC that was released earlier this year - it's a short mini-episode that's meant to bridge To The Moon and its eventual full-length sequel together and introduce the sequel's new main character. While A Bird Story is a full, albeit very short, standalone game in the To The Moon universe, it also has some notable differences from its predecessor. Firstly, there is absolutely no dialogue in A Bird Story. Secondly, because A Bird Story takes place long before the events of To The Moon (and presumably long before Watts or Rosalene were even born), you play not as Dr. Watts or Dr. Rosalene, but as a young boy who will eventually become their patient in the next game.

The most defining characteristic of A Bird Story is its heavy focus on narrative, but complete lack of dialogue of any kind. This is in stark contrast to To The Moon which was a game made up almost entirely of reading text boxes. I found this to be the most interesting "mechanic" in A Bird Story. This places a greater importance on music to set the mood and the animation to convey the action in the game, which is pretty ambitious for a 2D sprite based game. After finding a few of the opening scenes to be ambiguous and difficult to interpret, I was initially not too fond of this style of storytelling. I was getting annoyed that I couldn't tell what the game was trying to convey to me, so I instead chose to focus on what *my* interpretations of the scenes were. I found this approach to the game made it much more enjoyable and I'll go as far as to say that I think the game was actually intended to be played this way. By the nature of removing all dialogue, A Bird Story sets itself up to be much more open to interpretation than literal like its predecessor. Plus A Bird Story has a very metaphorical and almost dreamlike quality to it which meshes well with its dialogue-less-ness.

While To The Moon had qualities of science fiction, these sci-fi laws were explained and defined and for the most part, the game played by its own rules throughout its story. A Bird Story is much less concerned with what rules govern its in game reality, and instead goes for a very dreamlike aesthetic. It's often hard to tell if what you're witnessing is "actually happening" or if its part of the main character's fantasy or daydream. This is exemplified not only in the events of the story, but in the game's level design too. In the first scenes of the game, the main character walks from his school to his apartment, establishing their physical locations in the game world. But then in a subsequent scene, the character walks back to his school from the apartment via a different path which goes in a totally contradictory direction than the one taken in the previous scene. You still know where you are, but the game invalidates its own rules for how its game world is laid out structurally. It reminded me of how sometimes the architecture of dreams isn't quite exactly correct. You still know where you are, but there are sometimes little shortcuts and inconsistencies with reality.

Kan Gao's excellent musical composition skills are on display again in A Bird Story. I did catch at least one recycled track from To The Moon, but I'm pretty sure all of the rest of the music in the game was original. I'm also a fan of the old school 2D sprite aesthetic and some of the backgrounds in the game are very well drawn. Without any dialogue, the music and artwork get an increased emphasis, and they do a good job of creating mood and atmosphere.

Summary:
A Bird Story does stand on its own, but I'm not sure I'd recommend this to people who haven't already played To The Moon and enjoyed it. It feels more like a shorter and more compressed version of everything that was great about To The Moon. Clocking in at just over an hour, it's a very short experience, but is probably priced appropriately at $5. The storytelling without dialogue works, but it just didn't quite have the same impact on me as To The Moon. I'm now looking forward to Finding Paradise which I guess will be the next "proper" game in the To The Moon series

Beyond: Two Souls

Quantic Dream - 2013 - PS3

Beyond: Two Souls is the fourth game from developer Quantic Dream and director David Cage. Other titles by Quantic Dream include the excellent Heavy Rain, Indigo Prophecy - which I really want to play, and Omikron: The Nomad Soul - which I had never heard of prior to reading the Wikipedia article for Quantic Dream. Beyond plays very similarly to Heavy Rain (and Indigo Prophecy, from what I understand) which made me very excited to try it as Heavy Rain was one of my favorite games I played last year. But, oh boy, Beyond has so many problems. This was such a disappointment after what was a very promising game in Heavy Rain. This review is probably going to get pretty rant-y, so heads up. I don't even know where to start with this game. I guess I'll start by tearing apart the plot.

Beyond: Two Souls tells the story of the life of Jodie Foster who is played by actress Ellen Page. Yes, this is the game that actually stars Ellen Page, as opposed to The Last of Us, which just stole her name and likeness. Anyway, Jodie was somehow linked at birth to a ghostly entity named Aiden, hence the "Two Souls" moniker in the title of the game. Aiden has the ability to manipulate objects in the physical world, give Jodie visions of the past, can phase through walls, and has the ability posses others and force them to do whatever actions he pleases. But Aiden cannot otherwise speak or interact with the physical world. How did Jodie and Aiden come to be linked together? How did Aiden get his powers? How do we even know Aiden's name to begin with??? These are important plot points that the game just chooses to never address.

The plot of Beyond is delivered Pulp Fiction style, which is to say that important parts of Jodie's life are sliced up and given to us out of chronological order. Why is the story presented this way? I have no idea, it only serves to make the narrative more confusing and it felt unjustified. A lot of the pieces of Jodie's life that we are given seem to be largely unrelated to one another and are stylistically and tonally completely different from the last. I remember noting this back in my Heavy Rain review - that some pieces of the plot didn't seem to fit in or progress the story in any meaningful way. But Beyond is an entire game made of these unrelated segments. It's as though 20 different writers wrote 20 different stories about Jodie and no one bothered checking to see if they were related in any way. Then to make things worse, they're presented to us all out of order.

I'll say this though: Beyond has a very promising and interesting open. The first tutorial chapter sees a young Jodie being tested for "physic powers" by recreating the scene in Ghostbusters where there's a supposed physic on one side of a room and someone with symbols on flash cards on the other side of the room. The game wants you to take control of Aiden to peek at the flash cards before Jodie gives her answer. This is a really interesting scenario because it gives the player information that the playable characters in the game shouldn't otherwise have. Aiden essentially becomes a personification of "The video game camera", which is a really interesting concept. The physic tester then asks Jodie to manipulate objects in the other room. The game lets you take control of Aiden to accomplish this. Then Jodie asks Aiden to stop, but you don't necessarily have to listen to her. This is another interesting scenario because it puts the player in the position of performing actions that directly oppose what Jodie, your player character, wants. This is another really interesting scenario that I was really excited to explore. But nowhere else in the game do these scenarios exist. Okay, maybe there's more time where the game gives you the option of pitting Jodie and Aiden against each other, but it's still a really interesting concept that went way underexplored.

These missed opportunities are a symptom of a larger problem: Beyond is a game that has no idea what it does well. The best parts of Beyond, for me at least, were the sections where I was roleplaying as Jodie and making decisions about how she would act in certain situations. Would she tell her friends about Aiden even though it may make her seem strange? Or lie to fit in? But the game seems less interested in these character shaping decisions and would rather tell this action story about how the U.S. government wants to weaponize Aiden's abilities.

(Mild spoilers in this paragraph). Okay so there's this scene later in the game where the CIA sends Jodie to Somalia to assassinate a warlord. After the successful assassination, Jodie learns that the CIA had lied to her and her target was not an evil warlord at all, but a democratically elected president. What's worse is that she learns she has made a young boy fatherless after also killing one of the president's bodyguards. It's a pivotal moment in the game where Jodie realizes she can't trust the CIA and is only a tool being used to perpetuate an endless cycle of death and violence. So she throws away her weapon, quits the CIA and goes into hiding. But then after the next couple scenes, she's right back to killin' more dudes again! Aaaand then she rejoins the CIA... YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!! You can't write these pivotal, character defining moments and then undo them a couple chapters later when you want to tell another story and it becomes convenient to the plot! It was pretty obvious that there were sections of the story that were added in order to pad out the game's length, but these sections didn't fit in at all thematically and sometimes clashed directly with the rest of the story. It seemed to me like Beyond struggled to find its identity throughout the entire duration of the plot. This culminates in the game's ending where the last topics and themes have absolutely nothing at all to do with the story leading up to that point. The game then tries to execute what I'm guessing was supposed to be this surprise twist ending, but the twist doesn't really add anything at all or change the player's understanding of the story in any way. It was a confirmation of my theory that the writers were not at all on the same page about what they wanted Beyond to be about and the result is an incohesive mess of a plot.

Alright, alright, enough ragging on the plot. So how does the game actually play? It's fairly similar to Heavy Rain which is to say there are lots of quick time events and moments when you can give input on what choices Jodie will make or what her dialogue will be. The main difference coming from Heavy Rain is that you can also take control of Aiden during certain action sequences to either strangle enemies or possess them in order to use their physical bodies to take out more enemies. How does the game determine which enemies you can possess and which you can strangle? It seemed totally random and inconsistent to me. There were enemies I wanted to strangle that I could only possess and there were enemies that I wanted to possess but could only strangle. Coming from Heavy Rain, the QTEs are a bit different as well. I see what they were going for here, they wanted to eliminate all of the button prompts from the screen so the player can focus on the action, but I don't think it really works. The idea is that when the game prompts you for a QTE, you're supposed to simply follow the motion of Jodie's body and press the joystick in that direction. But it's often really ambiguous and hard to tell which direction Jodie is punching or dodging or whatever. No meaningful feedback is given to the player when they miss a QTE either, the screen just flashes red as if to only say "NOPE! YOU DID IT WRONG!".

(Sigh). Beyond was a pretty big disappointment for me especially after playing through Heavy Rain. This game felt like a big step in the wrong direction. I'd like to close this review/rant with an open letter not only to Quantic Dream, but to all game developers: Please respect the player's time. If you have a story to tell, tell it. But please don't pad out the game with filler or copy/paste segments of the game to artificially lengthen the play time. I may not speak for all gamers, but I'm way more likely to be angry when I can tell that my time is being wasted as opposed to the notion that a game I'm playing might feel too short. Sincerely, James.

Summary:
As for a recommendation - if you haven't played Heavy Rain, please go do that first. It's a much more complete, cohesive and interesting game than Beyond. If you have already played Heavy Rain, just be sure you know what you're getting into before you start Beyond.

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS (Smash 4)

Sora Ltd. (Nintendo) / Bandai Namco Games - 2014 - 3DS

I am huge, huge fan of the Smash Bros. series. I've poured literally thousands of hours into the first three Smash games and love them very dearly. I first played Smash 64 at a friend's house and instantly fell in love with this series' accessibility and wacky party game-like zaniness that all came wrapped in a package of Nintendo characters I already was familiar with. After dozens of hours of play, my friends and I found that we really enjoyed playing with the items off and on the more neutral stages, and we started playing the game from a more competitive angle. When Melee came out, its faster game speed and emphasis on combos and juggling nicely facilitated this playstyle and I fell deeper in love. Brawl didn't have Melee's speed, depth or balance, but Brawl mods like Project M have quenched my thirst for playing Smash competitively and I actually recently competed in a national Project M tournament earlier this year. (Don't bother looking for my name among the finalists, although I did manage to take 3 stocks off of one of the guys who tied for 7th). Anyway, I wanted to preface this review with my history of competitive Smash so you know where I'm coming from here when I talk about Smash 4.

As of this writing, the WiiU version of Smash 4 has yet to be released, so the version of the game I'm reviewing is the 3DS one. This is the first iteration of Smash that has appeared on a handheld platform, and I'm glad to say it's made the transition about as well as it possibly could have. Any complaints I'd have about the mobile version of the game would be more against the 3DS' hardware than Smash 4's software. The circle pad feels a bit flimsy for a quick reflex based fighting game like Smash, but other than that, the game plays fine. I still don't like looking at that tiny screen and my hands do start to hurt after after a few matches of gripping that un-ergonomic surface of the 3DS, but those are more complaints against the 3DS than Smash 4. Speed wise, Smash 4 plays somewhere in between Melee's speed and Brawl's speed, although Smash 4 retains Brawl's "floaty" feel when characters are airborne. I actually think this "game feel" is a good fit for the 3DS version of Smash 4. I don't really want to have to press a million buttons really quickly on the tiny 3DS gamepad. I think the game speed of Smash 4 is appropriate for the mobile hardware and I don't think it would work if Nintendo tried to put a game as fast as Melee or Project M on the 3DS, even if they could.

I know most players treat Smash as a party game, but I'm going quickly discuss how Smash 4 plays as a competitive fighter because I belong to that small subset of hardcore Smash players who are interested in such things. I know some fellow competitive Smashers may disagree with me here, but I don't think Smash 4 really works as a competitive game. At least not in the same way Melee or Project M do. I know Nintendo has made concessions to competitive players like "For Glory" mode and the neutral "Omega" versions of each stage, but I don't think the actual game engine quite facilitates deep competitive play. While the slow speed and floaty feel makes the game feel appropriate for the 3DS, it also de-emphasizes combos and technical skill. In Melee and P:M, once you win the situation that is referred to in fighting games as the "neutral position", you can use combos, prediction and technical play to rack up as much damage as possible while your opponent uses mix-ups and DI (Directional Influence) to attempt to escape your combos and counter your efforts. These deep and complex systems are what I love about Smash. Almost none of these systems are present in Smash 4. In my experience, once a player wins neutral in Smash 4, they can get one or maybe two hits - that's it. Then the situation is reset to neutral again. I recently competed in a local Smash 4 tournament and I found it to be...well... not really that much fun. Games took nearly 8 minutes to finish, even when we played with only 3 stocks (competitive smash is normally played with 4). Systems like "auto-sweet spotting the ledge", "multiple air dodges", and blast zones being too far away all contribute to Smash 4 just not feeling quite right when played competitively.

But alright, enough comparisons to Melee and Project M. As a party game, Smash 4 is just as fun as ever. Once my friend and I stopped trying to play this game competitively, turned the items back on and played on some of the non-omega versions of the stages, the game became very fun for me again and I found myself enjoying Smash's wacky "anything can happen" feel all over again. The roster of selectable fighters has been expanded from Brawl's 39 characters to 49 (50 if you count the Mewtwo DLC) and you can additionally play as any Mii character found on your 3DS. You can also customize your fighter's movesets which is something I admittedly haven't played around with much yet. Old game modes from previous iterations make a return and are joined by new ones like "Smash Run" which is the sort-of successor to Brawl's "Subspace Emissary" which can also be played multiplayer in Smash 4. Speaking of which, the multiplayer on the 3DS works pretty nicely. It's quick and easy to set up and we never had a problem with connectivity, even when there were tons of 3DS's in the room at the local Smash tournament. I've only ever played one Smash 4 game where I experienced any lag as opposed to Brawl's online multiplayer which was a borderline unplayable laggy mess.

Summary:
Smash 4 may not be the competitive successor to Melee like I foolishly hoped it might be, but it's still a really fun party game. I think it's great that tons of people will now be able to play Smash together on-the-go now. It'll also be nice to have something to do now when waiting at Melee/P:M tournaments in between matches. Also if you're interested in learning about competitive Smash, I would highly, highly recommend this documentary on YouTube. It's an 8-part series and is kind of long, but it's really well made and provides a window into why players like me have fallen in love with playing the Smash series competitively. Also if you own Brawl, go download Project M.

Parasite Eve

Squaresoft - 1998 - PS1

I'm really not sure why I didn't try this game before now. It's got "me" written all over it. Parasite Eve is a text heavy horror RPG by Sqaresoft for the PS1. I love horror, I love RPGs, I love story and I love Squaresoft games. Classic Squaresoft, of course - not necessarily Square-Enix. Okay, so full disclosure: I haven't finished this game yet, but I'm on the 5th of 6 chapters. I usually try to complete every game I review here, but I wanted to play a bunch of new horror games in October and I think I bit off a few more games than I had time to chew this month. I'll admit to not finishing Clock Tower last week either. But I'm quite excited to wrap up Parasite Eve this weekend as opposed to Clock Tower which felt too aged for me to really enjoy.

Parasite Eve is actually a "sort of" sequel to a novel of the same name by a Japanese author named Hideaki Sena. The characters and themes of the novel were adapted to be used in the game, and a lot of new narrative was written by Takashi Tokita, who also helped direct Chrono Trigger. There's actually a lot of well-respected industry talent that worked on this game. Hironobu Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Nomura, both of Final Fantasy fame, respectively produced and did lead artwork for Parasite Eve. The game's excellent soundtrack was composed by Yoko Shimomura who is arguably the most prolific video game composer of all time who is not named Nobuo Uematsu or Koji Kondo. "Primal Eyes", "Missing Perspective" and "Out of Phase" are examples of Shimomura's great work on the soundtrack.

Parasite Eve tells the story of Aya Brea who is a cop working for the NYPD in a fictional New York City during Christmas of 1997. The game opens as Aya and her date are at Carnegie Hall watching an opera. During her solo performance, the lead actress of the opera starts to creepily stare directly at Aya and while the two gaze across the theater at each other, everyone else in the room suddenly begins to catch fire and spontaneously combust. It's a pretty crazy and horrifying opening scene. Aya then learns that the lead actress is being possessed by a being named Eve who is the source of the body melting fires. Eve eventually escapes Carnegie Hall and Aya must spend the rest of the game unraveling the mystery of who Eve is, learning what she's trying to accomplish, and finding a way to foil her plans. Parasite Eve isn't the greatest written game, but the story has its moments and keeps you interested by teasing a mysterious relationship between Aya and Eve.

One of the first things I noticed about Parasite Eve is how beautiful and detailed the backgrounds were. I love and miss all of the hand drawn backdrops that are present in all of Square's PS1 RPGs and I hope some of the modern RPGs will start to take a crack at this art style again. Parasite Eve's battle system is in some ways an evolution of Chrono Trigger's. There is no "battle scene"; encounters happen seamlessly while you're exploring. You also have full control over Aya's movements during the battle. You can move around to dodge enemy attacks and move closer when your ATB gauge is full to deal maximum damage at close range. All of Aya's weapons have range rating which determines how far away you can be from enemies and still successfully make an attack. I found I was constantly managing Aya's spatial position while my ATB was charging, which was an interesting mechanic. I know this is back-to-back reviews where I'm complaining about this, but really I found Aya's move speed to be too slow, both in and out of battle. Aya's snail-like move speed combined with the slow screen fade transitions made exploring a bit tedious at times.

Summary:
Parasite Eve isn't the most pulse-poundingly terrifying game out there, but I still found it be enjoyable. The game's creepy themes, excellent artwork and eerie soundtrack work together to make Parasite Eve an interesting play, but it's probably not anything that will make you want to sleep with the lights on. The combat was overall pretty decent, but it was hampered by Aya's slow move speed and the battles lacked that real addictive hook that's found in most of Square's games around this era. The story has its moments, but could really be aided by a little more character development early on. I did enjoy the realistic setting of New York City as opposed to the imaginary fantasy locations that are in most RPGs. I'm excited to finish this game up and to eventually move on to Parasite Eve 2 in the future

EDIT: Finished the game. The highlights of the game for me were the 4th chapter which is spent locked in a creepy abandoned hospital basement during a power outage and the 6th chapter final boss fight. Without spoiling too much, my first real moment of terror in Parasite Eve came during the final boss fight. I'd recommend this game, but only to players who can tolerate the pacing of older RPGs

Clock Tower

Human Entertainment - 1995 - SNES

Clock Tower is a true survival horror game that actually pre-dates Resident Evil and was released on the SNES in 1995. This game is not to be confused with the 1996 PS1 game Clock Tower 2 which was released in the U.S. simply as Clock Tower because the original SNES game never made it outside of Japan. So the Clock Tower series has the old Final Fantasy numbering problem where no one really knows which game you're actually talking about until you clarify with the year or system. I think we should all just universally agree to use the Japanese numbering for these games to minimize the amount of unnecessary confusion. 

It actually surprised me that the original Clock Tower was never released outside of Japan because on the surface at least, it seems like a very American styled game. You play as the very American-sounding "Jennifer Simpson" who is a young teenage girl and an orphan. In the beginning of the game, Jennifer and a few of her friends are sent to live at the "The Clock Tower" which is a giant old mansion owned by the wealthy Barrows family. Shortly after arriving, Jennifer finds herself separated from her friends and can her distant screams from somewhere in the mansion. She eventually encounters "Scissorman" - a short boy with a deformed face who wields a gigantic pair of hedge clippers. Scissorman is a villian who is totally straight out of all of the American slasher films that gained popularity in the 80s. Even Clock Tower's opening music sounds remarkably similar to Michael Myers' theme song from Halloween. 

Mechanically, Clock Tower is a blend of Survival Horror and a Point and Click adventure game. You move a cursor around the screen with the SNES d-pad and can interact with items or objects by pressing the "A" button. Moving Jennifer around the screen is done in a similar fashion. I know Clock Tower is nearly 20 years old now, but there were a few things about this game that really felt outdated. Actually, moving Jennifer is actually one of the first things I noticed that really irked me. WHY IS HER MOVE SPEED SO SLOW????? Out of curiosity, I went back and timed how long it takes Jennifer to cross the the main lobby from one end to the other. It literally takes 36 seconds. Think about how long that is. Even once I figured out that you can double tap A to run (why would I not ALWAYS want my character to run??), it still takes 13 seconds. Too slow!! Even in 1995, players had to have gotten fed up with this.

Each encounter with Scissorman is resolved by running away from him; there is no combat in the game. Scissorman usually shows up randomly while you're exploring the mansion or trying to solve puzzles, but some of his appearances are triggered by certain actions. The puzzle solving in Clock Tower is not really a strong suit, but the game does build tension somewhat effectively. Like any good horror game, there is a fair amount of suspense when Scissorman ISN'T around, because you're not sure when he'll appear next. But when he does appear, dealing with him is really more of an annoyance than a terror. Moving Jennifer around often felt unresponsive and even when Scissorman killed me, the game just took me right back to where I was before I died. So really death in Clock Tower is just kind of a mild annoyance. I felt that this game could have benefited from knowing that the player's enemies are always the most scary when you can't see them. The best parts of Clock Tower were when Scissorman was nowhere around. Like Alfred Hitchcock said, "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it". 

Summary:

I can't really whole-heartedly recommend this game unless you're a huge fan of classic horror games or classic point and click games and can overlook this game's faults. I'm afraid it really hasn't aged that well. It does suspense somewhat well, but everything else will feel very old. I could see how this game would have had its place back in 1995 with like young kids staying up late and playing this at a sleepover with the lights off or something like that. I've heard subsequent titles in this series improved on the formula of the original, so maybe I'll check one of them out eventually. If you do decide to go back to the original, I'd advise doing so on an emulator that has a "speed up" feature. Seriously, that walk animation...

Zombies Ate My Neighbors

LucasArts - 1993 - SNES/Genesis

I'm cheating a little bit here by labeling Zombies Ate My Neighbors as a horror game. I don't think it's truly a horror game, but it is horror themed if you can make a distinction between those two things. So remember when LucasArts was a thing? Well back in the 90s before all they were doing was milking the Star Wars license, LucasArts used to be known for quality point-and-click adventure games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. It was around this time that the creative talent at LucasArts broke away from their traditional fare of PC adventure games to produce Zombies Ate My Neighbors, a co-op shoot-em-up game for the SNES and Genesis. Yes, the game can also be played single player - but find a buddy if you can. The real fun is had in multiplayer.

So you, and hopefully a friend, will play as Zeke and Julie - two teenage neighborhood kids who witness an attack on their suburb by just about every horror movie monster you can think of. There's zombies, mummies, werewolves, aliens, vampires, you name it. Zeke and Julie arm themselves with all sorts of unconventional weaponry like squirt guns, soda cans, dinner plates and fire extinguishers to combat the threat. Each weapon's effectiveness varies depending on which enemy it's used on. For instance, mummies are weak vs. soda cans. Because, you know, reasons.

The game features 55 levels, but I'm not sure I've ever even made it past the twenty something range levels in this game. It gets pretty hard pretty quick, even with co-op help. The main objective in each level is not to kill all of the enemies, but to save all of the neighbors in each level. Each level's map is a non-linear, giant block of terrain and you must rescue each and every one of the neighbors hidden in the level. You don't have a hard time limit, but the longer you take, the more likely it is that neighbors will start being killed by the infinitely respawning monsters in each level. Once neighbors die, they won't come back - even in subsequent levels - so rescuing them as quickly as possible is paramount. The game is over when all of the neighbors die or if you lose all of your lives. Ammo management is also a key mechanic as each weapon has a finite amount of ammo. You can find more ammo, different weapons, health packs and other helpful items in each level, but you'll have to look carefully as these upgrades are often well hidden.

Summary:
There's not much else that can be said about this game. It's a classic co-op shooter that still holds up very well today. It's difficult, but it's still a great game to share with a friend. Discovering the game's secrets, fighting huge mutant babies and frantically running away from chainsaw killers in a giant hedge maze is still just as fun as it was 20+ years ago.

Off

Mortis Ghost - 2008 - PC

I stumbled across this game while searching for new stuff to play and looking really deep into the internet for recommendations. I often like to try lesser known games that are passionately appreciated by a very small group of people. I saw that Off was a game that was getting this kind of love and decided I wanted to check it out. Off is a French indie game released on the PC in 2008 which was eventually translated into English in 2011. It is a weird, weird, trippy game. I think I would pitch it as: "What if Earthbound was a horror game? And then it was given an extra dose of weirdness"

In Off, you play as "The Batter" (possible Earthbound reference?) who is tasked with "purifying" various zones of the in-game world that have become infested with ghostly specters. The Batter is guided through the game world by a well-spoken and eternally smiling feline known as "The Judge" whose in-game artwork looks like it was likely influenced by Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat. The Judge provides The Batter with knowledge and background story about the in-game world and often provides hints for the puzzle solving sections. The Batter is also assisted by a masked merchant named Zacharie who sells The Batter equipment, items and upgrades. He always greets The Batter with a signature creepy chuckle and will occasionally wear a cat mask to impersonate the Judge for some bizarre reason. Most of the characters in the game, especially The Judge and Zacharie, are quite aware that they are characters in a video game and will sometimes directly address the player as though you were a character in the game. In most games, this sort of 4th wall break is done for comedic effect, but that's not the case with Off. Here, it's used as a story element which helps construct the creepy, surreal atmosphere. This is my favorite type of horror game. Off mixes its dark and disturbing subject matter with bizarre, surreal imagery to mess with the player's mind. It uses atmosphere and storytelling to deliver its chills in lieu of jump scares.

I was initially not very taken with Off's art style. It looked cheap, minimalistic and low quality. But as I played the game, the artwork really grew on me and I think it helps to give this game a sense of style. Some of the monster designs are really horrifying too. The soundtrack also helps to create the unique and wacky feel of the game. Just give a listen to "Pepper Steak", Off's battle theme. It's a remix of an old jazz song set to a Cajun beat. It sounds completely insane and a little horrifying, which fits in perfectly with the game thematically. The one complaint I will level against the sound design is that Off repeats some basic sound effects much too often. And I'm not sure if it was just my copy of the game, but the music was very poorly looped. Minor complaints, but these are little things that can be easily cleaned up to give a game more polish.

I found the storytelling to simultaneously be a strength and weakness in Off. The dialogue is very well written, but the story is often ambiguous at times. For a good portion of the game, I felt like I wasn't sure what I was doing or why I was doing it. There are also a lot of events that take place in the game that are a little vague about what's happening, especially near the end. While narrative ambiguity is a definite problem with the game, I still felt interested to explore the world and learn about all of the characters which speaks to how strong and engaging the writing still is. The actual gameplay for Off is where the game falls flat on its face. The RPG combat is very basic and extremely repetitive. Without any interesting battle mechanics, Off's combat system started to stale very quickly. I found I could just use the same attacks and strategy regardless of which enemies I was facing. The game's designers chose to include an "auto-battle" system as well, but I feel this is actually a detriment to Off. It's never good when a game can play itself. The player always needs to feel engaged. The puzzles in this game were almost equally as disappointing as the combat. A lot of the puzzles weren't very well communicated and even the ones what were weren't very clever or interesting. There were times when I wasn't even sure if what looking at was even intended to be a puzzle or not. It's a shame because a little more polish, thought and depth on the gameplay would have done a lot to improve the playability of this game.

Summary:
If you play Off, you're doing it for the story, not the gameplay. The puzzles are weak and the combat is mind-numbingly repetitive. To its credit, Off still manages to create a very unique and bizarre world through strong writing and stylistically appropriate artwork and music. The story lost me at times, but it was still an interesting and engaging ride. Off is certainly not for everyone though and it will likely be doomed by its faults to continue to only be appreciated only by a small group of hardcore horror game fans. If you do decide to try it though, don't say I didn't warn you about that combat system.

EDIT: You can download Off completely free here if you're interested in giving it a shot

Resident Evil

Capcom - 2002 (1996 Original) - GameCube/Wii/PS3/X360

Ahhh, October. October has always been one of my favorite months. Maybe it's because I was born in the beginning of the month, or maybe it's because October means football season is in full swing or maybe it's because the oppressive Florida weather where I live starts to cool down a bit and you can go outside again without feeling like you're going to die. Or maybe it's because October is home to Halloween, which has become one of my favorite holidays in my adult life. Aside from eating candy and dressing up like ridiculous characters, the fact that Halloween is a sort of celebration of fear and scary things has always been a novel concept to me. Last year, I observed Halloween by watching a bunch of horror films and exploring specifically why I did or did not find them scary. This year, I'm planning to do the same thing here, but with games. I'm going to kick things off with one of the most obvious and well-known horror games of all time, but I promise in the coming weeks I'll cover some horror games you probably haven't played before. Also if you're looking for other horror titles to try, check out anything I've labeled with the horror tag so far. All of those titles are interesting in their own way and definitely worth a look with Silent Hill 2 being a particular favorite of mine.

The original Resident Evil made its debut on the PS1 in 1996 and is considered to be the genesis of the survival horror game genre. It was very well received critically and commercially and it of course spawned many sequels, spin-offs and movie tie-ins. Starting with Resident Evil 4, recent entries in the series have been more action/shooter than survival horror, but the original Resident Evil is certainly true survival horror. As important and influential as the original is, the game I want to specifically talk about is the 2002 remake for GameCube that was then ported to a bunch of other consoles. The 2002 remake contains completely redone visuals and cutscenes, alterations to gameplay, completely different puzzles and re-recorded voice acting, sound effects and music. This sounds like total blasphemy, especially to remake a game as iconic as the original. But the remake is SO well done; it's faithful to the vision of its predecessor and it's a testament to the quality of the remake that the remake is arguably even more well received than the original. Aside from more immersive sound and graphics, probably the most important thing the remake did was re-record the voice overs. The voice acting was, well, pretty terrible. I think the enhancements made in the remake enable this game to age a little more gracefully and stand the test of time as a horror game masterpiece.

If you've ever played any of the other entries in the Resident Evil series, you know that the story is kind of ridiculous and throw away. There's all sorts of plot holes and inconsistencies and it can get pretty absurd at times. Most of my other favorite horror games use excellent writing to help create their creepy mood, but not really so with Resident Evil. What it lacks in storytelling, it makes up for with superb audiovisual presentation and excellent game design. One of the first unusual things you'll notice when playing the game is that it uses a fixed and stationary camera. The game is still rendered in full 3D, but the camera never moves, only the the player and enemies do. This can be a little disorienting at first, especially when changing scenes, but I'm surprised I haven't seen this elsewhere in other Survival Horror games. It makes the game feel very cinematic and gives the designers complete control over exactly what they want the player to see. In first person games or games with an adjustable camera, the designers have to design set pieces and jump scares around knowing or guessing where the player's camera will be. Resident Evil is freed up to design its scares however it pleases, and it does so very well.

Resident Evil does a great job of not only creating creepy atmosphere with its audiovisuals, but also by creating stress and nervousness through gameplay. Encountering an enemy in is scary in its own right, but that fear is also accompanied by the stress of considering how to deal with the enemy. You may have a pistol, but ammo is limited. Should you still shoot it? Knives don't consume ammo, but are also more risky as you have to get close to the enemy in order to kill it. And even if you do manage to "kill" a zombie, it will actually eventually reanimate and become stronger and faster. You can prevent a zombie from reanimating by burning their corpse, but that means you'll have to carry around kerosene and a lighter which take up precious inventory slots. Burning corpses will also consume kerosene which is preciously finite resource. Is the corpse in a key corridor that you'll have to walk through frequently? It might not be worth your kerosene. And if ammo or health are low, sometimes the best option may be to simply run away.

Another smart game design choice was the limitation of the player's inventory slots. You'll eventually find a giant crate in the game that can store all of your items, but you can only take so many of them with you at a time when you leave. You'll have to make strategic decisions about how many healing items you want to bring, how much ammo you want to bring, whether or not to bring the kerosene/lighter and you'll also want to think about how many inventory slots you want to keep open in case you find something interesting while exploring the mansion. There's also a finite number of saves you can make while playing Resident Evil, which is a really interesting mechanic that I'm surprised more games haven't copied. Your character in the game saves their progress by typing on an old-fashioned typewriter, but using a typewriter requires ink ribbons which are then consumed. When you burn through all of your ink ribbons, you can't make any more saves until you find more ribbons in the mansion. This keeps the player from just killing a few enemies and quickly running back to a save their progress. There's an ample amount of ink ribbons to find in the mansion as to not make the number of saves an annoying issue, but it still makes you think twice before making a save with minimal progress. Very smart game design.

Summary:
Resident Evil is a horror game classic, and the remake is a masterpiece. You absolutely must play this if you're a horror game fan, but if you call yourself that you probably already have. For those looking to test the waters of the survival horror genre for the first time, the Resident Evil remake is a great place to start. It excellently builds and maintains tension through superb audiovisual presentation and smart game design. In the most Capcom of moves, I hear they're remaking the remake for next-gen consoles and PC and it will be out early 2015. I think this is just going to be an "HD remaster" of the remake, but this will still hopefully give more people a chance to play this game. Shinji Mikami, the creative director of Resident Evil, also has his latest game "The Evil Within" coming out later this month. From what I've seen of the game so far, it looks very interesting. Hopefully he can recapture the terror and suspense he created so well initially with Resident Evil

Riven

Cyan - 1997 - PC/Saturn/PS1/Mobile

Anyone else remember this game? Riven was the sequel to the massively popular game Myst which launched in 1993. It was famously one of the first games to be released on a CD and helped to popularize the CD-ROM drive. I can't even believe Myst is more than 20 years old now. I can still remember playing Myst on Windows 3.1 and how frustratingly often it used to crash. Then Riven was released in 1997 and came on 5 CDs. You had to annoyingly keep swapping the CDs out as you explored different parts of the island. There's a lot of stuff like this about Riven that requires the player to have a lot of patience. Patience that I had as a kid, but has long since left me as an adult. It's kind of a shame because I'm pretty sure that if I played a game like Riven today, I'd push it aside after 15 minutes or so and move on to something else. While there are some technical limitations and some game mechanics in Riven that have not aged well over the years, there's also a lot this game does really smartly. It's a "slow burn" type of game. If you give Riven your time and patience, it will reward you with some amazingly clever puzzles and an unusual and immersive fantasy story. 

For those not familiar with the Myst games, they are point & click style adventure games. But not quite in the same way as the old King's Quest or Monkey Island games. They're no puzzles that involve combining items together through some absurd logic that allows you to progress further or whatever. In Riven, you're gated only by how much you've explored and how deep your understanding is about the island and its inhabitants. It's a game that does a beautiful job of communicating a complex story with few words and minimal cutscenes. The only cutscene you're given for quite a while is the game's initial opening cutscene, which really gives you more questions than answers. During this cryptic scene, a man teleports you to an island called Riven after giving you nothing but two books. You arrive in a jail cell on Riven where one of the books you were given is promptly stolen by a man who does not speak your language. The thief is then quickly killed by another mysterious person who sets you free, but not before taking the stolen book for himself. You're then free to explore the island and unravel the mystery of Riven. An intriguing open, no? What's in that book that's worth killing for? And who are these people who are so desperate to get it?

Riven's story is told through exploring the island, discovering its secrets and understanding the meaning and purpose behind them. Riven doesn't tell its story through dialogue or cutscenes as in most games. When you do watch a cutscene in the game, it usually only serves to confirm what you've figured out about the island already. It's never directly or clearly communicated to you what any of the character's motivations are or even why you were sent to the island in the first place. It's really up to the player to discover and understand the deep story in Riven for themselves, and this may have been the most satisfying part of the game for me. I think the best way to go about doing this is to always ask the question "Why?" when something doesn't make sense. A lot of the fun in this game is trying to form the answers to all of the questions the game gives based on what you know about the island so far. The developers did a fantastic job of being very deliberate with their world design. Nothing is there by accident or coincidence, nearly every object or structure in the game is meant to communicate something important to you. As you explore Riven, you'll encounter many mysterious machines and contraptions. Ask "What do they do?". "Who would have put them here?". If you think on these questions, eventually the details of the story will come in to focus.

The puzzles in Riven are given to you in a similar fashion as the story. The objective or elements of the puzzle aren't given to you explicitly, but rather communicated to you subtly through the environment and world design. It's definitely a game where you have to keep a sheet or two of handwritten notes while you're playing, which is something not many games do anymore. Some of the puzzles in Riven are downright brilliant. There's one amazing puzzle in particular where I can remember feeling so impressed with myself after I had figured it out. The solutions to these puzzles are really so satisfying when you finally figure them out. I'd challenge you to play through this game without looking any of them up.

Riven is not without its faults though and some of them are unfortunately due to this game's age. The game is first person, but it's not full 3D. It's essentially a bunch of still images that have been linked together. This, to me, really makes the game feel aged. A full 3D engine would do this game a lot of good. The game's pace is also incredibly slow and it can be very frustrating to be stuck in one place for a while and feel like you're not progressing. This will likely happen a lot in Riven which can be discouraging to players if they don't have a deep well of patience. There are certain puzzles in the game where Riven may have been to clever for its own good. The puzzle solutions are fair, but they're hidden so deeply in the game's world that they're not easily discovered without a very keen eye and extremely sharp mind.

Summary:
If you've got the time and patience and love puzzle games, mysteries or unusual stories, Riven would probably be a good fit for you. Just keep in mind that this game will probably show its age and you may also get stuck frequently while playing it. If you've never played a game in the Myst series and are curious, Riven is a great place to start. It's a refinement and improvement on everything that the first game was. While subsequent games in the series improved their audiovisual fidelity, they never quite recaptured the sublime story or brilliant puzzles that made Riven a great game. Also steer clear of Myst 5. That game is terrible. Rand Miller, one of the lead creative minds behind Myst and Riven recently launched a successful kickstarter for his new game, Obduction. It sounds like Obduction will play similarly to Riven and I'd love to try another game like this to see if I still have the patience for it. I'll be interested to monitor the development of Obduction and hopefully play it soon.

Ether One

White Paper Games - 2014 - PC

The premise alone for Ether One probably would have been enough to get me interested in playing this game, not to mention that it had mostly positive(ish) reviews upon its launch earlier this year. Gameplay wise, it's kind of one is one part interactive story and one part puzzle game. It's like if Gone Home had a baby with the old school adventure/puzzle games like Myst. In Ether One, you'll be playing the role of "The Restorer". You're contracted to help a medical researcher treat a patient with dementia by entering the patient's mind Inception style and then finding and restoring the patient's lost or broken memories. Really interesting premise, right? Unfortunately, most of what's typed below are a lot of the faults I found with the game. There's a lot of good stuff to be found with Ether One too, but I chose to focus mostly on the things I thought could be improved to make a more complete experience. I want to submit some constructive criticism because I know that Ether One is the type of game that I usually like, but there were a few problems in the way of making my experience truly awesome

Like Gone Home before it, the story of Ether One is told via voiceovers that occasionally kick in and give you narrative details when you're standing near or looking at something of importance. You'll be exploring a deserted island as it exists in your patient's memory and discovering your patient's life history by exploring this small island. The primary voice you hear is that of the lead researcher of the project you're assigned to. She chimes in now and again to give you your objectives and bark out orders on how you're to carry them out. Her character reminded me a little bit of GLaDOS from Portal. She serves to guide the player and move the game along, but her motivations seem questionable. You don't feel like you can completely trust her. The game seemed content to keep this character sort of ambivalent all the way up until the end of the story. Actually, I found a lot of the story's details to be a little vague and I'm not sure if this was intentional or poor narrative execution.

Adding to the confusion and the vagueness of this story is the other female character's voiceover who just starts talking to you out of nowhere. For the longest time, I thought I had missed some important cutscene where the game delivered a bunch of narrative exposition and this other voice was introduced, but nope. For most of the game, you're not sure who this voice is supposed to be or what the relevance is of the details she provides are. To me, this sort of ambiguity wasn't even interestingly vague or mysteriously vague. It was more confusingly and annoyingly vague. A lot of what either of the two voices talk about seemed incohesive and irrelevant to the rest of the story. Because of these problems, it took Ether One quite a while to grab me and for the game to really click with me. There's some really well executed scenes about halfway through the game that pulled me in and there's also an interesting twist at the end, but unfortunately you'll have to tough it out while the game stumbles through the confusing introduction of the setting and characters.

The focus of the gameplay in Ether One is on exploration. You need to find a certain number of red ribbons in each area before being allowed to proceed to the next one. The game also includes some puzzles, but interestingly, nearly all of the puzzle sections in Ether One are completely optional. Since they're not required, solving these puzzles serves only to give you an extra bit of narrative about whichever area you're in. I think it's fortunate that the designers made these optional, because the puzzles I attempted to solve were so frustratingly poorly communicated. I had absolutely no idea what the game wanted me to do with some of these puzzles. Sometimes I wasn't even sure if what I was looking at was supposed to be a puzzle at all. I happened to accidentally solve one of the puzzles, and I wasn't even really sure what I had done to complete it. A lot of them involve placing the correct items gathered from various places around the island, but you can only carry one item at a time for some odd reason. It felt like the game designers were hacking around the game engine rather than coding a decent inventory system. It was a pretty unintuitive mess. Mercifully, these are indeed optional. Aside from the puzzles, the rest of the gameplay was sort of unremarkable and uninteresting. If you're playing Ether One, you're doing it for the story, nothing else. But just like its story, I felt that there was something missing from Ether One's gameplay that could have really made this game special

Summary:
Despite all of my ranting above, I still liked Ether One. I wanted to like this game more than I actually did, but there was some bungled narrative and some really poor execution in gameplay that I just couldn't get over. It's also another pretty short game. That is, unless you try to figure out some of those crazy puzzles. That might pad the game a bit, but I'd advise against it. Skipping nearly all of the puzzles, I was able to knock this game out in about 3 hours. The subject matter in this game is really interesting to me and there are a few short sequences in where Ether One really shines. However most of the rest of the game is unfortunately kind of dull, incoherent or overly vague. Artsy folks who like the "open to interpretation" kind of story may dig this, but I found too many details were missing and my interest wasn't adequately captured at the game's opening. I really still did enjoy playing through this game though. Just not as much as I hoped I would.